Free Fallin'

Welp. Other than this blog and Instagram (which I trimmed down to posts within this past year), I am officially off the grid of social networks for the first time in probably ten years (if we're including cute little Myspace).

I can't describe to you the freedom I am experiencing in that. Even knowing that you're probably reading this because you clicked on the link in my Instagram profile...which takes a few more intentional steps to see how I'm doing as a human than a streaming Facebook news feed dangling the link in your face...that's pretty great to me. Even if I get 5 views rather than 500, damn, you're the only five people I'm really writing to anyway. :)

Anyway, yes. Freedom.

Not because Facebook was an addiction of mine, or a platform for drama, or I'm on a high horse about technology sucking the life out of mankind.

I'm simply learning more and more that the human process of figuring out life is an absolute mess, even when you have a good head on your shoulders and all the best intentions in the world.

And after taking an objective look at how my Facebook and Twitter portrayed who I am and where I've been, I decided I didn't like the idea of my messy and flawed human process documented with words and photos for someone to comb through and assess me by. The past 7+ years have shaped me into the person I am today, and I share the memories of those years with those who were meant to be part of them. Who I am today is something entirely different, and my future as the person I am is so much more relevant to my relationships than my past journey in getting here.

Along with that, it didn't sit well with me that someone would need to use those platforms to get to know me in the first place. If we don't have the ability/desire to know each other in real life, what is the point of status updates and years' worth of pictures of me? Or, if they already know me, it didn't sit well with me that they'd use those platforms to keep up with how life is going for me...rather than an intentional text/phone call that take a little time and effort.

There's also a level of entering into the professional world rather soon, and if I were to ever hop back into the Facebook realm, I'd want to start afresh with a very intentional mindset on what/when/why I use it at all.

Moving on my own and away from "my people" into a new city...for a grad program all about the human condition...have, if nothing else, taught me that we are neurologically interwoven with a lifelong need for human connections. We can't survive without them. And our brains are wired for those connections to be three-dimensional and physically present with other humans. Technology doesn't have the capacity to support the type of connections we need, and I doubt it ever will. I have tried so hard to live vicariously through technology in hopes that my life may as well be happening in the same city as the people I miss who don't live here with me, and it always left me feeling unrested. Meanwhile, my co-workers want to talk about their relationship situations and their families, and my classmates are sharing some of their stories when something we're talking about in a lecture really resounds in them...there are humans right next to me reaching out for the connections I've been staring at my phone for trying to feel with people thousands of miles away. I'd lost touch with the concept of my community being with whoever I lay eyes on, not whoever has private access to my Facebook statuses and pictures.

So I'm feeling free.

Free to let my distant human connections be what they are, and put actual time/energy into them if they really are worth it.

Free to let my local human connections grow in organic ways that take advantage of our proximity...coffee hangouts, grabbing lunch/dinner, anything involving the actual humans I'm living my life next to.

Free to let my hunger for human connections push me to genuinely talk with someone I may not have in a more comfortable state, like the stranger sitting next to me at coffee or the customer at the drive-thru window who's forced to sit there anyway while their drink is being made.

Free to live in the reality that we were never meant to have 500+ friends to keep up with and share our lives with, but respect the comings and goings of those who cross our paths and keep our attentions most focused on those put in front of us this very moment.

This may be my last post for awhile...mainly to push myself to share my heart with real humans rather than whoever can find me online. I'm sure I'll have a few painfully inspirational rants to share, knowing me. And I also know that I've had some genuine encouragement to keep writing, and that what I've written in here has really made some impacts. I want to honor that. So I'm not going anywhere in the long run.

But for now, I leave you for the treacherous road of living life with flesh and blood humans. If that can't be you, text or call for some you-and-me time. If you don't have my number, but want some you-and-me time, but we can't do that in real life...well...let's cross that bridge when we get to it? Hah.

We'll talk soon.

Oh Death, where is your sting?

There was one point...one chapter, really...of my life when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who would be on my mind if I knew I was about to die. Or on my deathbed, if I was able to ask for anyone I wished to come be with me in my last moments...no question, I knew who I would ask for.

That's a profound feeling, knowing who you'd ask for if you were about to die. Knowing the ghost in the deepest parts of your being whose hand you'd want to hold as you faced the end.

I knew who that would be until about a year ago. Or I should say, it would have been true until about a year ago.

