exposed

I do not like who I see sometimes when I get a full look at her.

The person you see is fairly tame and in these online spaces is mostly well-behaved. She's rational about the things that trouble her deeply and though you hear her heart ache from time to time, she's mostly able to keep it together.

As these layers are burned away, I see someone else entirely. Skin and muscle peeled back, nerve endings exposed and raw, I have been coming to see who she really is -- the red and throbbing life underneath it all.

She knows trials and troubles are promised, and she knows she should endure these things as discipline. A move away from family, friends, and familiarity and mysterious health issues are refining her soul. She knows she's being taught to trust deeply in the Giver and not in the gifts themselves. She observes what she perceives to be the ease and happiness of others and thanks God for how He's blessing them.

Truth is, she loves the gifts more than the One who gives them. Trials, tedious and prolonged, have worn her down like water over a rock and make her doubt what she knows: not that He exists, but if He is good. She pouts and pines away in the hopes that she will somehow get her way. She wonders what she has done to get here (is it punishment? does she inhabit God's blind spot?) and what she could do to escape. She has considered that if it meant her circumstances would improve, she would turn her back, give it all up and try something new. She wonders what kind of God has the power to heal, but withholds it from her. She knows that He counts her tears, but protests that she'd rather not have a reason to cry them in the first place.

She is not as devoted and faith-filled as she thought she was. She is selfish and proud, desiring above all else her own comfort and happiness. She fears that this is all there is, that this is as good as it's going to get, and that she had just better get used to it.

Every time she thinks the last layer has been pulled away, He finds another, peeling it back easily as the skin of an onion. It seems to her that there is nothing left, no covering for her nakedness. And so her insides are turned out and her raw nerve-endings are exposed, unprotected. She is totally exposed, entirely vulnerable even to the most infinitesimal threat. She is afraid. He is, after all, the One who burned away her layers of protection. Will He protect her now?

She does not know what He will do next, or how He will be with her, but she knows for sure that she is something truer now than she was before. It burns and it stings, but it occurs to her: this is what changing feels like; this is the business of being made new.

buffeted

I tend to have a rich and colorful dream life. Once the lights are out and I'm warm under the covers, a new life begins after I surrender to that deep and restful state of unconsciousness. I only occasionally remember what happens when I wake up. But I can't shake last night's dream. It was too real, still covering me like an invisible cloak.

Yesterday, I left work about halfway through my day because I was profoundly and deeply tired. My limbs were heavy and my head felt as though it was a bowling ball balancing precariously on a broomstick. I slumped in my chair, unable to concentrate. I was supposed to conduct a training session, but couldn't even contemplate how I was going to make it through the day feeling like this. I had consumed a latte already and was on my second cup of black tea. So deigning to practice what I preach, I decided to take myself home and rest.

I lay in bed for two hours, but didn't really sleep. It was restful though; I felt well as long as I was hidden from the shafts light penetrating my bedroom blinds, wrapped in the darkness and warmth of the bed coverings.

After about two hours, I went downstairs and did some work on my book project; the words are coming naturally and easily; even I am surprised with how much there is to tell. Later on, I had a healthy dinner and made my way to bed early.

I slipped into unconsciousness easily. And then came the dream.

In my dream I was in my bed, but unable to sleep. I was being tossed about, gusts of air pushing me, moving me from where I lay, enveloping me; they were lifting me inches off the bed, spinning me about in the air, tossing me back over and over again. I cried out for Jesus, over and over again. I screamed His name. I screamed until my throat was raw with it. The room was filled with a taunting and demonic laughter. Before long I felt a hand was clasped tightly over my mouth. Suddenly I was unable to breathe or scream. I continued to cry out in my spirit for Jesus.

In the name of Jesus!! I shouted in my spirit. In the name of Jesus!!

Inside this dream, I remembered another dream from several months ago. I was secretly pregnant, having managed to keep it hidden from everyone around me. For months, I carried the growing child with me secretly. I had taken myself to the hospital when the labor pains came on. As I lay in the hospital bed breathing, pushing, giving birth, a familiar face was beside me, holding my hand. The face was my mom's, but I knew in my soul it was Jesus. I looked away after the child was out of me, a squealing little girl who was the embodiment of my shame, something I had kept hidden and secret, now squealing and alive and outside of me. Not hidden anymore. I clenched my eyes and kept my face turned. I knew she was safe as she was carried away, though I did not know where she was taken.

