Tag: The One Fear

Please Just Fight with Me

Please Just Fight with Me

by and | People

We talk so much here about choice, and fear, and commitment. And hope, and struggle, and how to be a person, and how to be yourself in a world that seems to really wants you to be…different. Quieter, less sure, more afraid. Mostly, we tend to talk about how to be yourself in a world that seems to want you to fight less for the right to do exactly that.

We’ve talked recently about how we each got divorced last year. We both came from marriages with Forbidden Topics. Or at least… This is Going to Be an Exhausting Unproductive Fight Topics. Topics that we felt like we couldn’t really genuinely talk about, ways that we couldn’t stand up for ourselves or what we wanted or needed. Conversations that would lead to us taking damage in some way. The beginning death rattle of any relationship is probably being simply…too tired to keep fighting. And usually, it’s the Forbidden Topics that start that trend.

The Problem Statement

We’re going to pause and define what we mean by “fighting,” because it’s one of those overloaded words that means many different, sometimes scary, things to many people.

fight (v): to engage in conflict with someone, seeing that conflict through until genuine resolution

Note the part of the definition that says, “seeing that conflict through until genuine resolution.” Fighting, using this definition, is vital. Rather than letting baggage pile up and overwhelm a relationship, fighting in this way allows baggage and rubble to transform into…foundation. Shared, strong foundation that allows a relationship to thrive.

But…everyone has scars. Scars from how they grew up, scars from past similar relationships, scars from…trying to be a person. And fighting with people you care about, getting to that resolution point where both people feel heard and loved and accepted and like they understand each other better, is one of the fastest, most effective, most painful ways that those scars are sometimes triggered. It’s terrifying to lay your soul out, and show what you’re afraid of, and put the relationship at risk by just…being yourself. We’ve said before that the one fear that everyone seems to share at their core is the fear of being alone because of who you really are – well, fighting with someone where you’re both actively working to navigate your scars lays all of that on the line.

Because it’s so hard, there are a few ways this can go.

1. I Won’t Fight

This is the hardest, and the most painful. This is the…well, as we said above, this is the death rattle noise that relationships make when they’re falling apart. This is someone saying that fake resolution, that quiet, matters more than your soul. It’s someone deciding that hiding from you is more important than sharing their soul. Everyone gets to choose if they engage in fighting – they get to choose if they will show their soul, and if the risk to them or the relationship is worth it. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the time, people will choose that it’s not. People will instead choose to try to keep some version of the “relationship” where both parties agree to hide from each other in a slightly different, memorized way in the future.

2. I Can’t Fight

On the other hand…fighting is exhausting. And terrifying. Don’t think that we’re saying that fighting is not exhausting and terrifying, because that would be stuuuupid.

And sometimes in a fight, you just… can’t anymore. If no one is choosing that they won’t fight, then whoever has run out of resources will get back to it when they’ve recovered some of those resources. But the old adage of “never go to sleep angry” is…not always wise, or a good idea. Sometimes stepping away has to occur, and if you can trust each other and be clear and still love each other even during a fight, then…this is okay. It’s good, even, despite it sometimes seeming even more scary.

3. The Good Fight

As a reminder…

fight (v): to engage in conflict with someone, seeing that conflict through until genuine resolution

A Good Fight is…well, when this happens. When both parties feel like they understand each other better, and when misunderstandings get cleared up. This does not mean that they agree. Relationships, and love, and true acceptance, don’t need agreement in order to exist, they just need…understanding, and reaffirmed choices not to hide from each other. They need, “I love actual you, and now I understand who that is a bit better than I did before, and also I still love actual you.”

A Good Fight results in the strengthened, shared foundation that can make some relationships staggeringly good.

Please Just Fight

Be you and have fun.

We give this advice constantly, to anyone who will listen and probably some people who won’t listen. We say it because it’s the best TL;DR we’ve figured out so far about how to live your life with joy. We constantly remind each other about it – because it isn’t easy. Being yourself often seems like exactly the way to end up completely alone.

However.

