What Not To Wear

I have always loved this show. Whenver I am channel surfing, and I see Stacy and Clinton shopping with someone, my pulse quickens and my pupils dialate: what will they buy? will she like it? how will she look? what’s going to happen with the hair and makeup?

I always felt a little ashamed of how much I like it, though. I mean, isn’t it vanity? It’s so superficial, clothes and hair and makeup. After all, it’s inner-beauty that matters, and the Bible even says that women should be adorned not with gold and braids, but with a quiet and gentle spirit. . .

Right?

But what if there was actually something profound about the show? There must be a reason why so many women gravitate toward it (it’s been on tv since I was in high school, and Stacy London has countless endorsements).

The show is not just a makeover show. If that was the case, there would be an irrationality behind the fact that many people feel a surge of positive emotion at this show and yet recoil at Extreme Makeover (a show where they gave women plastic surgery as part of their makeover).

On this show, notice Stacy and Clinton never tell anyone that they need to lose or gain weight. The makeup artist never says that anyone needs a nose-job. This is what is profound about the show: they find what is beautiful about each woman and attempt to reveal that beauty in a way that is both alluring and tasteful. They not only attempt to show others her beauty through clothes that act as a frame for a masterpiece, but they attempt to show her that she is a masterpiece. The same goes for the hair and makeup artists- they show her what is lovely about her face and draw attention to it.

This show taps into something deep in the heart of woman- the longing that we have for a beauty to unveil to the world. We long to have a loveliness all of our own to unfurl, and this show recognizes that desire and affirms it. Granted, it only deals with external changes, but in a culture where we have rigorously (and detrimentally) divided the “internal” (soul, spirit, mind) and the “external” (the body), we could use a little refresher on how to unify the two.

We need to re-learn how to see people. The body reveals deep truths about the soul, and the soul of a woman was created to reflect the (dare I say it?) seductive beauty of God, so we need to learn how to see a woman’s body as the revelation of her soul.

Please do not mistake me- I am not in any way endorsing the cheapening of women by reducing their bodies to objects to serve man’s brokeness. The word “seductive” needs to be redeemed; it is to captivate, to draw another toward oneself through desire. Is that not what God is himself? Women are created to mirror this captivating essense of God, and we can reclaim the beauty of our entire being as we embrace and celebrate Beauty. Not the “beauty” that we have reduced down to something nearly unrecognizable through fetishization, but true Beauty that looks at the glory of a whole person, body and soul. Beauty that moves. Beauty that changes the world.

I am still learning this with extreme difficulty, as I battle body-image problems and eating disorder tendencies. It is a slow learning process, laden with wrestling matches with God that sometimes He (unfortunately) lets me win. But sometimes, I behold my face in the mirror and see a flicker of the eternity for which I am intended. The curtain that loosely divides Heaven and Earth is pulled back, and I see. . . beauty.

 

A vision

I feel stressed and overwhelmed by many things- surface-things and deep-things. I feel they are existing side by side, but not together. To which do I attend first? I am directionless, paralyzed by indecision.

-What if you let them out together, to run around all at the same time in your mind?-

I released them all, and they were animals, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, running around in a petting zoo pen. Running, trotting, laying, getting up again, all over the place,

I see myself, exhausted, leaning over the side of the pen, and my face looks like that of a child who’s lost her parents at Disneyland.

-Can I come in?-

In my heart, I assent, and then He is standing there with me, in the pen.

Suddenly (and yet it didn’t seem sudden at all) the animals cease moving and they lay, quiet, in a loose circle around him. He sits, utterly at rest, and gently takes a small lamb. He holds it in his arms and pets it.

I am now near him, invited to pet the lamb. I run my hands over his soft wooly coat. He looks up and smiles as he bleats gratefully. He just needed some attention, some care.

Then we let him go. I pet a pig, and a goat, all of them conveying gratitude to me.

Then, there is a green woman, an animation of a woman, only her side profile, and it commands, “Be still!”

Anticipation somehow grips my heart- it is not fear or anxiety- I feel (paradoxically) galvanized to grasp stillness.

Then, invisible hands drag a white sheet from underneath a Midwestern yellow house, rustling the half-decomposed Fall leaves that carpet the ground. The sheet smells not unpleasantly of wet earth and mushrooms and it is streaked with gravelly mud-dirt as it is pulled out.

Unattended.

Not abandoned.