In my dream, I couldn't remember if this had actually happened to me, or if I was remembering another dream inside this dream. I felt the shame as fresh as if it were yesterday, as real as if had actually happened, as if I had actually given birth to an infant, looking away from her, not giving her a name. I was unable to distinguish between the dream and my waking life.

As this dream came to the front of my memory, I was still tossed and thrown about as if I were no more than a leaf on the wind, being bounced off the four walls, the ceiling, and the floor. My muffled screaming was swallowed in the escalating and cackling laughter around me. Like a pinball, my body continued to bounce off the walls and back again as they pushed and threw me. I felt bruised and battered, I could feel myself going limp. I was suffocating, feeling the winds rush tightly around my body, closing in on me, unrelenting. My arms and legs were bound, I was frozen. A heavy weight rested on my chest like a boulder, pinning me to the bed.

I could not move, nor could I cry out.

Then in my dream, the door opened and light spilled in. The hand disappeared from my mouth and the cackling laughter was silenced. I lay still and the rushing around me slowed until all was still. In the guise of a face both intensely familiar and deeply comforting, Jesus came and sat beside me on my bed. He looked just like my mom again. My hand reached out for him, grabbing at his calf, the most reachable piece of him from where I lay.

What's wrong? he asked softly, his gentle gaze holding my own.

I am buffeted, I choked. I could barely speak, still gasping for air.

Let me help you breathe, he said.

And slowly I woke up, taking in slow, deep lungfulls of air. I looked at my clock, reasoning that it must be close to morning. I was surprised to learn it had not yet been an hour since I first went to bed.

I looked about the same dark room, seeing the faint outlines of the walls against which I had been tossed, as though to check for damage. The room was intact. No visible evidence existed of what I had experienced so vividly in my dream.

And I was breathing. In and out, in and out, deeply. With relief. Safe. Rescued. Breathing.

I returned to sleep easily, sleeping deeply and soundly the remainder of the night. In my body today, I am still deeply tired; I am keenly aware I will need to be deliberate about getting enough sleep over the next few days. But inside that fatigue, deep inside my body rests a bone-deep knowledge that this pervading tiredness comes from having fought hard, from being rescued from an enemy; my body was battered and tossed, but I am alive and well and breathing, having been carried to the right side of victory by Jehovah, the God who rescues.

that thursday

I've been sitting here quietly, staring down those words she said, holding them at arm's length. I circle them suspiciously. I simultaneously dread them and long for them. I put them in my mouth, wanting both to spit them out and to ingest them. In truth, they scare me.

So here I am. Sitting across from the truth, holding the raw shredded heart tissue that found its way out of me that day. It had been in hiding so long, protected behind thick steel doors, secured with locks that had long been rusted over.

But now it is here in the light of day, demanding a reckoning. I hold it in my hands, and it's a terrible mess. It's pulpy and tattered and dripping. I can't put it back together. I can't bring any sense or semblance of meaning out of it. There's a reason it remained hidden for so long.

By now most of you have a sense of something happening for both Christianne and I on a day we've both come to call "that Thursday". On that Thursday we were together, we were both startled to the core. For completely different reasons, we saw separate truths emerge that had been hidden and stuffed within us, crammed into dusty corners of forgetting without any conscious knowledge on our parts that they were about to make themselves known.

Christianne has written about beginning the journey deeper into what God revealed to her that day; and now I am doing the same.

I don't want to go there.

Going there means revisiting old wounds, splitting open old scar tissue and permitting God to poke about my insides.

It means resurrecting the memories of relationships long past, bringing to the surface that which I had gagged, bound, weighted with lead, and made to drown. It means not merely being present for the autopsy, but wielding the knife that will open these dead things.

It means looking at the past fifteen years of my life and relationships through a microscope. It means identifying where and how the seedlings of lies were planted, watered, and permitted to grow.

