Self-Sufficiency = Torment

"Who walks in darkness and has no light?
Let him trust in the name of the Lord
And rely upon his God.
Look, all you who kindle a fire,
Who encircle yourselves with sparks:
Walk in the light of your fire
And in the sparks you have kindled--
This you shall have from My hand:
You shall lie down in torment."
Isaiah 50:10,11

I have been encircling myself with sparks lately. For the past twenty years or so. Against my better judgement, like a compulsion, I labor over the sticks, rubbing them together, hoping for friction, until my hands are blistered and bleeding and I can barely keep at it a minute longer. Then I start to see some smoke rise. I did it. Then I do it again and again and again until I am safely inside the light of my own fire. The only problem is once I'm inside it, I'm inside it alone.

This has been a rough week for me, a dark week. Two hospitals in seven days. One for me, one for my sister. A brithday that didn't quite go as planned. Anxieties. Pain. Lots of unsettledness. So, I have done what I do best. I've rubbed those sticks together. I've tried to stay in control. I've done all I could to make myself feel safe. For me, what that means is pulling in and shutting down. I push Him away.

Everybody walks in darkness every once in awhile. When we do, we have two choices. One, we can trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon our God. Or two, we can do our best to take care of ourselves on our own, apart from Him, walking in the light of our own fire. When you look at it that way, seems like it should be an easy choice.

For as long as I can remember, the greatest longing of my heart has been to have unbroken intimacy with God. And for as long as I can remember, it has eluded me. I think I'm beginning to understand that the only thing standing in the way of that is me. And my circle of self-sufficient fire.

215 N

I was driving to work this morning. Praying. Thinking about what it means to trust God, really trust Him. I realized so clearly, more clearly than ever before, that we don't trust God because He promises not to let us hurt. We don't trust Him because He protects us from bad things happening. Death. Disappointed hopes. Heartache. Flat tires. Restlessness of heart and mind. He doesn't promise us life without pain and He doesn't always make the ache go away. He doesn't always break the silence. And He lets us wiggle and squirm inside our skin from time to time.

But just as clearly as I realized all of this, I knew. I knew with the kind of knowing that lands somewhere too deep for words. And something happened--something I've been waiting for for a long, long time and I didn't even know it.

My heart settled on Him.

That is my final answer. The end of my story, or just the beginning. I feel sort of free. Strange. Like the pieces just fell into place. In a moment, on the freeway, my heart settled on Him and peace came.

Lessons Learned

I should have known. Ground turkey that has a green tint and smells slightly minty should probably be thrown out instead of added to spaghetti sauce. I really should have known this after eating a little of that spaghetti for lunch yesterday and having, how do i say it...an unpleasant experience...at Target, 30 minutes later. Without giving you more detail than you want to know (believe me), I'll just say that the aforementioned incident involved me, the Target ladies' room, and a customer in the Target ladies' room chuckling these words to a fellow hand-washer as I listened from behind closed stall: "I can hardly wait to get out of here." I definitely should have known better than to decide to eat some more spaghetti last night for dinner, just to be absolutely sure I knew what the culprit was. Well, I can safely say that I am sure now and rest assured that spaghetti met its rightful demise a little while ago when I shoved it down the garbage disposal. I should have known better, but instead, I learned my lesson the hard way. So what is the moral of this story, you ask? Don't eat bad meat. Especially not repeatedly.

A Settled Heart

Maybe there will come a time when all the jumbled, awkward pieces will fall into perfect place. Questions will be answered or forgotten in a Better Knowing. Peace will fill the corners of our minds. Hearts will be settled, deeply. I have a feeling that I'm not the only one to long for this.

My heart is not settled. Not yet. Most of the time, especially lately, there is mostly striving and frustration there. Restlessness. Big restlessness. Someone shared an idea with me recently. My loose restating of it is this: it is when we fumble our unanswered questions and jumbled pieces in hands that can't seem to grip that we are most Vulnerable to the Lover of our souls. Isn't that what we really need the most? To be vulnerable to Him? We want a formula to follow and success to boast. He wants us stripped of the sufficiencies we carry, dependant on Him and the way that He loves us. We want to offer Him polished plans and capable hands. He just wants us, weary and spent if necessary, in need of Him and only Him.