If you can find people who want to know you so much that they’re willing to risk your acceptance of them, people who will fight you with Good Fights, then you get the immense joy and relief and peace of existing with people who love actual you. Everyone deserves the space to be themselves, and everyone deserves people who will fight them, and fight with them, in order to have that.

Content-Generating Machine – or, A Love Letter to Creating

Content-Generating Machine – or, A Love Letter to Creating

by and | People, Processes

We’re generally good at generating content. We have been as long as we’ve been working together, it was one of the first amazing things we noticed when working as a team. Other people dread putting together a presentation, or writing up a blurb for a document, or crafting an email to get the right message across – we don’t really have problems with that. No big deal, nonchalant shrug.

We commonly refer to this ability we have as a “content-generating machine.” We can – and have! thanks, you-know-who-you-are and your content smashing emergencies – knock out 90 minute presentations in a few hours. Have something to say, put it down, and polish it until it’s beautiful. It helps that we talk about our content between the two of us, for a long time, before we get to the point of putting (metaphorical) pen to paper, but…still. It’s cool, this magical ability that we possess.

…unfortunately for this narrative, we haven’t published anything here in a long time, with the notable and exciting (to us!) exception of last week. That’s because having something to say isn’t enough. You have to have enough soul – perhaps more precisely soul energy – to create. And you have to have even more soul to share what you create in a public place. Take enough soul damage and…it gets progressively more difficult to share.

Having something to say isn’t enough – take enough soul damage, and it’s hard to share.

Creation, and Soul Bruises

I would follow the trail of this fabulous squirrel ANY-DAMN-WHERE. – L.

Creation requires soul because creation comes from the soul – any kind of creation. Writing (fiction or non-fiction), composing (lyrics or music), drawing, painting, sculpting, building, dancing… the best creative things are outpourings of our souls and their many many moods and feels. Creation is you – the core you that wants to be known and understood and also is super afraid of being alone because of who you really are.

Writing, at least the non-fiction kind that we do, takes thoughts that typically start as impressions and pictures and patterns that we see, and puts them into words in a sentence, and then a paragraph, and eventually an arc of something that’s hopefully interesting and ideally somehow meaningfully true for our audience. It requires paying attention to those thoughts, and weaving them into something that’s linear and logical. It also requires remembering the things that we wanted to talk about that were related, and knowing what’s a finite unit of “blog” or “talk” and what’s maybe a, uh, squirrel trail.

Writing, creating in general, also requires accepting that the thoughts you have, or the soul that you want to share, is worth something – that it’s worth the work of getting it out of your head at all, and also that it’s worth sharing. It takes love, and creativity, and storytelling, and vulnerability. And…if you’re as soul-bruised as we were at various points in the past year or so, well…souls can’t create if they’re beat up too badly. Not easily, anyway.

Creation, and Soul Healing

“The opposite of war isn’t peace – it’s creation.” (La Vie Boheme B, Rent)

The problem with creation requiring a healthy(ish) soul is that creation itself lets you heal. It lets you process your feels, and tell your story. Creation lets you heal the bruises and cuts and scrapes on your soul.

But the great thing about creating is that sometimes, the things that are created have the magical impact of helping other people heal, and process. And when you’re too soul-bruised to create yourself, you can heal in perhaps a less direct way than, say…sharing your soul on a blog.

Maybe it comes from switching to a more private kind of creating, or a different kind. Maybe you find other people’s songs that fit exactly what you’re going through, or maybe other people’s stories tie directly to your experiences – writing them, or reliving them by way of a great author.

Basically, you can heal, and grow, via creating, yes – but you can also heal, and grow, via experiencing other people’s creations.

How to Get Back to Creating

It’s okay. It will happen. 

That’s a thing that Laine worries about, a lot, whether her soul will…well, repair (no pun intended, hahaha) enough to have the capacity to create again. That worry is almost certainly a relic of 30+ years of untreated ADHD and feeling like getting her brain to DO the thing was a constant battle.

But…the fact is, it always comes back. When enough has healed, and enough time has passed for some brave to build back up, the drive to create always reappears. Not being alone, literally, helps a lot – as in, creating with someone else and getting that built in support and shared brave.

