Most of us, if we were truly honest, would have to admit that most days, we want to be known as someone other than who we truly are. We all have our glory moments and our ugly ones…and we’d prefer not to be remembered for the latter.

I was at the library a week ago, pretending to do homework and actually studying people over the top of my computer. One interaction in particular caught my attention and made me wince…and then made me think.

There was a beautiful young lady with lively brown eyes and bouncy brown hair who was in the library on this particular day—and her vivacious personality was oozing out of her along with her warm heart as she flitted from one friend to the next, reveling in the experience of life with them. She probably wasn’t aware of her volume or of the fact that some adults find it difficult to appreciate the vivacity and the joyful exuberance of youth in the context of the library setting.

Thus, the poor little maiden was taken rather off-guard when one of the elderly female librarians approached her indignantly, and proceeded—with cutting words and an angry tone of voice—to demean the child and publicly embarrass her while demanding that she be quiet in the library.

I winced as I listened, remembering silently what it used to feel like to be that little girl. As the little lady marched past me a moment later with her chin stuck defiantly in the air to hide the fact that her little heart was bleeding, I noticed the tears welling up in the corners of her flashing brown eyes, and I wanted to reach out and hug her, and tell her that she was beautiful, that I loved her precious tender heart, and that passion for life is a gift which is often misunderstood and under-appreciated, but no less a gift.

But then my thoughts turned to the librarian. To be honest, I felt keenly angry with her in that moment for the fact that she had needlessly wounded this young woman with her words. There was quite a lot of the Pharisee in my attitude as I judgmentally wondered to myself whether she feels like a jerk when she looks back on her day before going to bed…cuz, by George, she certainly should!

That’s when it hit me that each one of us takes part in this same self-deception on some level or another. If I were to ask this particular librarian how she thinks of herself, I’m sure she wouldn’t tell me she thinks of herself as a vicious, insensitive nasty old woman who says hurtful things to children. She would probably say that she is a compassionate, caring, warm, loving, patient individual who genuinely strives to better the condition of the human race. And you know what? She probably is all of those things on some level and at certain points. But she’s also other things, at times.

And so it is with each one of us. We would love to be defined by who we are in our best moments. But sometimes, let’s face it: we’re just hateful. We say and do things that we are—rightfully—ashamed to own up to when we consider them in hindsight.

Perhaps one of the biggest marks of maturity and growth, then, is an ever-increasing degree of consistency. Do I consistently demonstrate a Christ-like attitude towards those in my life who demand a little extra measure of grace? Do I consistently respond with discernment and love when I’m tempted to be provoked? Am I consistently the person I am called to be? Do I consistently choose to submit to the call of God in my life—to let Christ work in and through me?

The honest answer is, nope, I’m not consistent yet. And I won’t ever be 100% consistent this side of heaven. But my prayer as I walked out of the library was that God would make me mindful of my inconsistencies…and that He would use this awareness to create in me a passionate, humble commitment to first of all, be willing to take responsibility for and own my failures. But secondly, to always be willing to change and seeking to grow in this area…to be transformed into His likeness and to learn to dream His selfless dream for humanity.

For the past four weeks, most of my clinical hours have been with patients who are suffering from psychiatric illnesses, and for whatever reason, this particular patient population really grips me in the gut like nothing I’ve ever done before.

If you had asked me four weeks ago, I might have admitted to you that I believed that most patients in psychiatric settings aren’t really that sick. But what I’m coming to realize is that sometimes, the most serious wounds that we have—the brain hemorrhages and heart attacks that kill people silently and often without warning—are those that can’t be seen. And I think that one of the things that has been most gripping about these psych patients—especially the little kids—is just how deeply wounded they truly are...many of them so much more so than they will ever know.

There are days when I get back into my car after a clinical and put my head down on the steering wheel and cry—cry for my patients, these precious little kids who are so angry and so bitter and so scared that they can’t cry themselves...cry for their parents, who are often so confused they don’t know what it is to love a child or what it feels like to be loved themselves...cry because it hurts to see so many hurting so deeply in numb silence.

But all of this has made me ponder, sometimes throughout the dark hours of the predawn on the days when sleep has fled, about the different forms of human suffering, and how outsiders normally respond to the suffering of others. I read a fascinating article on Boundless.org called “Let’s Talk.” The author, Christopher Riordan, is speaking about communication, but he also makes some interesting points about the way we as people are wired.