Just unattended.

A little girl holds the sheet, in a cavern. The cavern is dark, but there is just enough light to see a few things, to see the sheet. She looks around for someone- she feels something must be done with the sheet. Who will show her? Who will help her? She is not panicked, but she longs for someone to come by and help. Her face is like mine at age 9, with brown bangs and scraggly hair hanging down her back. She is beautiful and sad.

Unattended.

I walk up, not really knowing what to do for her. I am inadequate- I’m just a volunteer, I’m not in charge or anything. Her big dark eyes fix on me, pleading with me to help. I still don’t know what I am going to do, but I go over, hoping to do the best that I can.

She is relieved that a grown-up is with her. She feel safe, she feels comforted, she feels cared for.

I still do not know what to do, so I just sit down with her and we both hold the sheet. I realize that I am still not capable of helping her with the sheet or the cavern, but I am so much more capable than I originally believed. I matter to her. I can help her, if only in a small way. I sit with her, knowing my presence there is significant to her.

Then, I know where to take her. The cavern is not enclosed- it was open the whole time, and yet it was not, and we walk into the darker part to the East,

And we just walk out, hand in hand. We walk toward the petting zoo.

And there He is. She knows, and I know, that she needed to go there. He is the one for whom she was waiting. The one who can help. She lets go of my hand and runs to Him. He scoops her up, all the folds of her frilly dress spilling over his arms as he holds the little Charissa.

She is cared for.

Cared for.

I see the sheet- it back in the cavern, but it is white and clean. Somehow, I know someone is going to take care of it. I don’t know what they will do or who will care for it, but someone will. For now, it is there. It is there, and it is okay. It is white. Someone cleaned it. We can leave it there, while we stay with the man in the petting zoo pen. That is where we are.

Open

Water trickled down my shoulders and ran in tiny rivets until it pooled in between my toes. An old friend was visiting- unwelcome- once more. Words were not spoken, but messages were conveyed, as tightness gripped my chest. Melancholy, a frequent guest, typically drops by the first time that I am alone after being too busy for thoughts. I felt a loss that was only relieved by resignation to blasé. After all the moments of triumph, joy and liberation, how could this loss still haunt me?

 

I understood that the loss was necessary, good even, but the wound from the rending of my heart is still scabby, breaking open at times and hurting (thought considerably less each time) once more.

 

The insistent patter of the water flying from the spout above me, wetting my hair and uniting it into a soft, supple blob at the nape of my neck, was comforting. In the emptiness, I decided to open myself to whatever was in store for me, as I realize I must do each day anew. The sore that I hide away I believe I am nursing, but in actuality I am providing a haven for festering and infection, steeling it against the One who alone can heal.

 

“Can you just come and sit with me and it for awhile?” I pleaded, tears mingling with the shower-water. Through the grey of my thoughts, a streak of blue emerged and spread over the murky canvas, saying:

 

Dear one,

When you love, you give so much of your heart away,

You put your entire soul into whatever, whomever you love,

You place it

Out there,

For someone to venerate

Or

Desecrate.

 

I made you that way,

And it is utterly ravishing,

Captivating-

It is your beauty and your glory.

 

Do not harden or hide yourself,

But look to me

As the Protector

Of your delicate vunerability.

 

Somehow the warm shower was less real than the love that enveloped my entire being; my inadequacy in capturing the language of what is beyond language is asserting itself, and I can only express. . . I do not know- song? If only there was even something more transcendent than music.

 

Tears, awe, ecstacy, dignity, acceptance, depth, vision- mingling together in a holy embrace of what can only occur in the realm of the unseen infinity. . .

 

A Gift From the Sea

I got up to North County very early today. So early, in fact, that I thought I would hop over to Ki’s, which is just a little north of my work. Through the glass I could see grey-green waves curling up close to the sand with frothy white veins crawling across the face of the ones closer to shore. The beach was calling me. I decided to get my coffee to-go, and darting across the still-vacant 101 freeway (at 7:15 on a Monday in a beach community I guess no one is up and about just yet) I hoppled over the piles of smooth rocks and sunk into the cold, early-morning sand.

As I walked, with the gentle, briny mist enveloping my face, I scanned the wet sand for gleaming shells and rocks. Out of my peripheral, I spotted a shockingly tangerine rock, sitting brazenly, anchored in the wet sand, almost daring me to pick it up. I’m pretty sure it called me a punk.