Be you, and have fun.

When you find you can create, when there’s enough room in your soul to be that core you again, it will just…flow. Your mind and your soul will line up, and everything just…knows what ideas connect where, like building up a Lego wall. If you can heal the damage, and you can get past the critics in your own head, and just… be you and have fun, creation is a wildly strong source of joy. You can let yourself be yourself, and worry about if it exactly “makes sense” or is “valid” later.

If you’re not bruised, beaten, scared of rejection, or simply tired, then creations just…appear out of nowhere.

We interact with a lot of people who don’t create, or who don’t share what they create, for a lot of reasons. If you fall into this camp, we’d strongly encourage you to think about why not, and if you like, send a message our way and tell us, or use us as guinea pigs to share what you create with a very controlled subset of “everyone.” We’d love to hear from you.

For us, once we’ve healed enough to want to create again, the “why not” is always fear – the same fear we see over and over as the core fear of everyone, the fear of being alone somehow. Bruises are just a hurt-reminder of that fear, whispering that maybe it’s really true, that fear that we’re alone…maybe it’s really true.

It’s not true. We promise. Life maybe has sucked, life maybe still sucks, but creation lets you deal with that. And actually dealing with stuff will leave you (has left us) much less alone.

If you pay attention, it all works out pretty well

If you pay attention, it all works out pretty well

by and | God, Government, People

There’s a lot of weird stuff going on. It’s the second week of 2021, and instead of any kind of return to normalcy, it looks like the world is falling apart and the USA is tearing itself apart.

The news seems to be mostly designed to result in people thinking….uhhh…whatever the news people want their listeners to think? Probably? At best, the news outlets are perhaps trying to “fix” things the best way they know how – but that seems to mostly resemble trying to control people into aligning to their version of reality. To think like them, so everyone can be “safe.” Or, they’re trying to get ratings and behaving like a business instead of an organization with a responsibility to inform in a fair, balanced, accurate manner. None of these reasons, or any others that we can think of, are good enough to make inaccurate and downright confusing views of reality as presented by national news outlets not controlling, knowingly dishonest, or awful.

Aside from the news, the two main political parties of our national bipartisan system seem to be doing their best to rip each other apart – and in the process, rip apart any unity that exists in the country. They mostly act like toddlers fighting over an old, worn out blanket that they both have decided is their very most favorite.

Social media, AKA “people talking about stuff on the internet,” is doing its darnedest to implode. More people are talking than listening, and the resulting echo chambers are…well, echoing, at maximum volume. Everyone seems to be getting real offended at anyone who disagrees with them – and not just offended. People are seeing anyone who disagrees with them as an immediate enemy. With COVID, our primary social interaction has moved to online, and when it’s that hostile for dissenting opinions or ideas, something is very wrong.

Also, as of now, the sitting US President is so painful or dangerous to listen to (apparently?) that he doesn’t even get a voice on social media outlets. In addition, lots of other people who just…again, disagree, with the privately-held social media companies are banned. Literally silenced just for having opinions.

As two veterans of divorce, we recognize some of these patterns. It very much feels like the last stages of a relationship ending. Josh got some advice, about a year before his divorce was certain:

As long as you’re arguing, you’re okay – but if you go quiet, it’s just a matter of time.

As a country, we/the US has been arguing violently for about…30 years? We stopped civil discourse… at some point. We both began voting in presidential elections around the time that the results were so close to 50/50 that the winner could not be immediately determined. It’s not acceptable to talk about politics in “polite” circles, because it’s just assumed that we can’t agree and that relationships can’t survive in the face of that kind of disagreement.

You can’t have a political opinion in a public place without risking those relationships, and probably being disowned by at least two people. Any opinion at all is going to result in someone telling you that you’re a bad citizen, and not a “real” American, and also that you very definitely couldn’t possibly be a good person. Depending on where you say it, you will probably also be told that you’re not a good God person, or that you ignore science, or that you’re stupid and your opinions are irrelevant.

We do not accept differing opinions with a listening ear anymore.

