Comfort in the Hallway

In the nearly three months since I adopted my dog Cassio, he’s spent every night on the floor of my bedroom. There have been some hiccups, like when we had to switch which side of the bed he was on since he kept rolling over in his sleep and slamming into the very rattly baseboard heater by the window, or when we learned the hard way that pushing the dog bed all the way to the back of his crate only meant he’d dig ferociously at the plastic for fifteen minutes before falling asleep, but all in all we both appreciate the mutual safety each other’s company brings.

This morning, my alarm went off like it does ever weekday of my life, only this time I didn’t have a fussy dog trying to shepherd me out my bedroom door to provide him with breakfast. Cassio is passionate about breakfast, so this was odd. Then I realized not only did I not have a fussy dog trying to shepherd me, I didn’t have a fussy dog anywhere in the room. Which was both odd and illuminating.

Sure enough, I opened my bedroom door and there was my extra fussy dog. He got himself shut out last night when he snuck off into the dark, and then spent the whole morning clinging to me to make up for our separation.

As I tripped over this needy pile of fluff more than once in my morning routine, I couldn’t help but compare Cassio’s predicament to my life over the past few months. How many times have I slipped out of the presence of God of my own accord, spent the night in the barren hallway, and then spent the next morning freaking out because the absence of my master was so terrifying? When in reality I’m more than welcome to spend every moment by His side?

In some ways, living in Colorado for the past 7 months (so long already!) has been everything I’d ever dreamed.

The mountains decorate my every drive and tower up over my apartment building. The weather is so much nicer than anywhere I’ve lived—we haven’t once hit anything above 85° F and it’s already June. People are forever outside, walking dogs and riding bikes and running up hills that make me out of breath just to think about, and the sheer variety of walks, hikes, and scrambles available within a 30 minute radius is remarkable.

Colorado is magnificent, y’all, and I wouldn’t move back to Texas unless someone was paying me a minimum of 6 figures. Might take 7, though. It’s that much Home already.

In other ways, though, in the ways that don’t show on the outside, this move has been really hard.

Coming into this move I knew that finding a church community to do life with would be really important, because I do best in a unit of like-minded peers who’ll keep me accountable for chasing after Jesus, but that’s turned out to be harder than I anticipated. My routine has changed, especially with a dog who demands every scrap of my attention before I abandon him for the day (he really likes to nap, so don’t feel too badly for him; he just sleeps all day) and so prioritizing a quiet time…hasn’t been a priority.

All that to say, it feels like I’m spending a lot of time in the hallway instead of curled up near my Master, and it’s draining.

It’s one of those things that I could have written about any time in the 7.5 months since I last posted anything on my blog, because nothing really changes despite my continued resolutions to the contrary. I celebrate the really great parts of life, and occasionally I pause and remember that there was a time that my relationship with my Abba was so much more vibrant and vital. But when life itself is vibrant and vital, the sacrifice of intimacy seems less critical.

Louie Giglio wrote a book called Goliath Must Fall, which my church in Texas studied…oh, a year or so ago? Anyway, in the book, Giglio lays out five of the giants common to our lives and how, though they’ve been defeated by the saving work of Christ, they still roar at us from the grave and need slaying in order for us to walk in the freedom we’ve been given. The five giants he lists are the giants of: Fear, Rejection, Addiction, Anger, and Comfort.

Comfort is a giant in my life right now. And that’s a weird giant to name and face down in a world that worships it.

Those other four in the list? Fear, rejection, addiction, and anger? Yeah, I could probably go up to anyone in the street, ask them their opinion on those topics, and they’d agree with me that they’re bad. No one would claim that those are great foundations for living—though we build our lives on and around them all the same.

But comfort? Comfort is a good thing! Comfort is the reason our parents worked so hard and sacrificed so much on our behalf. Comfort is basically the difference between first world and third world countries, right?

How can something so right, so good be a giant in need of slaying?

Ross King’s song “Clear The Stage” puts it this way:

Anything I put before my God is an idol
Anything I want with all my heart is an idol
And anything I can’t stop thinking of is an idol
And anything that I give all my love is an idol

So. Comfort. My warm bed in the morning. A good-sized savings account. Vacation plans.

Not bad things. But not the One Thing.

I’ve putting the wrong things first, and so although Colorado is undoubtedly great, I’m not living in the full greatness that’s offered to me. Sacrificing intimacy with the one who knows the number of hairs on my head (even when I cut those hairs way too short back in November and avoided mirrors for two weeks) cannot be acceptable anymore. Seven months of spiritual stagnation is seven months too many. Life outside my window is bright and vivid; life inside must become so, too.

Comfort must fall.

So go ahead and ask me what I’m learning. Ask me what I’m reading (and I don’t mean which novel I’ve picked for my 45th book of the year.) Community and accountability are the best weapons I know against indifference, and I’ve got just enough people-pleaser in me for them to be pretty good incentives too.

Here’s to a summer that’s beautiful for all the right reasons, and here’s to making sure Cassio doesn’t accidentally get shut out in the hallway again tonight.

