advent

O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

 

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai’s height,
In ancient times did’st give the Law,
In cloud, and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

 

Advent.  I’ve never given it a whole lot of thought until lately.  Advent is about waiting…and waiting…and waiting.  I cannot imagine what it was like to wait for Jesus to come…and in some ways, I can.

I have felt like such a huge mess lately.  I feel like a captive who needs ransoming right now.

Jesus is coming.  God with us is coming.

I think Christmas is going to mean something very different to me this year…aside from the fact that I am not going home, I think Christmas is going to be different because I have felt this season of Advent in more ways than one.

I love O Come, O Come Emmanuel.  It and O Come All Ye Faithful are my two favorite Christmas songs.  I feel so painfully the longing and agony of waiting, in more ways than one…and somehow, this year, I am hungering for a Savior in a way I never have.  I feel the sharp pangs of hunger, of longing.  And I don’t know anything to do but to wait, and pray.

I wonder if we as the church know what it means to hunger, to groan in agony and to feel the pain of longing as we wait for what our heart most desires.  We do not know what our heart most desires though if we are always trying to kill the longing and the desire.  This whole longing and desire thing is the gospel.  Jesus is what our hearts long for, and that longing is always going to be painful in some way until heaven.

theology project

Here are the photos I took for my theology project…and did some work to via Photoshop…

a friend

One of my friends/old roommates here in Seattle has a blog…I am sad I have not checked it out sooner, because her words are amazing, challenging, and thought-provoking.  It has been an honor to be able to see the journey she is on…and I am thankful for the ways she has been a good friend to me.  Anyways, you should check her out…

For A Limited Time Only

to my therapist

We are both here…trying to do this together.

You are trying to show me how to be me, that I can be me.

You are trying to show me how I don’t have to go away…that we can both be here together.

You are trying to show me that you are not going anywhere.

We can both struggle and wrestle with our full being, and we can do it together…it doesn’t require one of us to die…it doesn’t require one of us to be alone.

What is a human being fully alive?  It is not isolation.  It is not a constant shoving and running from emotion so that I can adapt to only you.

It is crying.  It is feeling uncomfortable.  It is having needs.  It is letting those emotions come out.  It is allowing all of this to exist in the midst of relationship.

You aren’t going to let me kill myself in our relationship.  In our relationship, you are calling “me” forth…you want all of me in the picture.  You don’t want decisions without all of me there.

You are calling forth all of me in this space between us.  You are showing me that there is another way, that I don’t have to disappear.

I can say no.  I have the choice to say no.  I get angry when others tell me no because I feel like I don’t have the choice of saying no.  I always have to say yes.  I have always had to say yes.

You letting your needs exist helps me help my needs exist.  You not backing away or giving ground at the expense of yourself makes me have to bring more of me…and if you see me leaving, you’re going to try to find me.  You will wait for me.

I do not understand why you stay with me sometimes.  I do not understand why you don’t let me feel this pain alone.  In those moments, I know there is something bigger than both you and me in the room.

You are trying to help me see the paradox that I don’t have to be alone anymore…and that in being fully alive, being alone sometimes is not so terrifying.

And the truth is, I’m never really completely alone.  As painful as the isolation is that I put myself in at times, I will never be able to isolate myself from God.

I miss my relationship with God.  I miss the way I used to talk to Him all the time, how when I felt so painfully alone, I would read my Bible, and it wouldn’t hurt so bad.  I miss that.

You are trying to help me become more me, more alive.  And you won’t let me do it alone.  Sometimes it pisses me off.  But even when it pisses me off, deep down, I am relieved.

addictions

I have had mixed feelings about Grey’s Anatomy this season.  There have been a few times where I’ve been like, good grief I am addicted to a soap opera…and then they turn the last 10-15 minutes of an episode into something amazing.  Pretty much been the theme of the season to me.

Something about last week’s episode at the end really got to me.  The chief, Richard, has had a hell of a time this season with stress from work.  If you’ve watched Grey’s at all, you know he is a recovered alcoholic.  I’ve been waiting to see if it would remain that way for very long, because the minute the heat picked up to the intensity it has for him, I’ve been waiting to see if they would write a script that brought in a return to drinking for him.  Funny how I have suspected that as I’ve watched the show this season.

The last few minutes of this past Thursday’s episode, Richard is at the bar all the doctors hang out at after work.  He asks Joe, the bartender, for another “club soda.”  The next few minutes is when I just lost it.  Joe asks Richard if he is planning on going home or spending the night at the hospital.  When Richard replies that he is going home, Joe tells him that he is going to need Richard’s car keys before he can give him another drink.  Richard hands over his keys, and Joe pours a glass of straight vodka under the bar (and I might add it was not the most subtle thing ever).  As Richard is drinking, they bring in all the stressful scenes from the season that have happened to him, and then a scene from last season where Richard is telling Derek, “You’ve been drunk for a few days.  I was drunk for years.”  As they’re showing all of this while Richard is drinking, I just found myself absolutely bawling.  Grey’s always makes me cry.  I think that is part of the reason I like it so much.

