As excited as I am to be home, it was surprisingly difficult to turn my school keys in Tuesday and leave my apartment today.  I realized today that I've been feeling moderate separation anxiety all week, and it seems that transition is always going to be a challenge for me.  Wherever I go and whatever I do, I tend to form deep attachments regardless (or perhaps because?) of how generally miserable things may be, and so parting tends to be traumatic even under the best of circumstances.

On Wednesday my daily reading passage was Psalms 3-5, and I fittingly read this right before bed.

I seem to have developed the unfortunate habit of only posting once a month. (Actually, it's just a manifestation of an existing habit of withdrawing from the world when I'm having a hard time.) I am recovering from a not insignificant meltdown precipitated by my long-standing and profound fear of...joy.

Just when I was closer than ever to the teacher and missionary God has called me to be, I had an involuntary Jonah reflex, but instead of hating the people I'm supposed to minister to, I turned on myself as a way of subconsciously running from God. It's very strange because it's not like I even wanted to, and in fact I would be having a perfectly good day, then suddenly I am warring against my own body with unprecedented violence. I finally scared myself straight last week, but I'm afraid that will only last so long...

I'm sad because I still don't trust God enough to give me good things in abundance. I'm sad that I am still, at some level, tensed up waiting for the next shoe to drop. I'm sad that even though I've forgiven the person for leaving, I haven't quite forgiven God for letting him go, and that fear of loss still clouds my vision. And I hate that I've given the enemy this weapon to use against me when I'm so close to being free.

"Sometimes I feel it's all just too big to be true
I sabotage myself for fear of what my bigness could do"
-Alanis Morissette, "Fear of Bliss"

But I do have hope that this will pass. I don't know how or when, but I do know that God doesn't want this for me, and maybe I can come to want better for myself.

[edit] I also realized that even though I don't trust God nearly as well as I'd like to, I do trust Him enough so that my doubt doesn't scare me quite so much as it used to. It's comforting to think that, despite it all, I am still on my way to keeping God in His proper place and me in mine. [/edit]

This week I had dinner with my ex-boyfriend for the last time before he moves to another city for work. For the first time in a long time, we sat and talked as friends, which was nice, but saying goodbye proved much harder than I anticipated and I had to wrestle with a lot on my own afterward. I couldn't help feeling that he was taking away the love I once bore him, however childish that may be, and it scared me to think I might never have that again. Even though I knew that, with him, I could never be the woman I am becoming, I couldn't help mourning the little girl I felt was dying. But as I was praying, God spoke this to me:

Mark 5:39-42
He went in and said to them, "Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep." But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. ⁴¹He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum!" (which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" ). Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.

I need not be afraid because my capacity for love is entirely dependent on God's grace, which is infinite. I see Him actually protecting me from giving my heart away willy-nilly...that little girl is in the safest place possible. Maybe someday she'll be awakened again, but only by her Father. This promise is consistent with what God has told me about my heart all along:

Song of Solomon 8:4
Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.

My best friend said something very wise a few weeks ago: "Conflict increases your love ability."

While it's true that I don't find myself angry or annoyed with people nearly as often as I used to, there is still a distance between not hating someone and actively loving them. And sometimes love is not being warm and fuzzy chummy-chums; sometimes it is the simple act of extending grace to someone who drives you nuts. I'm experiencing this with a few people in my program now that we see so much of each other; some of them have attitudes and mannerisms that just rub me the wrong way, but I try really hard not to strike out in vengeance. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but playing along and pretending to agree with them to avoid conflict is not really an option I prefer anymore.

And sometimes love is letting go of the past. A few weeks ago my old boyfriend sent me a "What's up" type e-mail that began a tentative detente that has since progressed to thaw the frostiness of our last encounter. This week I sent him a message about something I'd learned about in class that he might find interesting, and his reply told me more about his personal life than I had been prepared for. At first I wasn't sure how I felt or how I supposed to feel, but I called him yesterday and our conversation was, for me at least, a really good one. It showed me that while I still care greatly about him, "the passion of pity...the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth..." had indeed died in me. And I am willing to let that die now, so that it does not kill me! I still ache sometimes for what might have been, but that is the exception rather than the norm, and I am learning to let that go, not just in this situation but in general.