I have never been as restless with life as I am now. I have also never been more aware of my need of Him. Maybe I'm not in such a bad place after all.

Time

The minutes pass so quickly once the sun comes up. So quickly that I have to frantically gather them all in my arms until I am full of them. Some will spill over onto the ground and if I'm not careful I will step on a few and waste them by the clumsy weight of my body on my feet. The minutes that don't spill over will remain within my focused grasp and I will not let them out of my sight if I can help it. I will not lose anymore than I have to. Then, I will distribute them into their respective slots. I will count them over and over and over again just to make sure they are still there. I will juggle them, begrudge them, love them. I will worry over them as I watch them diminish and with them, my firm grip will fade. Then I will sleep and gather strength for the next day's ration.

Paradigm Shift

The other day I came across this line in a book that talked about how a man, whose wife had Alzheimer's, responded to the reality that God might choose not to answer his prayers for her healing. This is what he said: “If He doesn't, then somehow this suffering is useful for a good purpose I can't see. And when I pray that those purposes will be accomplished in her life and mine, I'm confident He'll answer that prayer. Of that I have no doubt.” I put a star next to those words on the page. Sometimes, I feel panic when I look at the picture of my life as it is now held against the picture I had antipated, hoped for, planned on. In those moments, I let fear paralyze me. And fear, when it has taken root, turns to despair and I am cut off from God by my own hand. Those moments don't last long, but they are enough to make me take notice of the state of my heart. Do I believe that God is good? Yes. Do I believe that He loves me? Yes. Well then maybe I am going about this all wrong. I keep on thinking about my plans and my dreams and my timeline, my purposes and desires. What if what really matters is that God work out His purposes for my life? And what if He is doing that right now? If I say that I trust Him, that means believing He is working all things together for good whether I have the dream or not. It means not letting my fulfilled desires or answered prayers be the measure of His goodness towards me. His ways are higher than mine and sometimes, they're past finding out. But they are always, always good and full of love. My prayer is that God will fulfill His purposes for my life His way, not mine. And that I'll trust Him with all my heart in the process.

Good Days Ahead

According to the calendar, Fall began on Wendesday of last week. Not so says Shawna. According to my calendar, Fall started today, on this the first day of October, ceremoniously ushered in by my deliciously symbolic Pumpkin Spice frappaccino from my friend and yours (don't deny it) yes, Starbucks.

I love Fall. It is my favorite season. I love it especially in St. Louis and in Tulsa where the leaves are the shades of fall: reds, oranges, greens and yellows. Where you know its October because your sweaters and thick socks surface from their summer hibernation. Where there is the hope, or dread if you are so inclined, of imminent snow in the air. Nights last longer. Days get shorter. Coffee shops grow to feel more like home by the day.

Maybe that's why i went to a coffee shop on my lunch break today. I'm not in the Midwest anymore. The trees stay mostly green here. The air stays mostly mild. Snow is the stuff you pack on the roof of your car when you're driving down the mountain, before it melts off and blows away on the freeway. But change is unavoidable and that's ok. And so many of the things that made Fall so great over there in those other places will make it great here too. Sure, I probably would have ordered a hot Pumpkin Spice latte instead of a cold Pumpkin Spice frappaccino if i still lived in Tulsa, but the fact is that I ordered one, of course making today the first official day of Fall, Southern California style. Ushered in by the taste of my favorite season and the anticipation of good days ahead.

Parking Lot Thoughts

I don't know about you, but I opened my front door this morning to an unfamiliar world of cold and fog. It was a welcome change. The calm white chill in the air whispered forgotten words to me with its stillness: all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well in the hands of God.

I don't know about you, but I desperately needed some perspective this morning. I needed Truth to pierce between my bone and marrow, between my circumstances and reality. I needed to see what is really going on here. It didn't happen right away. In fact, it wasn't until later in the morning when I was walking through parking lots, of all things, that I started thinking.