I know this is a TV show, but I know stuff like this also exists.  I know someone’s story was being told.  I know I saw parts of my own story.  We have all run to our addictions to try to make the stress and pain go away, to find some sort of reprieve, even if it is only for a few hours.  Some of those addictions require us to hide from people out of shame.  I wouldn’t classify myself as an alcoholic, but I know that there have been points in my life where that was what I used to cope, and I would try to hide it.  I think what got to me about Grey’s was feeling Richard’s isolation and pain.  When you are hiding, you are all alone, you and your addiction, whatever that is for you.  You expend so much energy trying to hide and keep your addiction, trying to act like you are okay and don’t need help, when all you really want is someone to come into that isolation with you, to help you turn from your addiction to something of hope and life.  It is an agonizing bind.

I’ll be really interested to see where they take this piece of the storyline.

Also, there was a great song played during the scene with Richard called “Poison and Wine” by The Civil Wars.  Highly recommend checking it out, it’s beautiful.

coming up for air

Bad news 1st years…2nd year fall semester of MACP is way harder than fall semester of 1st year!

I have 2 papers/presentations per week the rest of the semester.  I turned in a 15 page paper for psychopathology last Monday, then turned right around and frantically worked on a research paper that was due for Human Growth this past Monday, and a research paper that was due for Sexual Disorders today.  I have a quiz in Theology tomorrow, then a paper/presentation due next Tuesday, and then…well, you get the idea.

I feel like I have said this several times on my last few blog posts, but I love Dan Allender.  I recently got my Sexual Disorders paper back from him, which was hard as hell to read and said things that I will definitely be talking about in therapy in the coming weeks, and had office hours with him today.  I’ve had a hard semester with him for various reasons, mostly having to do with my own crap, but today I was reminded of just how thankful I am for him.  He is one of the few men in my life that I know is adamantly protective of me and would fight for me in just about anything…and he isn’t afraid to tell me what is hard.  That is something that can be hard to find.

In the midst of the craziness, I have had a hard time locating myself lately.  The past 2 days have been incredibly hard for me…in therapy, in my papers, with Dan…I have felt some incredibly hard emotions, and have been humbled and reminded that I do not have my shit together, and I won’t until heaven.  It is so hard to let go of that though…not having your shit together.  It is hard to let go and just be, and know that it is in the messed up parts where God does the most amazing things and uses you the most.  Why do we try so hard to hold it all together, when God tells us it’s about dying, losing our life, and using our weaknesses?  You would think we would be more eager to embrace those parts of us.  But for some reason, we choose to shut down, or to fight, kick, and scream.

I hate suffering.  And in my masochistic self, I really love it.  Is that okay to say?

sad: “feeling or showing sorrow; causing or characterized by sorrow or regret”

Amanda is always telling me that it is okay to have feelings that I usually categorize as “bad.”  It is okay to feel something and let it be.  I don’t have to “do” anything about it.  I don’t have to make it go away.  I can just let it be.

I am sad.  There.  I said it.

I hate being sad.  I hate the way it makes me feel.  I hate that I can’t make it go away.  I want to learn to let go of that hate and just be with the feeling.

It is exhausting to be sad.  You’re afraid of your sadness bringing other people down, so you don’t talk to anyone about it.  You try to be happy, try to keep engaging, and get to be pretty good at it.  But every now and then, you feel yourself staring off into space, overwhelmed by what you are really feeling inside.  You wish you could just sit there and keep staring off into space.  But you also wish someone would come sit beside you and hold you while you cry.  Is it okay to ask that of someone?  You want to hide, but you also want someone to pick up on what you are feeling.  It’s exhausting to fight through the things that silence you and tell you to deal with it yourself.

It’s scary to me when I get sad.  I’ve struggled with having major depressive episodes in the past.  Thankfully, I have not had one of those while I’ve been at Mars Hill.  It’s been one of my biggest fears because of how debilitating it is.  I’ve learned to pick up on the signs though and try to take some action before it fully hits.  There is a difference between being depressed and being sad, I think.  I don’t feel like this is what that is, but would I be okay with it if it was?

Sadness is exhausting.  For me, sadness is isolating.

I know why I am sad.  And there is nothing I can do about it except to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to try to keep feeling, to keep trying to understand and untangle the mess, and know that God blesses the process, and that this is the very reason Jesus became human.  Somehow, by learning that it is okay to be sad, I am becoming more alive.

women…not less than men?

