Stay with Me

It's only Wednesday, and already, this week has been filled with a lot of heaviness. On my drive home tonight, I was feeling really pensive, and this song came on the radio. While the exact content doesn't exactly fit what I've been experiencing this week, the sentiment behind "Stay with Me" was enough to bring me to tears. Never mind the heaviness of the week - we can blame it on that soulful voice of Sam Smith that I love so much, and probably the sentiment to saying goodbye to another class of students I've been blessed to teach for a semester. 

 

 

I find lots of my inspiration for living from music. Naturally, I started thinking about how so many of the songs that have left the biggest impact on my life are ones that express a deep yearning for connection. After all, isn't connection with others what our hearts and souls so unceasingly seek after? Whether we search for love with another human being, intimacy with a God who has created us and knows the depths of our need, or friends who will accept us in all of our beautiful brokenness - we are a people made to seek connection. Biologically, we may be able to survive with only basic needs met. Relationally, we need others to understand us like we need the air we breathe.  

 

I have sat with clients and friends in unspeakable darkness this week. I've been a therapist for two years now, and I cannot remember what my heart felt like before I could feel the depths of this need to simply be in the presence of someone and witness their pain. Each day, I feel like I am infinitely more blessed by my job, and I hope I still feel this way when I've been practicing for forty years. No matter how many times I enter into that hazy darkness, I become aware of stepping into this sacred space of someone's inner world. There is the need to tread lightly - not out of fear, but born of deep respect. As humans who have experienced hurt and disappointment, we manage our vulnerabilities through a veil (sometimes fairly translucent, and sometimes intentionally opaque) that shelters us from others who cannot meet our needs for connection. As a therapist or as a friend, it is such an incredible privilege that leaves me feeling a bit raw and in awe each time someone lets me have a glimpse behind the veil of vulnerability. In every one of these quietly ground-breaking encounters, I find myself wondering afterwards how I have been irrevocably changed and hoping that this other person was able to fill experience true connection and unwavering mercy.  

 

This week, I am reminded of how deeply grateful I am for the gift of compassion and the risks others have taken to share their hearts with me. I am also thankful for the certainty of knowing that I have some amazing friends and family members in my life who have stayed with me during times of heartbreak and confusion and immeasurable sadness. My friends, I hope you know that no matter how great the darkness can be, I will stay with you.

Today's Thoughts on Fatherhood

Today, my Facebook feed is inundated with a whole slew of posts celebrating dads. In a way, it is so inspiring to me to see how deeply the love between a child and his/her father can run throughout an entire lifetime, and some of your pictures have made me cry. There, I said it. My sappy side is coming out again. It is so clear to see the joy some of you have with your dads, and how much you treasure memories of a childhood grounded in adoring love, life lessons, a sense of commitment, and physical and emotional presence. As I get older, it's also amazing to see how many friends of mine are now dads themselves. Great dads out there, you have reminded me that there are amazing, loving, compassionate fathers who see that parenting role as a core part of their identity. I thank you for that, truly.

Today, I won't be posting pictures or writing a commemorative speech honoring my earthly dad because Father's Day has been a bittersweet holiday for as long as I can remember. This is not a place where I'll air my "dirty laundry" so that's all I will say about that. But today, despite the heaviness in my heart, I am celebrating. I am celebrating every one of you amazing men out there who are protective and self-sacrificing, those of you who are loving and patient, and those of you who are intentional about your fathering. I am celebrating a heavenly Father who loves me even beyond what I can imagine. A client said something to me this week, and her words have been bouncing around in my brain all weekend: "See yourself as God sees you, not like you think about yourself or what others say about you. Live your life like you believe what your Father sees in you." Because I know I have a Father who loves me in such an overpowering and overwhelming way, I choose to see myself as both lion-hearted and tender-hearted. Those are the best parts of me. I am not broken, and even though I have been bruised, I believe in love. I believe in joy, and I believe in goodness. I believe in a world where there are men who uphold their commitments and admit their imperfections. I believe in honoring those men and a heavenly Father who loves me in all my complexity and faults.

Today, I am sending up a prayer in communion with those of you who, like me, need reminders every once in a while that there is a good, loving, merciful Father out there, and there are men here on this earth doing His work, too. Peace be with you, friends.

