I am a writer, impertinent Christian, and recovering perfectionist. I (mostly) enjoy life in the Pacific Northwest with my husband and two daughters. Sleep is my drug of choice, and I like books, hugs, and piña colada milkshakes.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, for being upside down.
We layer things up and You overturn them, like a pineapple upside-down cake.
Blessed are You for teaching us to stand on our heads, to see what we did not see before: the poor are favored, enemies are beloved, forgiveness predates repentance, trials are joy, lost lives are saved lives.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, for inviting us to grab a fork and try a bite, and for chuckling at our look of surprise.
“Life is a journey,” we say. I want a rest stop. I want to stay at a posh hotel for, I don’t know, a couple of years. But in a rash moment I decided healing is a priority. Discomfort is part and parcel with healing, so I carry on. I receive the affirmation of my friends and of my own spirit and I keep taking steps.
My current discomfort comes from the fluctuations and changes of intimacy in marriage. I feel like I’m on a chain and I don’t know when it’s gonna get jerked. It seems we oscillate between politeness and passion, and both extremes are uncomfortable. The truth is I’m really scared to be me. Around all the actual dynamics and realities of our relationship is a cloud of fear. My thoughts are fearful, terrified. Though I’m acting peaceful, some inward part of me is frozen, and if it gets poked it will likely either fight or flee.
What if this fear is not me, not true to who I am? What if it doesn’t belong here and I can send it away?
What if being me is never a mistake? There can be fallout, but it doesn’t mean I ought not to have been me. I am not the mistake. I make mistakes, but I am not a mistake. I’m gonna agree with Papa God and Jesus and Holy Spirit on this one.
“A feeling is just a feeling,” I say, quoting Josh Straub. What is under this fear? What is my internal space without the fear?
I journal the fears. I allow myself to explore them and feel them and write them down. Then I do the same with healing messages. Sometimes it helps to call them “lies” and “truths.”
Lie: I am not and cannot be enough. Truth: I am enough.
Lie: I am not worthy of connection or belonging. Truth: I am worthy of connection and belonging.
Lie: Vulnerability may cause permanent damage to my sense of self. Truth: No matter how someone reaches out to me or responds to me, they cannot touch my identity of wholeness. Vulnerability involves sharing my inner world, but it does not involve putting my value up for negotiation.
Lie: Rejection says something about who I am. Truth: Rejection is a normal human dynamic, a part of processing experiences in a shared space, and grappling with fears. Rejection does not tell me the truth about who I am or about who the other person is.
Lie: Being different means someone is wrong. Truth: Being different probably means we’re both right, both have something to contribute. We bring our flat realities and together make a 3D reality.
Lie: I should be able to avoid hurting someone if I try hard enough. Truth: I cannot avoid hurting other people. Hurting someone does not declare that I am a hurtful person. It means that my movement in the world interacted with another person’s movement in the world in a way that was painful—similar to accidentally stepping on someone’s toe, or elbowing your kid in the head while unloading the dishwasher.
Lie: I am not a safe person. Truth: I am a safe person when I am a real person. Being me is the greatest gift I can give.
Lie: I can unwittingly ruin a relationship. Truth: I can unwittingly cause pain, but I cannot unwittingly ruin a relationship. Relationships are bigger than the stimulus of pain. Relationships always hold the potential for repair and shared understanding, connection and healing. Even when there is a rift in a relationship, the relationship continues to hold that potential.
And so it seems I am a lot less dangerous and powerful than I thought I was. The success or failure of each relationship I’m in—including my marriage—is not mine to carry. I am me, and that is good. I will keep showing up because relationships are life, and I was made to live.
“Expect suffering. I want to receive this teaching,” I wrote in my prayer journal. Five days later I came down with the worst cold I’d had in years. Perhaps God in His great grace had prepared me by putting suffering on my mind beforehand. Whatever the case, He blessed me with a spirit of acceptance. I had one angry tantrum (in my head and on my face) for a couple of hours, followed by a good cry, some pats on the cheek from my seven-year-old, and a slightly scared inquiry from my husband as to whether I needed anything.