It means putting my finger on sore oozing places and letting God do the same.

It means identifying the lies that have tangled their long, sinewy roots around and throughout my insides, roots that have firmly embedded themselves in my flesh. It means acknowledging that I have held on to them as much as they have held on to me. It means asking God to pull these out by the roots.

It will mean learning to believe the truth.

The truth: the truth of those words that she prayed over me. The words that I keep at a distance, staring them down and eyeing surreptitiously. The words that I walk circles around to examine from every angle, looking for leaks, cracks, flaws, exceptions. Words that are foreign to my heart, that feel like rocks in my mouth. These words I must learn to believe.

And so I fear what is being asked of me: of being called again to walk a path that is dark, where my feet are the only ones that can do the walking.

Surrender

I've been so exhausted this week; I'm certain at least some of it has to do with the consecutive weeks of overtime I've been working. Those long weeks cannot help, but really, I've known all along the root of my fatigue goes much deeper.

I've written on both blogs now about my exhaustion and anger at God. About how much I don't want to be in this place right now. About how I feel like God pulled a fast one on me: I go looking for love, but God has other plans. So I waltz along happy to have found it, then that rug gets pulled out from under me. In the process, my convictions get turned upside-down and inside-out and I'm on a path I was never looking for.

Perhaps my response to all this was delayed; but I've written about that too. I was so busy arguing with my heart that I never heard its cries. Shhh, shhh, I would tell my heart. You shouldn't be feeling this way. But then those cries pressed up against the walls of my heart; I was both pricked and squeezed. Then at last that most tender and wounded organ saw the light of day and was permitted to breathe.

As much as I didn't want to be angry at God, my denial of that reality inhibited my ability to approach Him with any integrity. So I let the anger out. Perhaps it was because of being denied expression for so long, but once the anger was unleashed, I fixated on it. My prayers became about nothing else besides what I had most wanted but been denied; what I had sought and God had used to turn my faith upside-down. I won't lie: I felt tricked, duped, and deceived. Sometimes I even felt like the butt of His joke. So I beat my fists on God's chest, feeling myself to be a victim of divine trickery. I wanted desperately to abandon this whole process, to return to the old way of doing things. To surround myself in a warm blanket of familiarity, to be comforted and unchallenged. To find what I had set out for in the first place. To be in the midst of the known.

I lay in bed this morning, wide awake but still utterly exhausted. I've shared with others that the words "tired" or "exhausted" are woefully inadequate for describing whatever this state is. Adding hours to sleep could not and did not meet my need.

It was still so early. Not wanting to be awake but unable to return to sleep, I poured my limp body out of bed and as I often do, gazed at my bookshelves. I fixated on the thin green spine of one I had started several months ago, but put down. Not understanding but obeying the impulse, I picked it up and took it to the living room with me. The Critical Journey is about faith and faith journeys, it's about encountering walls and crises. It's about feeling stuck and cultivating an awareness that will help us both to become unstuck and to hedge ourselves against getting caught in the mire again. It compared the stages in a life of faith to a spiral "and we experience more depth each time we recycle through the stages at a higher place in the sprial" (p. 9). Where I was unmotivated to continue my reading before, I couldn't stop turning the pages now.

I saw myself in these introductory paragraphs and I let the words pour over me:

"Faith is a verb, action, the dynamic that drives or gives life to the relationship between us and God. Our response called faith is the human recognition, on the one hand, that God is God, and, on the other hand, that each of us is special. It is the recognition that we are most fully human when we acknowledge and accept God is God in or lives. ... Therefore, faith as a verb is neither static, an object to be dissected, nor a qualifier that either puts us on God's side or distinguishes us religiously from one another. Faith with reference to the journey is simply the process by which we let God direct our lives or let God be God." (p. 4)

"Getting stuck occurs sometimes from our fear of facing the unknown. Other times it results from personal or work crises that we cannot control. ... It may even be that we are simply afraid to face the fact that we are loved unconditionally by God. Accepting that means admitting we cannot control God or our destiny. Whatever the cause, becoming caged at a stage is real. If we are aware of it, we will have less likelihood of staying stuck." (p. 10)