Nature's Skyscrapers

Let me preface this post by saying: I absolutely love being a therapist. There are a lot of ways in which I’m not sure the direction my life will take, but my identity as a couple and family therapist is a certainty. I feel incredibly blessed to accompany people in places of pain and fear, and it has been the most beautiful gift to see people experience healing and find hope amidst the darkness. By jumping headfirst into the realm of human experience, I have grown more in two years of doing therapy than I could have ever imagined was possible. That being said, this past week has been hard. I’ve held people’s pain, and my heart has hurt with theirs. I wouldn’t change this part of my job even if I could, but after this long, beautiful, challenging week, I needed to fill my soul back up. Sometimes I turn to cupcakes (can you say…self-care dinner?), but usually I turn to nature for healing grace.

So yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon hiking around Caprock Canyon. It was healing and soothing and invigorating in all the ways I needed it to be. More than that, I found myself reflecting on why I feel such a connection with nature. For that, I have my family to sincerely thank. Some of my earliest memories include hiking with my family in Colorado, and I remember being fascinated as a child by fuzzy caterpillars, flower petals, puddles of water, and blades of grass. As I grew older, my mom encouraged me to stay grounded in appreciation for the earth we are called to embrace. Nature is my refuge when I am feeling weak, when I am lost, when I am broken.  

 

 

Walking through the canyon yesterday, I was thinking about how I am much more impressed with natural occurrences than I am with man-made feats like skyscrapers or amusement parks. Why? The way I see it, what man builds can be easily torn down by earthquakes or terrorist attacks or fires or any number of destructive forces. What God builds in nature can also be damaged. Sometimes this involves natural processes like erosion; sometimes it involves careless human error leading to wildfires or overconsumption resulting from greed or lack of planning. Seeing all the ways in which erosion had helped develop these canyons really made me stop and think. Now, this won’t be a brilliant, scientifically accurate description of erosion, but hear me out. With wind and rain and all sorts of weather over a huge expanse of time, erosion had torn down these rocks and scarred them. But it’s almost like I could see how God’s hand had carved out these beautiful parts of the earth that didn’t exist before and weren’t visible under the original surface. There’s beauty in the breakdown. And at the bottom of the riverbed, these rocks had swept across and grated against each other, creating this beautiful mixture of browns and blues and whites. Friction can create something mysteriously lovely. I can appreciate that in the human spirit, both for my clients and for myself.  

 

 

What about 50 years from now? If I return to this same spot, will it look the same? All the crevices and jagged edges I have touched today, what stories would they have to tell in half a century? Would I recognize these same spaces, or would they have changed beyond recognition? It makes me think about the ways in which I have changed as a result of my life experiences. There are parts of me now that I’m not sure I would have recognized in myself ten years ago – some parts are improvements, I think, and some are surely works in progress. I suppose we’re all parts of God’s creation, constantly changing as a result of forces beneath the surface.

Lessons from the Desert

Surprise, surprise. Even though I gave up blogging nearly two years ago, I should have known that something would draw me back. Writing has always been a constant in my life, but reflective writing is something I all too often find excuses not to make time for. Don't be fooled. I'm under no illusion this blogging will follow a regular pattern, but I do hope to make more time for it. I've decided to give myself the gift of a summer filled with healing and learning to more fully love myself and this beautiful earth filled with beautiful people. Writing seems to be a most excellent companion for that kind of journey.

I've spent the past 8 months living in the desert. Literally. For those of y'all who don't know, west Texas is a desert. When I decided to pursue my PhD, I made a commitment to staying in Texas because I wanted to stay in the same state as my family, but man...sometimes it feels like I'm more than just a few highways away from the north Texas life I used to know with plenty of rain, humidity, traffic, and skyscrapers. Life loves to throw us curve balls, and expectations have a way of getting in the way of reality. I have to smile when I think of how many times I have probably made God shake his head and laugh a big belly laugh during this past year. Ask anyone who knows me well...I am stubborn. I like to have a game plan, and I like to think that planning ahead can resolve most problems. This year brought me a lot of experiences I couldn't have planned on happening, but in the end, they have made me more fully human, more humble, more alive, and more trusting of God's plan for me.