I have a confession.  I have a pretty strong visceral reaction to feminism.  It is hard for me to not discredit a feminist theologian the minute I find out she is a woman, and immediately read with a hermeneutic of suspicion.

I have come from a conservative theology in the past.  I have always been taught that men have been given the gift of leadership, and that we as women need to affirm them in that and build them up in it.  Women pastors aren’t cool.  Submission is the name of the game (which I am really wanting someone to tell me what that really means now).  Men are the spiritual leaders (which also now, I am like, what does that mean??).  While the theology I have come from would deny that women are somehow less than men, I cannot help but think that in the way the theology is structured that men are somehow elevated above women.  Men are the leaders.  Women are the followers.  No man wants to marry a woman who is too strong.  I have always believed this.

I want men to be leaders…but not at the expense of a woman or shutting out a woman’s voice.  I want men to be self-confident and strong, and am all about affirming men…but not at the expense of a woman.  I want men to buck up and not feel emasculated around a woman who is strong.  Today it hit me in theology that I think my voice as a woman has been typically shut down.  I don’t say things sometimes because I am afraid of “making a man look bad” when the man could just be challenged and learn to deal.  One of my friends told me today that she thinks I hate my womanhood.  I think in some ways, yes I do hate it, and I need to grieve that.  But I think the statement would be more true would be, not that I hate being a woman, but that men are created a little better than women.  Maybe I have hated my womanhood because it has felt limiting, that I can only do so much without being labeled extreme, saying too much, being someone that a man would never want to marry.  Being a woman has meant being created a little less.  Being a woman has meant being used.

Here are the voices I am hearing in my head:

“You are taking this out of context.  These are your issues to deal with.  Our theology isn’t saying this at all, you’re just misinterpreting it.  No, of course women are not created as less than men.  Your notion of submission is all wrong.  And if you are wanting a man to be a leader and be strong, would you not do everything you could to affirm this, even if it is submitting?  It is biblical for a woman to submit to a man and for a man to be the spiritual leader.”

I am not saying it is a bad thing to serve your husband.  I want a husband to serve one day.  And even if this is my issue to deal with, it seems like something needs to be re-worded or clarified.  Whether or not the theology is saying that men are above, it is making me and other women I know feel like that, and that’s a problem, and something needs to change.

The women I have met at Mars Hill have changed me, both friends and professors.  It makes me think of I-Thou and Buber, and everything about Interpersonal Foundations.  It is easy to believe one thing from far away, when you don’t know anyone really well.  It is another thing when you get to know someone and hear their voice.  I have met some amazing women at Mars Hill, and their voices are amazing and beautiful, and it grieves me to think that in some places, their voices would be limited or shut down, that I myself, a fellow woman, have shut them down in the past.  I have women friends who are going to be pastors, who are already pastors…and I cry to think that I once said, no, it is not biblical for you to do this.  I have been uncomfortable with women as pastors because I have been told women aren’t supposed to be pastors.

I’m thinking of doing my theology paper on a biblical notion of gender.  Sounds like a can of worms to me.  But I want to understand and learn.  I want to know what it means to be a woman who is alive.  And I want to learn how to love the women around me better, and love myself as a woman better.  I want to learn what it means to love my neighbor.  I want my friends to challenge me, on both sides.

God has me on a rather wild ride right now…it is humbling, hard, scary…and God is blowing my mind and showing me more of what it means to love.

dan trifecta

I love music.  I love how it has the ability to impact our emotions.  I love how it brings me to feeling.  I love how God makes Himself present through it.  Needless to say, my iTunes library currently has 3,958 songs.  I’m excited about 4,000.    A song I downloaded recently I am in love with, mainly because of the strings.  I haven’t really listened to the lyrics because the song instrumentally is beautiful.  It’s called “Songs from Different Times” by Jack Savoretti.  Another great song I downloaded recently called “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire is pretty awesome lyrically.  I highly recommend downloading both.

At Mars Hill Graduate School, we write these infamous papers.  To us, they are known as the tragedy paper, family of origin paper, and the sexual development paper.  I also call them the Dan Trifecta.  They are all for Dan Allender’s classes.  During Fall semester 1st year in Faith, Hope, and Love, you write the tragedy paper, where you take a central and guiding story/tragedy from your growing up years, write a 500 word narrative about it, then basically write 4-5 pages about how it has impacted and shaped you.  Spring semester 1st year in Marriage and Family, you write the family of origin paper, where you write 4 pages about how the family you grew up in has shaped you, especially your relational style.  Then Fall semester 2nd year in Sexual Disorders, you write 6 pages about the history of your sexual development and how it has shaped your sexuality and who you are as a man or woman.  Dan personally reads every single paper, then returns them to you with comments and an mp3 with feedback.  As incredibly hard as it is, sometimes I think writing these papers is the most valuable thing I will do at Mars Hill, and if I did nothing else during my time here as far as being trained as a counselor, I think it would be enough.  We talk a lot about story at Mars Hill.  You can’t take someone in their story further than you have gone in your own.  I think some of the most valuable training I am getting at Mars Hill is the work they ask us to do on ourselves.  Who we are is all we got as counselors…well, that and God.    But even then, my story impacts how I relate to God, how I see Him, how I believe in Him.

