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.

i’m still waiting

Y’all, I’m feeling pretty on top of the world tonight after what started out and continued to be a really hard week. Know why? Because I actually feel like I accomplished something today.

“Melissa, what did you accomplish?”

Great question. I made $7.06. After working for about three hours.

Beginner freelance transcription work is not where the money’s at, kids. But, hey, I actually enjoy the challenge, and that’s $7.06 that I wouldn’t have if I’d watched three episodes of Arrow instead.

Life recently has felt like it’s come to a standstill, like I’m over here stagnating while everyone else is out there thriving, and the inactivity has been getting to me. That, and the constant stream of rejected applications. I am so sick of spending hours typing information into text boxes that’s literally included in the resume you had me attach to this application only to get a disgustingly polite, standardly worded rejection letter. No matter how many times the wise people in my life tell me not to base my metric of success on things I can’t control, like what hiring manager is willing to give my resume more than a passing glance, no matter how many times I remind myself that my worth is not in my current job or lack thereof, I still find myself returning again and again to this place of defeat and self-doubt.

I am, in my heart of hearts, confident that the reason I am not yet employed is that God has not yet opened the door that I’m meant to walk through. I keep doing my part and knocking on doors, but I truly do have confidence and peace about who’s going to open one. However, knowing something in my heart of hearts does not always translate to remembering it in my here-and-now brain.

It’s been awhile since I blogged, and it’s mainly been because I haven’t felt like I have much to blog about. I wake up, generally much later than I intended; I make food, sometimes at traditional meal times but sometimes not because no schedule = well, no schedule; I apply for jobs; I read my Bible and I watch Netflix. After a full day of not much at all, I go to bed so that I can do it all again in the morning. At least, that’s how it feels.

In reality, most of my days aren’t actually as mundane as that. I’ve gotten to do some travelling, which is great, and I get to do more in less than a week, which is greater. I’ve had chances to spend time with friends who finally aren’t in school anymore, and I’m not in school anymore, and we have time for things like random midweek game nights. I’m refurbishing a couple pieces of furniture, and I’ve found some excellent deals on thrift store pieces for my burgeoning professional wardrobe.

It’s not a bad life, all told.

It’s a season of rest, if I could just rest in it.

And yet, here I am, finally away from the void’s edge I’ve felt myself teetering on all week, and all because I made less than I’d make working a third of the time at minimum wage. After transcribing interviews for three hours. Yeesh.

I can talk all day about finding my identity in Christ and having joy in him even during seasons of trial and uncertainty, but man oh man am I getting the chance to walk out everything I feel that the past few years have taught me.

Ya girl wants to have some semblance of control over her life back.

But, thing is, I never actually had any anyway.

I’m going to bed now, because after exercising my brain and my body tonight (I walked to Chick-fil-A because I had a credit for a free sandwich; don’t judge) I might actually be able to sleep tonight. If you’re inclined to pray for me, pray for patience in the waiting and an identity rooted not in the work of my hands, but deep in the love of my Father.

– Melissa
Psalm 27:14

P.S. Please don’t send me worried messages about me not getting paid enough for the work I’m doing. I know it’s not good money, but I wasn’t kidding when I said I enjoy it, and it’s something I’m excited to get better at in my spare time. I promise I don’t feel obligated to work for pennies. 😉

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

3am

I lie awake at 3am, wondering. I wonder what others think of me. If others think of me, and how often, and with what smiles or frowns. Do memories of me ever spring unbidden to their minds? Do memories of me ever come at all?

Was I someone’s first crush? Someone’s whole world once for those blissful moments of playground romance? Has anyone ever cried over me?

Have I ever been the turning point, the element between the before and the after? Are there poems about me? Songs that call me to mind?

Whose dreams do I haunt? (Do I want to haunt anyone?)

Recently my existence has felt big and overwhelming, a conglomerate of all my dreams and experiences and memories and every book I’ve ever read and each song lyric and story snippet. Sometimes I feel crammed into a body that’s too small, like all of this life that’s accumulated inside of me can’t possibly be contained in one face and two arms and two legs. Do you ever feel like that? It’s like the depth of me is terrifying and awesome all at once. And surreal. It all feels surreal sometimes, even when I’m not lying inexplicably awake at 3am.

