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.