After that, thanks to life happenings and choices, I was scared out of my mind to die. And at the same time, welcomed the end of trying to live here.

Then about five months ago, after dealing with some of the darkness I've shared on this blog and other shadows unmentioned, I started the process of slowly but surely getting to a place of facing my mortality with peace again.

And once more, I knew who I'd want with me in my last breaths. But it wasn't the same face, the same name.

It was the Face I'll be staring at when that time comes. The One I'll want will be right in front of me, the One who's walked with me every step on this earth, the Face I've longed to gaze on for so so long. I'll be reaching for His hand, no question.

This is all coming from a distinct dream I had last night that brought me an overwhelming peace, even in its morbidity. I dreamed I was in a car accident up here in Portland away from every one of my loved ones, flown from the car and bleeding out on the street. A man was crouching down next to me until an ambulance came, but I knew I wasn't going to make it.

So I looked at the stranger, and I said these words with tears in my eyes:

Tell my family I wasn't in pain, and I wasn't afraid. Tell them I can see Him, and He's so beautiful, and I'm ready.

I woke up, I cried in real life, and knew everything will be okay.

It's a profound feeling, knowing the human you'll want next to you in the end.

It's an even more profound feeling knowing that even if you are alone in the end, you won't be alone.

And that knowledge changes everything.

It makes the important things worth their pain and risk and patience.

It makes the unimportant things fade out of focus and lose their scariness.

It sets you free.

When death is welcomed, so is truly living.

This is a happy post, I swear. :)

Go and live abundant lives, my friends, and feel the peace of the Presence that will abide in you until the end.

On Lewis and Horses.

I know I'm abnormal in that C.S. Lewis' writing style flows through my brain seamlessly...he loves his run-ons and tangents. But bear with me, and chew on his words. I'll break it up for easier readability:

"Now it will be seen that, in so far as the tame animal has a real self or personality, it owes this almost entirely to its master. If a good sheepdog seems 'almost human' that is because a good shepherd has made it so [....]

I am now going to suggest - though with great readiness to be set right by real theologians - that there may be a sense [...] in which those beasts that attain a real self are in their masters. That is to say, you must not think of a beast by itself, and call that personality and then inquire whether God will raise and bless that. You must take the whole context in which the beast acquires its selfhood - namely 'The-goodman-and-the-goodwife-ruling-their-children-and-their-beasts-in-the-good-homestead'. That whole context may be regarded as a 'body' in the Pauline sense; and how much of that 'body' may be raised along with the goodman and goodwife, who can predict? So much, presumably, is necessary not only for the glory of God and the beatitude of the human pair, but for that particular glory and that particular beatitude which is eternally coloured by that particular terrestrial experience.

And in this way it seems to me possible that certain animals may have an immortality, not in themselves, but in the immortality of their masters. And the difficulty about personal identity in a creature barely personal disappears when the creature is thus kept in its proper context. If you ask, concerning an animal thus raised as a member of the whole Body of the homestead, where its personal identity resides, I answer 'Where its identity always did reside even in the earthly life - in its relation to the Body and, specially, to the master who is the head of that Body.'

In other words, the man will know his dog; the dog will know its master and, in knowing him, will be itself. To ask that it should, in any other way, know itself, is probably to ask for what has no meaning."

I love that. An animal finds their 'almost humanness' within the context of their human master. Just like we can only find ourselves within the context of the true Self. It brings to life the expression that people and their pets start looking/acting alike over time, and why there have been so many stories of true life-changing relationships between animals and humans.

It also solidifies the parallels I have always made between my dog Ayda, my ownership, love, and shepherding of her, and my relationship with my Shepherd.

One of my best friends and old roommates used to work at a Christian summer camp that centered around horse riding and training, and using horse training parallels to shed light on how God leads us, and how we tend to respond out of our fear and ignorance as flawed humans.

She said something once that has since stuck with me.

Apparently horses have no depth perception and very little color vision, so unknown objects moving toward them or on the ground in front of them get them easily spooked. This is why they're sometimes blindfolded or have blinders on in horse trailers or in crowded public places.

With this, one of their biggest fears are large tarps on the ground. They basically look like gaping holes the horse could fall into, so they're terrified of walking on them. A horse trainer works with the horse to ease them into being able to walk on the tarp successfully. Once they are willing to walk on tarps, they can walk through water and other land that they wouldn't have been able to before.

The tarp never looks less scary to the horse.

The tarp never makes sense or is understood by the horse.

