Some Love

Happy Saturday to all! As this was a crazy pre-week-before-the-week-before-Spring-Break week and I am thrilled for time to myself. I am also thrilled that my best friend is currently on her way to meet me in Springfield--after a 3 month hiatus it will be good to see her.

In light of my post earlier this week I thought I'd update y'all on some thoughts I've been having. The first being that I want to be happy regardless of my weight. If I allow my happiness to be dependent on my weight, then we get the meltdown from earlier this week. And who wants that? Not me, that's for certain.

The second is that my comparison scale is running rampant. I have been allowing myself to value the worth of myself based on my size rather than substance (not the three spoonfuls of cookie dough I ate last night substance, the me-ness substance). I've said it before, I praise God for blogs. This week they were my encouragement. Lindsey at The Pleated Poppy hosts this fun weekly post called What I Wore Wednesdays. Basically she takes pictures of herself in outfits she wears throughout the week and posts them. I love Wednesdays because I get to peek in on the way she presents herself through the week.

And as I was looking through this week's post, it hit me. The women who link up to her post aren't all size 2 college students, or consumed with being a size 2 college student. They enjoy who they are and they choose to have fun with style and clothes wherever they are at. I needed to see that this week. I needed to see people who weren't utterly consumed with their bodies but were enjoying clothes.

I know to some of y'all that may sound utterly petty, but I think clothes are a facet of presenting oneself. Clothes have the power to make us feel really good or really bad. There is a quote I saw on Pinterest that said, "I do not have anything in my home that I do not consider to be useful or beautiful." Well the same goes for my closet. I am working at playing with the things I have and getting rid of the items that do not serve me a great purpose and I do not feel good in.

The simplicity of only owning things I feel good in and use is freeing to me. It takes my focus off of comparing myself to other people and causes me to choose to decide how I feel about things. This may seem inconsequential to the whole realm of insecurity, but I think part of the healing process for me is learning how to pursue healthy beauty for myself. When I know I feel good about what I'm wearing then I don't spend nearly the amount of time playing the comparison game with others. So I don't think it's inconsequential at all.

I have to shoot y'all straight. I spent the morning on the Fitness Pinboard on Pinterest and I could just feel the self-torment welling up inside of me about how I ate cookie dough yesterday and that I haven't been in the gym since Tuesday. And the second I realized the turn in my thinking, I refused myself the pity party and am glad for it. I know all this doesn't mean I won't be accosted by the monster still, but this little realization as to how I can better actively choose it, made me a little giddy.

I guess all this to say, if I'm going down this road, I'm taking y'all with me.

Over-sharing

Okay blog world. I read so many blogs of woman who over-share. Those are always my favorite, their absolutely candidness (candidity?) with this community of readers warrants admiration from me all the time. Thus, I'm gonna shoot y'all straight today.

I am insanely messed up when it comes to body image. Like full-fledged-self-deprecating-gag-when-I-see-myself-in-pictures insecure. And this has been a life long battle. I can't tell you of a time longer than a week ever in my life when I was completely secure. I ache for that freedom.

In the past 2 years I have grown insanely in being an independent person, and in my mind, with that should come security. But that's it's own set of problems. Ugly, manipulative, problems. Although I am flattered by compliments, there is always a little rubber band that snaps in me when someone's kind hearted words hit my psyche. It's a nasty monkey that I am dying to not just get off my back, but brutally beat the stuffing out of.

My inadequacy's are only exacerbated by the fact that I am leading my small group through So Long Insecurity by Beth Moore. When the complete irony of it is, teaching is just one other big fact area of inhibition in my life.

I went to my church this last weekend, Kris Mcgee spent the time walking through the point of the gospel. Every. Time. Every time I go there I just sit in awe at the way they are able to convey so clearly to me that I just need to sit with Jesus. All the gospel is is realizing that my hope completely lies in the fact that I can't do anything and Jesus has done everything.

I have a massive issue with my mind turning everything faith-oriented into legalism. But this weekend it was like I finally understood that nothing I do is a catalyst and everything I do is a response. The concept of me being able to control, increase, stimulate, or any other synonym of that type my relationship with Christ is 110% absurd. Everything in my relationship with Him is responding to what has been, is being, and will be done in life, not just mine. It is so hard for me to let that seep in to the way I think. I want to hear this all the time. I need to hear this all the time. Because the lack of that is where my screwed up, messy, hateful way of thinking about myself comes from.