I'd like to add that conflict is also a byproduct of your loveability. I usually manage to avoid conflict by surrounding myself with people who generally agree with me, which is in some ways taking the easy way out. My real, close friends are in fact the ones I can and do constructively disagree with, for I am only brave enough to disagree with someone I know will not abandon me for it, and I know that through prior experience with them. (This was actually one of the major problems in my last relationship, come to think of it.) There must always be that first, "I don't think so," and it is definitely a risk, but it reveals the true depth of that friendship. The same goes for marriage, I think: I can't marry someone who agrees with me on everything because neither of us would ever grow out of our weak spots. That's pretty scary to think about sometimes, but I guess that's where commitment and love can stabilize and secure the situation.

"The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah." -2 Chronicles 36:21

Forgive the hyperbole, but it has been a year of desolation. I left on the Taiwan mission trip on this day last year, which itself was a year after I had the rug pulled out from under me by someone I thought I knew and trusted. The mission trip was difficult yet gratifying, but it turned out to be the high point from which I sank steadily downward for about eight months. The first four months after I came back from Taiwan were marked by a vague but growing sense of discomfort; for all my efforts to seek God, I seemed to be sliding back into that dreadful numbness I knew at the end of my freshman year.

I came up for air at the winter youth retreat, then was dragged to the depths with a vengeance. My body sort of fell apart after four years of anorexia; inexplicably, I gained about ten pounds in about two months' time, to which I responded by active purging in many forms, which only made things worse, of course. (Ironically, my outer life couldn't have looked better: I made a 4.0 that quarter and was selected for a scholarship interview and a national quiz show.) It was then that I was once again plagued by the gnawing fear that things were never going to get better from that point. I saw a viral video of a child's post-operative behavior under the influence of laughing gas, and he mumbles groggily, "I feel funny. Why is this happening to me? Is this going to be forever???" And that's how I felt all the time. (I should note that throughout this entire period I was torn between maintaining and exorcising a past relationship, which I now realize was a significant drain on my emotional resources.)

Things turned when I started going to a Christian support group for women with eating disorders. Meeting others who knew exactly what I was talking about because they had been there...and beaten it...brought me to a turning point and I declared my first victory over my disorder. In keeping with the spring season, my life bloomed again, and I found myself wishing that things could, indeed, be like they were then forever. Of course, all things must come to an end, but this end did not mean a return to sorrow but a transition to something new, which I am in the midst of right now.

A passage from Elisabeth Elliott's devotion for today:

There are dry, fruitless, lonely places in each of our lives, where we seem to travel alone, sometimes feeling as though we must surely have lost the way. What am I doing here? How did this happen? Lord, get me out of this!
He does not get us out. Not when we ask for it, at any rate, because it was He all along who brought us to this place. He has been here before--it is no wilderness to Him, and He walks with us. There are things to be seen and learned in these apparent wastelands which cannot be seen and learned in the "city"--in places of comfort, convenience, and company.

I usually characterize the summer after my freshman year the worst period of my life. When I compare this past year with that summer, I think that the circumstances may indeed have been worse this year, but the difference is that this time I did not hide from God as I did then. I cried out for Him, and He answered with silence only to let me cry out more. When I strove to fix things myself, He put up walls to absorb the brunt of my futility so He could, finally, carry my powerless self. (Quite literally, He hit me with a car to break my compulsion to exercise!) In the past I would have resented this way of teaching, and many times I still grow terribly discouraged. But I often take encouragement from the book of Hosea:

"Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
"In that day," declares the LORD,
"you will call me 'my husband';
you will no longer call me 'my master.'