Anyway, I stooped down to pick it up when a thought occured to me (it does happen from time to time); you know what it’s like when thought-time and real-time are different lengths? All of this ran through my head during the brief movement I made toward the ground: first, I remembered that I often pick up rocks that look beautiful within the frame of the wet, shining sand only to later find they have been dulled by their new residence in a jar on a desk. I would enjoy the memory of the stones’s beauty as it laid in its home on the soft shoreline more than I would snatching it up to sit in a collection.

How often have I robbed myself of the fullest expression of beauty (or goodness) by the desire to possess? Beauty unfulrs itself when it is free, when it can just simply exist, to be shared, belonging to no one in particular and belonging to everyone. Even more than that, when the desire to get your grubby hands all over something subsides, how much more liberated is your awareness? Being present in the moment, without longing to cease a moment or a memory or a souvenir to enjoy at a later time, allows me to experience it in its fullest expression.

I thought about how fast the weeks, months and years are flying past me- and how they are continually gaining in speed- and I pondered if maybe this is the only way to live so that I won’t be continuously looking back to what just whizzed past me. Letting go of the desire to possess beauty, or a moment, or a feeling. To just (as I seem to be learning over and over again) be.

Man/Woman

Today, I was thinking about what it means to be a woman.

There are so many ways in which people address this, and I had the thought that our culture- because of the Cartesian way in which we view the mind/body relationship- equates gender with ethnicity, cultural upbringing and all sorts of things that are not essential parts of one’s person-hood. That is not to say that culture and ethnicity do not have a formative impact on how you develop your sense of self, but they are more or less exterior parts of a person.

However, I do not think that one’s sexual identity is quite the same. It seems to me, even though there are vast differences in the way in which one can be Man or Woman, that there are intrinisic things about woman-hood and man-hood. A woman’s soul is different from a man’s soul, and the contrast is what makes human relations beautiful, much in the same way that the visual contrast between men and womens’ bodies awakens beauty.

As I was pondering this, I realized that even though this idea seems beautiful to me, that many people would not find it so. In fact, I think some people would even be offended by the idea of men and women being (I say “being” instead of “possessing” because I believe that we are soul/body combinations, not lumps of flesh that possess souls- but I digress) different souls.

Upon some reflection, I began to ponder some aspects of how we have handled justice and fairness over the last hundred years, since women have (and continue to) suffer from great injustice.

It seems that we have identified the root of the problem as difference. We have made two great- albeit well intended- errors in our handling of injustice. First, we have decided that fairness and equality are the same. To be fair is to have everything exactly equal, or so it is said. This is a significant reduction of what justice or fairness truly is.

Second, we have equated equality with same-ness. To be equal means there are to be no differences, or that we need to bypass (read: ignore) differences between people. While this sounds nice on the outset, what it does is create a homogenous, bland way in which to express oneself or one’s personhood. It robs us of the beauty of diversity which was, I believe, created by a Master Artist, for whom mankind is his greatest masterpiece.

So, to accomplish justice, we say everything must be equal, and therefore, everyone must be intrinsically the same. And in doing this, we have lost the beauty of the complementary nature of man and woman.

We, in a sense, complete each other. That is not to say that everyone must be in a romantic/sexual relationship to be complete; but in a cosmic sense, the existence of man and woman, side by side, interacting in the world is complementary and lovely. It is the difference between a line of soliders all marching together and a the grace of a Viennese waltz. Each partner has different steps, but each is just as important as the other, for the dance is imcomplete if one dancer does not dance the part for which they were intended.

I think much of the hurt and confusion in our culture is due to this loss of connection with our bodies. I know that sounds like that is the opposite of our culture’s problem, but think of it this way: how many people do you know that would say- in complete seriousness- that they would want to intentionally harm/maim/soil their soul? Probably only the most wounded and cynical of us would really feel that way. But we do whatever we want with our bodies. We eat things like deep-fried butter at the fair, we drink until we puke, we kill our brains with drugs and television, and we subject our bodies to multiple diseases by using them as recreation at the expense of other people (i.e. casual sex).

I think we are not connected enough with our bodies and the meaning that they convey. They tell us something profound, intrinsic, and epically beautiful about ourselves. And we have lost it. It is among the greatest of human tragedies.

I feel distraught and pained over this loss in our culture and our world. But I am exhorted to seek to live the meaning of this truth in my own life.

