Let's get real

Last week I returned to this blog after a 2.5 year hiatus.  I wrote a puff piece on being nice to strangers and blamed my absence on my new, obviously fabulous, job.  While my new role has been a distraction from other areas of my life in the last two years, it is not the sole reason I stopped blogging.  There is a deeper, darker reason for the time out, and since the name of this blog is "Totally Transparent", it’s time I got real.

There is a voice which seeks to destroy me.  Sometimes it comes from within.  Sometimes it comes through another person's voice.  Sometimes its entirely on its own.  It tells me I'm not good enough.  It tells me I'm weak.  Needy.  Too emotional.  A fraud.  A burden.  Unliked.  It tells me no one could possibly love me, not even God.  Foolishly I once believed it was the voice of God, evoking conviction for my sins.  It was not.  It is not.  Jesus says in John 10:10 "the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy.  I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." (ESV) The voice is the thief and it has been seeking to destroy me my entire life.

The teasing began in the first grade.  It started with the boy next door at the bus-stop and spread like wildfire through the school.  By the end of that horrific day, the entire school up to the 8th grade was pointing, laughing, and calling me "cry baby".  And what's a naturally sensitive 6 year old girl who feels betrayed by someone who was her friend and now has an entire school of strangers calling her names do?  Cry.  The name stuck.  Over the years they tried to put me with the school counselor.  I was given the advice of "just ignore it" or told "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me".  I was told that I was "too sensitive" and "immature".  It was a classic blame the victim situation.  The school couldn't reign in the bullies and offenders and so to eliminate the problem the sensitive one needed to learn to toughen up.  And after many years of this, I did eventually toughen up.  But those wounds.  They affected everything.

Rejection.  It's what I felt.  It was always there, still is there.  It stings.  And it feeds the voice.  Lysa Terkeurst wrote the book "Uninvited" on dealing with rejection.  I bought it when it came out a few years ago and it is still sitting in my nightstand waiting for me.  I have been avoiding it and avoiding dealing with the topic in my own life.  It's my achilles heel, and the thief knows it.

So what does a woman who doesn't want to feel rejection do?  There are several options, but my primary defense mechanism was to pursue achievement.  "I'll show them!"  Spite is a very powerful, yet sinful, motivator.  And with achievement come accolades.  Oh how I need to hear those accolades.  Like Rachel Berry on Glee once said, "I'm like Tinkerbell.  I need applause to live!"  But what happens when the accolades don't come, when I'm not being affirmed externally?  That voice shows up.  Sometimes it shows up even with the praise, but its louder.  It's consuming.

Before I started this blog I had a moment in my car while driving to work one morning when I strongly sensed that I was being instructed to write, "to the lost in need of hope".  And I was being encouraged by friends to start a blog because of some of my more insightful and funny facebook posts.  But I actually really hate writing.  Every time at work when I complete another memo or long report (the last one was 30 pages long) I look at my colleagues and lament, "I studied math so I wouldn't have to write."  It's so time consuming, and I obsess over every thing.  I torture myself over balancing thoroughness and brevity.  I type and delete.  Type.  Delete.  (I just did it right there again in writing this).  It's painful.  And what if I'm not inspired?  Procrastination, like Olympic quality procrastination.  What if I actually am inspired?  I'm annoyed at everything that keeps me from getting those words out of my head and onto the page.  So I'm supposed to write when I hate writing?  What good writer hates writing?  Turns out most of them, actually.  (Thank you to the person who recently pointed this out to me).  So I suppose I'm in good company.  One of the hard things with writing though, is it is very personal.  When I write I'm putting my innermost thoughts out there for others to see.  It makes me very vulnerable.  And when I would write these posts, I would agonize over the number of likes or whether there were any comments.  I would wonder and worry about what people thought about what I said.  Did I go to far?  Was I too "Christiany"?  Did I not go far enough?  Do they like me?  And the voice would say:  "No-one is reading these.  No-one cares what you are saying.  You're not reaching anyone.  You just want attention."  And soon enough it became too much for me.  Too much rejection at stake to continue.  Too easy to make an excuse not to write.  I let the voice win.

