Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more that watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.

**************

I drew back the living room curtain, to let the evening light in, and thought to myself “It’s like a depressed person lives here.” I cleaned to keep from crying, then I sat on the porch drinking a beer, counting the cars until he ran to me, and when he did, I was so confused that he was running.

*************

The morning light greeted my eyes already full of tears. I thought I had reached the end. I would be spending the day entirely alone, and was so very afraid.

I sat in the red chair and looked at the book on the table, trying to convince myself to open it while my coffee was brewing. I didn’t want to have to tell those girls again that I didn’t believe God loved me anymore, and that I wanted very little to do with Him. And what I wanted even less was to endure their encouraging and genuine responses about God’s love and faithfulness even in the hardest of times. So I opened it, halfway out of spite and halfway out of fear. The last words I’d read sent me reeling to the arms of the one whose heart ticks like a clock, and convinced me that there was no where I was safe from pain.

I read Psalm 130.
Once.
Twice.
Three and four more times.

I shut the book because I was actually angry at God for addressing me. If he stayed far away from me, and I could prove that he really did have it out for me, then I would be justified. But he didn’t. He crept right up from behind me and put into words the achings that had been pouring out of my eyes in the form of tears, so many tears that it seemed a little part of my soul went with each and every one until there was no soul left inside of me for God to revive and I would spend the rest of my days cold on the inside, quietly serving him until he took me home.

I sighed. I knew what I had to do. I ripped a page out of my journal, which is basically like cutting Samson’s hair. I wrote the Psalm out on that page, pausing when I wrote the word “Israel.” The name God chose for his hand-picked nation of people means “he who struggles with God.” In some way, that name has always given me hope, reassuring me that God knows how hard it is for us to actually believe in him, and that he doesn’t hate us when we don’t. I would rather fight with God for the rest of my life than blindly accept what someone tells me because they are a “stronger” Christian. And I think God’s okay with that, because I know that he made me, and that it is his hand that instilled that characteristic in me.

I read the Psalm out loud, my voice cracking and shaking, microcosmic parts of my soul spilling out from eyes. “O she who struggles with God, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.” I asked God to redeem me, to restore all the parts of my heart that I had given away, and the parts my heart I still possessed, but were so gnarled and scarred that I am afraid to show them to anyone. I thought about God’s promise in Joel, that he will restore the years that the locusts have stripped away.

Staring at my turquoise wall until they cones and rods in my eyes fired orange, I remembered the last time I felt the way I do now, spending everyday in my pajamas in a basement apartment in a town that reeked of death, and that every single day since I left that place, I have fought tooth and nail, to never, never go back.

But I am back. I am in that place again. I am the depressed person that lives in the house.

And it’s perfectly okay.

I always knew it would come back. For as much as I wanted to be one of those people who God has miraculously rescued from their days of mental illness, I’ve sort of always known that wouldn’t be my story. My diagnosis when I lived in that basement was “major depressive disorder, with personality change.” It’s some pretty heavy duty shit. I sort of always knew that I would fight this for the rest of my life, which is probably why it’s taken me so long to actually admit that I am legitimately depressed, because I was scared out of my mind, that even admitting that I was depressed again meant that I broken beyond repair.

I’m not writing this to elicit pity or sympathy, or because I think it’s cool to be sad.

I am writing this because now is the time when I have to fight. I’ve been fighting the wrong person for a while now, and when it clicked in my mind, that I am legitimately, clinically depressed, I felt free. I am not under God’s thumb, and God is not my enemy. My own brain is my enemy, which trust me, is a strange, strange realization.

Just like a cancer patient has to fight their own body, I have to fight my own mind. And just like a cancer patient needs lots of people around them who love them and will help them fight, I need that too.

In the end, this really is between me and God. But He is on my side, so I’m going to be okay. There’s a good chance I won’t always be myself, and I will probably do some really crazy things, and I don’t know how long it will take to get better, but I will.