This is what came of it:

1. Hope in God
2. Don't Complain
3. Be thankful for little things
4. Believe truth, not feelings
5. Remember loving is never a bad idea

Sometimes simplicity is best. It can help to clear away the fog, so to speak.

(I should mention, the calm white chill bore a striking resemblance to Julian of Norwich.)

Turn to Face Him

This one's from my vault. More self-talk. Verbose and mostly un-edited.

Sometimes things don't turn out the way we thought they would, or the way we hoped they would. And when the reality sets in, or stares you in the face with the immediacy of a punch or a cup of cold water, as is the case more often than not, dissappointment inevitably follows. That is normal. Sometimes, when you offer a hidden, tender part of yourself, a part that has never seen the light of day, and it is not loved, the experience goes beyond the realm of dissappointment and takes you instead into the lonely barren wasteland of all your insecurities and all the things you are afraid of and all of the reasons why you were right when you told yourself never to offer that part of you. Here is where hope is lost, dropped from your hands, stomped into the ground and left to rot because you are doing what you should have done in the first place—walking away. Dissappointment. Despair. These are the dark nights of the soul. They are forces that are the hardest to fight and there is nothing we need to fight more than these. We can start with a simple, straighforward truth, break the ice a little: I am not abandoned. Maybe I feel abandoned by one million people and things, maybe I have been, but there is One who has not abandoned me and He makes it impossible for me to join the Abandoned Club. And once the ice has cracked a little, stack truth upon truth. This one may take some time: I am loved. That is about the last thing you want to tell yourself when you are in the thick of dissappointment and despair. In fact, if you could, you would take the very word 'love' and hurl it with all your strength into oblivion. But love will not be hurled. It will come at you and come at you and come at you until you are so sick of its relentlessness that you throw yourself upon it for relief. And this is not a bad idea, but why not save some time and begin to believe the truth of love now, in the dark night. How, you ask? It is not as difficult as you may think. In fact, the answer lies in four little words. Ready? Turn to face Him. That's all. Turn to face Him. He is good and He is kind and He is where hope comes from. Turn to face Him and He will be there, facing you. You will find that it is impossible to stare equally at the face of Love and the face of DissappointmentandDespair at the same time. Only one face will have you. He will not shove dissappointment and despair aside and demand your attention because He is not the shoving kind. But He will keep your gaze if you give Him a chance. Turn to face Him. All it takes is a moment. And that moment is the difference between a dark night of the soul and a dark night in perfect, unbroken love. And with love like that, the darkness pales in comparison.

From My Journal

(I wrote this not long ago...inside a dark night.)

There are a lot of things i don't know.

These are some things i do know.

I have to go to my job tomorrow.
There is a reason why i am there.
God is taking care of me.
I am not a wife.
I am not a mother.
I am not a songwriter.
He has me in His hands.
Reading more books won't make me better.
Being productive won't make me more worthy.
Practicing the drums more won't earn me validation.
I belong to Him.
Because He has set His love upon me.
I don't need answers.
I don't need change.
I don't need to make Him proud of me.
I need Him.

These Aggrivated Days

When I feel discombobulated, out of control, frightened of indefinite sameness...i find it hard to write. Lately I've felt this way and i've had a tough go of it. To divulge more would only end in spotlighting the glass half empty side of myself. The truth is that's only part of me, not all of me. So, until I can wrap my arms around and settle this untamed beast that is the workings of my inner world, I will pull from the archives and post clarity of days gone by. Recycled writing soon to follow.

10/30/89--8/31/09

I am going to a memorial service today. Jonathan David Storll Welch. Jon Jon. Jonafin. Johnnykins (i don't think he liked that one). Killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. We met 19 years ago. He was six months old, learning to crawl. I was seven, and Kimberly and I were hopelessly devoted from that day on. It's easier for me to write about God or writing or my own interpersonal troubles than it is to write about this. I can't control this and I can't hide from it. There is no resolution or clever last line. Just messy grief spilling out of all of us who love him. He is gone and we are brokenhearted. We woke up this morning with the heaviness of knowing we have to say goodbye today. We don't want to, but we have to.