In speaking of communication, he says, “I believe all communication begins with who we are (or who we are becoming) and only then moves into the specific ways we speak and interact with one another. If our hearts are ill or fearful, so too will be our interactions with one another. Am I the kind of person who is willing to trust another? Will I share all of myself or hold back for fear? Can I accept what my loved one shares with me, no matter how hard it is to hear?”

Further on in the same article, Riordan continues, “The truth is that many of us struggle with secrets and the dark places of the heart that we dare not share with another. We find it extremely difficult to trust others because we don't see this modeled well in real life. Instead, we witness (and many of us have experienced) what happens when we reveal too much of ourselves. Our partner flees. Isn't this our deepest relationship fear?

Of all the obstacles to open and honest communication, fear may be the most crippling. We fear not measuring up to society's or our loved one's standards. We fear being revealed as a fraud. We fear rejection and loneliness. So we hide those parts of our lives that we believe would threaten the relationship. We set aside true intimacy, which is to be known and loved, in favor of the cold, shallow comfort of our delusions of safety. We forget that mature love comes not after years of being together, but when we release our fears of rejection, failure, loss, heartache.

In the book Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry's title character reflects on a lifetime of intimate relationships: "You can't give yourself over to love for somebody without giving yourself over to suffering."

Yet, giving ourselves over to suffering is not what any of us would describe as relational bliss. In fact, many of us get married precisely to end our suffering and loneliness. Henri Nouwen tells us:

Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer.”

The sentence that really stuck out to me was Riordan’s comment that “compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken.” It was precisely that desire/ability/disposition to go into the messy places of the heart and do major restoration that made Christ an anomaly, a puzzle, and an endless source of delight to the multitudes who followed Him.

I feel like, all too often, that’s the last place in the world that we want to accompany our friends—to hold their hand and go down under the façade and help them to unpack all of their filthiness and uncover the putrid infected wounds of their soul. We hate that because it scares us—it reminds us too much of our own carefully hidden rotting mess.

 As I was driving home from one clinical in particular, I remembered a conversation that I’d had with a friend over the summer. We were talking about friendship, and she made the comment that she had a lot of friends, and that she loved all of them intensely. I asked her if she loved them enough to be willing to challenge them when they were wrong, and put some tension in the relationship at times for the sake of helping each friend grow and mature. She got really quiet for a moment, and then said quietly,

“Well, no, I don’t really do that. I really don’t like that part.”

I nodded.  “Yeah, I hear you. I feel like there are parts of friendship that we all like—the feel-good parts. The parts where we get to encourage each other, and cheer each other on, and tell each other what we appreciate in one another…all the mushy stuff. We love that. But then when it gets tough—when they’re doing something stupid, and we need to tell them, or when we’re doing something stupid, and they need to bring it to our attention, and we know that the conversation is going to hurt, and that it might make us unpopular for a while…we don’t like that part so well. And a lot of times we let our dislike for the process keep us from being a part of the other person’s growth…which is a pretty high price to pay for superficial popularity, when you really think about it…”

The conversation went on from there, but I’ve thought of it many times since when I was in a place where I needed to gently challenge one of my friends with an uncomfortable truth. The reality is that sometimes, I’m right with my friend: I don’t really do it, because I really don’t like that part. And yet we serve a God who modeled, during His time on earth, what it means to have the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken.

Riordan went on to comment that Christ chose an unfaithful woman to be His bride. That He “surrounded Himself with people who had utterly — and publicly — failed and called them to be His bride, His body on earth” to remind each of us that God is a Father who “accepts us as the broken people we are and transforms us into what we are meant to be.”

At the end of the day, the obvious question that each one of us faces, then, is whether we’re truly willing to give all that it might cost us to follow His example in walking alongside others into the black despair of their weakness, vulnerability, loneliness, and brokenness? Are we willing to face that same blackness in ourselves?

It’s not an easy question to ask, and it’s an even harder question to answer. However, as I work with the broken little ones who surround me in the children’s psychiatric wards and interact with their parents, I’m beginning to see, in the haunted sadness of their empty, pleading eyes, that it’s a question we really can’t afford NOT to ask and answer…and so my prayer is that we—that I—would be willing to go the distance and ready to plumb the depths with each person God calls me to accompany on this journey to wholeness, healing, and divine redemption. 

Wow, so it’s been a while. No, I didn’t die, but yes, I did sort of...fall off the face of the cyber planet for a few months. (This post may therefore qualify as some sort of indication of resurrection. I may celebrate this fact later by taking out the garbage.)

            Part of the reason for this lengthy sabbatical is that, after solemnly promising myself that I wouldn’t be returning to the bookfield ever again after last summer (for mostly wrong reasons), I ended up out on the bookfield this past summer once again, and in looking back, I’m sincerely grateful, both to have had the opportunity to generate some income and for all of the rich lessons that I began to learn during the experience. (Yeah, baby!)