Can anyone ever possibly know me inside and out? There’s too much experience here, too many things I don’t even know that I know. I want to be known, seen, understood, but how does that even begin to be possible? I could write pages and pages and still not begin to get out all of what’s inside. That’s terrifying. And awesome. All at once.

Meta. That’s best word for it, maybe. I’ve been feeling so meta, but not in some trendy or new agey way. It’s just…super cerebral, I guess. With my emotions engaged, but watching from the sidelines.

I don’t know.

It’s 3am and I want to be in love. I want to be loved.

I know that I am.

I want more.

I want deeper, fiercer, more tangible. I want greater, louder, bolder, crazier love that overwhelms me and consumes me until I forget to be startled by the vast body of experience that makes up my consciousness.

I think 3am is a time for sleeping, not for pondering the juxtaposition of the vastness of one person, tiny in a vast world of vast people. I think 3am Melissa sounds like a drunk philosopher. I think a lot of things. And I think that’s why I’m still awake at stupid 3am.

– M

Storm Watch

Last week was, well, hard. It generally is, jumping back into the swing of things after something like spring break, but last week seemed extra hard because it felt like I was slipping back toward that place of anxiety where I lived last semester. That’s not a place to which I ever want to return, and I like to think that I’ve grown as a person enough and learned enough coping techniques so as to fight a more valiant battle when the monster anxiety rears its ugly head. Good ol’ Melissa: trying to muscle her way through absolutely everything. Even when that’s proven ineffective literally every time I’ve tried it.

It wasn’t so much that I was having full-blown bouts of anxiety. It was more…a heaviness. A lingering premonition of something dark on the horizon. I couldn’t put my finger on the feeling, but it was undeniable. Inescapable.

This morning, I finally found the metaphor I was looking for:

The air all last week was charged, a gathering storm that might turn out to be an electrical catastrophe or might be a shower of healing rain. But while you wait to find out what it will become, the air just gets heavier and thicker, and the sky grows darker, and the wind picks up, and you start to look for cover. Eventually that storm is going to break, and you feel that you can’t risk being caught out in it because you might get fried. Or you might get washed, healed, who knows, but it seems like the danger outweighs the hope.

It is 6:49pm and, one incredible worship service and one poignant theatrical performance later, I am still waiting for the storm to break. Maybe it’ll surprise everyone and turn out to be hail—this is Texas, so weirder things have happened.

It’s kind of funny: recently I’ve found myself spending a lot of time missing thunder storms. We’ve only had two, maybe three, sizeable ones come through this calendar year that I’ve been in town for (though, in fairness, I do spend a lot of time out of town) and both have occurred in the middle of the night. I love thunderstorms, I really do, but I also love sleep, and so it’s always bittersweet to be awoken from a dream by the boom and rumble overhead at 4am. Afternoon thunderstorms are far more my thing.

I love watching a midday summer thunderstorm blow in.

First the sky grows dark, the wind picks up and the temps begin to drop as the distant roll of thunder just begins to make its presence known. Was that a truck, or thunder? Then those first big, fat drops come plopping onto the sidewalk outside my window, followed by a few more that join the twigs and leaves that are now being blown onto my roof. Another rumble, and I know it’s a storm and so if my blinds aren’t already open, I run around them room pulling them up and with a chorus of zips. A flash of lightning. Another rumble from the heavens. And then the skies open and the rain pours down and drenches everything, while the lightning paints the world in bursts of light and the thunder reminds my neighbors that they’re not the loudest thing on the block.

And then it all ends. The storm passes, the sun comes out, and the world drip-dries itself and reminds us all that we’re still here.

Those storms are my favorite.