Hosea 2:14-16

Life is a cycle of desolation, rest, and restoration, and each enhances the experience of the other. I don't pretend to remember this all the time, but I try. Now the question is, Am I resting now or being restored?

A few months ago we had a series of discussions in church titled, "Wabi-sabi," which refers to the Japanese aesthetic beauty in the imperfect. The timing of that series coincided with the "crucible" period of my recovery from eating disorder. Just now, as I was uploading my profile picture, I got another dose of wabi-sabi from nature.

This was taken in the butterfly habitat of our local conservatory. I titled this shot, "Survivor," in honor of the wound, but I just realized that I can only see the beauty of the far wing because of the tear in the near one! And Lord, if that isn't a timely message. Several weeks ago a friend of mine asked if I would be willing to have another relationship that did not turn out to be "the one." During my prayer time on Saturday, I finally said, "Yes," even though I was afraid of irretrievably losing some part of myself during the process, because I realized that is what change is all about and maybe that's what it would take to make me the woman my husband could marry. But then hearing the song, "Here Comes Goodbye" by Rascal Flatts, triggered a reflux of remembered/anticipated pain that almost had me saying No forever. But...I won't.

Unbreakable (Maia Sharp)

This time I really took a hard fall
I never thought I'd get myself back
Together trying to do it all alone
Next time will I have the courage
To face it or take my broken heart and
Replace it with a block of stone?

I don't want to be unbreakable
Safe from anyone who could ever love me
Perfect and empty
I'd rather a crack in a glass half full
I don't want to be unbreakable

I want someone who could wreck me
But wouldn't if I'm ever gonna get this right
I shouldn't think I'd be a stranger to pain
Same love that's strong enough to hurt me
Is gonna be strong enough to save me
It'll all be in vain if I remain unbreakable

What else can I do?
As bad as it feels to be broken in two,
I don't want to be unbreakable.

I picked up The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis) at the recommendation of a male classmate who, ironically, was the locus of my relational angst this week. Initially I had demurred, saying, "I don't think I need to read that at this point in my life," despite having absolutely no idea what the book was actually about. I thought it might have something to do with relational breaks, and the story itself did not, but I ended up reaching some resolution about that issue anyway. Funny how God works, isn't it?

My favorite part is when the narrator witnesses the conversation between a Lady, "one of the great ones" who did good to children and animals alike, and a Ghost that was her husband on earth. She asks his forgiveness for all the wrong she did him on earth and tries to persuade him to receive joy, but he ultimately refuses, choosing instead to play the Tragedian and be offended when she says she will not be sad if he goes. He returns to Hell and, true to her word, she goes on her joyful way. The narrator is perplexed, but his Teacher explains it thus:

The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of Pity will not...the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity...that will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken.

And as I reflected, I asked myself: Do I take up Christ's joy so completely that _____ cannot steal it from me through his own rejection of joy? Then will I be ready to speak to him. I remember at times feeling sad that I wasn't sadder for what I lost, but I realize now that is the final act of giving him over to Christ: giving over my grief as well. Do I still care about him? Yes. Do I still pray for him? Until I die, most likely. But is his pain my problem, and do I try to save him myself? No. My prayer is always this, If there's anything I can do...thy will be done.

Two weeks ago I reached the point of being willing and able to accept my ex-boyfriend as a part of my past, and myself as a "girl with a past" in terms of relationships. (Yes, it took two years, but I'm a slow learner. So sue me.) Almost immediately weird little things started happening to test the depth of my acceptance of singleness, and I had a slight allergic reaction to the universe as a result.

Emotionally hungover and theologically perplexed, I holed up yesterday with Elisabeth Elliot's Passion and Purity and was promptly kicked in the face for about five hours, but felt incredibly refreshed when I was done. I can't begin to say enough about this woman, married thrice and widowed twice, except that she is, of all people, qualified to write a book on love. She and her first husband Jim Elliot, a missionary who was killed in South America, waited five years for God to make His will clear about their singleness, and in that time they didn't even really have a "relationship" as we might understand it today. She argued the idea of "going steady" was actually a form of impatience:

The couple are not ready for marriage or even for the public commitment that engagement ought to entail, but neither are they ready to leave each other in God's hands...each clutches at the other, fearful lest he "get away."