❤, Melissa

A Letter to Me

Melissa, what do you even have to talk about?

Well, let’s see.

You’ve been at your job for over five months now. It’s still going well. You got to repaint your office and you’re recovering chairs now and nothing gets your soul excited like making old things new, so there’s that. You still hate answering phones, but that’s basically everyone under, what, 30? So no surprise there. On the hard days, you remind yourself that the Lord led you to exactly where you are in ways only he could do, and he’s going to sustain you until he’s got the next door prepared to walk through. You anticipate but try really hard not to overlook the beauties of the now.

You were in a play, and it defied your fears and was a beautiful, cohesive piece that made audiences laugh in all the right ways every night. That laughter sure was rewarding after how many nights rehearsals left you in tears. You try so hard, and sometimes you try so hard that you can’t see the sparkle for the grind. Audiences remind you of the sparkle in things. The play closed and you’re too busy to really notice its absence.

Golly, you’re busy. You book every moment you can and then wonder why you’re staggeringly tired every day. Today it’s a trip to Florida, with a crazy-early wake up call. So what did you do last night? Oh, just accept an invitation for a last minute game night, that’s all. It was worth it of course. It will still be worth it when you come home to an untidy house on Tuesday since you didn’t clean it Friday. But, girl, you need to accept that you’re always going to be tired if you keep running pell-mell at life. Stop being surprised.

Life is so worth charging pell-mell. The deeper you dig into God’s good love for you, the more deeply you fall in love with him. And the more deeply you fall in love with him, the more your eyes are opened to how good his love is for you. The world has so much color when you worship, and the ache you feel for the pain of others is so much better than the ache of feeling nothing at all. You haven’t arrived, but you’re not stagnating anymore. You stagnated for awhile, but you’re not anymore.

More and more, you’re wondering if your “calling” is in a different direction than you’ve ever dreamed. You’re beginning to think that maybe the MBA wasn’t so that you’d land some high-paying, high-profile job, but rather so God could teach you some lessons and grow some things in you that wouldn’t have come about if that season of your life had looked differently than it did. Can you give up on your expectations in exchange for all that is offered by a God who gives abundantly more than we could ever ask or imagine? That’s a daily struggle, but oh, oh it thrills you to dream about might happen if you can. You sometimes whisper a prayer under your breath, ‘This dream is outside of what I can make happen. You’re going to have to show up.’ You sometimes have to wrestle your heart to mean it. You’re sometimes afraid of what happens if and when he says ‘Yes.’ But sometimes it’s too pressing to merely whisper because you mean it. Keep meaning it. And keep whispering it even when you just want to mean it.

Now, as you sit on a plane in unexpected turbulence, you murmur a prayer under your breath for the people around you who are afraid. You realize yet again how many people are around you and you feel that familiar tug to get pulled into the vortex of contemplating the vast body of experience contained in this plane, the wild idea that we each carry within us an entire world that our fellow passengers will never know. Melissa, you live constantly on the cusp of being completely paralyzed by overfeeling everything for everyone. You see a world you cannot control, colors you cannot explain, people you cannot possibly know, and it washes over you in a way you cannot describe. It’s a strength and a weakness, and increasingly you’re having to come to terms with what it means to be you in a world that tells you you’re too sensitive/vulnerable/invested. That same gracious, big-love God keeps unfolding this path for you as you walk along it, and as you sit on this plane in this turbulence with all these people, your only real option is to focus your eyes and over-full senses on the God who never says you’re too sensitive/vulnerable/invested for feeling as deep as you do and loving as recklessly as you do. He made you the way you are. You know him in the vibrant way you do because he made you exactly the way you are. You’ll have keep reminding yourself of that for the rest of your life probably.

You can’t find your fit on the enneagram or the MBTI or any of the arbitrary personality tests that float around. You don’t blog as often as you mean to. You send ridiculously long texts that you punctuate meticulously and you think about pizza more than anyone who doesn’t work for a pizzeria has any right to do.

Your life is messy but, even when it’s hard, you’re madly in love with it.

So what do you have to talk about? Life, my dear. Life in its minutia and life in its broad, sweeping strokes.

Remember whose you are. Remember that the turbulence passes.

Now get out there and enjoy some much needed beach time.

Love, Me

Take Arms Against A Sea Of Troubles

How is your relationship with Jesus, or how healthy is that relationship, based on the idea of that relationship being your first love? How would you rate that relationship on a scale of 0-10 (0 being I have no relationship, 10 being it’s the best it’s ever been)?

That was the final discussion question at my life group on Sunday. (For those not down with hip modern-church lingo, that’s what my church calls once-a-week, in-home Bible study groups.)

Every week we discuss the sermon, and this Sunday it was about evaluating where you are with Christ and returning to your first love, which is a great thing to focus on and certainly something that many of us need to do. Since I ended up making a last minute trip to see my family in Seminole this weekend, I wasn’t at church but got to listen to the sermon using the church’s podcast, and I was really tracking until the end when we got to this question.

