In the Beginning

I had to pinch myself as I was driving along the 101 on my way to lead my first Al-Anon meeting. I'd just left a visit with my friend and her newborn baby, and I was admiring those unrivaled LA sunsets with their cotton candy hues and silhouetted palm trees. I thought about what I was going to say at the meeting, what "my story" was. 

I was reminded of one of the fantasies I created as a kid as a coping mechanism. Sitting alone in my room and wondering what my future was going to look like, dreaming I might end up in a world far away from the town I grew up in. I think that was the first time I heard God's voice, who showed me he had a plan for my life that I wouldn't have been able to imagine. 

When I got to the meeting I shared what it was like for me to grow up in an alcoholic household. The things I saw when I woke up in the middle of the night from all of the commotion. How helpless I felt as a nine year old standing by while all of my little siblings were dragged in. How the worst offense was waking up the next morning and being told that everything was 'okay' and that we were going to continue on as if it didn't happen. 

About how the most affection I'd ever felt from the people who were meant to provide me with safety and love and nurturance was when they were drunk. The dangerous situations I'd found myself in without anyone to call. Some of the details I shared I'd only ever told my therapist, and at one point I felt a darkness come over the room and wondered if I'd gone too far.

Growing up like that left me with a lot of deep-seated shame. I learned to pretend and conceal aspects of my life, like my life at home, which I thought was unspeakable. I never had friends come over to visit. I would do things like buy Christmas presents for myself so I could pretend my parents got them for me. I still feel uneasy when my birthday comes around because it was often forgotten about. 

But living through that produced an endurance in me that allowed me to get to where I am. It gave me relentless determination to get away as fast as I could and work hard for myself so that I didn't have to rely on someone else to be okay. 

I shared with them the things I was still struggling with, and how I was excited to be working on letting go of old patterns. To dismantle the boundaries and systems I created to protect myself but that might not serve me anymore.

Recently, I'd managed to work up to an impenetrable eight-hour morning routine that started at 4 AM, with time to pray, journal, work on my book, go for a run, then eat my chia pudding, do yoga, and go for another hour long walk to hit my 15k steps before 11.

Then I'd start my work, do any cleaning or errands, make paintings for people, which I somehow turned into another must-do. I would have dinner at 4pm (very anti-social) and go for another hour long walk in order to get to bed on time to get up and do it again the next morning. There was no opportunity for human interaction.

I ended friendships because the intimacy made me uncomfortable and I had too many things 'to-do.' In my dating life, everything was awesome until it came time to actually connect with someone, to let them in to see who I really was.

I ignored God's voice who was telling me to make time, to reach out, to give something a chance. The 'world' had taught me that I needed to do more to keep up and stay afloat. I found it hard to trust Him, it was too scary and uncomfortable. So I resorted to my old ways instead, my learned behaviors, my old operating system that told me isolating would make everything feel better.  

When I finished sharing, a woman at the back of the room raised her hand and told me that when she listened to me tell my story it was like she was hearing her own story, down to the very last detail. The domestic violence, moving countries, the inability to relax or sit on her couch.

When she recounted those things and shared her current struggles, it made me feel so proud of her. We all have stories like this, that we're too ashamed to share, that we instead carry around with us everywhere we go. Bobbing around our heads and affecting our every action. What I thought was too scary to ever tell wound up being an opportunity to connect with someone. 

When we pretend we're perfect, we deprive ourselves the chance to be loved and seen. It's no fun. I experienced it once when I was dating someone, he was very well read and well accomplished, and I was feeling down that he'd been less responsive to me. He told me he had a lot on his plate, lots of pressure at work and with his family and his friend group. 

I asked him if that made him stressed, and his response to me was that he didn't feel stress. He'd read about how not to. I was extending an invitation to connect over something real, our shared humanness, but instead he shut down the conversation. 

What a beautiful thing it is to have started to partake in these rooms at Al-Anon, and to have joined my life group where we can all share what we're really going through and get to pray for each other. 

My pastor pointed out that when we deny people the opportunity to see our struggles, we deny them the rewarding experience of allowing them to see us through it, to see prayers answered. Being honest not only lets others get a glimpse of God's character, but it can provide them with very needed inspiration and framework to get through the things that plague their own lives. 

When I was a new Christian, I was flabbergasted by the old testament. Why would a loving God allow for such calamity? Why the need for all of the suffering and grappling and grieving? I found it harsh and unrelatable and stopped reading the bible altogether until a friend gifted me a new one when was going through a hard time. She told me to start reading at Matthew, the beginning of the new testament or the 'Good News.'

I fell in love with that part. It was like a wonderful fairytale to me about the supernatural love of Jesus. He filled the pages with miracles and I couldn't stop reading and learning about the ways he rebelled against the norms and challenged religious practices.

He wasn't concerned with how well the people kept the laws, but instead by their heart posture. He gave us an example of a radical kind of love that forgave all wrong-doings and invited people in no matter how great their guilt and shame. He forgives me, he forgives my dad, he forgives my mom. He died for us even while we were sinners.

I finished the New Testament and went back to the beginning and read about each of the times God's people strayed and the atrocities that came. In Exodus when he took them out of Egypt and parted the red sea, only for them to lose their faith in the wilderness before reaching the promised land. Or when the prophet Jeremiah foretold that the Babylonians would come make waste of their land and take them captive, but that God would not forsake them, and would send a savior to rescue them. 

Even Job, who God himself described as an upright man, was plagued by catastrophic loss and suffering. Why would God do that to someone who always kept his laws? Job loved God and enjoyed his blessings, but when destruction came and took everything he had, he was given a new appreciation for the complexities of the universe and all that God oversaw. It strengthened his faith in Him. 

When things go well for long enough, sometimes we can forget what it was like to rely on Him. We start to believe (I started to believe) that it was by my own strength that things were held into place, and that I might not even need God. But in the times when I fell down, when I got lost and made mistakes, those were the times I grew closer to Him. It made me hunger for Him.

I love the way Andy Squyres puts it in his song, 'You Bring the Morning,' 

You bring the mountain, so I have somewhere to wander

You bring the ocean, so I can walk on water

You bring the wilderness, so I can learn to hunger

It was in those dark times I started to pray, that I asked for help, that I delved into his word. And even when I doubted that he could ever pull me out, He always did. And that became my evidence of his faithfulness. 

That he would take me from the pit and let me walk free, to look up at the Jacaranda trees forming an archway over the street, to make eye contact with the little golden doggy going by, to see a mother sharing a bagel with her son in the window of the bakery.

The Old Testament, as brutal as it can be, is realistic. It's a representation of the human experience. And I know what comes next. 

You bring the morning, you bring the evening

I'm gonna praise you with every breath that I'm breathing