"A crisis can knock us off balance, making us afraid, vulnerable, and ripe for change. This also happens in our spiritual journey. We have a crisis in our faith that causes us to reconsider. It might frighten us, at least make us vulnerable. If we become bitter or too resistant, we can get very stuck. But if we let the change or crisis touch us, if we live with it and embrace it as difficult as that is, we are more likely to grown and to move eventually to another stage or spiral in our journey. When we are most vulnerable, we have the best chance to learn and move along the way. In the midst of pain there is promise." (p. 13)

I saw myself so clearly. I was letting myself be caged, protesting the loss of a control that was strictly illusory to begin with. I resisted walking into the endless stretch of unknown before me. I fought the crisis instead of pressing my weight against God in the midst of it. And worst of all, I was dissecting myself in two: my head and my heart were at war with one another. It is no wonder my reserves were depleted.

Closing the book, I cloistered myself in my room. Sitting on the floor, I picked up the rosary beads for the first time in a week. They still feel foreign and strange to me, the words still come awkwardly, like marbles out of my mouth. As I moved through the decades of Our Fathers and Hail Marys and contemplated the joyful mysteries, I wept. I no longer suppressed the tears that rose to the surface: I let myself feel loss for the warmth and comfort I leave behind for a way of faith that is alien to me. I let myself feel the pain of a love that slipped through my fingers. And then I thought of Christ who left the comfort and warmth of heaven for an earth that must have been a cold, dank, and uncomfortable place for Him. I let my mind turn to Mary at the moment of the Annunciation, who neither resisted nor protested, who did not rationalize or justify, who took the words of the angel and let them be. I am the Lord's handmaiden. Let it be to me as you have said. And so I let the rosary and its mysteries wash over me.

Once those five decades were completed, I continued to let the tears come. I raised up my palms and held them open, quietly. I said little to God and if He spoke to me, I'm not sure I could provide an adequate translation. But if I had to try to articulate His message, I think He wants me to be more gracious with myself, to allow Him to carry me along this difficult path. He understands my anger and He understands that I'm hurting right now in a way no words can describe. He knows me and my frustration with the ambiguity in this process better than I do myself. He knows that it the midst of all this hurt and confusion, it is tempting to revert to what I've been called to leave behind.

Before today, I understood that He's been there too. But this morning, it was wholly different. Today I stopped fighting Him, coming instead with open hands. I unclenched my fists and opened my palms to the sky. I held them to heaven silently. The tears still came, but a heaven-sent peace and calm washed over me as I gave up on my idea of how this all should be. I breathed in and out more deeply and without trying to understand or explain it, simply let the peace He offered permeate the most hidden and unvisited corners of my soul. The war between my mind and heart slowed and ceased in those minutes, the wall I erected between the two dissolved. I don't feel so exhausted now.

It was not so much an answer He provided or a promise the path ahead would be smooth. It was simple surrender; it was a step toward resigning the control I was fighting to maintain. It was me moving toward God, allowing Him to be God. It was giving Him the things that are wholly inadequate in themselves to propel me forward in my journey. My own efforts at digging out of my stuckness were only putting me deeper in the mire that hindered me; today I rested my weary arms and put down the shovel.

He met me in this place of my giving up. The fighting now over, I bury my head in His chest and wrap my arms around His neck, letting Him carry me. Sometimes I think that's the most difficult thing: to stop our legs from walking, carrying ourselves down what paths we will and instead like a small child, to stretch forth our arms in a simple gesture that says, carry me. And then to let Him bear our weight and do the walking.

Down & Dirty With God

Dear God,

It's no great secret now that I've spent the better part of the last couple of weeks and months desperately trying not to be angry. I can't figure out if I'm angrier at You, at M, at myself, or whom. Or what. I've tried intellectualizing and rationalizing my way out of this place, but in vain. It's not working. Right or wrong, this anger/frustration/doubt is what it is, and I cannot convince myself otherwise.