Until the end of life group when we got to this question.

I know for a fact that I’m not at a 10. My relationship with Jesus is not the best it’s ever been. But…I can’t put a number to where I’m at.

Trust me: I tried.

I tried in the car, traveling across West Texas with nothing to look at except dead horizon and nothing to do but ponder. I ended up turning on some worship music and singing loud because it was easier than mentally spinning my wheels.

I tried on Monday, sitting on a couch surrounded by people I’ve grown to trust enough to be super vulnerable with. Finally, when everyone else had spoken and the silence waited for me, I had to admit in a voice that quavered more than I preferred, “I don’t know.”

I don’t know, because right now, in this season, everything in me is screaming “UNWORTHY.”

I don’t know, because right now I feel like a less-than-1. Because I have felt less-than for weeks.

In case you haven’t noticed, I am in a (hopefully not but maybe) lifelong battle with self-worth. And, y’all, the struggle is real right now. I feel stripped of my authority, my ability, and my validity. It feels as though every thing I do, every step I take is full of doubt and apology. I feel like apologizing for even existing.

And when you feel full doubt and anxiety, stripped of authority and ability and validity, you will never feel like a 10 or a 9 or an 8 or anything but a less-than-1, because your gut will tell you that you aren’t doing enough or walking close enough or praying hard enough.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
John 10:10a (ESV)

On Sunday (which I listened to on Monday) our pastor closed up things with a call to self-evaluate and to commit to reclaiming your first love if you were anywhere but a 10. And then he said the thing that hit me right where I’m at, right in the midst of the doubt and the lies: he said that rather than guilt, he was praying for anger. That it’s okay to be angry that we have an enemy who has come to steal, kill, and destroy, and it’s okay to be angry that he’s made headway in our lives.

It’s okay to have a righteous fury here.

(Pastor David said this much better than me, but I’m currently trying not to freeze at the office so just be impressed that I can still type given how numb my fingers are getting.)

I am not okay, and it’s because I have an enemy whose goal is to steal and destroy my identity as a worthy child of God. I am not okay, and it’s alright to be angry about that.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
John 10:10 (ESV)

Abundant life feels out of reach when I’m living in a place of not okay. But feelings do not dictate reality, and it’s when I make the switch from focusing on what I’m feeling to what I know that life abundant finally has a chance.

I know that I am known.

I know that I am capable.

I know that I have a voice and talents and I have been uniquely gifted to serve God.

I know that God sees me as worthy, that God declares me worthy not because of what I’ve done but because of what has been done for me. I know that–get this–God declares me worthy to be used by him.

Even in the midst of my mess. Even in the middle of my mistakes.

God declares me worthy to be used by him.

So where am I on that troublesome scale from 0 to 10? I’m not a 0. I’m not a 10. And I’m not ready to commit to much else right now. The main thing here is that I am working toward a 10. I am battling toward a 10, y’all, and it’s not a battle against flesh and blood. (Trust me, if there was some way to physically fight something hard enough that I’d never again struggle with self-doubt pulling me away from Jesus, I can promise you I’d be in much better shape than I am today because I’d take that thing down.)

I think this blog has turned out to be part sermon to myself, part journal, part battle cry, but what else is new?

If you’re inclined to pray for me, pray that I’d have the fortitude to keep fighting toward 10 and that I’d be able to take back the ground that I’ve lost.

If you’re inclined to the same struggles that I am, take heart. We’re in this together, yes?

If you’re still reading in hopes that I’ll acknowledge the fact that it’s been literal months since I last wrote a blog post, yes, yes it has been. But I’m not going to apologize because a) it’s my blog and b) I don’t get paid to do this. I get paid to sit in an office that’s either too hot or too cold and sometimes have so much free time that I write blog posts to email to myself for formatting later, but at least I have a job because job hunting is up there among the most spiritually, mentally, emotionally exhausting things I’ve ever done.

Keep it real, y’all.

– Melissa

P.S. If you only read this because you thought it had something to do with Shakespeare based on its title, clearly it does not. You’re welcome.

Feelings are Fickle

Today I was pondering a job lead and framing the future in light of that possibility. You know: imagining myself in the position and deciding how I felt about it. And it’s exciting, this possibility of having an answer to the unknown future I’ve been wrestling with for so long.

(I really want to just have an answer. Even if it meant God saying, “Okay, Melissa. You’re going to drive a garbage truck for a living.” Like, okay, just tell me where to go and what to do and please please please stop teaching me about trusting you while I feel blindfolded. I am so ready for this metaphorical blindfold to come off.)

While I was busy imagining and dreaming and being excited, I heard myself say, “Woah there, Melissa. Don’t get too worked up over the goodness of God.”

I’m pretty sure I physically winced.

I know what the intention was behind the thought: Just because the lead seems providentially dropped in your lap doesn’t mean that it’s meant to be. Don’t get so carried away thinking that this job is “the one” that if it doesn’t happen you’ll feel betrayed by God. He’ll either open this door or another one, and both options are good ones because you serve a good God who’s already told you he’s got a plan.