The tarp will always...always...look like a gaping hole in the ground. The horse's brain does not have the capacity to register it as anything else, and will alert the nervous system and the adrenaline glands of danger over and over again. Despite that response becoming desensitized over time, it will never truly go away.

But here's the thing...

The goal is to gain the horse's trust to the point that the horse would walk straight into a gaping hole in the ground if its master guided it there.

This is when animals could possibly find their 'almost humanness' to me, when they transcend their instincts in dedication to their master, and therefore glorify the heart of our God. I see myself so painfully clear in this picture.

Because oh, how I love scanning the horizons for the gaping holes in the ground of my life.

There have been a legitimate few, and they led to broken bones and scars and regrets. And somewhere inside myself I vowed never to let myself fall into one again. I'd avoid any situation necessary, any relationship necessary, any feeling necessary, to avoid falling into a hole like that again.

Just like with horses, some of this is survival instinct and holds a beneficial fear of danger in order to survive and stay healthy.

But when the Master leads you to danger, you must trust Him above your instincts.

Even if it's straight into a gaping hole in the ground.

That vow of no more gaping holes has been challenged by Him over and over again in His leadership of my soul.

I'd even say I'm in the middle of such a situation right now. One where my brain is on edge and I'm looking around for all my exits, making sure I have a quick and painless escape if necessary, even searching for excuses to use them now before potential disaster hits. Some of this is healthy, and it means I'm being smart about my surroundings. But when I am called deeper, when I sense His voice is in front of me and not behind me telling me to walk away, I must follow His footsteps on top of that tarp and trust that He is my God, He is my Shepherd, and falling into a gaping hole with Him is more beautiful than avoiding those holes without Him.

And so I quiet my soul, move forward, and keep myself open to His guidance. I give Him my fears but do not let them rule my steps. I let Him be my Master, and lead me where my feet could never wander alone.

And maybe one day I'll be as brave as some horses are out there.

Die Trying

"It was a draining and depressing year for [Geoffrey]. He felt each morning as though he were going to work in a burning building, as though his job was simply to rescue as many kids as he could from the flames. 'It was almost primal,' Geoffrey told me, looking back. 'We were literally just trying to keep our children alive.' There were plenty he couldn't save; for many kids, the pull of guns and drugs was impossible to resist. For years, he offered martial arts lessons to a small group of young men and women from the neighborhood, mentoring them, hoping to show them an alternative to the violence on the streets, and he became closer to them than any other children in Rheedlan's programs. And then two of his top students told him that they had decided to go into business selling cocaine."

This is an excerpt from a book I'm currently reading for class. It is about Geoffrey Canada's noble fight to save the children of Harlem from the systematic oppression of their poverty level. I have to read it for a writing assignment on socioeconomics.

But this idea...this idea of a career path feeling like a burning building...that's sticking with me today. I think that will resound in me in profound ways once I am meeting with clients I want to "save". The child from unnecessary ADHD medication. The woman from the abusive relationship. The man from clinical depression. The marriage from heartbreak. The family from dysfunction. The human from darkness.

I have a long road ahead of me. I think that may be why I've been consciously preparing the way for this career path for almost a decade now...I've always known this is what I wanted to do. And I'm just now sensing the toll it may take on my soul.

At the edge of the abyss. That image is still with me when I imagine myself hand in hand with a client as they face themselves. All the mystery, the fear, the unknown, the mess.

I'm sensing now that I may witness too many clients dive into the darkness and lose the will to try anymore.

I'm sensing now that I may be tempted myself to lose the will to try anymore.

Geoffrey Canada's story is so moving because his vision - to save the children of Harlem - remained in tact year after year, decade after decade, program after program, failure after failure, during the highs and the lows. I know my own vision - to make peace in hurting marriages/families - is in my bone marrow, and will flow through me until my last breath. I hope to have the same resolve Geoffrey had, and to remember that God works in quiet, gradual, and unsuspecting ways, where I'd rather have glorious one-time-ends-all victories in living out His will.

We're not called to win. We're called to die trying.

Lord give me the strength to lose, to fail, to not know what to do next. Set me free from the fear I feel in those shortcomings, set me free from the lie that my worth is in my victories and my wisdom. Set me free from the shell I crawl into in the face of feeling too much tenderness.

Give me the strength to be weak.

My weakness within the sanctuary of Your love is where I find my true strength.

The strength I'll need to die trying.