It’s frustrating being sick and knowing no one else is going to cook or clean or help the kids with piano practice and pet care and chores. It’s frustrating to cancel the play date and the sleepover and the dinner with friends and the meal delivery to other friends.
But it’s also nice to rest in bed, to watch my children try some new things I usually do for them, to have more time for prayer, and to practice gratitude.
By God’s grace I had an attitude of receiving instead of fighting, and somehow—honestly, I find it rather mysterious—the sickness was a blessing. And it was followed by the biggest surprise of all. On the fourth day I woke up full of joy. As I drifted between sleep and wakefulness I felt that both were bliss. When I looked outside, the world seemed more beautiful. My energy was coming back, and where usually I would feel a sense of guilty relief—I can finally catch up on days of neglected tasks—I felt alive, vibrant. It all seemed very silly, like an overreaction. But there it was, that intangible we call joy.
Suffering (which admittedly is a strong word to describe a cold) has a tremendous capacity to grow me, to introduce me to my mature and whole self. This post-cold joy was a treasured moment in which I caught a glimpse of Spirit-fruit in my life. I was awed. I was grateful.
Papa God, I have opened my hands (literally, daily) and I have received Your abundance. There is a sweet moment of contentment here, releasing the past and not knowing the future, tasting the pleasure of this moment, that I have received a blessing from You.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, for pocket-size love— 3am conversations, fuzzy blankets, quiet mornings, little faces.
Blessed are You for dessert and coffee, anything that warms my feet, the delight of creating, and a sigh of acceptance as I nightly surrender to my pillow.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, for honest friends affirming my humanity by baring theirs, and for soul sisters whose healing gently nudges forward my own slow and brave recovery.
The gospel as I learned it was bad news, followed by ok news. Somehow the “good” got left out. I understood the gospel as the news that we are all sinners, separated from God, but that Jesus reunited us with God by taking our punishment. Despite being an “up-front” Jesus girl, selling religious books door-to-door and leading worship and Bible studies, I never could tell someone, “You’re a sinner. But don’t worry! God punished Jesus instead of you.” Wow. I mean, my life was hard already. Thanks for this “news.”
I went to the seminars (Revelation and prophecy) most loved by my particular faith tradition, and filled in all the blanks in the study guides. I marked my Bible with dozens of chain studies. But I never talked one-on-one with anyone about salvation. Most people I knew were Christian, or if they weren’t it was because of the experiences they had when they used to be Christian. On the rare occasion I interacted with someone who wasn’t Christian or ex-Christian, bringing up their sinner status seemed a bizarre thing to do. So I never did.
How could I distill spiritual experience into one conversation in which a person “admits” they are a sinner and thanks Jesus for helping them? I’ve had countless conversations that have given life or liberty or love to one or both parties. This is so often how I see God at work. I wonder if people don’t need a three-sentence salvation speech as much as they need someone to hear and affirm their own spiritual experiences. The salvation speech takes the gospel right out of our hearts and places it on the table in front of us for a transaction. If salvation is a transaction, Jesus wasted His time coming down here to be a human for over thirty years. He could have really simplified things by just getting sacrificed for our sins as a baby.
But what if salvation isn’t a transaction? What if Jesus came for another reason? As I continue to engage spiritually, to hunger and thirst and be filled, I wonder what it might look like for me to “share the gospel.” Is there actually something I could say that I believe? That I find compelling?
I am seen by Father/Son/Spirit, loved, held, wrestled with. I can share my experiences. But what about a three-sentence gospel? I’m not sure such a thing has any merit, but I’ve started forming one just in case.
Bad/ok news: You can be be better. Here’s how: you are a sinner, separated from God, but Jesus has reunited you with God by taking your punishment. Trust Jesus. (But not God, since He was coming after you with a flaming sword.)
Good news: You couldn’t be better. Here’s why: You are made in God’s image. You have believed some crappy things about yourself that aren’t true. Jesus came to reacquaint you with your true and holy self.