Even so, my mental voice’s choice of words could not have been worse.

Because yes, Melissa! Do get too worked up over the goodness of God! Let it soak deep into your anxiety-riddled soul! Let it wash away the insecurity that clouds your vision, and let it color your world!

If there is one thing I have lacked in the past month, it is being overwhelmed by the goodness of God.

It isn’t that he’s been any less good. I just haven’t looked for it as often. I’ve allowed myself to get caught up in the guilt and anxiety of less-than-ness, allowed myself to believe the lie that I am going nowhere because I’m not good enough to get there.

The first quarter this year I (clearly, based on the excess of effusive blog posts/social media posts/post-it notes from the period) was in a great place. God was doing big things in my life, and I was on board and hungry for more. I was feeling this whole child-of-God thing. And it felt good.

From that mountain top, I could have told you that God is bigger than our feelings. I could have assured you that feel great or feel not at all, He remains the same and continues to pursue and desire us. I could have warned you that relating to God on a purely emotional level is setting yourself up for failure, because your emotions will ebb and flow, and if that’s the basis of how you see God, your perception is going to be super skewed.

I most certainly know that God’s character is not dictated by my emotions. I know that his presence is not dictated by how I feel. If I had a dollar for all the things I know but I don’t know, I’d have a lot of dollars. A lot of dollars.

Anyway, Q1 ended and April came and when suddenly graduation was a month away, my eyes wandered from the one who calms the storm to the storm itself and my most prevalent emotions once again became anxiety and insecurity. The storm-calmer never moved. But I stopped feeling safe.

As I’m processing through all this on paper tonight (as I generally do), the story of Jesus walking on water comes to mind. The disciples are on a boat, it’s pretty stormy, and Jesus isn’t with them. Then suddenly a dude comes toward the boat, walking on the water, and of course they flip. The guy says that there’s no need to fear because it’s him, Jesus, and you have to know all the other disciples were rolling their eyes when impulsive Peter opens his mouth.

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

“Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

Matthew 14:28-31 (NIV)

Show of hands: who thinks there was any version of events where Jesus was going to let Peter drown?

(Okay, if your hand is raised, you look dumb and I can’t see it. Put your hand down.)

No. Of course Jesus wasn’t going to let Peter drown. That was never on the agenda. Peter was as safe out of the boat as he was in the boat, so long as Jesus was right there. He should have known that, right? He’d walked on water, for crying out loud, before he started to sink.

Hi, my name is Peter, and I forget the faithfulness of God in my life because the wind is scary and even though Jesus is right in front of me, I don’t happen to be touching him just now.

I just realized how sarcastic that sounds, but I’m actually serious. That is exactly where I’m at, how I’ve been living lately.

But the good news is that Jesus is right there to stretch out his hand and catch me. I’m not going to drown. I won’t drown in the anxiety of turning in job applications. I won’t drown in the unknown of the future. I won’t drown in the changing dynamics of friendships and community.

April wasn’t all bad. There were moments of definite peace, when I rooted myself in the word and lived out of my Abba’s strength rather than my own. Brief moments, but moments all the same.

I still feel like I’m not feeling anything. (Okay, that’s not accurate. How about this: I feel like all I’m feeling is the things I don’t want to feel.) But I’m going to keep reminding myself that my emotions don’t dictate reality. I’m going to cling to the fact that not only was Peter as safe in the boat as out, but he was also as safe as when Jesus grabbed his hand as before he felt anything but the spray off the stormy sea as he was when Jesus grabbed his hand.

I’m not drowning. We’re not drowning.

God isn’t defined by my emotions.

I’m making it my goal this week to be aware of each time I think or use the words “I feel like,” and then replace those statements with things I know. For example, I feel like I don’t really want to sleep, but I know that I’m ridiculously exhausted and need to get some rest. Night, all. Thanks for doing life with me.

– Melissa

Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick’s Day would be a super cool holiday just on its own. I mean, the colors, the music, the dancing… I love Ireland. And I love its holiday.

(One of these days I’m going to make it to the country, and it’s going to be fantastic. Until then, I have its pictures on my walls, and its flag up by my mirror. Once a year, on March 17th, my ~6%-Irish-self becomes 100% Irish.)

But then you add to the mix Saint Patrick himself. And that takes this holiday to a whole new level.
When Patrick was 16, he was captured and taken to Ireland as a slave. That doesn’t sound like very much fun to me. I mean, being a slave is one of the worst things that most of us can imagine, I think. But that was Patrick’s reality. For six years, Patrick was a slave in Ireland, and then he escaped.

Hooray for escape!

I know that if I was a slave, that would be my ultimate goal: to escape. And once I escaped, you had better bet that I would be going home and telling everybody about how horrible my life had been, and how miraculous my escape was, and how glad I was to be home. You probably wouldn’t be able to get me to shut up. Except that’s not how Patrick decided to handle life.

You see, Patrick escapes Ireland, returns home, and subsequently returns to Ireland to spread the gospel.