My mom actually questioned me on this when I said my first boyfriend and I were "committed." She did not understand the use of the intermediate extra step of pseudocommitment, and Elliot cautions women against giving any man reason to presume she belongs to him. Beyonce has a point: "If you like it, then you should put a ring on it!"

I am always all too willing to throw myself at people, or worse, try to entice them. To borrow from Captivating, women should be inviting but not clinging.

If you should marry ________ in the end, would you want to live with the knowledge that you went after him? He might resent you for snaring him. You might despise him for allowing you to....[for] we prize what we cannot easily get. We take for granted, we even come to despise, that which costs us no effort.

The book's biggest challenge to me was the idea of waiting for a husband--not a boyfriend, a significant other, whatever.

...when you get to the point where you can't keep your hands off each other, it's time to get married...[her father counseled his sons] never say 'I love you' to a woman until they were ready to follow immediately with "Will you marry me?" Nor should they think of saying, "Will you marry me?" unless they had first said, "I love you."

Could I wait for this? It may be what I need most, actually, because over the years, so many boys and men have liked me, but only one, perhaps, has wanted me, and he not enough to pay the full price, though I am choosing to give him credit for knowing (eventually) that he couldn't pay it and still treating me honorably. That is a deep, deep wound that has yet to be healed, perhaps only through relationship.

Of course, as my friend asked pointedly, am I willing to go through another failed relationship just to learn that lesson? Truthfully, I don't know. My greatest fear at this point is not the pain but the emotional capital and time I would invariably waste in the process. (Remember, it took almost two years to get the first one through my system!) I don't know if that's theologically sound, but I'm no theologian anyway and that's what scares me. But at least I am more at peace with what I should be doing now, and that's something else I'm constantly learning, to trust God from one moment to the next.

"We are the feet! We are the feet! Lalalalala!" --the lyrics of a song I made up with Maureen in fifth grade...man, I was cool.

This is not so much a well-reasoned metaphor as it is a word association that popped into my head while doing my devotions this afternoon. I was thinking and writing about a friend...

Let him not think he has lost everything...but believe that you can and will restore everything to him and more if only he accepts obedience to you. Lord, we are all like Job at some point or another, when the fire is at our feet and the question is asked, "Will you still follow?" And you know my answer is yes even though it's darn hard to walk on burnt feet, but that's when you carry us, God. Help me to be a firewalker, "With feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace" (Ephesians 6:15)--the foundation on which I can "stand firm" (v. 14).

I remember reading about firewalking in a book about unsolved mysteries I had as a kid. It's a ritual practiced in traditional cultures around the world for thousands of years, more recently co-opted by American motivational speakers and corporate team-building exercises. The ritual involves walking barefoot over a bed of hot embers or stones and is used rites of healing, initiation, and faith.
In most cases, it is simply a matter of the stones' relatively poor heat conductivity, but you still have to walk quickly. "Hesitate, and you get burned." I remember that exact line from the book I read as a kid.

I am pathologically indecisive, so making the decision to stay at OSU for grad school has taken a lot of anxiety out of my life. A lot of times indecision is more paralyzing and scary than any possible consequences of choosing either way, and I think I see this in the friend I was writing about above, only he's made a choice that I don't agree with and has hurt me a lot. I guess I do have to respect him for making and sticking to that choice...but it is still possible to make a different choice...

My hopes are like embers lying around inside a firebed and
Your mind is a firewalker, it steps on them like they are dead but

I can grow
In spite of all you know
You might not recognize me tomorrow
Yes I can change
In spite of all they say
Become something strange and beautiful
Like joy, like joy
(Liz Phair - "Firewalker")

...I'm not sure why I wrote this. I guess I just hope someone who reads this will be encouraged.