What Is Really Going On Here

I'm coming to face the ways I push away Love.
One day at a time.
One bout of anxiety at a time.
Every day brings a choice:
Trust or Control.
Trust that believes God is good and He is taking care of me, or
Control that keeps Him from getting too close and makes me feel almost safe.
It never lasts, that feeling.
It goes away and I keep trying to get it back.
Accomplish something else, clean something else, eat something else, buy something else, write something else, pray something else.
These are my attempts to keep everything from falling apart.
But what I'm really doing,
What is really going on here is that I'm pushing away Love.
Love isn't afraid of running out of time.
Love isn't afraid that everything will fall apart.
And neither would I be if only I would
Trust instead of Control.
I will not try to get this right.
That would be counter-productive.
This is what I will do:
Take a deep breath, let my hands hang limp, and say nothing.
Just face Love tonight.

This is from my archives. March 7th, 2009. At the time, I was writing at least 300 words per day because I was reading Bird by Bird and Anne Lamott said it was a good idea.

I will try to make this the best three words I have ever written. I will write and not stop until I am finished for today. No backspaces. No edits. No rewrites. Only my fluid thoughts on paper. Digital paper. I will write about why I write. Last night, on the 10 freeway heading west, I imagined being in Anne Lamott's writing class. What I would say in answer to her question, “Why do you want to write, Shawna?” At first I told her and the class, who were all, by the way, very impressed with me by end of my speech, that I write because of the mystery that never grows old. When I write I feel like I am endlessly trying to solve an unsolveable mystery and it doesn't matter that it won't be solved because the joy is in the trying. The seeking. The peeling away of the layers. As long as the mystery remains unsolved, I have reason to write. Each time I have a go at it, I go further up and further in and yet there is always, always still further to go.

Then I got home and realized all that stuff about mystery is fluff and nonsense. I was looking through some old photo albums and I landed on the real reason why I sit here at my screen or with my pen and journal in hand. It is because here, I can look any way I want to look. Here, I can show a different face, a different look behind the eyes than the one I see in those pictures. That girl was stuck and she was lost, stumbling to find her way and failing to choose love time after time after time. These pages are true snapshots and they are the real heart of me, not the one with crooked teeth and unshaped eyebrows. These are a reflection of who I am with make-up off and a big sigh of release, trust, finally. I would fill photo albums with my three hundred words if I could.

10:18

I'm living life on the edge right now. It's 10pm and my lights are on, laptop in front of me, no sleep in sight. How do the nights go by so fast? And the days so slowly? I feel heaviness in my chest because of all that I didn't accomplish tonight and because I spend so much time at a job where I give myself a minute by minute mental pep talk just to get through the day. I feel overwhelmed. Overwhelmed and unproductive and untouchable. I can't see my Father God right now. I can't feel Him. I know He wants to be here, He is here, but I have no room for Him with all this heaviness taking up so much room. Silly me, I asked Him today to show me how I push Him away so that I can stop. Easier said than done.

Ants and Itches

Sometimes my life feels like a perpetual itch that I cannot scratch. I am trying, believe me I am. But I can't get to it. I can't find it. I don't even know where to look. And that unrelenting itch leaves me feeling like I have ants crawling over me all the time. I am frustrated and annoyed and I just want them to get off of me. Isn't there something I was born to do with all these days? Isn't there some path I should be settled on by now? Isn't there somone out there in that great expanse of space and people who fits me perfectly? (I'll settle for nearly perfectly.) Isn't there a Voice that's supposed to whisper behind me saying This is way, Walk in it? My insides ache and wail as I sit at my desk day after day. I say to the Father I can't do it anymore. I can't. I am going to shrivel up into a teeny, tiny administrative ball and they are going to start to squeeze me for stress relief.

Okay...now that I got that off my chest.