I went looking for love, God. That's no great secret either. I'm fast approaching the age of thirty -- not that it's some kind of dead end or drop-off or anything -- and I'm still single. I don't want to be; that's why I went looking. I've spent the overwhelming majority of my adult life as unattached and have had few complaints in that regard. I've worked hard, traveled, spent quality time with my friends, and pursued those things that interest me. I've been able to do many things that would be difficult to do were I married or otherwise attached. That's not lost on me and I think You know that. I've enjoyed doing them on my own, but I really do want to find someone to share this life with, to build a home and a family with.

I guess I always thought that if I was meant to find it, it would have happened by now. And here I am, alone again in that single-woman way. And again, not that my preconception of when it "should" have happened limits You in any way, but the further along I get in life, the more I wonder if it will ever happen at all. I'll be honest; right now, I hate it. I absolutely hate it. Sometimes I feel so close to it, but then the hope of it is yanked away again. I feel taunted sometimes. Part of what makes me angry is that You used that desire to bring me to this place I was not looking for -- and now here I am, leaving behind what's familiar, feeling like I'm wandering in a foreign land. You've given me no map and I've been fumbling as I try to find my way toward You. I've tried to refrain from asking why, knowing that even if I had an answer, it would not make this any easier, would not make this any less painful than it is. I guess I've learned by now that understanding the why of any kind of suffering or unpleasantness doesn't make it any easier to bear; it still must be lived through. I can have faith that You can see and know things that I cannot -- You can see the whole spectrum of time, of which my life is only the tiniest sliver. I can have faith that You know better than I what is best for me. I can even have faith that this is all moved by Your love for me. What I lack, I think, is trust. If I read the Scriptures, if I hear Your words, I'm not getting anything I haven't bargained for. That is a hard pill to swallow.

But is it so wrong that I should want to be happy? I'm not talking about happiness in a selfish or hedonistic kind of way, but the kind of happiness that most people desire in their innermost beings: to love and to be loved, to feel connected to another human being on this planet. I know this is a good thing because You created it to be this way; but sometimes in my darkest moments I question why You'd plant a good desire and then deny me the means of fulfilling it. I'm more than willing to assent to the fact that this feeling has more to do with my limited perspective; I just wish I could get my heart to see it that way. I can't help but notice the many friends for whom You've made this dream a reality and here I am: an outsider looking in, feeling as though I'm completely remedial, denied a spot at the grown-up's table. I know I shouldn't (and it hurts me desperately even to acknowledge this), but in my darker moments I feel like the butt of a great cosmic joke: look at her, the woman who just doesn't get it! I feel so eminently unwantable as a woman and often wonder if it really is as entirely preposterous as it feels that there would be someone "out there" (how I loathe those words!) that should find me a desirable girlfriend, let alone partner in marriage.

I look at these words as I write them and I want to say that it's a matter of my limited perspective (and at the end of the day, maybe it really is just that). But here comes the temptation again to try and suppress my heart with my intellect, but I can't do it anymore. I can't suffocate this feeling anymore than I can will my heart to stop beating. I believe I have to move through these feelings to get beyond them, and I can't do that unless I acknowledge that they are there. Ugh. Here are my feelings, messy as they may be, as uncomfortable as it makes me to bring them out of hiding.

God, I just don't know what to do with any of this. Many times in the last several months I have thrown up my hands and said, You take it. I so clearly don't know what I'm doing! Never has that been more true. I've been so busy intellectualizing my way through this that I've entirely neglected my heart in the process. I don't want to leave my heart behind, God. If I am going to commit to this big of a life change, I want my heart to come with me. That's why I'm here now, acknowledging these ugly truths. I wish it could be different, I wish I could convince myself of the merits of following my intellect, and I wish my heart would be as eager to follow. But it's not. I'm still as human as You made me, I still have those desires You've implanted in me. And now it seems less and less likely that it will ever be a reality. It seems so cruel sometimes!! I know my perception of things doesn't limit You, nor should it limit what I know You can do ... but still my heart doesn't follow. I'm still licking my wounds in a way and maybe I should be gracious enough with myself to allow for that. Maybe that's what a lot of this anger boils down to: not having had time to allow my heart to recover from falling from a height. Maybe the wound was deep enough that it is unfair to expect my heart to have recovered this quickly. I don't know; even as I write this I want to say it is a bunch of fluff: my tendency is to be stoic and move forward in spite of pain or unpleasantness. The life of someone following Christ isn't supposed to be a primrose-lined path, but at the same time, something in my heart is preventing me from moving forward in the way my intellect knows I should move. I just don't know. That's the only thing of which I am completely certain right now: the not-knowing, and the inconvenient reality that this part of me is looming about, a question with no apparent answer except WAIT.