When I was in the seventh grade, I loved a boy named Justin Schaewe. Being familiar with the English language, I’m guessing that you pronounced that “sha-way.” If you did, you would have been wrong. His last name was actually pronounced “sha-VAY.” Tricky, huh? He looked like Ponyboy, played by C. Thomas Howell, in the movie The Outsiders, and I loved him. He was a year older than me.
We had a class together, it was Spanish and I sat behind and to the left of him. Ms. Cervantes was our teacher. Every year she would dress up as an M&M for Halloween because she was short and fat and loved to eat M&Ms. She was married to one of the art teachers at our school, whom I always believed was gay. They had different last names and two dogs of the chow persuasion. I don’t think they really loved each other.
The girl who sat in front of me in Spanish class was named Jennifer. She looked like an eagle. A pretty blond eagle with perfect bangs who played volleyball. She was in my grade, and very, very popular. Justin Schaewe was popular too, he hung out with Mike and Nicole (if you went to Falcon Middle School in the years 1992-1995, you would get the reference). In our Spanish class, we picked out Spanish names to call each other during class. Jennifer picked the name Esperanza, which means hope. I picked the name Cristina, which means Christina, because that was the closest thing I could find to Kristen.
For a brief period of time, Jennifer and Justin Schaewe dated. This was a terrible period for me, because I knew that this meant that Justin Schaewe could not love me. We were not fated to be together. It was also terrible\y awkward because Jennifer and I were in the same grade and had other classes together and we were friends, in that way that a popular girl is friends with the smart fat girl who is good at maintaining a conversation, and listens to you when you talk about your boyfriend whom she secretly loves, but you would have know idea that she loves him, because to you she is so clearly out of his league. Duh.
Just when I was getting over the fact that Justin Schaewe could never love me, his grandfather died and he was not at school for a week. He had to travel somewhere to go the funeral, which was very exotic, because we lived in a small country town and I had only flown in an airplane once. I know all of that because Ms. Cervantes told our whole class. I think there are laws against that now.
Jennifer and Justin broke up eventually, Spanish class ended and we all moved on with our lives. Since Justin was a year older than us he continued his education at Falcon High School. (I am also a proud alumni of Falcon Elementary School. I told you it was a small rural town). Later, I transitioned from Falcon High School to Sand Creek High School, the other, brand new, high school in our district. Most of the kids at that school were the city kids who were bussed out to Falcon High School, and had gone to Horizon Middle School, our rival. But there were a handful of the country kids like me, who opted to attend Sand Creek because of its promising future and because it was a school that didn’t allow students to hitch their horses to the front of the building while they were in class.
One of those was Justin Shaewe. Finally we had a special bond that was shared with only a handful of other students at Sand Creek: we were the country kids. By no means did this make us friends. He continued to be popular, and I continued to be smart and fat. He wore ski goggles on the side of his head, even in the warmest weather and I wore long-sleeved cardigans purchased from Goodwill. Our taste in fashion may have been different, but he and I shared the bond of having known each other through elementary and middle school, and when he nodded casually to me as we passed in the hallway I knew it was because he was remembering the time when I sat behind and to the left of him in Ms. Cervantes Spanish class, and not at all because his silly orange goggles were slipping down the side of his face.

Bzz.

Bzzzz.

THWACK!


That's what I heard all day long yesterday. A gigantic fly - you know, the ones that are so big you think it's a bee - kept smacking itself into the window in front of the couch I was sitting on. All day. Here's how it would go: I could hear the fly buzzing casually around the room, then a pause and CHARGE!


BZZZZZZZ...... THWACK!


Sometimes, I swear as it bounced off the window, I could see it shakes it little head, furrow its brow in an attempt to figure out what it was doing wrong, and why it could not get outside. All day long, this happened.

A keen reader will note that from the above illustration, that I, in fact, sat on the couch all day. Aside from the ten or so steps it takes for me to get to the bathroom and a few petrifying trips into the Basement of Doom to do laundry, this would be an accurate summation of my day. Some may lambast me for my laziness when there are so many things on my to do list, but truly I think I needed a day to just sit and look out the window.

