In the Beginning

I had to pinch myself as I was driving along the 101 on my way to lead my first Al-Anon meeting. I'd just left a visit with my friend and her newborn baby, and I was admiring those unrivaled LA sunsets with their cotton candy hues and silhouetted palm trees. I thought about what I was going to say at the meeting, what my "story" was. 

I was reminded of one of the fantasies I created as a kid as a coping mechanism. Sitting alone in my room and wondering what my future was going to look like, dreaming I might end up in a world far away from the town I grew up in. I think that was the first time I heard God's voice, who told me he had a plan for my life that was going to be better than I could imagine. 

When I got to the meeting I shared what it was like for me to grow up in an alcoholic household. The things I saw when I woke up in the middle of the night from all of the commotion. How helpless I felt as a nine year old standing by while all of my little siblings were dragged in. How the worst offense was waking up the next morning and being told that everything was 'okay' and that we were going to continue on as if it didn't happen. 

About how the most affection I'd ever felt from the people who were meant to provide me with safety and love and nurturance was when they were drunk. The dangerous situations I'd found myself in without anyone to call. Some of the details I shared I'd only ever told my therapist, and at one point I felt a darkness come over the room and wondered if I'd gone too far.

Growing up like that left me with a lot of deep-seated shame. I learned to pretend and conceal aspects of my life, like my life at home, which I thought was unspeakable. I never had friends come over to visit. I would do things like buy Christmas presents for myself so I could pretend my parents got them for me. I still feel uneasy when my birthday comes around because it was often forgotten about. 

But living through that produced an endurance in me that allowed me to get to where I am. It gave me relentless determination to get away as fast as I could and work hard for myself so that I didn't have to rely on someone else to be okay. 

I shared with them the things I was still struggling with, and how I was excited to be working on letting go of old patterns. To dismantle the boundaries and systems I created to protect myself but that might not serve me anymore.

Recently, I'd managed to work up to an impenetrable eight-hour morning routine that started at 4 AM, with time to pray, journal, work on my book, go for a run, then eat my chia pudding, do yoga, and go for another hour long walk to hit my 15k steps before 11.

Then I'd start my work, do any cleaning or errands, make paintings for people, which I somehow turned into another must-do. I would have dinner at 4pm (very anti-social) and go for another hour long walk in order to get to bed on time to get up and do it again the next morning. There was no opportunity for human interaction.

I ended friendships because the intimacy made me uncomfortable and I had too many things 'to-do.' In my dating life, everything was awesome until it came time to actually connect with someone, to let them in to see who I really was.

I ignored God's voice who was telling me to make time, to reach out, to give something a chance. The 'world' had taught me that I needed to do more to keep up and stay afloat. I found it hard to trust Him, it was too scary and uncomfortable. So I resorted to my old ways instead, my learned behaviors, my old operating system that told me isolating would make everything feel better.  

When I finished sharing, a woman at the back of the room raised her hand and told me that when she listened to me tell my story it was like she was hearing her own story, down to the very last detail. The domestic violence, moving countries, the inability to relax or sit on her couch.

When she recounted those things and shared her current struggles, it made me feel so proud of her. We all have stories like that, that we're too ashamed to share, that we instead carry around with us everywhere we go. Bobbing around our heads and affecting our every action. What I thought was too scary to ever tell wound up being an opportunity to connect with someone. 

When we pretend we're perfect, we deprive ourselves the chance to be loved and seen. It's no fun. I was on the receiving end of this when I dated someone who tried with all he could to be perfect. I was feeling down that he'd been less responsive to me, and he told me he had a lot going on. Things to take care of with work and his family and his friends. 

I asked him if he was stressed, and his response to me was that he didn't get stressed. He'd read about how not to. I was extending an invitation to connect over something real, our shared humanness, but instead he shut down the conversation. 

What a beautiful thing it was to have started to partake in those rooms at Al-Anon. And to have joined my life group at church where we could share what we were really going through and pray for each other. 

My pastor once pointed out that when we deny people the opportunity to our struggles, we deny them the experience of getting to see us through it, to see prayers answered. 

Being honest not only lets others get a glimpse of God's character, but it can provide them with very needed inspiration and framework to get through the things that plague their own lives. 

When I was a new Christian, I was flabbergasted by the old testament. Why would a loving God allow for such calamity? Why the need for all of the suffering and grappling and grieving? I found it harsh and unrelateable and stopped reading the bible altogether until a friend gifted me a new one when was going through a hard time. She told me to start reading at Matthew, the beginning of the new testament, or the 'Good News.'

I fell in love with that part. Its pages were filled with miraculous stories of comfort and hope and redemption and I couldn't stop reading. It was like a wonderful fairytale about the supernatural love of Jesus and how he came to save us. 

When God came to earth as Jesus, we got to see his true character. We learned that he wasn't a harsh, punishing God, who only wanted to rule over us from heaven with an iron fist. He wasn't wasn't concerned about how well the people could abide by the laws, he was concerned instead by their heart posture. 

He gave us an example of a radical kind of love that forgave all wrong-doings and invited people in no matter how great their guilt and shame. He forgave me. He forgave my dad. He forgave my mom. He went to the cross and died for us even though we were sinners. 

I finished the New Testament and went back to the beginning and read about each of the times God's people strayed from him and the atrocities that came. In Exodus when he brought them out of Egypt and parted the red sea, only for them to lose faith the wilderness before they reached the promised land. 

Or when the prophet Jeremiah warned that the Babylonians would take God's people captive and make waste of their land. 

Even when God's people hadn't strayed, like in the story of Job, whom God himself described as an upright man, he still experienced catastrophic loss and suffering. Why would our God allow that? Why would he allow for destruction to come and take everything that Job had?

As in the story of Job, we will never understand the complexities of the universe and why God placed the stars the way he did. But all of it served make Job's faith even greater.

When things go well for long enough, we can forget what it was like to rely on Him. We start to believe (I started to believe) that it was by my own strength that things were held into place, and that I might not even need God. But in the times when I fell down, when I got lost and made mistakes, those were the times I grew closer to Him, because those were the times I searched for Him. 

I love the way Andy Squyres puts it in his song, 'You Bring the Morning,' 

You bring the mountain, so I have somewhere to wander

You bring the ocean, so I can walk on water

You bring the wilderness, so I can learn to hunger

It was in those dark times I started to pray, that I asked for help, that I delved into his word. And even when I doubted that he could ever pull me out, He always did. And that became the evidence of his faithfulness. 

That he would take me from the pit and let me walk free, to look up at the Jacaranda trees forming an archway over the street, to make eye contact with the little golden doggy going by, to see a mother sharing a bagel with her son in the window of the bakery.

The Old Testament, with all of its brutality, is realistic. It's a representation of the human experience. And now I know what comes next. 

You bring the morning, you bring the evening

I'm gonna praise you with every breath that I'm breathing