I crave to be around people who love that gospel, who are responding to that gospel. And to be honest, I feel like I'm drowning without it at school. This long-term reality of feeling like something is missing down here has left me feeling like I have to do it alone. I am my own teacher, consoler, counselor, etc. It's exhausting. It is the biggest breath of the freshest air for me to go home these days. Hear this. It's not that I hate it in Bolivar, I love the people, and I love my classes, but there has always been a chunk missing for me. I can't tell you that that hasn't produced a good dose of bitterness in me towards it, but I'm slowly realizing it and asking to change.

But truth is, I'm tired. It's like I'm not able to respond because there I no longer know how to listen for it. I praise God for my family and my church where I feel able to breathe and take in for a little while. I have come to deeply cherish those breaks and while this is insanely frustrating, I am choosing to believe that this all has a point.

So here is the summary. I am a big hot mess. I have body issues. I have faith issues. And I'm tired. I just felt like shooting y'all straight. Regardless of my exhaustion, mess, and inadequacy, writing it down keeps me level headed. So I don't write for pity, I write to be honest. I don't crave compliments, I crave freedom. I know y'all have got to want the same thing, and I know that some of y'all have it. And that's the reason I put this out there: to over-share, because we're in this together.

Valentine's

Valentines, oh Valentines.

I love this day. A day to decorate, enjoy, smile, and rest in all things love.  I think I am one of few people in the world who is content to watch Valentine's day go on around me. To watch people gift each other, convey value and love, yet not be experiencing it myself, and I'm blissfully content with that.

Although, when it comes down to it, I have some love shout outs of my own to give. My cheerleaders who no matter what, are there for me.

Momma

The woman who knows me best and deepest. My mother with the sincere heart and rich words that reroute me constantly back to the Lord. Her genuine spirit that doesn't patronize me with half truths. My mother who leans hard into the Lord and hard into her family. The woman from whom I received the blood coursing through me. She is the one who sang me "Feed the Birds," instilled in my sister and myself the love to create, and makes the best homemade bread. The mother from whom I have received a passionate love for Starbucks. This mother, she is a grace.

Sister
My sister, the deep lover of beauty, the one with the eye for creating. The opposite of myself, a fighter. She who has given me freedom to think and be different with grace-filled eyes. She who has frustrated me to pieces has become a dear staple in my life. She encompasses honesty, passion, and fervor. The curly haired one with the refusal to settle. My sister, the believer in students, the heart-changer who chooses to look differently. I love her dearly.

Daddy
I am his Guppy. My father from whom comes my calves and virtually nothing else. I am the daughter of a strong leader. He is the man who shows me Godly provision and selflessness fleshed out. The man who takes me for ice cream and bar-be-que and listens to me ramble on. The man so vested in my life who never ceases to amaze me. My dad, the tiler of floors, killer of spiders, and reader of American Girls, this man filled my childhood with so much life. This man fills my young adulthood with so much love. He believes in me and I am honored to be his daughter.

These, the people I choose to celebrate this Valentine's.

#12 My Valentine's

Leaning

Sweet conversation.

Sitting upon what my friend has dubbed the "vomit couch" yesterday, I did just that. I churned out my thoughts and fears and frustrations and processed through it. Not all the way, but for the first time in awhile I spewed to someone who wasn't my family. It was like a breath of fresh air.

I just cannot shake the thoughts I've been having about grace moments and curse moments. What do I number as grace and what do I number as curse, and what moments do I just let pass me by? Overlooked. Cheapened. Unvalued. I've said it before. I am trying to number because I'm trying to look. To let my days carry their own weight.

Sometimes I look ahead to the next year and a half of college and I think, "how can I make it through?" Not that college is a miserable thing, at all. But I'm antsy. I long to be somewhere where I fit better, where I feel known more. And it's overwhelming to look ahead and see abyss. So I count. I start trying to look at the value in the today. To find grace in it all because I have to. Because if today isn't able to transfigure, then when will it? I've made it to nine. Because most days I forget to look. And I think the not numbering has been just as weighty as the numbering because it shows me how often I just move on, how I forget with ease.