In his book, No Longer I, Jacob Hotchkiss writes, “We mistook a sinless spirit, a pure heart, to be the end of the Christian life, when actually it is the beginning…” This explains why I have spent my life reaching, heart and hands outstretched, hoping that this might be the time I would receive something good, something healing, something to make me whole. I didn’t know I had it all the time.
Gregory Boyle, Jesuit priest and gang recovery waymaker, lives from the certainty that every person has “unshakeable goodness.” This is hope. Unless I have invested my whole life in beinggood; then my unshakeable, preexisting goodness is terrifying. But in either case, settling in to my unshakeable goodness is freedom and life, joy and bravery, a lifelong celebration of the unshakeable goodness in everyone. Which is better: looking at every person as a sinner, or looking at each one as a masterpiece?
Jesus said, “God didn’t send me into the world to condemn it, but to save it.” Everyone in the world already has a new identity in Christ. We are all new creations. And as we acknowledge this, transformation happens. We need not strive for something that is already ours. Our belief, then, is not in something outside ourselves, but in an inheritance that is already ours. The good news is that we are whole.
This is overwhelmingly good—great—terrific news, and it is difficult to believe. Whether Christian or not, most of us have spent our whole lives thinking we could be better—with the next self-help book, diet, relationship, or job. Or maybe just with the next cup of coffee, pair of jeans, or good nights sleep. We have believed to our bones that we could maybe arrive someday, and it’s up to us to keep trying. With each disappointment, with each morning we awake and realize, I’m still me, hope wanes. Christians often cope by performing. As Kevin Sweeney insightfully says in his book, The Making of a Mystic, “It’s easier to try and spread the gospel to every part of the world than it is to allow the gospel to be spread to every part of your soul.”
The challenge is not to accept the reality that we are not—and never will be—enough, but to believe the shocking truth that we are already enough. We are whole, we are full, we are loved and lovable, we could not be better. This might change every phone conversation, work meeting, messy room, conflict with friends or kids.
When we look at ourselves, are we willing to say, “I am good”? It’s either that or “I am a sinner.” And since that hasn’t worked well for me the last 30 years, I’m gonna give this a try. Check in with me in 30 years, and I’ll let you know what happens when “I couldn’t be better” is my go-to.
My whole life I have never felt comfortable evangelizing—inviting people to church or doctrinal Bible studies. No reasonable person invites their friends to bondage. Church was a place I belonged, but it was not a place of freedom. It was a place of rules that I was damn good at following, so most of the time I felt pretty good. But the “good” of self-righteousness doesn’t hold a candle to the good of “you are God’s masterpiece. Right now. Already.” Self-righteousness requires a lot of maintenance—painting, roofing, updating furniture, replacing wooden steps before they rot through. A masterpiece is complete, valuable and valued, ready to be enjoyed. People stop and look; they lose track of time.
You are a masterpiece. And so is the person in front of you.
“A house divided against itself will not stand.” – Jesus
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Queen of the Universe, for moments that return me to myself; when I discover I am not my own enemy but my greatest ally.
Blessed am I, for what I desire is even now within me. I need not fight against myself. My present wholeness is an invitation to hush.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Queen of the Universe, for inhabiting me, imparting courage for me to inhabit my self.
We speak of heaven as a distant, perfect, glowing place. But if God feels all our feelings, then the pain of the world is present in heaven, just as a parent who is safe and free feels the suffering and bondage of their child a thousand miles away. There is anguish in heaven over every person who believes untruths about who they are. We all believe lies, for one reason or another: abandonment, abuse, rejection, holding secrets. If God’s Spirit is in us, and He is present to all the pain in the world, then there is sorrow in heaven.
But there is also hope in heaven—not for what will be, but what is done. Jesus experienced the identity-mangling human life (including being lied to by Satan, abused, and rejected) and followed it to its deadly end. In so doing, He gifted us a life without death. The hope in heaven is born of a freedom for God’s children that is already true. God feels our pain, but He also knows who we are. When we know whom we are and Whose we are, pain and sorrow find union with hope.