I ask the one who Is,

Who is Love,

The Relentless Pursuer,

To reveal to me,

To the ones who have seen and responded to your wooing,

And to those who do not yet know of the Romance in which they are enfolded,

The deep, mysterious, and exquisite meaning of our bodies,

Man and Woman,

And what it means to be human.

Long time coming

I had been exploding blog-iness lately, but alas, the demands of life have been too much for me to do the things that are important to me.

It is interesting, how often I relegate my needs- or things that are truly important to me- to a lower caste of priorities. I place social obligations, activities to which I have committed myself, or even just tasks, like cleaning or decorating, above things that my soul longs for.

I am starting to suspect that I actually disallow myself those things that I really need because I often scold myself later for not being more “productive” or for “using my time unwisely.” This self-chastising usually arises as a reaction to something inconvienent that seems preventable: If only I hadn’t spent that hour playing piano, I would have had more time to plan for my day and wouldn’t have forgotten my phone; If only I hadn’t wasted my time journaling- that is why I don’t get more research done, because I don’t use my down-time effectively; and it goes on and on.

Where is this voice coming from? This responsible, spectacle-wearing, Oliver Cromwell-type schoolmarm who wants me to be more sensible exists somewhere within my psyche, letting me know that everything that goes wrong in my life is a direct result of my irresponsibility- an irresponsibility that is fostered by “poor time-management.”

While there is a grain of truth in that, why is it that I have taken that and ran with it, to the point where I avoid doing things that I enjoy? And when I finally give in and indulge, it is not always at the most opportune time; yet, at that point I feel owed. . . and then I terribly regret my indulgence within about an hour.

I believe that inner-schoolmarm is an anthropomorphism of a sense of undeserving. I do not deserve to be “idle.” Only after everything is done (which never, ever happens) can one do enjoyable activities. I don’t always heed her advice, but she manages to make me sufficiently guilty regardless, so that I begin to spend even my free-time trying to fill my life with things that will give me a sense of faux-accomplishment (re-organizing my kitchen again, etc.) so that if something comes up, at least I know that I wasn’t idle so I can’t blame myself. I am making excusess to her, as she glowers over me with an arched eyebrow and a tightly-drawn mouth.

Maybe I need to be honest with myself about what I truly need instead of setting up expectations of what my day should look like, hour-by-hour. If I don’t run today, ok. Maybe I needed to shuffle around the house this morning. If I don’t return all of my emails, so be it. I needed to spend time unplugged, getting connected with myself and with God. My house isn’t perfect? Oh well. You don’t need to have a perfect house to live an extraordinary life.

Eventually, I will strike balance. Until then, all I can do is my best with the organizational-stuff. I can choose to listen to my soul (and to God’s whisper) and ignore the irrational guilt. It’s been a long time coming.

Between two worlds/In the burning

I have been feeling like I live in a kind of limbo between two realms;

One world embraces the brokeness that is all around us in a desperate effort to “normalize” the pain.

The idea of facing the pain- or of leaning into the agony that would lead us to our destiny- is utterly terrifying. We are so deeply uncomfortable with the mystery of our creation as male and female that we do everything we can to “de-mystefy.” We mock the body. We have silly or crude names for our parts. We reduce it to functionality. We divorce it from our souls, viewing ourselves and others through Cartesian glasses. Sex has to be made casual, because if we were to really see it for the raging, burning, holy fire that it was originally intended to portray, we would feel singed by its misuse.

How do we deal with the injuries of this rending of soul and body? We party. We do drugs, mainly with doctors and pharmacists as our dealers. Or, if we are really strong, we deny the pain and desire: after all, if you don’t want anything or have expectations, then no one can let you down, right?

But can we really silence our desires? Can we numb our hurt around the clock? Or will the pain, the yearning, eventually be heard?

We are all haunted creatures. We wake up in the middle of the night, and we don’t know why. Even over the noise of the radio, we sense the loneliness in our cars. What if you went for a run without an iPod?? I have heard people say, “I can’t go running because my iPod is broken.” Try it.

There is endemic confusion about our bodies- about the very meaning of what it is to be human- and the greatest tragedy is that we misdirect the anger we feel over our wounds. The outcry of this world is not unfounded; there is a great deal of legitimate hurt. But we shake our fists at God, angry that He could let this happen to us. He extends hands of mercy to us, and we have all (myself included) slapped them away. Yet He continually stands, waiting with balm and bandages and love, for our return.