I… I think I am afraid of fearing this storm. Does that make any sense? I know, intellectually, that this gathering storm is only the most recent development in a long line of storms, all of which I’ve weathered and all of which have taught me more about the depths of this God I’m trying to get to know. But there’s still a lingering fear of the unknown, which scares me because it seems like weakness. And—for better or worse—weakness is exactly what I’m trying to escape.

Despite not engineering this storm metaphor (that I’m probably currently beating to death) until this morning, this past week I’ve been listening to my music on ‘shuffle all’ because I couldn’t settle into wanting to hear any one thing on my Spotify or my phone’s internal memory, and I keep thinking I hear the intro to a song that I don’t think is even in my music library.

Just checked: it actually is. Surprise, Melissa! You were wrong! (Shocker…)

The song is Bring It On by Steven Curtis Chapman, and you can check out the full lyrics here or listen to the song here. But here’s the chorus:

Bring it on

Let the lightning flash
Let the thunder roll
Let it make me strong

Bring it on

Let the trouble come
Let the hard rain fall
Let it make me strong

Bring it on

True confession: that’s not where I’m at right now. I love thunderstorms outside my house, not inside my chest. I don’t want this storm to break, I want it to dissipate. I have enjoyed enjoying this season of sunshine the past few months.

But for all my battening down the hatches, all my bracing for the shock of the storm, I really feel that what I’m being called to is standing outside, waiting for the rain, trusting that what is going to come might be hard but that it’s not going to destroy me. The last few lines of the last verse of Chapman’s song are as follows:

But I’m not gonna run from the very things
That would drive me closer to Him
So bring it on

That’s my prayer for this week:

When it’s hard, when I’m afraid, when it feels like I cannot bear to face whatever is coming:

Bring it on.

– Melissa

P.S. Can we all take a moment to appreciate the irony of Melissa entering a season of…whatever the heck this is just as the season outside is turning to warm breezes and bird songs. Oh my upside down life…

Happy National Strawberry Day

My nose is frozen, so I’m too cold to change into pajamas, so I’m writing a blog post while my heater gets my house to a temperature where I’m warm enough to go to bed. I know this concept probably doesn’t make much sense to you, but it definitely does to me because it’s 11:20pm and I should have gone to sleep an hour ago.

Today’s been quite a day, y’all. According to my calendar, it’s National Strawberry Day, but I didn’t have a single strawberry all day. That’s disappointing on some level, but I’m sort of a strawberry snob after spending my teen years only half a mile away from the best strawberry stand in the universe. Now all the store berries taste like plastic and I’m forever craving that field-grown candy from the summers of my past. Lately I’ve also been craving farm fresh watermelon, which we’d get at the same stand on those hot, sticky July days, and then we’d end up sticky from the watermelon juice that ran all down our faces as we contentedly pigged out on the best watermelon in the country. Toby would eat my rinds, and I think he liked them almost more than I liked the watermelon (but not more than I liked him.)

My house isn’t warming up very quickly…and I just realized that I left the heat on “low.” That would do it.

Hang on a sec…

There. I’m back from clambering over my furniture to superheat my supercold house.

This afternoon I had the fantastic experience of taking a three-hour standardized test that I hadn’t studied for at all. If you know me at all, you probably know that two of my least favorite things are a) being unprepared for things and b) not doing well in an academic setting. So I was pretty stressed going into it, despite knowing that I’d made the right choice by prioritizing my time elsewhere because this stupidly huge test was a very tiny fraction of my grade for the class. And then, of course, when the time came to take the test I couldn’t get the testing browser to work and I started freaking out even more than I’d already been freaking out in the first place. Needless to say, I survived. I will not be flunking out of grad school (not that that was even a possibility anywhere outside of my own agitated imagination) and I realized something:

That (should be) the last pointless standardized test that I ever have to take! Not that it’ll be the last major test I take, because I’m not promising not to do something crazy like getting my general contractor’s license on a whim, and I do still plan on eventually getting my doctorate. But still! It’s the last one I won’t choose to take!

Because, gurl, let me just tell you that taking the MBA MFT was never on my “things I’d like to do” list.

One of the things that IS on my list of things I’d like to do is go on an adventure. Or, preferably, as many adventures as possible. As soon as possible.