Today, as I’ve celebrated with Irish jigs and green-dyed foods, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the courage and Christlike love that Patrick displayed all those years ago, and on the implications and effects of his actions. Rend Collective, one of my favorite bands, is from Ireland. I personally think that Rend is making big steps for the kingdom, with their wild, celebratory worship and focus on the call of the worldwide church to spread the gospel. Without Patrick, could Ireland have birthed this movement? What other world changers and kingdom movers are part of the ripple effect of Patrick’s decision to follow where the spirit led?

I guess I don’t have overmuch to say tonight, but I did want to comment on this my favorite holiday, because it’s about more than drinking Irish whiskey and pinching people and having good luck.

It’s about a former slave turned cleric, who stepped out in in radical faith and forgiveness, and who allowed God to use him to tear down strongholds of the enemy and to shine the light of Christ into a pagan nation.

I encourage you to do a bit of your own research into St. Patrick, because there’s so many cool stories about him but I’m getting to the point of tired where I can’t even type accurately anymore. In the meantime and in-between-time, Happy St. Patrick’s Day, my friend. Here’s to shamrocks, potatoes, and the color green.

– Melissa
(is anyone even surprised anymore when I link to Rend Collective videos at the end of my posts? check this one out anyway.)

seen

Tonight, I told God that I needed to be seen.

Straight up told him:

I said, “God, I need you to show me that I am seen. I don’t care if it is physically or spiritually, but I need you to show up and show me I’m seen.”

And then I waited.

I sat in the middle of a church auditorium filled with people pressing in to the spirit of God and waited for my miraculous sign.

And I sat.

And I sat.

And as I sat, waiting for someone to walk up to me or something to overwhelm my mind, I started hearing. The girls behind me, comparing encounters they’d had with the Holy Spirit, encouraging and strengthening each other with the power of their testimony. The mother quietly explaining this whole Holy-Spirit-thing to her son. The quiet weeping of someone being prayed over.

“Melissa,” he said.

“Melissa, what if what I need from you right now is to see?”

That was not the answer I was looking for. That is not the hug of heavenly affirmation I was seeking.

But…what if it’s less about me?

What if instead of feeling less-than, I’m supposed to be reminding others that he is more-than?

I don’t have my personal ministry figured out yet. I still haven’t found my niche, or my spectacular calling, or whatever. Heck, half the time I’m simply trying to figure out how to be a decent friend—or even just a decent human being, for that matter.

But I definitely think that this whole Melissa-living-for-God-thing has to do with seeing. Not the supernatural per se, though I pray for that. Not the future, though that would also be nice. But seeing people. And, more than that, letting others know that they are seen.

I can say with relative confidence that there are few things worse than living in invisibility.

Invisibility is this constant nagging that your pain is not worth the time of others. Everything you feel, all the darkness, it lives inside your chest and your chest becomes an echo chamber and there is no one there to muffle the noise with their presence, no one to share the weight of it all with you.

In invisibility, there is no one there at all, even when there is.

Invisibility creeps in and tells you that no one notices your comings and goings. No one needs you. No one would miss you, because no one would notice you were gone.

No one.

No one.

No one.

But I can.

I can notice your goings and comings. God already does. Let me be his eyes.

I can listen to the silent cries of your breaking heart. God already does. Let me be his ears.

I can wrap you in my arms because you are here and you belong here and I don’t want you to go anywhere ever. Hugs are nice. Let me give you a God-hug.

Because here’s the thing: I get it.

I get what it’s like to feel invisible. It’s a feeling that I struggle with at least once a week—more during bad weeks. But it’s just that: it’s a feeling. And our feelings lie, frequently and unabashedly.

The truth is that I have so many people who love me, who see me, and who value what I have to say. I may not always feel like I do, but I do. And, best of all, I have an Abba-Father God who sees me, loves me, shows up in personal ways, and provides what I truly need. He provides what I need when I don’t know that I need it. Turns out that I had it wrong tonight:

I thought that what I needed was to be seen, to be reminded of who I am in Christ. Instead, I got reminded of who Christ is calling me to be.

Tbh, this one’s way better.

– Melissa

I Will Be Here by Steven Curtis Chapman

(Okay, so this is technically a song SCC wrote for his wife, but it came on my exceedingly random shuffle today, and it pretty well captures the state of mind I’m currently in. So just bear with me and appreciate the lyrics as they apply to what I just said. Or don’t bear with me, don’t listen to the song, and ignore this entire post-script. Your choice.)

A Song of Worship in the Night

Wow. Family. What a crazy blessing and a crazy burden.

It’s been months and months since we’ve all been together last and, in many ways, it’s so so good to be reunited. Reminiscing about all our crazy inside jokes. Telling half a story because we all know the punch line. Real, honest, raw admissions of who we are and who we’re becoming. What scares us. What we celebrate.

But, at the same time, life is messy and so are we.

Which is why I’m sitting on the trunk of my car, parked on the side of a country road, staring up at the moon as one of my favorite worship playlists chases away the silence of the moment.