And then there is another world.

This world has seen tragedy arise from the tearing of body and soul. They see the brokenness around them, and they flee. They- understandably- disengage and form their own cloistered colony. They see the pervasiveness of the pain in the outside world, and so they vigilantly guard their colony against any infiltration. But in their vigilance, they create a new way of wounding and hurting. Ostracisim, judgement, and narrow-mindedness is rampant in this colony.

And still, deep inside, they understand the cyclical system of hurt that they have fled. They feel their own desire, their own tendencies pulling them toward it. And it is frightening.

So they increase their fervor and create a rigid system with dire consequences to avoid the pain of wounding. They too are profoundly uncomfortable with the mystery of their bodies, and their attempt to reconcile the mystery is to fence it in with rules, and then ignore it.

I am caught between the two. I understand the desire and the pain of the first realm, and yet like the second I feel that the pain isn’t something we should just “deal” with, that something needs to be done.

What if we threw ourselves into the agony? What if we took away our numbing agents, or our systems of rules and just let ourselves sit with the mystery? What if we acknowledged the tragedy and faced the sense of the numinous surrounding our own bodies? That is a fearful thing. Terrifying, in fact. We fear- rightly so- that the fire would utterly consume us.

Exactly.

We are called to be beings on fire. I am called to burn. A life without it is a life lived outside of my primal, eternal calling. I have been learning that allowing myself to feel the agony points me to a destiny more wildly glorious than I could have ever imagined. The destiny is that of an inscrutable, ineffable ecstacy. Even as I type now, hot tears pour down my face and hit the keyboard. I cannot contain it. The beauty of the Eternity for which I was meant is too vast for my senses to take it in. It is as if I was thirsty and I stepped under a waterfall for a drink. 

Drink deeply.

The Relentless Pursuer

“He will shake heaven and earth, that only the unshakable may remain: He is a consuming fire, that only that which cannot be consumed may stand forth eternal. . . It is not that the fire will burn us if we do not worship thus; yea, will go on burning within us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to its force, no longer with pain and consuming, but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God.” -George MacDonald

I read this today, and thought, “How does he know me?” It seems that this encapsulates the current stage of my life- no, the whole of my life.

The life I have lived has been a tale of burning, of suffering, of passion- much of the time at my own hand. But by the mercy of God, I am invited into the sufferings of Christ so that my own suffering is transformed into the likeness of His, and my wounds become marks of beauty and dignity. I have felt that ache, the yearning for the infinite, that God-knows-what since childhood, yet my damaged and mistrusting heart could not even perceive of a God who longs to satisfy (and renew, and endlessly re-satisfy) the chasmic longing that yawned over the expanse of my eternity. I drew near to God, only seeing pieces and glimpses, but perceiving these pieces through the lenses of my own hurt, He became distored to me. In fear, I fled to my own devices.

And yet, He has always pursued me. And I would return.

Each time I returned to Him, new aspects of His character became apparent, and I would find solace. And again, fear would enter, rearing  its ugly head, and I would run.

And yet again, over and over again, my tenacious lover never abandoned me. He whispered into my insensible ear, “Oh, if only you would let me love you more!”

But my heart could not open to Love except through my own Via Dolorosa. Through the trials and pain brought on by my wanderings, an increasing number of the pieces of me have passed through the kiln and emerged with a greater density of the true me, of a me that is free to receive love and to love freely. Oh, to have lived a life with no regrets! There is no reality in which I would rejoice in the choices that brought calamity upon myself and others; but, there is only one reality, and we are given one life. And the life that I have lived has somehow, by magnanimous and outrageous Grace, become so beautiful that I cannot say I am unhappy.

Praise be to the one who crushed Karma,

Who mercifully gives what we do not deserve,

Who beatifies the sufferings of my sin through the wounds of Christ,

Who redeems my life from the pit,

Who chooses the unworthy

And reveals their eternal splendor

Piece

by

Piece.

Mourning in the Afternoon

Blindsided.

One minute, I am enjoying the sunshine, eating a handful of strawberries as I walk out to my car to head to my nail appointment. Jittery with the excitement over pink nails that never wore off after age 9, I shoved the last of the succulent fruit in my mouth (no one was looking) and I went to my mailbox.