An encompassing word I would use to describe the past few years of my life is redefinition. In other words transfiguring. God has been taking the "Christianity" I forged in high school, and making me lean into it and find beauty. It's been a long process. Time-consuming. Heart-consuming. Some days utterly exhausting, and some days completely exhilarating. And I know very well I am just in the midst of it all. I know this because I see my selfishness. I see how compelled I am to look at myself, what I need, want, value, hate, and to define "good" by that. Maybe leaning into the ugly of my life looks like leaning into the frustrating places and ask to see the beautiful. It means I have to lean hard into Him. And I worry that won't be enough, that I will still be dissatisfied.

Can you had a single hour to your life by worrying? (Matt. 6:27) Does worry ever add anything? Sitting on the vomit couch I asked that. I looked at what I have been fretting over. And all I saw was the worry had taken from me. It had taken life, experiences, and sight. By letting my fear consume me I have willingly blinded myself from counting, and therefore seeing things accurately. It hasn't added anything to me. Insecurity has done nothing but take from me. But realizing that won't stop tightening of my stomach and the whispers in my head.

I have to ask the questions. To look. To lean hard into the fear. And I don't know quite how to do that. Sitting with Friend yesterday was a step into that. I verbalized it out. All of it. The fear, the excuse, the realization. And I saw. Seeing allowed me to ask. It's convinced me of a place I need lean hard into to find grace. To find accurate vision.

Maybe none of this makes sense to anyone else. I never thought I would be so impacted by just the thought of counting graces. But I am. And that in and of itself is a grace.

#10. Vomit couch

Paying Attention

One of the reasons I love blogging is that it allows us to put ourselves out there. Jaded, confused, angry, aching, ecstatic, needing, full....all of it can just go somewhere for others to see. And not just see, but somehow be invited into with perimeters. Blogging allows people to see our processes, and lets us unpack our journeys if we so choose to do so. I think there is something divine about that. 

A mother of 6 posted this morning about her mom/daughter relationship. I have never met this woman and although we share a name (ahem, spelling aside) and an understanding of the Gospel, we don't share much else. But somehow in this little blog-o-sphere, I was second-handedly invited into her story. I love that. I love that I get to "meet" women and be fed somehow by their realities and battles. Some days I skim, and some days I read a post three times through, but these friendships are available to me. 

I know face-to-face relationships are vital, but somehow these written ones have become important too. And sometimes a lot more real than that face-to-face ones. It's a pseudo-mentorship. I get to see the walk that people go through, hardness and all. 

I bet y'all think I'm a total creep by now. But here's the thing. I see the gospel from these people. When I stop looking for it, I get online to read and lo and behold they remind me. Not because we had a conversation and they knew my need, but because they are being faithful to sharing without expectation. And isn't that what the gospel is? 

Isn't it coming to know our need more and more the further up and in we go? Isn't it facing our junk because it needs to be faced? Isn't it allowing other people to see the wreckage of ourselves and allowing them to see the hope that develops through the process? 

I am reminded constantly of the moreness that I want, by complete strangers. And not because they are phenom people who got it going on, but because they display to me the honesty and reality of who they are and invite me in to see their process. And isn't that what community is? Inviting each other into the daily-ness of us and choosing to walk together without expectation. Pointing each other forward with freedom in love and the grace to become. 

I understand that there is a chunk missing. The need to be known well by someone is not lost upon me, in fact, it's something I know deeply.

Last post, I quoted One Thousand Gifts a ton. I recently started my list to a thousand things I am grateful for. I didn't start because she did it in the book and it helped her. I didn't start as a hopeful entry point to grow. I started because of what she said, "I pay tribute [to God] by paying attention." I want to pay attention more. I want to be ever-looking. Eyes opened to the gospel in the every day. Because I need to be pointed back to God constantly. I have a wandering heart. I forget. I am a victim of soul amnesia. And numbering makes me look. It causes me to slow down and pay attention. 

I've felt restless this past week and I haven't been able to figure out why. And as I'm sitting here writing, I wonder if it's because I'm breaking down a little deeper. Maybe when I start paying attention, I'm able to need Him more because I'm asking to see Him more. 

 

Settledness and rest hasn't been a part of things lately. I feel caught in between. But I'd rather be here asking, waiting, and uncomfortable than wandering. I think so at least. It's easy to type that. 

I think that's where reading blogs has mattered to me. When I'm feeling so restless, I am able to take a peek at other people's restlessness, peace, hope, angst. I'm reminded that this is a process. That God is present in the process because regardless of my seeing Him in mine, I can go see Him in others. And it documents my own. This past year and some months of blogging has given me reference points. It's given me documentation that God shows up. And it reminds me to keep being faithful to the process because that's vital to the result. And it's made me pay attention. 

