Before I met you

Posted on by

0

(Written in 2020)

Shew, relationships are hard guys. 

Yeah, I thought as a single person I knew that well. Scratch that, as a single introvert, I knew that well. It was hard enough to go parties alone to try and be social, but now I have this person next to me that wants to know how I feel. I’m sorry, excuse me? 

I hate feelings, although I am a reformed non-feeler, (shout out to counseling) but I am still trying to muddle my way through how all of this works. I guess that’s probably the point, but I have found that the more I try to work on it the worse I feel like I get. 

I realize that past hurts come up a lot more than I anticipated. Things I thought were over decide they are indeed NOT over, once I get the same similar feeling in my chest. I get flashbacks to a situation, and BAM! There I am 19 or 25 years old all over again. 

What is it about other human beings that make us realize our own brokenness? 

I’m grateful for it, I am, but I just never thought it would be this… emotional? I think I have honestly gotten better at my other relationships because of my primary relationship. I realize how isolated I really make my feelings and how closed off I really do make my intimate feelings that I really should let out.

I am very thankful that the Lord is patient with me. VERY patient. He allows me the time I need to process and he has allowed me to me angry. 

Yeah, I know, that sounds weird to some of you out there. But yes, I needed to be angry. I needed to see my life in this raw way that led me here to this point. 

For two years, I was in this awful place. I just didn’t know what to do or where to go and I was just mad about everything, and also tired, so there’s that… But Jesus told me it was okay. That it was okay to have these emotions that I didn’t know what to do with. Because friends, I wasn’t really angry. I was a whole lot of other things, that I can’t even put a name to. 

I was sad, rejected, anxious, afraid, crushed, and fed-up all at the same time. I felt like I was watching everything I had ever wanted in life slip through my fingers. I was seeing everyone else getting what they were hopelessly praying for, but I was left in silence. And this isn’t the first time, so I was over it. 

I remember thinking that I just don’t care. Not in a suicidal way, but in a way that just made me passionless. Hence, no blog. No writing. Why write when I had nothing to say? I didn’t want to be this voice in a sea of everyone wanting to be heard. I didn’t care about being heard, because that’s not what writing is to me. Writing is life, and I didn’t have any inside me. 

I pretended. I put myself on airplanes and adventures, but I didn’t get my hope back until Paris.

A town I have had in my heart and all over my room since before I can remember. I thought it wouldn’t live up to my expectations, but it exceeded them ten fold. Mostly because Jesus met me there, through people who didn’t know me and didn’t speak my language. Through this history that had a hurt like mine, deep and buried so far down that it took a fire to bring it to the surface. 

Paris and I were the same. We were meant to be, and I needed it. The next month my heart would be redeemed in a Starbucks off some exit in Gwinnett County Georgia, and someone decided they wanted my heart to beat again. 

I’m not sure what the point of this blog is really supposed to be. I think it’s part confession part reminder to myself that darkness can’t stay dark very long. The light of Jesus will shine through at the point you let it. But also, brokenness is okay. It’s okay to feel let down and at the end of yourself. I’m not meant to be anyone’s savior, only one person’s shoulders are strong enough for that, and I need them to hold me up too. 

So wherever you are, be all there as Jim Elliot would say. Don’t move too fast. Don’t try to be ready when you aren’t. Be present in the emotion and feel it. Be you. Press into the realness that is life. 

Be brave, and in doing so you will become strong. 

Not Looking Back– a short story

Posted on by

0

I have no idea how this works. I have no idea what to say or how to say it.. i don’t even know if I even EXIST in his mind. What am I doing! Shut UP Lain! Lainie fought the urge to completely bow to her ever looming emotions as she listened to Ben tell about his stressful day from across the table.

Realizing she had been in a daze just looking at him, she quickly took a long gulp of her latte and pretended to look passed him out the window.

“Lain, are you even listening to me?” Ben asked. “I feel like you have been somewhere else for the past 10 minutes. What is so interesting?” Ben quickly twisted his body around to follow her gaze.

Just you. Lainie said in her head.

“Nothing. Some guy with a crazy hat walked by,” she said as she took another long swallow of heated foam.

Ben looked at her with an interrogating stare, looked one last time out the window, and continued his story again.

Oh, God, this is awful! How in the world am I going to live through this? My heart feels like it’s in a million knots. Why did my boss think it was a great idea to put us together on project? Thanks Rich! Lainie felt like she couldn’t take it anymore and their proposal deadline wasn’t for another two weeks.

“Lainie is there something on your mind?” Ben asked. “You seemed like you wanted to say something, and I wanted to clear the air before we get started.”

“No. I’m okay. Can we just get started?” Lainie shuffled through her bag and pulled out her portfolio.

“No? Really? I know this is kind of crazy and weird. I feel it too, ya know. You don’t have to pretend.”

What? Am I really hearing him right? Lainie, snap OUT of it seriously! 

“I am not trying to hide anything. I mean of course it’s awkward, but I was just hoping to push past that,” Lainie, trying desperately to steer the conversation to professional interests, handed over a few sketches for a PR design.

Ben ignored the sketches as he tried to read her thoughts, “It wasn’t my plan. I didn’t go into it knowing that would happen.”

Lainie stopped moving as she felt her entire body go numb.

She thought of this moment a hundred times, and now finally the words in her head were coming out of her mouth.