I know this is nothing new; I know I'm not the only unattached woman out there who has been faced with heartache, who has trusted and been disappointed, who has cried out to You, who has been bouncing off the walls of faith, knowledge, hope, and the unpleasant present reality. But I can only bring my heart to You, point out that gaping emptiness, and hope and wait. And wait and wait.

I'm accustomed to my writing help me come to some conclusion, to tying things up all neatly at the end. I'm definitely not there now. There are no answers today; just some raw and painful honesty, some tears I'd rather not cry. But I think that's okay; this is big enough (as far as I'm concerned) that I cannot expect to find resolution so easily. I hate saying these things out loud to You; it seems so contrary to how I should be, so opposite of the righteousness You desire from me. But I know You saw this reality before I did, that You knew it well long before I acknowledged it. And I know that the end of all this will be to conform myself to Your will and not the other way around. But I need time to get there, and I think You are more willing to give me that time than I am to give it to myself.

Sometimes I wish I could shut off that part of my heart that desires what it does; it is a thorn in my side to walk through my days with it, to drag this deferred hope around with me like a dead weight wondering if and how it will ever find its fulfillment. Wondering if the hope is ultimately a vain one. Others try and encourage me, but they can no more see the future than I can (can they??). Some days are far easier to bear than others and sometimes it doesn't take much to trigger me in such a way that I am in the throes of heartache again.

Last night, it was that dream I had that triggered my angry prayer this morning. You know the dream I had, God. I didn't want to wake up; I wanted to stay embedded in that dream with the apparition: the one who took me as I was, who loved me, who made those feelings of being eminently unwantable evaporate. How much I wanted to go back to sleep! I can see why You'd desire my holiness more than my happiness, but in that dream state, I was so happy. Because it was right, because it was good. Because I was not feeing this awful, chest-sucking feeling. Because I didn't feel so alone anymore. And maybe You have a means of fulfilling that or satisfying this that is entirely other than I can conceive. It's not as though I expect my desire for this love to solve all my problems or fulfill all my needs. But it's there all the same, feeling like a gaping hole, proclaiming its emptiness to me emphatically.

So for now I pause in this journey, needing this time to be still and to heal. I'll probably never understand the why behind any of this; maybe I am meant only to move through it.

No answers today. Only this ugly prayer, this pitiful cry from me to You. I know You're no genie, God; it's not as if I look to You as the Fulfiller of my wishlist. I don't know what I ask of You, really; I can only acknowledge my present state to You, tell you the truth from my heart and my mind, to have faith that You'll do with it what You will, and that it will be good. To know that despite my feeling an utter mess, that You know, that You love and You hear, even when it feels as though my words bounce off the ceiling only to fall again in my lap with a heavy thud.

So take it. Take it all. Take my tears and store them up. Take my words and gather them in. Here they are in all my not-knowing. Please make this something good.

The Unknown

... never doubt in the dark what God has told you in the light.

Victoria Christopher Murray

I must confess that I'm not as certain and sure-footed as what I write here might indicate. I have my fair share of questions and doubts, moments where it seems like the most prudent thing would be to turn my back on the whole endeavor and return to what I know best.

I talked to the priest about this earlier this week; I was telling him how when I am there in the thick of my learning, surrounded by the faithful, I am so very certain. My intellect readily assents and my will is eager to follow. When I come home, I am no longer surrounded in the same way, I am no longer engaged in dialogue about the faith. I am in relationships where boundaries have been necessarily drawn so I may protect this infant thing that is so precious and still taking root in me.