But what about everyone who doesn’t know? It’s easy to look at the world and believe God has let some fall by the wayside; He has done a lot, but He couldn’t save everyone; He has shone a light, but it is a pinprick in the darkness of starvation, war, neglect, and oppression.
In many ways I’d be more comfortable with a Savior who removes us from our circumstances instead of entering into them. How is He saving us by surrendering to the dark side and letting them kill Him? Where is the Savior who stops the rapes happening as I write this, the starvation toll steadily climbing? What good is a God who showed up long enough to be brutally murdered and then went back to heaven after He was resurrected? And if His angels are really here ministering to us, how do they choose whom to deliver and whom to walk by?
I don’t know what or where heaven is, or why earth is dark. I think it’s okay to wonder. Paradox and tension are permissible. Questions keep me curious. Doubts save me from Pharisee-like certainty. God is bigger, and I know this, even as I am asking if He is too small.
Jesus chose to climb into the filth with us, rather than stay safe on the mother ship and throw us a life ring. Jesus can embody love in an untidy world; perhaps I can too. My heart is untidy, my kitchen is untidy, my husband, my neighbor and my world are untidy. If Jesus is any indication, my job is not to tidy things up, but to bend down and love.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, for sky— canvas of emotion, wild and expressive, ever changing; so bright we look down, or so dark we look up, searching for light.
Blessed are You for clouds— wistful wisps, satisfied puffy marshmallows, hurrying shape-changers, angry billows no longer white.
Blessed are You for lightning— shocking us into being present; for rainbows— causing us to stare and point; for winking stars and harvest moon— inviting us to be still, just for a moment.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, for sunset valentines, hopeful sunrises, depressed skies of flat gray, and joyful skies bright blue— giving us permission to feel, nothing or everything, intense or peaceful, romantic or solitary.
Blessed are You for daily permission to feel our ever-changing inner world as we look up and see it mirrored in the sky, sanctified by the expressions above us.
“Rest first.” This is God’s favorite thing to say to me. It’s incredibly irritating. I am terrible at resting, compelled to be a productive and functional human being. But God is provokingly persistent.
“Rest first.”
But I’m too messy to rest.
“Rest first.”
But there’s work to be done.
“Rest first.”
But people need me.
“Rest first.”
But I don’t deserve to rest.
“Rest first.”
But rest makes me feel restless.
“Rest first.”
But what if I get tired and sleep too long?
“Rest first.”
But what if I’m missing something? What if right now is the moment I need to grab what You have for me and hold on tight?
“Rest first.”
At this point I’m out of excuses, so I sit slumped down with arms crossed, pouting.
I have fought God tooth and nail on His invitation to rest first, and His corresponding refusal to “fix” me before I can rest.
In my defense, it’s impossible to rest when I don’t feel safe in my own skin. My journal bears witness to this ongoing struggle.
August 1 - What am I afraid of? Myself. And I think I’m afraid of admitting I’m afraid of myself, because it took me a long time to write that down, and I’m feeling really vulnerable.
September 22 - I wanted to be alone today, but it occurs to me that perhaps I wanted to get away even from myself, and this is hard (read “impossible”) to do. If I’m scared of me, anxiety is inescapable. Even if I get away from people and distract myself with busyness, in the end I’m still with myself.
I have been plagued with fear that I am a liability in life. Every time I fail, or don’t show up how I want to, it seems my fear is confirmed, and I am, in fact, a liability. Fighting this battle, against what I perceive as my own nature, sucks away time and energy like a board meeting. I struggle against my own self, day in and day out. I am a liability. I must protect myself and the people around me from this truth by performing well. Every. Single. Time.
But fighting and performing inevitably fails. I suppose the redeeming feature of failure is that eventually I become willing to consider what God is saying; consider thinking differently; consider rest.
I am allowed to be a mess.
I am allowed to skip out on some work.
I am allowed to take a break from meeting people’s needs.