And I needed to sit and stew on God. Who and what he is to me right now, and who and what I am to him, and what precisely I'm supposed to do with and about the answers to both those questions. In my last couple of real quiet times, the ones when I actually think about what I'm reading and really genuinely pray, in those times, I'm actually starting to be honest with God again.

To be honest with the fact that I feel pretty shitty in my heart, but on the surface I've been acting like everything is hunky dory.

To be honest with the fact that the advice I give other women, is not working in my life ( Here's a great example: If a woman told me she was feeling bad about x, y or even z, I would tell her that feelings are not real, they are part of our flesh and to stake her flag in the truth God provides in his word.)

To be honest with the fact taht I tell my friends I trust God, that I tell God I trust God, but somewhere, deep down in there, I really don't.

To be honest with the fact that I believe God has hurt me and I don't know why he did. (Once again, if a woman came to me with this complaint, I would tell her that God allowed the hurt, but didn't do the hurting.)

To be honest with the fact that I know, or think I know, the "answers" to these sorts of questions, but that I'm not sure if I believe them.

To be hosent with the fact that I am scared of God - not that I fear him, but that I am scared of him - and that is why I have been quietly angry at him for the last year.


Slowly but surely in these last few real quiet times, I've come to understand that this is the place my heart is in. I've been pondering about the dreadful thing in my heart, what I should do about it. What I should do. I am a very foolish girl indeed. Today I realized that there is nothing I can do about it, clinging to all of this nastiness and keeping it trapped down in my heart, going through the motions of my faith, That's what I can do about it, and that's what I have been doing for the last year.
So I asked God for help. For the reals this time.
I told him all of this stuff and I asked him to take out of my heart the thing of which I cannot let loose. And I told him I was scared of him. Because I prayed a prayer not too unlike that one round about this time last year and he shattered me. I'm not to well convinced he's put me back together yet, and I think it's because I have been resisting him. This time though, I asked him, begged him in fact to be gentle with me.

I believe He will, because of this verse:

Psalm 119:41

May your unfalining love come to me O Lord, your salvation according to your promise.

God gave that to me in my quiet time, just after I prayed that he'd gently take apart my heart. And I believe him. I think that's why I'm so confused right now. I genuinely believe God (not just in him, but I believe him) and I genuinely doubt him as well. It's a strange strange place to be.

Midway through Day on the Couch '07 I wrote the words "I am the Lord's." on my hand, something I haven't done for a long, long time. Maybe because i haven't genuinely believed it in an equally long time. I just started to write the letters without even really thinking about it. As I looked at it through out the day, there were some moments I knew it to be true and some moments I felt ashamed to have such a bold statement on my flesh.

But I think it's the start, the beginning of the new place God is taking me, that I certainly have not been to before...

The Silverware Anniversay

While packing my room getting ready to move for the umpteenth time my life, I came across some of my old journals. I flipped through them, one journal was from this time last year, one was from 2002 and one chronicled the beginning weeks of my new life in Salt Lake City. I found it appropriate to spend a little time this afternoon strolling down memory lane, since today is my five year anniversary of moving to Salt Lake City.

Looking over these journals, I was surprised by how much I have not changed. (Get ready, here comes a tangent ...) My handwriting has not though, which I find quite curious, I didn't think handwriting was actually supposed to change. And I don't mean it's gotten neater, or more like a grown-up's writing, I mean literally, the way in which I form letters has changed. Weird.

My prayers aren't all that different now from what they were five years ago, or three years ago, or even last year. I still spend a lot of time languishing over boys like a twelve year old girl. I'm still begging God to take over my whole entire heart. I'm still praying to be used effectively by him. And I'm still waiting.

I'm still waiting for a nice boy to come along and realize how bad ass I really am - in a Christian sort of way. (No one will ever be able to accuse me of having low self-esteem, that much is true.) I'm still waiting for God to take over my whole heart, because the further along this road I walk with him, the more I recognize the nastiness of my flesh. I'm still waiting to be used effectively by God, because there is so much work to be done.