He told me with sadness of how he's known many who have turned back from embracing the Catholic faith to keep the peace in relationships with family and friends. I told him that given the strain I've experienced in many of my relationships, I could understand the sentiment and empathize with those who were forced to forsake one for the other, but that I had no intention of abandoning what was so clear in front of me (while there is some relational strain and a gap in understanding where one did not exist before, I am not -- thank God -- in the unfortunate position of entirely forsaking one for the other). As I noted in a previous post, Christ made it clear that we have to love Him more, that we cannot allow even family relationships to be a cause of hesitation or of turning back. I've never before had to make that distinction; I've always had my family and many friends along the way with me. The fact that there is a measure of difficulty in making the separation does not give me a pass where obedience is concerned. The truth is that I'm scared to obey. But I'm more scared not to.

... to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

James 4:17

No exceptions. No caveats.

I can't reverse this process, I can't unknow what I've learned. There are times where this would be a tempting option were it a viable one. And I know that it won't be a giving up just for the present; I know there will be sacrifices to be made down the road. It's no great secret I would love to get married; by embracing the traditional Catholic faith, I'm effectually cutting myself off from the overwhelming majority of single men who call themselves "Christian". Am I forfeiting this dream? I cannot know; I only know I must love Christ more and love Him first. I must deposit at the altar all those things I have now and all those things I dream of having (even those dreams God Himself has given), trusting that like Abraham received Isaac back from the dead, so may I receive back those things I sacrifice.

I know what I need to do, I know the direction in which I must continue. But so often in my heart there is a pulling back. This is really all I have to offer up to Him: obedience in spite of my feelings, moving forward when I feel most like staying put.

For Those I Love

Dear Family & Beloved Friends,

I wish I could make all of this make sense to you. I wish I could ameliorate your fears, amend your anxieties about all of this. I wish I could convince you of what I see, lend you my mind's eye. I wish I could make your apprehension for me evaporate with explanations.

I wish I could pour out my heart to you, tell you everything I'm learning, tell you everything. It was with difficulty I learned that such openness did us all more harm than good. My excitement was quashed by concerns and critiques, by the cautious reserve you displayed when I told you. You feared for me and questioned my motives. I can't say I wouldn't do the same were our roles reversed.

I've learned to draw strict boundaries around this, my journey. Perhaps you see them as walls. But I've learned to trust myself and the God who leads me down this path, learning to trust that if He's leading me away from one thing, He is drawing me toward something better; it's that something better that I long to protect. It is not easy to hold all this back from you; I am accustomed to transparency. I feel like the blind man in Scripture who given fresh sight, is warned by Christ not to tell anyone. I revel in being given new eyes, eyes that see a faith that it wider, deeper, higher, richer, broader than I have ever known. But my sharing so clearly hurts you. It causes you to question and doubt me to some degree; it makes me feel defensive when I have no cause to be. And so I limit what I disclose, not wanting to compromise in any way what I've found by carving this path.

We follow a Savior who commanded of His followers: If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. This is the Christ who said to let the dead bury their dead; who, when one promised to follow Him anywhere but first wanted to bid his family farewell replied, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. This is the Messiah who commanded His followers to be perfect, the One who proclaimed He came not to bring peace, but a sword and in the same breath that he who loves his father or mother ... son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Ouch. Sounds harsh, I know. Were I the author of this faith, I wouldn't do it this way. But I'm not. It is not up to me to decide how it should be done. And while I have no intent of turning my back on any relationship, Christ so clearly demands that I not allow even the love of my family to restrict me from following Him without reserve and without condition. I wish I could convey the depth to which this pains me; I have always been privileged to be surrounded by like-minded wayfarers in matters of faith. And now that I've found another way of embodying my faith: a way to which my intellect, heart, and spirit assent, a way that draws me with its fullness and reverence, a way entrenched in history and tradition, a way so deeply rooted in the words of our Lord, I find that I am pulled in this new direction. I am leaving behind the way of familiarity and comfort, embracing something wholly new to me. In a relatively short amount of time, I've seen my heart expand, my faith deepen, my trust challenged. I've seen my heart place its dependence more upon God than ever before.

I cannot and will not let this go.