There are many times I've let the voice win, and other times when I've fought back against it.  During a particularly difficult time I was fighting the voice with everything I had.  The voice wasn't trying to push me off mission.  No.  It was trying to destroy me.  More accurately it wanted me to destroy me.  I want to be very careful here in how I handle this topic.  Depression/mental illness in the church is a very controversial subject, one that is often mishandled.  I am certainly not an expert, though I have suffered major depressive episodes.  The cause of depression among those in the church is often attributed to idols of the heart.  I've also heard demonic attack/influence as a cause.  And then there is the medical understanding of a chemical imbalance.  My personal experience is that it's a complex combination of the three and to treat it solely with a pill or to tell someone they simply need to pray and read their Bible more is grossly negligent.  My personal belief is that the chemical imbalance/biology creates the environment that makes one vulnerable to the other two.  I call this "the fog" or "the clogged filter".  I start to notice that my mind isn't interpreting things quite correctly.  Something is off.  And in this state, that voice is amplified.  And it targets areas of past hurt or those areas subject to idols.  This is a huge oversimplification and likely to draw some criticism, but just follow me here on this for the moment.  In this particular moment in time, I was battling feelings of worthlessness.  The voice was just coming in from outside of me and hitting me with blow after blow after blow.  And I remember standing in the shower shouting out loud, "I belong to Jesus!  I belong to Jesus!"  Several years later I heard my grandmother utter something similar while she lay in the hospital in terminal condition.  She was in and out of lucidity thanks to the painkillers and she may have been dreaming, but she would start crying out, "no! no! I'm a child of the light!"  This recurred many times in her final days.  When she would start crying out I'd hit the floor next to her and pray, or hold her hand and tell her to call out to Jesus.  I sat by her side and sang hymns on more than one night.  Sometimes she would wake and join me in singing.  It seemed to calm and soothe her.  I think the voice was trying to destroy her too, even in her last days.

I suspect that in this lifetime I will constantly be up against the voice.  This is why we're told in Ephesians to wear the armor of God.  Because, "..our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (Ephesians 6:12 NIV).  While all the armor is critical, for me none is more important that the helmet of salvation.  When we are saved, we belong to Jesus.  And He has overcome the world.  He wins the battle.  He has created us and He defines us.  And though my mind is still vulnerable to the voice and its wicked lies, that truth embedded in the helmet of salvation protects me.

It's fair to say I have been wandering for a bit in a desert of my own making, or maybe I've been hanging out in the belly of a whale.  I've felt like every choice and decision I've made in the last 3 years has been a step away from the path that God would have me take, and one of those wayward steps was to abandon this blog.  I think where I went wrong was when I started to make it about me.  It was never supposed to be about me.  And when its not about me, I'm not the one being rejected.  And the voice loses its power.  So then what is the purpose of this blog?  I'd like this blog to start a conversation, one of transparency and honesty.  I pray this blog will help point people to the their savior.  I am aware of how weird Christians can seem.  Trust me, I think we're a bit weird too, and I often don't feel like I fit in to the Christian sub-culture (though I'm not sure that I want to).  I want this blog to help make the gospel more accessible, especially to those who are struggling with really tough things in life.  I think there is a perception that Christians have to be perfect and I think we Christians have a (deservedly earned) reputation for presenting only the best sides of themselves, putting on our happy face and living a false joy.  I love the expression that a church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints.  We're all sinners in need of a savior and we will all make mistakes along the way.  The power of His grace is immeasurable.  That doesn't mean we take grace for granted, but when we earnestly, honestly, authentically seek him He will not reject us.  He is "faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9 ESV).

I want this blog to shine light into the dark corners of life to reflect the Hope that I have found in Christ Jesus, my Lord.  He has rescued me many times from the voice.  I pray through this blog that if you are a believer, that you may be encouraged and comforted.  I pray that if you are not, that you will see through the brutal transparency of this blog, that we all need Christ, that He is the way, the truth, and the life and that you will find everlasting Hope in His Loving Grace.

*** Public Service Announcement: If you are struggling with depression and have thoughts of harming yourself, please seek immediate attention.  Call someone you trust.  If there is no-one you can call, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255.  They are there to help and you are worth it***