The house was pretty pressure-cooker-esque tonight, as a stressful week of finals and life collided with a mass of strong opinions and dominant personalities. Because, in my family, we were all born to be leaders.

There’s a lot of us. There’s a lot of leaders.

That said, I think that it’s so exciting to see how God is working in each member of my family, in such unique and beautiful ways. Each of us is on a journey, taking steps in our own fashion and at our own pace. None of us are the people we were this time last year, and praise God for that, and praise God that he’s not done either.

I remind myself of that excitement and praise as my insides ache from tension.

The tension of our tension.

35° temps notwithstanding, I’m a windows-down, music-loud kind of a driver and tonight’s escape was no different: cold air blasting my face, one hand on the steering wheel, the other opened to heaven.

Tonight’s playlist is titled, ‘Life feels fragile. God is not.’

What I love about worship music is that the words are there when you need them, ready-made and designed to remind yourself of truths—be they about the character of God or the reality of reality. But the moment that the words create give space for the cries of our hearts. The gritty, gut-level responses that the wind and the cold and the beat tear from me as I chase my headlights through the night.

“God! I’m not okay!”

That was tonight. That was, oh, fifteen minutes ago, before my fingers started to go numb and my throat started to go hoarse. That was as the last chords of a song faded and I needed to be heard in the moment before the new song came. That was, and is, the truth that I can’t quite explain.

Sometimes feelings don’t make sense. I’m learning that.

God, I’m not okay sometimes and I don’t know why.

Even as my shout echoed in my ears, and the sudden tears warmed my cheeks, Spotify picked the next song from the 33 on this playlist. “Come On My Soul” by Rend Collective. It’s a super simple song. But it was right.

“Sing my soul. Sing my soul. Sing my soul. Sing my soul.”

“Come on my soul. Come on my soul. Let down your walls and sing my soul.”

“Come on, come on, come on, come on, it’s time to look up. Come on, come on, come on, come on, it’s time to look up.”

That’s it.

Those are all the words.

Again and again.

Calling my soul to worship. To look up. To let go and sing.

I love my family and every messy fiber of each member’s being. Even when the strengths I love about us are the reason we’re butting heads. Even when all that our interactions seem to highlight are the many ways that God hasn’t finished growing us. But as integral to my life as these six humans are, they’re not the reason for my existence. They’re not what gets to call my soul to attention.

Sitting out here in the moonlight, the stars in semi-hiding because of the brightness of its light, the lyrics that dance through my head say it best:

“If the stars were made to worship, so will I.”

When I left the house, it was to escape. Silly me, though: I forgot that I should have anticipated exactly where I’d end up. It shouldn’t be a surprise that I find myself here, raising my voice with the coyotes in a pandemonium of whole-being worship to my Father-God, who holds my heart and calls my soul to remember what’s most important.

They say that the stars at night shine big and bright deep in the heart of Texas.

They’re right, of course.

But it’s equally true that the one to whom my life, my breath, my being, my family is due shines equally big and equally bright. Right here in the heart of Texas.

– Melissa
(Here’s a link to tonight’s playlist, if you’re interested: Life feels fragile. God is not.)

Ot(hello) Lessons

I’m not a confident person.

I know, I know, I could have fooled you.

But it’s an act.

Me being confident is only ever an act. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know where I’m going or how I’m going to get there or when or if I will ever arrive.

If we’re supposed to do things that scare us, it often seems like that’s all I do every day. I open my front door even though it scares me, and I stare out of the world that expects things from me that I don’t know how to give.

And it terrifies me.

When I auditioned for Othello in October, I mainly did it because I knew it scared me a lot. It scared me more than any auditions should, because I’m a thespian. I have been since the day I was born.

I directed my first show when I was 4 years old, and even though I made the dumb casting decision to cast my 9-months-pregnant mother as the angel Gabriel and my three-year-old sister as the virgin Mary, I’ve always been a part of the theatre. Theatre has always been a part of me.

But when I auditioned for Othello in October, I wanted to be anywhere but the theatre. I barely got out of my car. I barely walked up the steps into the building and open to the door. The audition form was overwhelming. Sitting in my chair, I felt as though the whole world was staring at me and telling me just to go home. You don’t belong. This isn’t your home anymore.

How did that even happen? How did I get to a place so lost and so broken that the stage, my first home, became such a leering monster, a presence that filled me with dread?

It’s funny, but sometimes I don’t realize how much something hurts until it starts to get better.

“What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”

 That’s one of Iago’s lines in the play, and for all that Iago is an absolutely despicable human being, he manages to speak the truth here.

Wounds heal by degrees. And a lot of times, I think those degrees are people. People who don’t realize how important they are, and that’s a tragedy. More of a tragedy than everyone dying at the end of Othello. (Although, in fairness, not everybody dies. Just most of them.)

The cast of Othello has been exactly what I needed in my life, the balm that has helped to heal the wounds on my heart that I didn’t realize theatre had left there.