I guess I'm just feeling restless. Life is a funny thing. I'm about as as far from where I thought I'd be by now as I could be. Dreams. Plans. Timelines. All good ideas, but no cigar. Not yet, anyway. Part of me wants to scream and shake my fist at injustice or God or myself for letting things turn out like they have. Part of me knows I'm only 26 and it's not the end of the world just yet. But I get scared sometimes and I just want Something to hold onto...wife-status, a job that matters, beauty, bravery...babies. Something that will stop me from feeling lost. Something that will make me feel safe.

But do you want to know something? Somehow in the midst of this, my itching and aching, I am beginning to Need my Father God. Need. The thing that makes intimacy so sweet. Need for Him, only Him and all of Him. Somehow in the midst of this, I can say for the first time in my life that Truth is starting to solidify beneath my feet. Its happening. Its really happening. I believe that my God is good and everything He does and everything He allows in my life is only out of love for me. I believe that I am safe with Him, not lost. He is teaching me that He is enough. Restlessness, frustration, dissappointment, ants and itches...they are no match for Him and they are no match against the heart that He settles. Mine is becoming one of those hearts.

Changes

My sister got married last week. I stood beside her when she told her new husband that she will love him and be his wife forever. I watched her walk up the aisle beside him as a new bride in all her glory, love glowing on her face. I ran to her across the reception hall in my floor-length dress with her checkbook in my hand so she could pay Chick Fil-A in a hurry. I said goodbye to her as she positioned herself into the front seat of her freshly decorated car and I took a big, deep breath as my sister and her husband drove off to their future.
I didn't go with her.

A Tree By the River

Take a deep breath.
Remember Love.
Sink your feet into truth
likes roots cling to wet earth
by the side of the river.
He is your God
and He is good.
He is your God
and He is better
than the richest of fare.
It's love...what you see around you that is hard to take in,
hard to make sense of, hard to put into words.
It's Love.
You'll see..
really, it is.
Take a deep breath,
remember, Love.
The Force and Flow
and you,
You are the tree by the river.

Jer. 17:8,9

Go Be A Writer

I need to figure out a way to follow through with this lingering thought that has been poking and prodding me for days, thousands of them. I am frightened to stare at a blank screen and not know what to say. I am even more frightened that I will waste more time. I made a list of all the things I am afraid of. Here are some of them:

That I have nothing to say.
That Kimberly is the writer, not me, because Pastor Mary said so.
That I won't be relatable.
That this is just my idea, not God's idea.
That I am pretending to be something i'm not.
That I am making this up.
That I am not a good writer.
This I have not been commissioned.
I don't know what to write about.
I don't know if all of this will fizzle.

Ok, that's about all of them. It was good to have it out with those big, haunting fears. I guess they are not so big in that little font size after all. This is what i wrote next, after my list.

But what if I never even try?
Will I regret not trying?
Yes.

Yes, I will.

Here's the last of it. What i wrote to myself. My very own pep talk.


So what does that leave me to do?
Write.
Something.
Anything.
Just don't keep hoarding your words in notebooks and documents. Don't write blogs that no one can read because you haven't told them you blog.
Grow up a little Shawna and be big.
Be fearless.
Fearless of how they may see you.
Fearless of saying the wrong thing, the wrong way.
Write as if you were free.
See what happens.
If you're going to do this,
you're going to really need to do this.
That means no procrastinating.
Be big and brave and do this all by yourself because not even trying is worse than failing.
Everyone knows that.
Go be a writer.

Here I go.

Freeways and Phrases

I started crying just a little bit on the freeway today. If you stick with me long enough, you'll find that the freeway is usually a pretty eventful place for me. Revelations. Tears. Words from the Father. Truth. Choices. They all seem to happen on the freeway. Maybe that's why i love road trips so much. Even as a child, i used to love riding in the car, staring out the window beside my face. Dreaming. Wondering what would happen someday. Would i ever get to go on tour with Point of Grace and what would it be like if i did? I don't wonder about that anymore. But there are other things i wonder about. Questions i can't help but wrestle with even when i thought the struggle was over.
I didn't have time to cry today so I sucked it up and kept driving, forgot about the hard stuff eventually. Its been a long time since the last tears came. Months. I cried on the freeway today because my heart felt forsaken. We all feel that way from to time, right? I didn't think too long or too hard about it and I didn't come to any resolutions. I just said over and over again...you know...i won't push you away. I will say it until i mean it. Until nothing, not heart ache, not guilt, not ugliness or uncertainty, will stand in my way of Him. The feeling went away after awhile. It might come back again. If it does, I'll go for a drive. Find a nice long freeway to sort out my thoughts on. I'll repeat those words again for miles at a time until they are not just words anymore. Then I will be closer to freedom.