If wading through this whole grad-school-quagmire has taught me one thing, it’s that life is too short to waste waiting for tomorrow to come. Seize the day today. Drag your friends along to do something crazy today. Pursue God more intentionally today. Follow the road wherever it takes you today.

I definitely need sleep, because I accidentally typed a T instead of an R when I was typing the word “road,” and now all I can think of is how boring it is to follow toads most of the time. Because most of the time toads aren’t going anywhere in a hurry.

My dog used to try to herd toads. She’d bark at them and play-bow at them and nudge them with her nose, and they’d freeze in fear. People talk about trying to herd cats, but what they really ought to talk about is herding toads. Freaking impossible, that’s what that is.
Toads don’t follow any specific path. They’re unpredictable like that. Like this post.

Oh! I once got hit in the head with a toad while doing dirt work with my dad. It peed in my hair. Not a good day at all.

Today, however, turned out to be a good day. Even though I spent 10.5 hours of it in a windowless room in the university library and came out feeling like I’d been removed from time. Do you ever feel like that? Like the world has shifted around you and you have no idea where you’ve been or how many hours/days/weeks you’ve been gone? (I know what you’re thinking: “Go to sleep, Melissa.” I’m getting there. I promise I’m getting there. But my nose is still really cold.)

Today was a good day because
it was. Because I found time—no, because I made time to spend in my Bible, and because I didn’t let my anxiety cripple me, and because I was brave enough to admit when I wasn’t coping well and needed grace from my friends, and because my brother made me laugh, and because all of the troubles of this world will pass away but the word of the Lord endures forever.
It’s quite nice, this being a person who defaults to joy. It’s been quite a journey to get here, but now that I’ve gotten here I don’t ever want to leave.

This is the day the Lord has made (all remaining eleven minutes of it); I will rejoice and be glad in it.

 

Relevant takeaway points for both of us based on this rambling nonsense:

• It’s up to you to choose to have a good day, and it’s doable with practice even if you have to spend 10.5 hours in the library doing homework and emerge in a daze to the somehow-below-freezing weather that the cold front brought to town

• I would love to go on an adventure, so if anyone would like to submit their application for “spontaneous adventure buddy,” now would be an excellent time

• No one really has any idea if Tired Melissa is much like Drunk Melissa, because I’ve never actually been drunk, but Tired Sober Melissa doesn’t always act exceptionally sober (which is to say, I haven’t had any alcohol since New Year’s, so you can’t blame this post on anything but Finals Week Daze and simple exhaustion)

Happy National Strawberry Day, friends.

– Melissa

sanctuary

Wow I hate being still.

That’s an odd thing to say, because naps are maybe my favorite thing ever. They’re definitely right up there with chocolate and pizza and adventures with my sisters. But I still hate being still.

I’m a driven person, if you hadn’t noticed. I’m constantly dreaming and scheming, and coming and going, and the reason my walls are covered in art is that there is so much inside of me that needs to get out and sometimes that’s best done with watercolors and sometimes it’s with acrylics and sometimes it’s with my camera that I named Coraline before I even picked her up from the store.

Movement is safety, because inactivity is unproductive, and unproductivity devalues me. Or, at the very least, it is a waste of the value with which I am imbued. If I am not accomplishing something, I am stagnating.

That last paragraph is a lie, the internal monologue that steals my rest and floods me with guilt whenever I sit down to be still.

Right now, I am blogging because I needed to rest from a technically complicated explanation of the calculation of arbitrage opportunities in forwards and future contracts. (If you have no idea what that means then count yourself lucky that you don’t need to, because I don’t really either but I do need to.) Despite being completely able to acknowledge that my poor little brain needs a rest, I still am staying productive. So…yay?

Not actually.

Recently I’ve had to go on a journey to learn to rest without feeling guilty for resting. Because the fact is that a “rest” where you’re consumed by guilt for being still isn’t actually restful.

(Last year I wrote a post about needing to learn this lesson, and I’m so glad I did, because it’s a beautiful testimony to the growth that I’ve been too busy experiencing to notice.)