When I left theatre a year-and-a-half ago, I didn’t want to look back. I didn’t know exactly what was broken, but I knew that it was beyond broken. It was shattered. Theatre had left me absolutely shattered and exhausted and never never never wanting to go back.

Sure, I sat in the audience. I’ve seen some awesome shows, and I didn’t intend to stop doing that. But the stage? No. That wasn’t for me. I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t good enough to belong there. I couldn’t be good enough. And then, lo and behold, this show comes along that I want to audition for.

Even though I am so scared to want it. I am so scared of how badly I want it. And then I get cast. And it doesn’t make sense because I’m not good enough. Everyone and everything have told me that I am not good enough. I am a mediocre actress at best.

But I got cast.

And then rehearsals started, and people trusted my acting instincts. They didn’t tell me I was wrong when I made a decision. It was…novel. It was confusing. I didn’t know what to do with it. It terrified me.

So everything inside of me started screaming. Started telling me that I needed to go home, that I didn’t belong here, that I wasn’t good enough to belong here. The director had made a mistake. I had made a mistake for thinking I could step onto a stage.

I honestly have never experienced anxiety like I have had for the past month and a half. It wakes me up in the middle of the night, and it wrenches away my appetite. It steals my rest and twist my emotions into something I don’t recognize. I am all jitters all the time, and if by some miracle it got a little better during rehearsal, this heaviness was there waiting outside of the theatre doors.

You’re not good enough. You’re dragging the show down. Everyone wishes someone else had been cast. Anyone but you.

Those voices in your head gets so loud sometimes. You don’t want to listen, but you do, and the more you hear it, the more you believe it. Even when you know it’s a lie you believe it.

Monday at rehearsal was the worst. Anxiety was acting up something fierce, I hadn’t slept well in weeks, and I’d barely had an appetite and had to coax myself into eating dinner. Which then made me feel sicker. And then on stage I was a disaster. (Or, at least, it felt that way in the middle of my personal tempest.) I dropped lines, I missed cues, and I walked away so so discouraged.

I never want anxiety to win. I never want fear to win. And yet, here I was, acting less than my best because of this sickness that was living in my belly.

God listens. He listens so hard and so true that you can’t help but sense that it’s so safe to pour out your soul to him.

And I did.

On Tuesday I told God exactly what was going down. I told him that I wasn’t enough, but I needed to be for this week, for this amazing cast that He’d surrounded me with. I told him that I needed anxiety to quiet down so I could hear the lines and hear my cues.

God is such a good father. He speaks so much louder than the lies.

Tuesday, God spoke loud. He spoke through people, who reminded me that, impossibly, I am more than just someone who goes around pretending to be confident when she’s not. More than someone who pretends to know what she’s talking about when she doesn’t. More than someone who somehow fools the world and makes them believe she’s not afraid.

I’m an actress, not for the mask I wear, but because God made a little girl who loved theatre so much that she started making it before she knew what it was called. Because he’s gifted me in such a way that I can step onto stage and make connections and trust my instincts. Because I have a capacity and the heart to tell stories that need to be told. Because it was never about whether I could make it on Broadway.

I’m enough. That’s what keeps echoing in my head: I am enough. It’s written on my front door. I am enough. It pulses through my veins. I am enough.

My father says that I am enough.

But I’m not.

I am so full of inadequacies and broken places and rough edges that have yet to be smoothed out.

I am so full of anxiety and self-doubt and fears that don’t make sense.

But that’s not what my worth depends on.

That might seem like a leap, I don’t know. This show has been a journey that I can’t quite put words to, despite spending the past three hours trying to set it all down on paper. It’s been bigger and deeper and wider than I could have possibly imagined on that Sunday in October when I stepped into a dusty auditorium. It’s been bigger than I can ever make known to my castmates, to whom I owe so much, or to my director, who has quietly built up my confidence without even realizing that she did so.

I had no idea how deep my wounds were, but God did.

I had no idea that I needed a community theatre show, a stupid Shakespearean tragedy where everybody dies, but God did.

It’s been such a long two months, and I haven’t been able to see where this journey was taking me. But this week…this week it feels like things might finally be coming into focus. Maybe the reason that this healing season has been so confusing is because I didn’t realize yet what was broken.

Wounds heal by degrees. With balms and ointments and tenderly tied bandages.

With Shakespearean prose, and backstage giggles, and words of kindness that mean more to me than I can ever say.

This weekend we opened Othello, the first show I’ve opened in almost three years.

And here I am:

Actress, student, daughter of the king.

Enough.

Despite myself, enough.

Hallelujah, heavenly father, you have made me enough.

– Melissa

Zephaniah 3:17

weariness

Do you ever get thoughts that scream so loud in your head that you can’t even think? The lies that are so loud, that you know aren’t true, but that just take everything over?

Right now, my mind is trying to convince me that I will always be tired. That this infernal weariness will never go away and I will forever live in a fog of not being able to accomplish the things that I need to.

I have seven things left on my to-do list for this week. Only seven.

One is due tomorrow, four are due on Friday, and the other two are not time-sensitive.