My Confession

I have a confession to make.
You may have noticed already, maybe not.
Sometimes
I feel sorry for myself.
There.
I said it.
I want to put my confession in print, for posterity.
So that I will remember.
So that I will have no excuses not to change.
I can make good choices or I can endulge self-pity.
I can console my wounded self-perception
or I can thank My God for the dose of
Tough Love
that He gave me.
What matters IS NOT that I get the things I want,
the things I dream of, the things I think I need.
What matters IS that He builds in me
a foundation of character and devotion to Him.
Will I let Him build that in me?
I will.
And I will be content in the building.

Old Shadows

Some molds are hard to shake. Just like some habits are hard to break. I am wrestling with some old shadows tonight. Thinking maybe if I just pack up and move somewhere new, somewhere beautiful, well then by association I will become the girl who is brave and beautiful, not this girl that I am. Maybe then this ache, this restlestness, will be quieted. I feel scared that some things will never change. Is it that I need to get something right first? Is it that I need to prove myself? The Bible says You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, for he trusts in You. I was thinking about peace today and then I thought of that verse. My response was God how in the world am I supposed to trust You when I can't feel you or see you or hear you and all of these other things, these nightmares, are staring me in the face? My mold doesn't know how to trust the God of the Universe who is good and full of love. Its going to take some time to shake it. My habit is to withdraw from Him when I feel hurt or angry or sad. I push Him away. This habit needs breaking. I can't change into a different girl overnight but I can make a good choice or two between now and morning. And in the morning, start again, as long as it takes until these shadows fade.

About Me...

My new favorite movie is Once.
I like to drink Mountain Dew - it is my guilty pleasure.
Book I'm reading right now: Catcher in the Rye
Yesterday I bought a cd - Amy Grant Age to Age - for 97 cents (it came out the same year i was born).
I hate conflict.
In 2006 i wrote 200 songs. I'm not kidding.
Iwontpushyouaway is what I say to God when my heart feels broken.
So You Think You Can Dance and basketal games make me cry.
When I was playing Scrabble today, I scored 79 points in one turn. I'm still not kidding.
Sometimes my mouth looks funny when I talk. I wish I could get plastic surgery.
I love sushi.
I am not photogenic...it is a thorn in my flesh.
Bambi was the first movie that made me cry - I was six.

Risk

I have to really be honest this time.
How many pages have I written?
How many words?
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Where are they now?
Stuffed between the covers of books tucked safely away on my shelves.
That is where they will stay unless I do something about it.
And if I don't do something about it,
I might as well crawl inside next to them.
Stuff myself between the covers.
Sleep away the risks.

Fumble

How many times will I begin and then begin again? Backspace. No good. You can do better than that, Shawna. Someone may actually read this someday. I don't even know who you are and I fear what you may think of me. She doesn't have what it takes. She is certainly no Bob Dylan. His words were beautiful and they resounded truth in every line, whether it was a good line or not. That's the difference. Fear and truth don't mix well together. He had one. I have the other. When will I learn?

I know.

I know what you're thinking.

I'm sure taking a risk here.

A risk that you will not think those words and their writer false.

Ostentatious.

A risk that you will not pass the verdict on me before I try.

If you do, I won't argue with you and I won't try to prove what I haven't yet earned the right to prove.

Or , you could keep reading, in good faith.

You'll see...that's a big promise for a girl like me.

Big words. The biggest I've ever used.

But I intned to keep my promise.