#9. Being invited into a strangers process by blog.

Soul Amnesia

My parched soul is overwhelmed today. I've been reading the Word, and a book. The book I talked about before. The one on Eucharisteo. Amazing how God can rip up your soul while filling it so deeply. Reminding me of the point. Awakening the desire.

A lot of this post is going to be excerpts. I want you to read her words. To soak in them. Because they have been life to my soul. I've written before of my views about beauty. And somewhere along the way, I forgot. This woman, the one who lives on a farm states away, has reminded me of the soul-stirring, love-evoking, search for beautiful things that really leads me to seeing God clearer. More wholly. She has reminded me that the easy fix doesn't exist and so we have to ask the question of how to see grace clearly, accurately, as more than ease or not experiencing the worst of the worst.

And I look down at his ugly-beautiful [referring to her sons maimed hand]. And I see what I am. I'm amputated. I have hacked my life up into grace moments and curse moments. The chopping that has cut myself off from the embracing love of a God who "does not enjoy hurting people or causing them sorrow" (Lamentations 3:33), but labors to birth grief into greater grace. 

God is good and I am always loved.

Because eucharisteo is how Jesus, at the Last Supper, showed us to transfigure all things--take the pain that is given, give thanks for it, and transform it into a joy that fulfills all emptiness. The hard discipline to learn into the ugly and whisper thanks to transfigure it into beauty. The hard discipline to give thanks for all things at all times because He is all good. 

All is grace because all can transfigure. 

All is grace because all. can. transfigure. He is ALL. GOOD. 

I soak that up like a good tan in the summer. Though I'm not in a season where I am disparaging in depravity, I know those who are. I talk to my sister and hear of the hell some of her students are living in. I walk with a friend who is dealing with the pull between her old world and her new. I ache for them, and then I have to remember the grace. Not that if this got worse it wouldn't be grace, but that the ugly is grace too, because it has to be. It has to be able to be transfigured because that's what God promises. To look at the people who absolutely drive me insane and see that as their ugly-beautiful and remember that I am that too. This concept of grace puts us all on the same level, none better, none worse. And it leads us to a place of being compelled to act for others in love. To love justice and mercy and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). To be a place of rest for hurting people because we understand the need and that grace doesn't leave us in a self-protecting place. 

I am beset by chronic soul amnesia. I empty of truth and need the refilling. I need to come again every day--bend, clutch, and remember--for who can gather the manna but once, hoarding, and store away sustenance in the mind for all of the living?

And is that not me? I am the one hoarding. Soaking in Truth a few times a week and calling that full. I forget my need, lose sight of my starvation, and allow life to be swallowed up by mortality (2 Corinthians 5:4). She refers in her book constantly to Manna. The food only available each day. She reminds me that the sweet bread is only available daily. Enough for a time. And my soul forgets. It forgets its hunger for life. I miss sight of fullness, forsaking it for cheap substitutes. 

Isn't beauty what we yearn to burn with before we die? What else so ignites, hot flame? Beauty is all that is glory and God is Beauty embodied, glory manifested. This what I crave: I hunger for Beauty. Is that why I must keep up the hunt? When I cease the beauty hunt, is that why I begin to starve, waste away?

I had told it once to a questioning son that theology is but that born of theos and logy--God and study-- and theology is to study God. I had always thought of the hefty concordances on the high shelf in the study, but isn't this, too, the deep study of the Spirit God? The revelation of God over the farm? [referring to the search for beauty]

I pay tribute to God by paying attention. Beauty requires no justification, no explanation; it simply is and transcends. 

And her words resonate with my soul. Bring tears to my eyes, and the question of how to refute soul amnesia. She's right. She calls me out. How do I constantly miss the beauty in things--the God in things. It's because my eyes aren't looking. They are darting to and fro for cheap entertainment. For ease. How much harder it is to live a life where I am constantly looking for God. It involves mindfulness that I don't possess, thus it involves constant looking up to Him for the mindfulness. I have held onto the thought that studying God in beauty is just as much the pursuit of theology as it is in books for a year now. My heart jumps to see someone speaking of her own journey to that truth. The truth that the fields I mindlessly drive by, the endless blue above me as I look down, the sunrise I daily ignore on my way to class, the cup of coffee I drink, the vastness of the world around me, it all contains some semblance of beauty. I shallowly live amidst it without ever really looking. 