Does that mean God hasn't answered any of these prayers? At first, after glancing over these journals, I thought maybe it did, but that's just my current dissatisfaction with life affecting my perception of the truth.

The boy thing? Well, that's sort of it's own punchline between me and God (and my closest friends) at this point in time. I can't guard my heart worth a damn, but I certainly can sit on my hands.

In regard to the last two issues, the ones that really are more important than whether or not I ever get married, I think it comes down to this: Yes, I am depressed. Yes, I am disappointed in my current state of affairs. Yes, I am disenchanted with God. All of that is true, and I don't think there is a single shred of harm in admitting it.

Because I have admitted it, and owned up my frustrations, I find myself in a bizarre place with God, somewhere our relationship has never gone before. Simultaneously, I feel that Jesus Christ is both my only hope for anything good to come out of my life and the only person in whom I can put all of my trust in as well as my greatest adversary. (I understand theologically that he is not, I'm just be honest right now.) The very fact that I can tell God that I'm frustrated with Him and what He is doing in my life, but continue to seek His face, continue to follow His word, and continue to desire him, well that has to count for something, right?

Right?

How Long?

I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again.
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
How long? Not long, because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpets that shall never call retreat. He is lifting up the hearts of men before His judgement seat. Oh, be swift, my soul to answer Him. Be jubilant, my feet. Our God is marching on.

-Martin Luther King, Jr speaking after a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama

Crush of the Week

The first real crush I can remember was on Luke Skywalker. No kidding. I'm more of a Han Solo girl these days, but I can recall the exact place I was seated in my parents living room (on top of the heating vent at my father's feet) the first time I thought "That boy is cute." I could have been no older than four sitting there watching Luke Skywalker crash his X-wing in the into the snow during the opening battle of "The Empire Strikes Back."


The crushes have never really stopped since then ...


I think of a crush as overwhelming feelings of adoration for a person, place or thing, whom for a brief period of time you wonder how on earth you ever lived and breathed without experiencing their presence, and in whom you develop a persistant desire to unfolded every aspect of their being. And then, you get over it.


With this definition in mind, I've had a lot of crushes over the years, and they don't always relate to people.


Here's a list of my current crushes:

• Doug Fabrizio, host of Radio West on KUER. I have no idea what he looks like, nor do I enjoy his show all that much, but each morning when he chimes in during the local news report, I find his voice riveting.
• Coretta Scott King, I'm just shy of finishing a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr and over and over again he explains that his wife and the support she gave him are what allowed him to be the man he was and lean the peaceful revolution that he did. I want to know more about her, and how to be a wife of a man like that.
• Body for Life (I never said it had to be a human being). Um, I never really thought that I would publically admit that I enjoy excerise, but seriously, I've only been doing this program for a week and I can't get enough of it.
• Hazelnut Gelato. Reason alone to go to Provo.

R&R

There's a rainbow and a river outside my door, and the sky is the color I fancy it will be when Jesus comes back. The clouds cover the blue and are so dark they are nearly purple, the living breathing definition of grouchy. But there's light too, coming from somewhere that I can't see, and it's like it's trapped underneath those heavy heavy clouds an it just keeps bouncing and fracturing and shining.

Light never dies, it just goes somewhere else for the time being.

There's a rainbow and river outside my door, and I'm wondering why things are the way they are and why I always wonder why things are the way they are.

We just tried to send my roommates weinerdog down the raging gutter river like baby Moses, but she resisted and flipped us off. It's true, I saw it happen. Then we raced pine cones in the raging gutter river, while our elderly across the street neighbor scowled at us standing at his door in only his short shorts. I waved and he smiled. Sometimes old men aren't angry, their faces just make them look that way. Matt Miller won the pine cone race. Of course.

Mostly, when I think too much or try to withdraw the spiritual symbolism of of standing at my doorstep gazing at a rainbow and a raging river and I remember that God gave Noah a rainbow to show him that He would keep all of His promises after destroying the world, the best thing to do is go run around outside and yell.

Yelling always makes me feel better.