It’s a doable amount. It’s nothing I can’t accomplish, and yet I lay on my bed as the overwhelmingness of it all washes over me. It feels inescapable. Like I can’t do this anymore.

I am so tired.

I have been so tired for so long.

Even when I rest, I feel guilty that I’m not going. That I’m not running head-on at this thing called life and tackling it in a way that makes a difference.

Seven things on my list.

I know, it was a long weekend. I didn’t get much sleep. I hit the ground running as soon as I got back. I’ve rested, but not too much. I owe myself some grace here.

And yet…

And yet still I feel guilty. Still I feel so tired and so guilty and so overwhelmed and so…well…hopeless.

Not hopeless in an eternal sense. There’s still a joy there, still an assurance of where I’m going in the long run, and a building confidence in who I am. (Building because it’s been a long, hard three weeks.)

But hopeless in the sense that this tiredness will never go away. I’ll never catch up on sleep. I’ll never find the strength to the important things. Or the unimportant things. Or just to climb out of bed.

It’s all a lie. I know that. I know that full well.

But it’s so loud.

It is so loud in my ears and my heart and my mind. And fighting it is exhausting. Tuning it out is exhausting.

I won’t rest. I won’t rest because even when I have down time I still feel the need to move. To do. To accomplish.

How do I learn to rest? I can rest in God’s love, but not in my own skin.

I’m tired.

I am still so tired.

– Melissa

Vitality

I think I expected college to transform me into some greater version of myself, to wake me up and revitalize me and just generally embolden me.

And while college changed me and grew me, it wasn’t in those ways that I had expected.

This blog is as close to a chronicle of those changes as anyone’s going to get, short of standing me up next to my past self and marking down all the differences between us, and I think it bears pretty clear testimony to the fact that the last three years have left me tired.

Tired and ready to run.

The funny thing is that I didn’t even come to Mackinac with the intent to run from what was hurting me. I just came because I needed a job and thought I wanted an adventure and liked horses.

Yet Mackinac has proven to be a more rejuvenating retreat than I could have known to request, if I thought to request a retreat at all. And it’s also a strange place to feel so deeply revitalized, because this isn’t your traditional mountain-top spiritual hideaway.

I am working long hours with people who, while kind, do not share my faith. There are no pastors daily pumping me full of well-considered interpretations of scripture or guitarists inviting me to join them in songs of faith-fueled praise.

Even so, I am more at peace than I have felt in a long time.

Possibly because Michigan air is easier to breathe.

Which I mean a little bit literally, because I grew up on Bakersfield air so dirty that you can chew it up, spit it out, and build a sooty sandcastle out of it. But metaphorically too.

Life itself feels more abundant here.

Even after nearly three weeks I find myself still silently gasping in delight when I catch sight of Lake Huron as I round the corner to stage along the point, still nearly laughing aloud when I pause to consider the fact that I am holding the lines to a team of horses the same way that my ancestors did.

Lately I laugh a lot.

And if you know me, you’re probably smiling because that’s what you expected. But if you’ve known me during school, when the trying to juggle classes and people and fear and exhaustion have transformed me into a snarling disaster of a person, then you might begin to guess how refreshing it is to laugh.

People smile at me because I am always smiling. They chuckle because I dash at new tasks with such enthusiasm, even though I’m tired and kind of just want to go home. And their amusement brings me more joy, which only increases the infectiousness of my laughter.

I truly do feel as though I’m breathing easier. As though life were painted in brighter colors than it was before.

Contentment and restfulness bring a certain vibrancy to the world.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t feel particularly well-rested. Even today, on my day off when I’ve slept in and napped and generally relaxed all day long, I am yawning with exhaustion before I’ve even eaten dinner.

Nonetheless, these few weeks in Michigan have brought me a certain level of restfulness.

There’s been heartache, too, and my tears have mingled with my desperate begging to the heavens for explanation of things I can’t understand.

But through it all, this peace. This knowledge that I am both where I’m supposed to be and where I want to be. And this almost audible song of celebration coming from everything around me.

I really don’t know how else to describe it, and kind of feel like I’m chasing my tail now as I try to explain.

It’s as though I’m alive again.

As if a person I’d long forgotten how to be is emerging from the storm of the past few years, and she hasn’t forgotten how to be bold or courageous or outgoing. (She has forgotten how to love to run and be active, but we’ll cross the exercise bridge some day in the maybe-never future.)

All that said, I am eager for this summer to end if only to end the torture of the crazy-early mornings. While I have settled into the routine of awakening at 5:30 every morning, I still don’t like it. And every morning I get a little closer to clinging to my pillow and sobbing at the thought of being parted from it.

I guess I don’t have much energy left for a well-worded conclusion. It’s taken long enough to just achieve anything like sense on this page.

My heart-song doesn’t much want to be translated today.

Anyway. Life is an adventure, and I’m so happy to be living this chapter of it. Feel free to come visit and write yourself in.

– Melissa

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. /Psalm 19:1-4a/