Josh saw a video of a family being carted off to jail because they got together for a holiday party and can still hear the screams of their kids. Something is very very wrong.

What the hell happened? What can we do about it? What should we do about it? These are the questions we’ve been asking ourselves, ad nauseum.

We Forgot About Science

So…remember science?

Not, “you have to obey our commands or we will lock you up,” or “just listen to the experts without asking questions,” or “I have statistics so you have to do what I tell you,” or…really anything where people tell you what to do.

We’re talking about that thing where people went out and observed stuff, and thought about it intelligently, and then came to conclusions that were backed by empirical evidence. Maybe they had a hypothesis first, or maybe they observed a cool thing and then tried to understand and explain it. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, people said stuff, and then they went and figured out what they thought, for themselves. And often, they found out that they were wrong in their first, second, and maybe even third assumptions, and that the first and third conclusions were also wrong. But they kept looking, with open eyes. They also argued a lot, got offended, and generally disagreed, all for the purposes of finding the truth.

Science by this definition is, was, and always has been a violent attack on dogma. It doesn’t matter whose dogma, or which dogma, we’re talking about – but often, it was the ruling body and the church (or both). The “let’s figure out what reality is” crowd was perceived as a threat. Sometimes they were exiled. Sometimes they were killed. Often they were mocked and told they were crazy.

Also, sometimes they got rich, and sometimes they gave away their inventions for the good of mankind.

Pursuit of actual reality is one of our highest moral values, because that’s where you can most clearly see God. When teaching Actual Digital Transformation, or any other kind of soul healing, there is no substitute for Trying Stuff Out and Seeing What Happens (TM). We have considered actually patenting our methods, because they are so revolutionary today.

…LOLJK no we haven’t, that was totally some pained sarcasm, because the pursuit of actual reality seems to be painfully and confoundingly revolutionary, most of the time.

We’re sick of being told to “trust” anybody without question. Trust has to be built. We’ve individually, together, and also collectively as a society, been lied to for so long by authority figures that the idea of unquestioning trust of authority is offensive, and frankly ridiculous. Present evidence and let people choose, and allow encourage dissent, or GTFO.

If people are:

  • banning other people from saying they’re wrong
  • playing into our fear of being alone in order to try to manipulate agreement (“if you don’t agree, you aren’t one of us.”)
  • saying anything like, “you should blindly trust us because we’re the experts”
  • threatening, including “we’ll put you in jail”

…then they are very much not to be trusted.

We have somehow arrived at this stupid, and dangerous, place where we think that we can’t argue with something if it’s deemed “science.” We cover our ears and run when people say things we don’t like to consider. We can’t handle the thought of being wrong.

Why?

We Forgot about God

There’s something wrong with the world today,
I don’t know what it is.
Something’s wrong with our eyes.
We’re seeing things in a different way,
and God knows it ain’t his.

Livin’ on the Edge, Aerosmith

We seem to have forgotten, or perhaps some of us never knew or accepted, that there’s something bigger than all of us. Something so thoroughly Real that it is the authority we must all bend to. Something exists outside of all of us that it is beyond complete human understanding yet is present in every choice and action that we take. Something that if seen directly brings us to tears of joy and sweet sadness. It, He, can be found in being actually loved, or in seeing something so beautiful we cannot speak. It’s in every one of our souls. It’s in the babbling of a madman and in the unquestioning belief of a child, and in the most dangerous thought a person can have.

We forget that we can’t know things perfectly. We forget that we cannot control reality, and that we don’t need to control each other. We forget that any plan can fail, and that good things happen that we did not make happen.

God is behind all of this mess beauty and he’s working hard to break the chains we tend to put on ourselves. We bind our souls, thinking we must create all of the good we have in our lives, and we must keep ourselves safe from our greatest fear: being alone for who we are. That’s behind all of the “one of us” and the tribalism and the exile fears, and it’s why we think we have to agree (or at least pretend to agree) with our peer group, or risk that we ourselves will be excluded, exiled, and forgotten.

We Forgot We Don’t Have to be Afraid

Over and over, the damage we have taken personally, and the things that get in the way of actual good change, can be traced back to people being afraid.