I feel overwhelmed with that reminder today. With the reminder that as I look for God in beauty, as I look for God in the ugly, as I look for God in my starvation, fullness, desire, apathy, and love, I am pursuing life rather than mortality. I am living the full life. I am creating a life that allows Him to work and I am fostering space for bigger things than me. 

Part of my soul amnesia diagnosis is remembering that God is in everything. That pursuing God doesn't  just look like what I learned it should in that warehouse room in Sunday School. It encompasses reality. All reality. And it leads me to a place where I don't shy away from "types" of people. In fact, it erases that word from my vocabulary. It allows me to see us all as ugly-beautiful. It teaches me to care deeply and love fervently. It teaches to me to live a life of rest and allow God to lead me where I'm supposed to be. It reminds me that I don't have to try. 

And how my soul has needed to know that. How it always needs to know that. This is grace because it can transfigure. It can go from being ugly to being beautiful. God treats my soul amnesia with a restful time in a coffee shop with thirst quenching reminders from a mother of six living on a farm. 

Posture

Merry Christmas to one and all.

And although this is the day we have deemed to, in the words of Relient K, "celebrate the day that [Jesus] was born to die, so I could one day pray for Him to save my life," it isn't what is on my mind so early-late this morning-night.

As I'm lying here in my childhood bedroom attempting to sleep I was thinking about humility. I have a myriad of quotes in post-it note form on my computer screen. Many of which are C.S. Lewis. I'm telling you the man was brilliant. One of them reads, "Humility isn't thinking any less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less."

Spurred on by a conversation with a friend, I was lying here, trying to imagine what that looked like. A mental image popped into my over-active imagination of an eager face looking at other people with feigned interest. It seemed forced and shallow. And you know why I think that is? Because my nature when I first begin to ask a question about the look of an action is to imagine the look of the action. I know that seems overly-obvious and stupid, but hear me out.

Maybe what I do so often isn't ask the question of, "how does this play out in my heart?" but rather, "what should this thought play out to in my life?" or rather, "what will people think of me when they see me acting this out?" And as sickening as that looks as I write it out, that is almost automatically where my mind goes all the time. It's about the posture I take.

The other day my sister-in-law and I were talking about how much we compare ourselves to other girls. What resulted from this conversation was the reminder that to be healthy isn't to necessarily feel like we are the creme de la creme, but to consider ourselves of equal value as the rest. I think the concept is the same for our faith. Maybe humility isn't raising or lowering ourselves on the "Christian totem pole" but maybe it's not needing to focus on ourselves and being able to take in the steady rhythm of life while walking with God as best as we know how.

Every one of you reading this probably is like, "well duh Emilie." But it's kind of a fabulous thought to me. I've thunk it before. But the word "posture" came to mind tonight and stuck. When I imagine posture I imagine the Princess Diaries when her grandmother ties her to a chair with handkerchiefs. It was about her appearance, and in that scene, and basically throughout the entire movie, she is not a graceful woman. When we try to posture ourselves, or place ourselves in a specific light, we tend to focus on the actions. It becomes about who we talk to, what we read, where we go to church, what information we know about whom; all these little factors with which we use to define ourselves and use to either tear ourselves down or build ourselves up.

The other side of the coin is looking beyond our posture. Asking for healing so we can root out our incessant needs to rate other people and ourselves and base treatment upon that.

Sara Groves sings this Christmas song "To Be With You" and it's one of my favorites. In the song, she says, "we gather round the table, we close our eyes and sing 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow.'" And it sticks with me for no other reason than the subtle reposturing in my mind that happens when I look at the celebrations that are occuring yesterday and today and choose to say, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." It grounds me. This year I don't need a big theological anthology to make me enjoy the season. I just needed to be reminded of God by a 300 year old liturgy.

I think maybe that's a big chunk of the walk that I miss so often. I think it's part of the reason I blog. I am a fickle person and I constantly need reposturing to look at things clearly. Writing is like a magnifying glass for me. It causes me to collect my thoughts in a pile, examine them, and sort them into their reserved places. Some of them are unripe and go back through the grinder, some need the finality of "publication" to settle deeply within me, and some, well, some are fresh and new and just need to be tossed out to see what's next for them.

So with a critical eye, I deem this thought one to be churned for awhile. Gnawed on. And for that, Praise God from whom all blessings flow.