So let's talk about this desert business. I have spent the past few months whining about how much I miss thunderstorms and that there's a disappointingly tiny amount of greenery and wildflowers. While I was on a rocky hike today around the Lubbock Lake Landmark, it hit me. Bam. I've always had an appreciation for dessert, but I'm humbly learning to appreciate the desert (see what I did there?). It took me 8 months, but I've finally learned to see the humble beauty in west Texas. You see, the desert isn't pretentious. The desert doesn't put on airs, trying to be beautiful, sandy beaches or whispy clouds crowning mountain peaks. The desert is what she is, and if you look hard enough, you find reminders of how God has created beauty in the most unexpected of places. There are jackrabbits with their powerful hind legs and graceful leaps, patches of wildflowers hiding amidst the cracked earth and yellowing grass, and yellow bellied birds with sweet songs to sing. Sunset is the time when the west Texas desert reveals all her true beauty in a way that's impossible to ignore, but the rest of the time, you have to be patiently mindful. If you aren't mindful, your eye will glance over the brown and yellow landscape and your nose will wrinkle with disdain. Be patient, and you'll realize that life is happening out there. Even tumble weeds can be kind of exciting because it means that the wind currents are blowing, which always reminds me that the Holy Spirit is at work in ways we can't see.

This got me thinking about how, in many ways, the start to 2014 felt a lot like a desert to me. At times, it was really hard to see how God was working in my life, and I sometimes felt like I was wandering around without much of a game plan. I've had a lot of humble reminders that it's not my plan that matters as much as His plan and how I put it into action. After 8 months in the Lubbock wilderness (that might be a big exaggeration, but we'll go with it), I feel connected to the desert in a way that inspires me to look beyond the grandiose ways that the earth is beautiful or that I can see how God is at work. Instead, my friends, I am striving for a heart that sees beyond the obvious to see the beautiful in the broken, the doubting, and the works in progress.

Compliments

Today, I find myself curious. I'm a big fan of questions. I love asking people about their experiences, thoughts, and beliefs, especially when I have no idea what their answer might entail. I genuinely think that people are fascinating in all their idiosyncrasies, rationalizations, stubbornness, and acts of good will. At the risk of sounding a bit mentally unstable, I love asking questions of myself, too. As a twenty-something, I find myself working towards becoming more self-aware. As I'm whisking through my day-to-day routine or experiencing something unfamiliar, I try to take a few moments to check in with myself. What emotions are being stirred up within me? What are the sensations in my body telling me? What thoughts are roaming around in my head? Am I being present in this moment, enjoying the world around me?

Today, my curiosity is focused on the wonderful phenomenon of compliments. We give, and we receive. Compliments: the concept seems simple. You tell someone something that you admire about them, and they say "thank you." End of the story, right? Wrong. Especially with women, it seems that there's often this intricate dance back and forth between "I compliment you" and "You compliment me back." And what about those of us who find receiving compliments to be a bit awkward? Why is it easier to accept compliments from a stranger than someone I know closely?

This last question has really sparked my curiosity. Generally, I don't receive compliments very well. I know, I know....it's a work in progress. When someone compliments me on my appearance, I'm likely to scrunch up my eyebrows and wrinkle my nose (mostly in a joking way), but I still feel obligated to say "thank you." I am polite to a fault sometimes, but I also try to be guarded against seeming narcissistic. I strive for humility, and while I don't always get there, it's something I value very much. Somewhere along the way, though, I began to equate accepting compliments with being self-centered. What's that about?

Lately, I've begun to question why I respond in this way. Why can't I just smile and say "thank you," without feeling like my stomach is churning butter inside? Why is it so difficult to trust that the person genuinely means what they say? How are humility and self-confidence intertwined together?

I've found that it is easier for me to accept appearance-related compliments from a random stranger than from someone I know personally. In this situation, I can smile, say thank you, and go on with my day. I don't give another thought about what the person will think of me based upon how I respond to a compliment. But when it comes to a compliment from someone I know, I feel uncomfortable. Why the madness, I feel myself wondering.

After giving this some thought, I've realized that within my personal relationships, it is much more important to me that someone values my actions and my behaviors than my appearance. I would rather be seen by those important to me as being intelligent, competent, and self-respecting than simply as someone with a pretty face or great earrings. As I write this, though, I'm struck by the thought that self-respect includes respecting all of one's self: physical appearance, intellectual capability, and emotional being. I'm going to let this thought guide me as I continue to learn how to accept compliments with grace, humility, and joy.

And so, dear friends, if you're still reading this, by now, I'm impressed :) Just consider it all part of the journey of self-awareness. Thanks for joining me on the ride. It's been a fun adventure!

Grounded

Sometimes, I really appreciate living on a planet with gravity. With gravity, I know that at least one of my feet has to be touching the ground. It might be touch-and-go as I hop along from place to place, but eventually, I know I will find secure footing. It could be exciting to visit a far away universe with zero gravity and float around in the atmosphere, but I think being completely untethered sounds more or less terrifying. I can appreciate gravity for the way in which it keeps me grounded. I feel more secure when I know the surface beneath my feet.