Typically there is never anything interesting in there- coupons, credit card solicitations, and sale announcements from Anthropologie and Crate and Barrel. Today, there was a manilla envelope from school. What could it be, I wondered as I tore at the paper. My stomach lurched as I imagined the possibilities of its contents: it might have to do with a potential job as a graduate assistant in the fall; it might be my portfolio from when I applied to the university (I haven’t been able to locate some of my compositions since). As I greedily ripped the paper, I spotted a folded up paper inside, written in a hand I felt I recognized.

It was beautiful, and it utterly crushed me. Just as my stitches finally came out, the fresh and delicate skin of  soul is torn open anew. And it happens over and over again; the scar grows, threatening to engulf me in hideous disfigurement. My mind was frozen, arrested, afraid to move lest it step into a territory from which I have assiduously fled. I did not know how to feel. I felt so much. Ineffible, inescapable. I still feel like I am slowly slipping below water’s surface, with blurred faces watching my descent from above me; some are sympathetic, some are irritated, all are impotent. There is only One who can rescue me from the depths of my loss and confusion, but my watery lungs won’t allow me to cry out. I can only utter from within my mind a prayer for my salvation.

I long to be able to share a realization, a moment of clarity or peace, but right now, there is none. I feel lost in my emotions, burried, afraid to even look at them for fear of upsetting what is a much more delicate balance than I have formerly believed. And yet, I am compelled to believe in hope. I cannot escape hope- it has become a more dogged shadow than pain or despair. Hope, surely, is coming for me. In the suspense of uncertainty and agony, I wait. I wait for hope. I wait for enlightenment. I wait for the One who restores, who makes all things new. I recall the story of someone, like Orpheus, who went to hell and back just to find me. And, in a gesture greater than the fabled musician, he went there to know what it was like to be me. It is for him that I sit in expectation, knowing that whatever state in which he finds me, his love will be enough.

How to “be”

Walking down the sun-warmed sidewalk, the big “X” signifying the Museum of Contemporary Art appearing on the horizon, I felt an unexpected twinge of loss. There was so much that was delighful- just right– about the day: work was invigorating, the morning haze had burned off revealing a resplendent afternoon sky, and my iternary for the next hour was simply to enjoy one of my last few days of free admission to MoCA. And yet, as my gaze rested on the quirky statues outside, sadness crept in, like an old friend who just decided to pop by unexpectedly.

I knew the loss I felt. It has been familiar to me over the last months, and I had, with fear and trembling, faced the despair with infinite resignation. In the wake of loss, I clung onto the Faith that promises the restoration of all things, and, hurling myself into the uncharted regions of my heart, I found (or re-found) what alone could reach the ever-present ache. It was kind of like jumping off a cliff, except somehow at the bottom I did more than survive the fall- I felt undone and remade. It was the hardest and most excruciatingly beautiful thing that I had felt.

Enter: the loss. “What?” I almost say aloud to myself. That again? My clarity-moment from a few days previous still fresh, I witheld judgement on myself. I chose to remind myself of what (or Whom) the Ache truly longs after. However, unlike that day, the loss lingered. And I would remind myself. And still it hung out with me, from exhibit to exhibit, looking at the art over my shoulder with its own commentary. 

I typically revist the movements of my soul from throughout the day in the evening. On my prayer rug, I invite God to sit with me, and together we watch the inner-movie of what transpired, with consolations and desolations, triumphs invisible and micro-tragedies. Seeing the Charissa-cinema unfold, I realized something that I already knew.

It was kind of like going to Big Sur as an adult after many childhood summers spent there- I always knew it was special, but only with more life experience could I truly see its breath-taking majesty.

The story of “my life” is not a tale of various obstacles overcome. I think somehow that idea got into me by way of our progress-obsessed culture; after all, we are always moving forward or backward, are we not? Or is it possible that life is a string of moments, held together by a common thread of cosmic, sacrificial love? I found a deep sense of liberation in knowing that “resolving my issues” is not my life’s primary object; rather, I am learning to “be.” To be in community with God. To be in a state of openness and receptivity to His endless outpouring of love. To be in my pain, to be in the recurring issues, and to hold myself with compassion when they arise. I am learning how to be with God. That’s it.

Pure, uncomplicated, and yet infinitely complex.

And when those familiar faces- wounds, loss, shame- inevitably come a-calling, I will have learned a little more about how to just “be” with God, bringing my naked, unadorned self before my Divine Lover.