This week, I wrote the final installment of the Dan trifecta.  Who knew that I would ever say writing my tragedy paper was easy.  Writing about the history of my sexual development was the hardest paper I have ever composed.  After 2 days of trying to write, I had a page and a half, a ton of tears, and felt overwhelmed.  It was like I needed to grieve before I could start writing.  My sexual history is overwhelming to me.  There is so much darkness that is hard to believe in light.  I wrote an email to Amanda on that second day (and just so you know, this is definitely edited! ):

i am trying to work on my sexual development paper for sexual disorders.  i think this may be the most overwhelming assignment i’ve ever had.  i cant write any part of it without crying.  my sexual history feels so incredibly overwhelming…and i dont think i’ve fully realized how dark it is until i started writing this.  i’m not writing about every sexual experience i’ve ever had…i feel a huge hesitancy writing about this for dan, but it is what i am feeling called towards.  maybe this is where my repentance comes in with this stuff, i don’t know.  i don’t know that i’ve ever felt so broken over this.

On the 3rd day (gee, that’s ironic), words came.  I knew what I needed to write about.  I knew the stories I was supposed to tell, the feelings I was supposed to remember and tell about.  It still was not easy…there were lots of random loud outbursts, cuss words, and what the fuck’s.  But there was something different.  In places where I have always felt contempt and shame, there was brokenness and grace.  Something about writing that paper was actually…healing?  Wow.  And regardless of what the feedback Dan gives me is, I know that I will be okay.  I will survive.  Somehow, we always survive.  We are always able to put one foot in front of the other and keep going.  I am convinced it is for no other reason than the gospel.

How much is enough?  The answer is ultimately whatever God desires for us to see.  Our part is to face whatever will help us better love those whom we have been called to serve.

- The Wounded Heart by Dan Allender

a book

I have this book.  It was made for me.  I read it every now and then, and I’m never quite sure what exactly causes me to read through it.  I told Sydney I needed to bring it to counseling to show her.  I never did.  I’ve mentioned it to Amanda.  Haven’t brought it to her yet either.  It feels like something secret that I want to guard.  After struggling with getting to my feelings, Thursday in therapy I cried the entire time.  Amanda just listened.  We both felt relief afterward.  She told me I had been hidden for a while, and felt relief at having finally “found me.”  What made me cry wasn’t talking about what happened to me.  What made me cry was talking about the “good” things about my relationship with my dad.   I have not known how to bring that into therapy.  I’ve pretty much split it off, because it’s too confusing.  I don’t know how to hold the good and the bad.  My dad and I were close.  Too close.  Close in the sense that pretty much I played the role of someone way too intimate for his daughter.  That makes me sick just to type it.  But it’s true.  So now I’m getting to grief, and trying to figure out what in the hell to do with this.  It makes me cry just to think about it.  There is something incredibly deep in there.

So this book…my dad made it for me for Christmas one year.  He gave it to me the Christmas of my freshmen year of college, when I had done the “leaving home.”  It’s a collection of Christmas letters that he sent out to family over the years, starting in 1988.  It’s the Christmas update letter you get from your relatives recapping the past year…and if you go back and read them, you will find it is your family history.  My dad is a writer so he gets really into it.  So he got all the letters from 1988-2002, went back through them all and put his own comments in it here and there, and made a book for me.  He wrote me a letter in it that makes me cry every time I read it.  In the front there is a picture of him handing me my high school diploma (he was the principal at my high school).

I think what is hard is facing truth, and facing how incredibly connected my heart is to my dad, how confusing it is, and how it was never supposed to be this way.  We talked about leaving and cleaving in Marriage and Family last year.  While I don’t have a spouse yet, there are major ways that I need to leave.  What is so hard is that I know that is incredibly painful for both my dad and me, and the raw grief that will be ripped open will be excruciating.  And part of me thinks, Amanda, I sure hope you know what you’re doing.  I rarely question her.  But right now I am like, what do you do with the good, the bad, the confusion?  And how the hell do you do therapy with someone in the midst of that???

Dan talked about how glorious it is to learn how to hold ambivalence (feeling two contradictory emotions at the same time) in Faith, Hope, and Love.  What does learning how to hold it even mean?????