“What is ‘it’ exactly? Me personally or our so called ‘relationship’? Seriously Ben? I hope you didn’t go into it knowing that you would cheat on me with my best friend. I hope you two are very happy together. I hope that the depths of your cold hearts are satisfying some preverbal sweet tea you have going on. Not only that but you invited me to the stupid wedding! THE WEDDING, that was supposed to be ours!”

“I felt horrible, Lain I really did. Please, can you forgive me? Can we start over…”

“Oh, I forgive you, but that doesn’t mean I trust you or want you in my life,” Lainie said packing up her things into her bag. “I’ll call Rich right now and tell him to move me to another architect.”

She stood to walk away as Ben stood up to stop her.

“Lainie don’t…”

She didn’t even hear what else he had to say. Tears were starting to cloud her vision. She didn’t even see him run out after her without looking for vehicles. She didn’t see the accident, all she could see was a ring. Gold in color. Resting on a left hand that wasn’t holding hers.

 

A Note to the World

Posted on by

0

Hello world.

I haven’t talked to you in a while.

Not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I find that words have become relatively useless on the interwebs. No one actually cares about what you say or think anymore because it’s all fluid. All pinged against a million walls of imaginary vetting topics.

However, I never wrote because I care what people think, or what you think, world. I wrote because it is the one way I can actually articulate my brain and my feelings.

The way that I can feel.

And if someone reads it, maybe they will feel too.

The thing is, I think people forget what you actually look like. They forget what vibrancy you bring to the mundane. I just couldn’t bring myself to be another person muting the colors.

However, I know that not to write mutes my own colors. Makes me a little more gray in my world. My fingers are the one way that I can truly get where I want to go, and they have been exercising on Google Documents and iPhone notes for the last few years.

They want to experience fresh air.

But world, I am still torn. I am still unable to see what difference it will make to you. I am unable to tell if the common sense that lies within my fingertips is actually an acceptable viewpoint anymore. If people even look up from Instagram to read. If it even matters to put this out here at all.

But I’ve decide this is my starting point. I will tell you world, exactly what I think about writing to you. The thoughts that I have fought with for almost two and a half years.

I don’t want to be another screaming voice. I want to be a quiet one. A real one. One that actually feels like it cares about what’s happening to you, and not how it’s happening to ME.

Yes, some things may come across a little selfish, but I promise I’m listening. I promise I will try to explain as best I can, but to throw a wrench into all of this… it will all be fiction.

For now at least. I’ll let you know when I decide to fully come back.

Now I realize this is all very cryptic in message, and possibly confusing to you, but that’s the intent. You have to stick around to find out.

All my best.

One Thing this Election will Never Change

Posted on by

0

I haven’t said much about the election in terms of what is happening, mostly because of my job, but also because it’s not worth my breath. While it pains me to read what people think is their version of the truth on social media, the facts really are buried with the lead.

Yes, this goes for both sides of the fence.

I’m not going to talk about candidates, what they have or have not done. All five have their issues and their virtues, but with reading all of the posts and slanted articles and seeing the memes, this is what I want to ask.

Why are you so defensive?

Why are we, as a people, so offended by what the other side of our opinions does or says? Why are we so quick to defend some version of morality that we have, frankly, created in some type of fantasy country that we live in?

Why can’t we all just know what we all know: we are different.

This election, no election, will change that.

No social media post will change that.

Your ideas and supposed rants will not change the fact that we all will vote and support different causes for different reasons and different convictions. Which is what this country stood for in the beginning. A place that aimed (not perfectly) to encouraged diversity of thought and lifestyle without penalty. I understand the push back from this because yes, the US was founded on Christian principles, because the majority of the founding fathers were indeed Christians, but we cannot deny that the world is moving in a direction that is no surprise (shouldn’t be anyways) to Christians or conservatives (or even liberals.)

We have to look at ourselves. We have to do what we as individuals feel is right for us and our inner circles. We have to embrace the differences, because if we don’t, polarization will destroy the very fiber of our country that made our differences so great.

So I charge you: Pay attention to what makes you defensive. If you feel the need to defend yourself or your political beliefs, I guarantee in most situations you aren’t listening.

As you are getting defensive reading this, I am not advocating taking everything thrown at you. There is also celebration in passion and fighting for a cause so hard your knuckles bleed. [THAT is a beautiful thing.] I’m not talking about when someone is deliberately attacking a belief or point of view, I’m talking about real conversations.

When you are having a normal conversation with someone, who in any other situation you would embrace, and your hairs stand up on your head, think about what is making you respond that way.

What would happen if all of us would simply stop and say to ourselves or that individual, “Thank you, for being different than I. Thank you for making me appreciate that we live in a world where individual thought is embraced.”

Don’t take this out of context. If you are, you’re missing the point. I’m not referring to a Christian or non-Christian worldview. I’m referring to a human one. No one, Christian or not, can deny that life (and mostly politics) will not always look the way your paradigm does. It is a fact of life.

What if, as a Christian, your conversations became more real and more ‘human’ with someone you have been trying to reach? What if, if you are someone who isn’t, you got the respect you feel you never get?

Intimate relationship doesn’t have to come from similarities, it can also come from differences. We just have to be willing to think of different as a positive instead of a negative. Maybe we can start looking a lot more like love.

Some interesting reads:

An Open Letter to the Christian Right

TRANSCRIPT: Michelle Obama’s Speech On Donald Trump’s Alleged Treatment Of Women

I’m pro-life. And I’m voting for Hillary. Here’s why.

A different reason to vote for Trump

Democrats raise $13K to reopen firebombed GOP headquarters