Collectively, we’re all afraid. We’re afraid of losing the power to take care of ourselves. We’re afraid of being rejected, and as such, we’re afraid of whatever other people tell us we should fear.

A lot of those fears are real. People do sometimes hate us for what we believe in. People have lost jobs, and careers, because of economic fallout from COVID and the government’s response. The dollar is losing value at an impressive rate, so money isn’t really safety either (and in fact it never was…). People (us included!) have lost relationships once they decided they were no longer going to be controlled or hide. People hold on to their guns, and their stuff, and their relationships, and their opinions, and their tribes, and they hold on really really tight because they fear what might happen if they lose the things that they think keep them safe. People fear what they will do if they lose what matters to them, or if they lose what keeps them chained.

Angel of death and mercy,
come take me from this cage.
Cause these four walls and iron bars have been
witness to the rage,
of a thousand broken hearts, in chains…

In Chains, Shaman’s Harvest

We fight so hard to make laws and control each other in order to keep these chained things, but actually we do more damage to ourselves than to others when we seek to control – when we employ violence, rejection, hatred, disrespect, manipulation, denial of wants and needs, etc. It’s a national tragedy, and a human tragedy. We’ve fought these types of wars for decades – drug wars, culture wars, foreign wars, civil wars – because we thought that they were required in order to be safe.

But…actually, we don’t have to be afraid.

If you pay attention…it all works out pretty well.

We forget, so much, that love is much greater, and much stronger, than fear. It doesn’t always look like that, but…that’s how it lands. We forget that we can just…be ourselves. We forget that we can just be people and love each other and that…actually, life is pretty good.

You won’t be alone. People will like you, no matter your beliefs, statements, opinions, hot takes, or economic status. People will like you regardless of your tribe, your political orientation, or whatever other orientation you have. People will like you because you are a person. Not all people. Sometimes people will double down on being afraid, and they will not be willing to let you be free. But…you still won’t be alone. We know this because simple existence, simple “you are a person,” is all it takes for us to like someone. You are made of God-stuffs, and you are beautiful, and you are worth knowing and loving just because of that. If you’re hungry, I’ll give you from my food. If you’re sick, I’ll help take care of you.

It turns out, the real solutions win, most people are generally trying to be good, and love eventually wins over fear.

So…what now?

Yeah, it’s a valid question. And in some ways, we have literally no idea.

What we do know, or at least are pretty sure of, is that we need to apply the basic, and admittedly very complex, remedy of stop trying to control each other to the nation as a whole.

People have the literal God-given right to be free, and that needs to be respected and honored. We were once the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” and we seem to have en masse forgotten how to do that. But…actually, it’s okay, guys. As a nation, and beginning with ourselves, we need to process our feels, as much as that sucks, and default to freedom and not controlling each other. We need to realign to reality.

The Human Scar of Exile

The Human Scar of Exile

by and | Community, God, People

In the course of getting ourselves kicked out of church we started to see a pattern of behavior. We referenced it briefly in the All the Problems of the World… post, where we said:

We’ve written about, and will write more about, this topic – but the summary is, people think that if someone near them is doing behavior X, it will cause them pain. They think that if someone near them is misbehaving according to God, then they will feel pain from God as a result.

This is an old, old cultural scar. Homophobia, racism, legalism, basically all kinds of hatred are examples of this. It’s a lie that people believe and respond to: “I need to control you, or something bad will happen to me. I need you to be what I think God wants, or we won’t be safe.”

We’ve gone over and over the ground of how people try to keep themselves safe. We even know part of why people do this – because of the one fear, the fear of being alone because of who you truly are. We do crazy, damaging things trying to keep ourselves and our relationships safe – and we do crazy, damaging things trying to make the people around us into our definition of safe as a result.