This summer, I've made a lot of changes. That statement is such a gross understatement that I can't even begin to describe it in more detail. Some of these changes have been excruciatingly unsettling, and some of them have filled me with a giddy sense of excitement. At times, I've felt like I've lost my footing, and I've found myself searching for my sense of purpose. Who am I? What am I looking for? What makes me happy? What do I need out of life? What legacy do I want to leave behind? The answers to those questions are constantly evolving, and I'm learning to be at peace with that uncertainty.

On the days where I'm feeling lost, I remind myself that gravity is on my side. I'm not afraid to take risks. I can experiment, I can try new things, and I can allow myself to fail. Through all the trial and error, I know that gravity will bring me back to the core of who I am meant to be.

Maybe this sense of being grounded is why I like yoga so much. During this morning's session, I found myself focusing on the sensation of my feet on the mat. My feet were connected to the ground: the same ground that connects me with everyone else on this beautiful planet. While I'm stretching up and around, I feel secure to stretch to my limits because my feet are firmly planted on the ground. I am balanced, and I am strong. I am grounded.  

Never Be Ready: Leaping into 2012

As 2011 prepares to become just a page in our collective memory, I'm inspired to take a few moments to remember the good, the bad, and the unexpected about the past year. As I reviewed my New Year's blog post from last year (Better Days), I am actually impressed that my resolution to search for better days did, in fact, succeed. All in all, 2011 will be considered a pretty decent year in my book.

This past spring, I began the exhilirating, treacherous, and stressful journey of graduate school. I have been blessed with the most phenomenal advisor I could ask for, friends who share my anguish and my joy, and some fantastic books added to my bookshelf. Grad school has certainly been a transition, and I'm still in the process of emerging from the Baylor Bubble. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to expand my worldview and garner as much life experience as possible, and it's been a road lined with challenging growth.

I'm also amazed by how much my family has grown this year. It's been a tough year for many of us, especially due to my grandpa's stroke over the summer. While it's forced all of us to experience the aging process in an in-your-face sort of way, I truly think it has been an unlikely blessing. Watching my grandfather struggle to relearn basic skills through physical therapy has filled me with inspiration and reminded me that we continue to grow and learn until our very last breaths. I have gained a newfound appreciation for his quiet demeanor, and I have loved spending more one-on-one time with both my grandparents. Seeing my family members come together and sacrifice for each other has been a beautiful experience, and in some ways, I am thankful for this family crisis. We may not always get along or see eye-to-eye, but I am certain that we are a passionate family: rich in love, opinions, and a strong will to survive.

It would be a mistake not to reflect on my volunteering experiences with the Behavioral Care unit at ACH Child and Family Services in Fort Worth. For the small price of two hours a week, I'm filled up with joy, hope, and appreciation by the children in residence at ACH. I felt called to begin volunteering with children with behavioral concerns in May, and I truly look forward to my time with these kiddos as the best part of my week. Some of these children carry with them sad stories from their past, but all of them exude this brilliance that can only come from resilience. Truly, I have learned so much from them about the ability to find joy in the smallest of happenings, the ability to love despite maltreatment, and the courage to overcome difficult circumstances.

With that in mind, I'm ready to leave 2011 behind, not with a sense of spitefulness or discouragement, but with hope and excitement for the new things that 2012 will bring. My song for this year is Never Be Ready by Mat Kearney.

Come on lay down these arms, all our best defenses
We're taking our chances here on the run
The fear is an anchor, time is a stranger,
Love isn't borrowed, we aren't promised tomorrow

How true is that? Nothing is guaranteed in life, not even tomorrow. I want to enjoy every morsel of each day. Okay, that might be a tad unrealistic (after all, who enjoys sitting in tedious traffic or waiting in line at the grocery store?). Nevertheless, my goal for this year is to enjoy life a little more. Love a little more. Hug a little more. Blog a little more. Pray a little more Do yoga a little more. Smile a little more. Breathe deeply a little more.

I'm not looking for huge changes in 2012, but I'm looking for that elusive happiness in small happenings. If I focus on all the wonderful things that happen on a daily basis, I'm a lot less likely to focus on the things that aren't quite so wonderful. One things I know about myself is that I put off a lot things because I'm waiting to be "ready," but honestly, we all know the perfect moment isn't just going to drop into our laps. Tomorrow isn't promised, and sometimes, today is all we have. Every once in a while, you just have to take a leap of faith. So here's to leaping into 2012!