            In the nearly-month-long gap between the end of my time on the bookfield and now, life has been a little bit of a blur, but the experiences and the memories have been a spectacular eclectic mixture.

            At the beginning of the semester, I moved into the parsonage of an ancient Methodist church with four other young women, each of whom is incredibly unique, ridiculously hilarious in her own way, and is a rich addition to the culture and conversation within our little place.

We’re renting the house, and on the inside, it kind of looks like the last people who lived there were hippies. Or maybe they were colorblind. Or maybe they were colorblind hippies. I mean, come on—who paints their bathroom Pepto-Bismol pink and lays puke-yellow carpet throughout the entire house?!

...in an attempt to preserve our sanity, make the house slightly more homey, and build a sense of family spirit, the five of us have undertaken to do some minor remodeling during the past month. (We watch The Property Brothers for inspiration when motivation runs low). Having armed ourselves with plaster, putty knives, paintbrushes, hammers, a miscellaneous assortment of screws and nails, paint trays, and sandpaper, and thus equipped, we have spent the past several weekends pretending to be amateur contractors (we’re doing pretty good at the amateur part. The contractor part, not so much). The results are somewhat amusing, generally happifying (the house didn’t burn down after we re-wired the light fixture—which was a source of much rejoicing), and the process is...probably one that will go on indefinitely. But whatever. We’re learning, and we’re having fun, and we’re not wrecking too many things in the process. (We hope). 

Since every home needs to have a mascot, the hideous little creature pictured below has been lovingly dubbed Mephistopheles, and because looking at him is almost enough visual stimulation to cause one to experience an epileptic seizure, we try to keep him out of sight as much as possible. We accomplish this by hiding him in odd places for discovery by unsuspecting housemates. This particular day, he showed up in the bathtub. He migrated from there to the freezer, standing guard over the frozen strawberries. The next day, he was found strung up in Kristina's closet with a woeful expression on his face. I really want to hang him by his neck from the chandelier one night after everyone's in bed, but the opportunity hasn't presented itself yet. We're also discussing sending him in a care package to a friend of ours in Iraq (we thought he might make a good addition to someone's dog tag). 

It's sure to be an interesting year, and hopefully one filled with as much growth as laughter. I must be off at the moment to spend a few hours administering CPR to plastic men without hearts (I confess, I feel the outlook for this particular patient population to be rather...grim). 

Musings and Muddlings

"It is by the grace of an eternally loving heavenly Father that there is an intolerable inner conflictedness that results from the incongruousness of living with irreconcilable inconsistency in our lives. It is the pain of the tension between what we claim to live by contrasted against the ugly reality of what we actually do that forces us to reexamine our moral and spiritual underpinnings and identify the areas in which we are desperately in need of repentance and renewal.

Do not allow the conflictedness of another to become your own. If you have an answer from Scripture, the fact that another questions its veracity or strives to evade the pain of applying it in their own lives does not make the truth itself less true. You will never save a drowning victim by drowning beside him so that at least he dies in good company."

This is an excerpt from my journal 10 days ago, as I was wrestling deeply with what it means to walk beside someone through difficult circumstances, empathize fully and meaningfully and with compassion, and yet not become entangled in the same web in which they--whether by choice or by happenstance--have become ensnared. For whatever reason, this has always been a tough one for me. It's difficult for me to empathize/sympathize/pray for and with someone without on some level taking personal ownership of their problem and becoming just as distraught--or sometimes more, perhaps--over the situation as they themselves are. Which...is totally not helpful. Yeah. News flash, eh?

What's more, I find that the devil--or is it the weakness of my own heart and mind?--is ever alert for opportunities when I am at my weakest emotionally, physically, and spiritually, and it is usually at these lowest of the low points that I find I am suddenly faced with a series of temptations that brings to light all of the darkest ugliness of my past and present failures with a venomous force that is both frightening and infuriating.

And...it always hits during finals week or the week before. Inevitably, relentlessly, and without fail, there will be a situation that is emotionally and spiritually taxing going on in the backdrop of the academic chaos that already has every nursing student at her wit's end mentally and physically. (Next year, I'm going to start marking these things on my calendar so I can be more fully prepared psychologically).

The past two weeks have been tough, in all honesty. There have been a number of very intense, very draining situations in a number of different friendships that have seemed to demand every ounce of emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical energy that I had...and then just a little bit more. But I'm convinced that frustrated tears, the moments of desperation, and the feelings of helplessness are all ordained by an omniscient Creator to guide each of us--and in this situation, one particular blonde--to realize and accept the fact that we are desperately in need of repentance, renewal, grace, and divine intervention.