…

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Most of Succeeding at Life is About Being Able to Deal with Rejection

Most of Succeeding at Life is About Being Able to Deal with Rejection

by and | Community, God, People

Succeeding at Life

Succeeding at life is being shiny – living, sure and certain, in your purpose that God gave you as best as you currently understand it, and letting your soul shine. Letting the joy of being you flow out of yourself and everything you do. This is hard to do, and it’s hard to maintain. It’s difficult, and it’s complicated, but it really comes down to two things:

  1. Doing what you’re supposed to do
  2. Not being afraid of rejection for being yourself

If you have both of those going on, in our experience, you’ll have a lot of joy, and a lot of fun. You’ll attract people who like your vibe, and you’ll have an impact in the ways you’re supposed to.

Your vibe attracts your tribe.
– Sassy Chocolate

…

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Sacrifice Done Well

Sacrifice Done Well

by and | God, People

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10:11

The Bible talks about sacrifice a lot. Sacrificing for each other, sacrificing to serve God. The Gospel, the most important story arc in the Bible, is in part about Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice – his death, yes, but more his complete and utter separation from God when he needed God the most. Unfortunately, over the past 2000 years, the definition of sacrifice has been broken to the point where it’s used to do more harm than good.

…

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I Never Saw that You Loved Me

I Never Saw that You Loved Me

by | God, People

I really love Halsey. Josh introduced me to her via a roundabout way that included Bishop Briggs and Amazon Music’s stations – and she grew on me slowly, because typically pop music about someone’s bad romantic choices is not my jam. But the more I listen to what she has to say, the more affected I am.

There’s a song called Sorry that I thought I understood. What I heard spoke to some of the broken ways I’ve approached relationships – and then I listened and…I realized it spoke to some of the deeper broken ways I’ve approached relationships.

It’s okay. You don’t have to love me. My fault, seems legit.

So I’m sorry, to my unknown lover, sorry that I can’t believe
anybody ever really, starts to fall in love with me.

This was the first part I heard. My default when I’m scared in a relationship is to retreat – shields up, and hide. In the past, that included looking for reasons that I should retreat – clues that I was about to be hurt, “proof” that the other person didn’t really want me around. And the clues and the proof that I found were always easier to accept if I believed that whatever I found was my fault.

This…well, it some kinda’ worked. It certainly kept me from being hurt – by anyone other than myself. It also made me blind to people truly caring about me, because all I ever saw were the “early warning signs” that the relationship was going to end.

It’s fine that you’re gone. I’m not hurt. Also, it’s still my fault.

I’ve missed your calls for months it seems.
Don’t realize how mean I can be
’cause I can sometimes treat the people that I love like jewelry.
I can change my mind each day.
I didn’t mean to try you on, but I still know your birthday and your mother’s favorite song.

And then I heard these words. And I noticed that she was lying to herself, because if she remembers their birthday and their mother’s favorite song, there’s no way that she actually changed her mind about them. But…again. Blame. “I was mean, I discarded you. It’s my fault you left. I accept that.”

And I know you’ll be happier with someone else.

Someone will love you, someone will love you.
Someone will love you, but someone isn’t me.

…Yep.

But really…I just…didn’t know.

I run away when things are good, and never really understood
the way you laid your eyes on me in ways that no one ever could.
And so it seems I broke your heart, my ignorance has struck again.
I failed to see it from the start, and tore you open ’til the end.

I thought the summary of this song was, “There’s no way you love me, no way you’d really want to. Someone else will love you better than I can, so I’m glad that you left and I’m sorry for the pain I caused you by trying to have a relationship with you.” I thought she was basically choosing, that she was saying “nope, I don’t believe people love me, so I choose good bye.”

This made sense to me. It fit what I thought I was doing when I ran away.

And then I actually heard this verse. And…I realized that the summary is more like, “I…didn’t know that you loved me. I couldn’t see it. And what I could see, I didn’t believe. Because I didn’t believe, I kept you away, and that hurt you. So…you left. So…I will let you go, and I will choose to believe that someone will love you better than I can.”

…and then I realized what I was really doing when I ran away – I realized that I ran because I couldn’t see. This summary explained how it felt to find myself running away when I didn’t mean to – and it explained what I was afraid would happen every time I found myself running.

Why explain this? Good question.