I do feel so alone in this sometimes. But I cannot allow discomfort or lack of familiarity sway me. Onlookers may be skeptical, they may have their critiques. Comforts have been stripped and He asks of me: will you follow me? He demands unadulterated motives, He requires I follow Him no matter the cost. When He takes away a relationship, when others think I'm crazy, when those closest to me disapprove: will you follow me? If anything or anyone is worth the sacrifice, He is. He so clearly is. And so I lay it all down before Him (again, again, and again), fumbling as I try to place my trust in Him, awkwardly pressing my weight into Him.

There is so much more I could and want to say. But this is not the time or place to offer proofs, to cite texts, or to lay out convincing arguments. This is about my heart and yours.

Know that I am in the most secure place in the world; my heart is safe in the hands of God. Know that I am not abandoning myself. I am only beginning to step into the fullness of faith, the fullness of who God made me to be.

grace & peace,
kirsten

When He Hides

I recently wrote on my main blog of the darkness through which I walk right now. Though I cannot see down the length of the path down which our Lord leads me, I must trust His leading and trust that this is all from His goodness. I must see my circumstances in light of of Him, not the other way around.

A friend sent Psalm 13 my way. I share it here. I love the way The Message puts this psalm, especially the last line.

Have your way with me, Lord. I trust in you and your goodness.


Psalm 13
of David

Long enough, God— you've ignored me long enough. I've looked at the back of your head long enough. Long enough I've carried this ton of trouble, lived with a stomach full of pain. Long enough my arrogant enemies have looked down their noses at me.

Take a good look at me, God, my God; I want to look life in the eye, So no enemy can get the best of me or laugh when I fall on my face.

I've thrown myself headlong into your arms— I'm celebrating your rescue. I'm singing at the top of my lungs, I'm so full of answered prayers.

Taking a Leap

I sat up in my room on Monday night, staring at it. I held my mobile phone in my hands and just stared at the number I had selected. Breathe in. Breathe out. I continued to stare, knowing I should call. I needed to call it. I wanted to call it. At least I think I wanted to. So why was this so difficult? Why the clammy palms, the racing pulse? Breathe in. Breathe out.

The phone wasn't going to dial the number on its own. Clearly, I had to be the one to press the button -- which I couldn't seem to get myself to do.

I tried to reason with myself: I knew my trepidation over this phone call was unduly exaggerated.

I had had Father C's phone number stored in my mobile phone for several days already. I knew that he knew who I was, and I knew that he knew about this faith journey I was on. He had to have seen me at the several Masses I had attended. But I had never spoken to him before. And I think I realized that calling him now was indicative of an internal commitment I had made to which I had not yet given any external expression.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The path before me was clear. Given what I had learned, what God had revealed, what He had convicted me of all pointed to the same place: conversion. A scary word, at least for me. But not when I considered that what I was committing to was fully embracing the truth as I now understood it. When I considered that I was committing to living in the fullness of faith, the correct decision was clear, no matter how overwhelming my trepidation might be.

And I knew I had to do this alone, independent of any other person.

In fact, whether I wanted to or not, I was going to be doing this alone. I feel anything but brave about it; in fact, I am altogether lacking where bravery is concerned.

After calling and talking to one of the two Catholic people I know and giving air to my insecurities, I was encouraged to call Father C. She assured me of his friendliness, and the ease with which she spoke with him when they first met. After hanging up with her, I called him right away.

After introducing myself, he knew exactly who I was. So, you're interested in the faith?

Yes, absolutely. I replied.

I grew more and more at ease as the conversation progressed; I discussed what I had learned and prayed through so far, and what some of my initial hesitations had been. I spoke of my family and my friends, and how I knew they were supportive, but could not really understand what I was doing. I told him about how I was learning to trust God with them. I am fully convinced this is the next step for me, I told him.

And before I knew it, we had arranged for me to receive instruction in the faith in order to be prepared to take the Blessed Sacrament. We discussed being conditionally re-baptized to ensure the correct words were spoken. We said our good-byes and I hung up the phone, relieved to have finally made the phone call.

And then it hit me: I am becoming Catholic.