Shaken
My life is changing and in a direction I never expected it to take. It is changing in such a brilliant and exuberant and terrifying way that I am constantly confounded by how well I maintain the thin veneer of calm that I present to most people. This veneer neatly hides my churning questions and the exhilarating possibilities of life, as well as its grave consequences, that all shout, coax, and stare at me from every angle.
At the end of my day, the trite phrases and Sunday school sayings that nourished me from childhood can no longer satisfy me, not unlike the way I have lost my appetite for warm milk before bedtime. The "tried and true" formulas for love and life that have worked for others may not and somehow do not work for me anymore, because the key to "tried and true" is the fact that someone tried. It was attempted, a risk was made, a desire fulfilled. Consequence or no consequence, they tried. And what they found is their story.
And for those who suffered the consequences of their risks gone awry warn me gravely not to go where they went, do what they did. In fact, it's probably best if I just stay put and wait for life to happen to me, because it will. But what kind of a life would I have to live if all I did was avoid consequences? A safe one, a clean one, and one that starves me of the longings of my heart.
All of my life I have done the expected, and I have to say I am pretty good at doing it. Whatever others expect me to do, how they expect me to feel, to think, to pray, to sing, I've tried my best to conjure up the will to want to do what they want. Don't misunderstand me for my existence was by no means one of a drudgery maid or a poor overprotected pastor's daughter locked up in church. I flourished and grew in a loving environment where I was rarely confronted with criticism or harsh behavior, and everyone was expected to love and make others around them happy. But the latter part of that expectation is getting to the best of me.
Much of my joy comes from making people around me feel comfortable and happy to be themselves. I want people to love being themselves around me because I can bring the peace that I personally experience into their lives and their self-image. But there are lines that have been blurred and erased and shakily redrawn and smudged again between living a life to serve others and living a life to please others. These past weeks I feel like I'm slowly awakening from a very long hypnosis where my emotions, actions, ideologies, and experiences were based entirely on the people I surround myself with. For so much of my life I have lived it with a sense of urgency to stay within the good graces of those who praised me so highly. Inconvenient feelings are suppressed. Ill will is tossed as soon as it's found. And although anger is not a foreign experience to me, but angry behavior is. The weight of disappointment is a heavy and lonely burden.
But beneath all of these good intentions lies a heart that is longing to know that she is not alone in her excitement at finding love in the most unexpected places. Beneath my "true love waits" slogans and the teachings on finding one's soul mate upon first glance, is a girl who is scared to death that she's found love in the wrong place at the wrong time but with the right one. Because now we have, what I like to call, a mess.
A mess it is, but what a beautiful mess despite it all. I can't help but feel like a complete insensitive jerk for saying all of these things, but that's exactly the problem. My silence and my guilt have trapped me for so long that I have never been able to say the words on my heart with boldness and gladness and shamelessness. It's actually still rather difficult for me. But I know myself, and I know that my actions may have defied all reason and seemed rash and irresponsible but I cannot deny that I love him. Through it all and in the end, I really do. Accept me or not, I cannot pretend I do not care because I do. But as of now, the truth remains, and even as I say this my heart sighs in relief. Now it waits for the repercussions of such a bold statement.
So here I am tonight, half asleep but unable to rest until this is all finally written down and posted. There's a sense of finality to it; these are more than just thoughts floating around (or more like banging around) in my head. The funny thing about all this is that I cannot say that I feel like I'm straying away from God. On the contrary, I feel like I'm pushing past all of the false attitudes and ulterior motives I used to (and probably still) have for serving God and getting to the gritty center of things.
I love to know that God is as real and as relevant and as emotional and as intense as His children who roam the world.
At the end of my day, the trite phrases and Sunday school sayings that nourished me from childhood can no longer satisfy me, not unlike the way I have lost my appetite for warm milk before bedtime. The "tried and true" formulas for love and life that have worked for others may not and somehow do not work for me anymore, because the key to "tried and true" is the fact that someone tried. It was attempted, a risk was made, a desire fulfilled. Consequence or no consequence, they tried. And what they found is their story.
And for those who suffered the consequences of their risks gone awry warn me gravely not to go where they went, do what they did. In fact, it's probably best if I just stay put and wait for life to happen to me, because it will. But what kind of a life would I have to live if all I did was avoid consequences? A safe one, a clean one, and one that starves me of the longings of my heart.
All of my life I have done the expected, and I have to say I am pretty good at doing it. Whatever others expect me to do, how they expect me to feel, to think, to pray, to sing, I've tried my best to conjure up the will to want to do what they want. Don't misunderstand me for my existence was by no means one of a drudgery maid or a poor overprotected pastor's daughter locked up in church. I flourished and grew in a loving environment where I was rarely confronted with criticism or harsh behavior, and everyone was expected to love and make others around them happy. But the latter part of that expectation is getting to the best of me.
Much of my joy comes from making people around me feel comfortable and happy to be themselves. I want people to love being themselves around me because I can bring the peace that I personally experience into their lives and their self-image. But there are lines that have been blurred and erased and shakily redrawn and smudged again between living a life to serve others and living a life to please others. These past weeks I feel like I'm slowly awakening from a very long hypnosis where my emotions, actions, ideologies, and experiences were based entirely on the people I surround myself with. For so much of my life I have lived it with a sense of urgency to stay within the good graces of those who praised me so highly. Inconvenient feelings are suppressed. Ill will is tossed as soon as it's found. And although anger is not a foreign experience to me, but angry behavior is. The weight of disappointment is a heavy and lonely burden.
But beneath all of these good intentions lies a heart that is longing to know that she is not alone in her excitement at finding love in the most unexpected places. Beneath my "true love waits" slogans and the teachings on finding one's soul mate upon first glance, is a girl who is scared to death that she's found love in the wrong place at the wrong time but with the right one. Because now we have, what I like to call, a mess.
A mess it is, but what a beautiful mess despite it all. I can't help but feel like a complete insensitive jerk for saying all of these things, but that's exactly the problem. My silence and my guilt have trapped me for so long that I have never been able to say the words on my heart with boldness and gladness and shamelessness. It's actually still rather difficult for me. But I know myself, and I know that my actions may have defied all reason and seemed rash and irresponsible but I cannot deny that I love him. Through it all and in the end, I really do. Accept me or not, I cannot pretend I do not care because I do. But as of now, the truth remains, and even as I say this my heart sighs in relief. Now it waits for the repercussions of such a bold statement.
So here I am tonight, half asleep but unable to rest until this is all finally written down and posted. There's a sense of finality to it; these are more than just thoughts floating around (or more like banging around) in my head. The funny thing about all this is that I cannot say that I feel like I'm straying away from God. On the contrary, I feel like I'm pushing past all of the false attitudes and ulterior motives I used to (and probably still) have for serving God and getting to the gritty center of things.
I love to know that God is as real and as relevant and as emotional and as intense as His children who roam the world.
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