When Josh told me that I should explain what I learned about this song, I sort of painfully asked him why on Earth I would ever do that. We’re pretty open about our souls here, but…this is deep damage. And it isn’t fully healed damage, and…actually I hate that I do it.

I also just…don’t have any stellar advice on how to not do it. I started to learn how to not do it on accident, because of a relationship that was more important to me than the sense of self-protection that came from running away. Since then, I’ve fought through multiple layers of this thing. At every layer, it comes down to deciding which is more important – the relationship or feeling (falsely) safe. I keep choosing the relationship.

The only way I know of to do that, to choose the relationship in the face of a lot of fear and the instinct to run and hide, is via trust – trust the other person and trust God. With trust, I can believe that the people I’m in relationships with love me and will stick around through all of the pain and confusion and…eventual wonder and joy of “figuring it out.” With trust, I can know that if they don’t stick around, God will take care of me – so the risk of them leaving is not enough of a reason to close myself off from people or run away.

But…this isn’t new information or helpful clarification or a good how-to. The answer to most soul damage seems to be trust. And I did not want to talk about it.

And then Josh, in a tricky bit of wisdom, asked me why understanding the song mattered so much to me. And…it mattered because it put words to my broken. It described it, accurately. The existence of words that described my broken told me that I’m not alone in it – and that I’m not alone in being blind to people caring about me. I’ve ruined relationships by retreating when I get scared, and that weighs on me. It scares me that I might do the same thing with the relationships that are so important to me now.

The existence of words that described my broken told me that I’m not alone in it.

I said that my new understanding of the song explained what I’m afraid could happen when I run away.  When I run,  it feels like no one follows me. And…really, it isn’t up to them to follow, it’s up to me not to run – which I do manage to figure out. Eventually. But…I worry that before I can figure it out, I will run too far. And, having run too far, it will take too long to find my way back, or I won’t be able to find my way back – and that if I manage to get back, by the time I get there, no one will be left waiting for me.

So…ultimately, I think I’m explaining this because hearing the words and knowing I wasn’t alone helped me get past another layer of this broken thing I do. It helped me identify it the next time I did it, and because I understood what I was doing, I knew that trust was the answer – even in the midst of sheer panic.

Sometimes seeing our broken, having the words to accurately describe it, is one of the most important ways to heal. And the words in this song helped me see this jagged stabby place in my soul clearly enough to be aware of when I was inclined to run. And it helped me remind myself to trust instead of run – and it helped make it easier for me to stay.

The Myth of Rationed Femininity

The Myth of Rationed Femininity

by | God, People

I recently had the great honor of going with a transgender friend to his first support group meeting. I was kind of terrified, because I am not transgender – just an extremely determined supporter of the people I love. I was worried that I would be seen as an interloper, or that I would make people uncomfortable.

As it happened, I didn’t need to worry about any of that. I was mostly quiet, and I listened, and I heard their stories with a great deal of thankfulness to be allowed to be included.

One story stuck with me, along with the way it was told as though it were a norm. A woman there had recently found out that a cis woman, someone she considered a friend, was something like neutral on being transgender. Not supportive. Not exactly “against.” Just…neutral. She said that it felt as though cis women in general don’t accept her, that they get defensive and say awful things like not a “real” woman, and the other women in the room nodded sadly in agreement.

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Idols and Alone and Rest for Your Soul

Idols and Alone and Rest for Your Soul

by and | Community, God, People

People Seem Safer than God

 Come, all you weary.
Come, gather ’round near me,
find rest for your soul. 
– Thrice, Come All You Weary

“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30

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Choice-Based Relationships

Choice-Based Relationships

by and | Community, God, People

Relationships and Control

We’ve talked in the past about how control is an illusion – we can’t control the world around us, and all we really have are the choices we make.

We’ve also talked about how manipulating people only works when you’re the smartest person in the room.

One of the things that’s been a struggle for both of us, individually and as friends, is how do we make sure people will stick around? We all, at our core, don’t want to be alone. We want to be known, and appreciated, and maybe truly loved, but that…sure seems like a lot to ask. Most of us only manage to shoot for being a little bit known and sort of vaguely liked. And that’s actually pretty great, if it happens.

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