May my heart be willing and open to accept and embrace the things that my Father is teaching me through these next several weeks.

What is it to love someone well? I find myself wondering this again as I lean over her bed, trying to help her sit up so I can maneuver her shriveled, crippled body onto the bedside commode, a process which has taken the place of the multiple trips to the bathroom which used to occupy her day.

Do I really care for her—and about her—as I would want someone to care if this were my mother? If this were the body of Christ Himself that I’m touching?

As I’ve witnessed—and gradually become a participant in—this sweet little woman’s journey towards death, I’ve had to ask myself some tough questions about what it means to love someone unconditionally, selflessly, and well.

Do I consistently treat her with respect and courtesy and fight to protect her feelings of personal dignity, regardless of how many times she accidentally pees on the floor, dribbles food all over herself, soils her bedding, or tips over a drinking glass?

I didn’t expect it to be hard to feel the right things in these situations—but sometimes, it IS hard for me. Sometimes, I want to feel impatient…because I forget to remind myself of what it probably feels like to be her right now—to have a mind and a body that are withering away, becoming less capable and less under her control with each passing day. That must be hard. Really hard.

Being in this position—having someone be almost completely dependent—has made me think a lot about friendship, too, and how people are wired.

I feel like it’s a tremendous weakness of human character that would cause us to show less respect for people when they’re physically or mentally incapable of demanding it—and yet I see this. I see this tendency in myself, and I see it in others as well.

And yet, if the measure of a man—or a woman—is determined by what he or she does when no one is there to hold them accountable, then what kind of people are we if we’re less kind, less compassionate, and less considerate when the accountability of answering to a person as capable as we are is removed? Do I provide the same level of care, same kind of compassion, and interact with the same degree of respect for the relational nature of the person for whom I’m caring when they’re unable to respond to me, unable to complain, or express appreciation? Sometimes, I’m ashamed to admit, the answer to that question is no. Which is inconsistent, because for several years, I’ve claimed that I believe that the value of personhood and the sacredness of humanity is in no way diminished by lack of physical or mental capacity. Our actions have a tricky way of betraying what exactly it is that we really believe, regardless of what our mouths say.

Sometimes, the circumstances that make us think, or challenge us to look deeply into the depths of our own character and honestly evaluate what we find there—sometimes these things are part of our own personal journey, which just happens to overlap with someone else’s. And so, in an odd way, I have found that my own personal journey towards exploring—on a new level—the superlative virtue of love has been oddly interlaced with my little landlady’s journey towards meeting the ultimate Lover of her soul face to face.

Over and over again during the past two semesters, I have been brought face to face, in an uncomfortably honest way, with the question of what exactly it means to love someone well.

We live in a generation where it is considered normal—and culturally acceptable—to stand up front and sing in the choir on Sunday and smile in a very spiritual and ever-so-holy fashion at all of the dear parishioners (unless they don’t clap after the choir finishes—then it’s probably acceptable to frown most disagreeably and possibly to send angry glares at certain people), and yet be a completely nasty, ungrateful, whiny and basically dreadful person to be around for six-and-a-half days out of the week.

Yet the Master we claim to be whole-heartedly serving says that men will know us by our fruits…and that we are known not by our words, but by our spiritual power…that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves…and that those who are truly sons of God will obey His commandments.

So my question then, is…in a world where we are called to shine as lights—to be counter-cultural, to be different, to be beacons of hope, and life, and love—how are we doing? If we’re failing to be even minimally nice to the homeless guy inconveniently blocking the sidewalk or the annoyingly slow cashier with the crazy hair in the express lane at WalMart, or the waitress who is distracted and distraught and providing rather poor service at Olive Garden, can that really be considered radical, God-inspired supernatural love?

It’s easy for me to point fingers at the ways that Christianity in America has failed—or to get indignant about the fact that the church in America is not living up to her calling. But what I’m brought face to face with over again is that I am a disciple. I am a Christian. I am a part of the church. I am an American. And I have failed to radically show the love of Christ as I’ve been called to do.

Radical change in a nation starts with radical devotion in the heart of one person who submits to the radical calling of a God who demands radical devotion. If I am unwilling to be that person, than I have forfeited my right to criticize anyone else for failing to be that person.

And I guess, what I’m gradually coming to through this journey of the past few months is the realization that each one of us has to deeply want—passionately yearn—to be that person.