I am allowed to rest.
I am worthy of rest.
I am not going to miss out on anything.
In her book Braving the Wilderness, Brené Brown uses the phrase, “Strong back. Soft front.” For me, this is a depiction of what it means to have an identity in Christ. I was created by God; I am inhabited by God; I am destined for perfect union with God. This is my strong back. I am not waiting to find out who I am today—to define myself by success or failure. I know who I am.
And today my soft front is three things: 1) love for people—especially my family, 2) grace for myself, and 3) holding things loosely—especially tiredness, fear, sadness, confusion, and loneliness in my marriage. These things are transient, but God and love and grace aren’t going anywhere.
I am able to have a soft front only when I have a strong back. If I have no back, I rely on an exoskeleton of performance to hold me together. But when I have a backbone of awareness that I am loved and righteous, I become soft and able to rest; and after rest, to embrace the person in front of me.
This freedom pokes its way into my consciousness through friendship, quiet time, reading. I write down moments of grace-full thinking and return to them:
“I am beautiful without adding or taking away anything, just like the lilies of the field. I am clothed by God, and my clothing is not distinguishable from me, just like a violet. I am clothed in dignity.”
“I am not a liability.”
“I am learning how to hold myself, receive comfort from God, and receive comfort from people. This is a valuable skill. I have survived without it, but I will thrive with it.”
“I have permission to enjoy my own company. I get to decide how I treat myself.”
Some time ago I wrote reminders to myself on a notecard, including: “I believe God is trustworthy,” and “I believe my husband is trustworthy.” With some trepidation I recently added, “I believe I am trustworthy.” After a lifetime of being told that sinful humans can’t be trusted, believing I am trustworthy may be what returns me to myself. I can be trusted to make decisions, manage my emotions, spend my time. In other words, I can be trusted to be in charge of myself. I am not on trial with God or anyone else, so all of these decisions are simply opportunities to learn. I can be curious about myself—about life—and I can be compassionate with myself.
Earlier this year I really got my panties in a wad, worrying that I wasn’t receiving what God had for me. After months of struggling I admitted things weren’t looking too good and set up an appointment with my counselor, Beth. When I told her I was worried and distracted by wanting God to fix me, and fearful I wasn’t letting Him do what He wanted to do, Beth said, “But you do know how to listen to the Holy Spirit and trust Him.”
After my long struggle I felt it would be necessary to claw my way back to peace and trust. But Beth said it’s just a tweak, a chiropractic adjustment, and I am back in trust with God. And so I journal again, choosing to trust God, and in so doing, to trust myself.
“God with the Welcoming Lap, I leave behind my perfectionist, outcomes-based thinking, and I return to trust. I am fully capable of responding to Your Spirit.”
In Zach Williams’ song, “Fear Is a Liar,” this line arrests me: “…you could be the one that grace could never change.” Despite (or maybe because of) being a lifelong Bible-believing Christian, I fear I could be the one who can get it wrong, miss out, not respond how or when I’m supposed to. This lie has felt so close to truth.
There’s a whole conversation about whether it’s hard to be “saved” or hard to be “lost,” which I’m not going to get into. I will say that believing it’s hard to be saved is a death sentence for a perfectionist. What helps me unclench is knowing “It is finished.” God already did the thing that rescued me. I can go with what He did, instead of what I’m doing. I can agree with Him, instead of my wretched feelings. He says I am righteous. Full stop.
And so I pray: “I leave behind my stubborn fear that I am the one grace could never change. I am capable of trusting You. I am not a helpless victim. I am able to hear You, trust You, and choose You. I am not in need of the right formula, or the right circumstances, or the future version of me that is better than this one. You created me with the ability to choose and to trust. ‘Being good’ was completed by Jesus, and there is nothing left for me to perform.”
Oh, sweet rest, how I longed to fall into your soft pillows, pull up a thick blanket, and be still. And here I am finally, with both feet tucked in, glasses off, curled up around my pillow, almost laughing with joy before I sink into peaceful stillness. Rest.
