i went into this past year excited to share it with everyone who made it possible, ready to pull you all in while I was pushing myself out. and then I quickly realized that this trip was going to look nothing like what I had anticipated or what I felt were everyone else’s expectations. I battled between the two roads before me: either spend all of my time trying to craft this year to fit what I envisioned.. like a third grade art project I wanted a good grade on, or stop living with the end in sight and audience in mind. choosing to believe that the present was enough, that I was allowed to trust a moment to make itself instead of tweaking it to be something that social media said was worth sharing. being away from everything familiar opened up room to wonder whether I was living from who I truly was or just out of everything I had ever known, fitting into molds that were unintentionally set, morphing into someone who fit the life I was born into instead of making my life move around to better welcome who I really was. seeing the world, it was like I started standing in front of my door; the same door i’ve come home to for 24 years, and someone had a hold on the back of my shirt, slowly pulling me out and up closer to the sky and further from everything I thought made me, me and god, god. starting the shift of home going from a place and a people and instead to wherever I was at. the sobering meeting of a light within me, after years of searching for that connection in a book or building, and realizing that maybe god isn’t some man in the sky but that feeling of humaneness that humbles me, walking around africa barefoot and not changing clothes for months. maybe god is the chaotic driving in india that somehow sees fewer accidents than what the laws in america prevent. what if god isn’t just who tells the sun to rise but the very rising of the sun? And maybe god isn’t the positive spin i put on bad situations but the storm itself. you see, god started to transcend into an actual way of living, instead of a lifestyle to achieve. he wasn’t a way out of the darkness, or a hope in the midst of despair, but a part of the disappointment and pain itself and that seemed to give me more hope than ever believing he was on the other side of everything unfortunate. the ways i’ve always believed, ideas and concepts i had made into concrete statues started to crumble and move into a rushing river. my faith started to become an exploration of a mystery. i no longer felt this need to understand. i wasn’t as motivated to make all the puzzle pieces fit together anymore, instead god became an experience. something that moves me, changes me and grows me. and christ, that place within, began to show me how to serve and follow this god that was no longer man.
i had this moment in nepal where i was standing on a rooftop (dramatic right), and i realized how small my perspective of life really was. and if my eyes were only seeing life through a squint, how minuscule the god i believed in had to be in order to fit into that sliver of scenery. it was as if i had been living backed into a corner of the world, like a light had been turned on and i realized my life had been spent in a closet just a tad bigger than the body it held inside. i had only ever known this one way of living, willing to believe and accept thats all there was. granted, i didn’t know any better so i couldn’t think any wider. but i was starting to, and it destroyed me in a way that had me feeling like i woke up for first time. this wasn’t a moment of wondering if god was real but of realizing “he” was growing beyond anything being a christian could contain. this was a moment of certainty beginning to crack beneath my feet and choosing to fall with everything i was standing on. i wanted something beyond what other eyes could see, and that meant being okay if it was only ever enough for me. i felt the exhaustion of living a life trying to catch up to the claims i made or others loudly made around me, and would rather lose my faith entirely than to keep something that was never really mine to begin with. something earned, no longer borrowed.
i’ve been scared to be honest, not sure of how to share things i hadn’t weeded through, made pretty, and wrapped in a bow. i spun around in circles questioning whether i was allowed to express an emotion that went outside the lines or express a thought that went against everything i was taught. i’m still terrified of judgement and what people will think; that was the outline given to me to live my life by. but ive reached the end of being able to live every other life except my own. i let go of what i thought it meant to be a “christian” and just started being a human. i stepped into that forbidden territory of an open mind and rested in knowing the truth will always be the truth, so what could i possibly lose? jesus said he is the way and the truth and the life, no one can come to the father without going through him. what if he wasn’t portraying himself as a guard in front of a gate or bouncer standing outside of an exclusive club, but saying that when you seek truth, when you choose love, when you stumble upon generosity and humility, that is jesus and there you find god. if your eyes are open it’s impossible to miss. this individual salvation started to expand into a universal love and i’ve mourned for all the ways i neglected christ by containing it to a religion. i had made a god that looked liked me instead of being a love that looked like his.
in the deconstruction of my faith, i found the freedom and humility to uncover myself. this past year, it was as if someone grabbed the world id been living in and started throwing it around until everything was out of place. i started to change in ways that made me think i no longer would fit into my world at home. struggling to embrace this vastness of uncertainty, i channeled all of my anxiety into what i knew i could control. ive struggled with an eating disorder since i was 14. along the way its led me through several variations of hell, physically and mentally destroying this body ive been given, and taking me further from the life i was meant to be living. you see, when we are insecure and have hatred for our truest being, we spend our life coping and running. getting drunk to fill the void. having sex to feel wanted. getting high to escape. we tear others down to feel better about ourselves. we are selfish because our pain keeps us within ourselves. we lie because we are living one. and this past year, mine was beginning to show. it was in being away that i finally had the room to start unpacking my past, and the resurfacing of my eating disorder was an indication that these things were still a part of my present. throughout my adolescence and adult life, i’ve gone to dramatic lengths either trying to hide this sickness or in an attempt to cry for help. this darkness first manifested through an eating disorder but along with it were suicide attempts, abuse of alcohol, and an addiction to pills. i stopped going to school, i was cheating in relationships, i lived out of my car, would spend months in bed and weeks in a hospital. i’ve carried a tremendous amount of shame over those years of my life, and spent the two years leading up to my mission trip trying to make up for all the damage i had done. i was desperate to rewrite my reputation. and that desire might have kept me out of self destruction but i was still in a prison. a few months ago it connected, my anxiety and depression are not a demon that i don’t have enough faith to pray away. im more than a christian with a bad habit of sin. i have a mental illness, and its taken every day since then to trust its legitimacy when so many people fail to recognize its existence.
i was scared of coming home because i put this expectation on myself to look a certain way after returning from a year long mission trip. i figured i would have my life a little more put together and not look so much like everything had obviously fallen apart. there is a line from one of my favorite songs “doves and ravens fly the same” and he’s saying “there will be good and bad in your life. light and dark. great joy and deep despair. there are lessons to be learned from both. both are equally important in your story.” there is a power in contrast, but you have to brave the dark to appreciate the light. i often think of jesus as half human and half divine, but it says he was fully human. he had to go through all the phases of life and death, passion and rejection, connection and betrayal. and if jesus is our map, why would i assume my life would look any different? seeing jesus as human invites me to embrace my own humanity and that kind of freedom is frightening because it forces me to focus on myself and that kind of confrontation is uncomfortable. but it was going into my humanity, that led me into an actual desire and appreciation for divinity. what if instead of suppressing, we accepted our humanity? we even celebrated it, and dared to believe it beloving of god? this has shown me compassion toward myself and allowed an acceptance of the differences in others that i ran into walls trying to find before. we tell people to come as they are without giving them permission to fully admit who that is. my mental illness isnt going to go away and instead of trying to outrun it ive decided to stay. im no longer praying for a way out, but seeking god within. and im showing up, only as i am.