One of the first steps I had to take in this crazy process of learning to be still was ask for some help.

Ick, right? I’m a strong, confident, independent person, and I really dislike asking for help. (Unless you’re my younger sibling and I’m enlisting you to help me with manual labor. Sorry not sorry.)

But last semester, when the sleepless nights got too many to count on my fingers, and I’d lain on the floor with tears silently streaming down my face for more minutes and hours than I knew what to do with, I had finally had enough.

Y’all. Asking for help is terrifying. But it’s also really really freeing. I’ve been seeing a counselor for the past two months, and frankly it’s fantastic. With her help I’ve been able to learn strategies for coping with the monsters in my head, and I don’t wake up with panic attacks in the middle of the night anymore. Best of all, I’m resting way better.

One of the silly things I’ve done that’s helped is making my favorite over-sized armchair a no-homework, no-worry zone. Occasionally I’ll sit down there with a textbook out of habit, but then I have to stand up and either put the book back on the shelf or move myself and the book over to the sofa.

My sofa literally touches my armchair, it’s so close in my tiny little house.

But it’s an important distinction for me because it means that if I am in my chair, I have to allow myself to rest. I am not allowed to feel guilty for not working on that project that has me tearing out my hair. The fact is that I am probably in my chair specifically because I need to not tear my hair out, if only for a few moments. I am not allowed to fret about all the things on my to-do list. That list is on the table, and it will still be there after I take my moment or my power nap or whatever.

It still seems kind of dumb, but it’s working. I’ve learned to be really aware of anxiety creeping up on my armchair and, through attentiveness and a lot of prayer, it’s invading that space less and less often.

Sometimes I’d like to live there, in my lovely green armchair where worry isn’t allowed to reside. Where I’m allowed to breathe (because sometimes we all need to breathe, even us perfectionists who think we need to bring life under our control with our constant movement.)

Inactivity is not the same as rest.

I can be inactive, and not manage to rest at all.

At the same time, though, I can find rest without having to live in my armchair.

Take, for example, this post. I’m currently sitting at my table, in a hard-backed chair, and I can see my to-do list in my peripheral vision. I have the lecture I’m halfway through minimized on my computer screen.

But ya girl ain’t stressin’ right now!

(If I liked to clutter my blog posts with gifs and images, there would be a whole wall of celebratory ones right here. Instead, I like the simplistic beauty of lines of text, so you’ll have to imagine my little personal party over here without graphic representation.)

It’s a moment to moment battle, and one I lost for most of yesterday, but I think the key is transferring that idea of sanctuary that I’ve developed in my armchair into a place of sanctuary around my soul. See, when my soul is seated safe with the King of Kings, the God who is so mighty and awesome that I fear him to the point where the things that “threaten” me in this life pale in comparison, then I can rest in the midst of crazy weeks of deadlines and projects.

There were a multitude of days last winter when I’d take the over-sized armchair that was living on my parents’ back porch and pull it out into the sunshine to bask in the unseasonable, inexplicable warmth that is somewhat unique to Texas winters.

So here I am again, but this time I’m dragging my armchair into the throne room of the Most High, my Father and King, and curling up in his presence. My problems are left on the table for him to deal with while I rest here.

I’m resting here.

If I’m honest, I’m probably going to have to keep returning here, because worry likes to creep in and pull me back into the crazy world outside. But I’ll come back again and again and again. However many times it takes. Because life here is so much better.

Maybe you’re someone who naturally understands how to rest but if, like me, you’re a perfectionist or a doer or a dreamer and schemer, I invite you to join me on this journey of learning how to rest in the midst of chaos. Maybe sanctuary isn’t an armchair for you, but that’s cool! God continues to impress upon my heart how sweet it is that he’s so intimately personal. He’ll meet you where you’re at, in ways that speak best to you, and that’s super beautiful.

Let’s get better at resting so that we can get better at the things we’re doing.

You can’t pour out of an empty cup.

– Melissa

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.)