The art of letting go

(Artist - Michael Leunig)

Letting go.

I'm good at writing about it.

I'm good at thinking about it.

I'm good at talking about it.

I'm not so good at doing it.

I know I hang on to 'stuff' in my life that I don't need to, that isn't helping me live the best life I can, but it's familiar, and there's comfort in familiarity, and predictability.

Bad habits.

Past hurts and condemnations.

'Stuff' (physical and emotional) that I think I need, but really I don't.

The sense of feeling that I'm not good enough.

The fear of failing.

The picture above comes from a calendar that the awesome Michael Leunig releases through a major Australian newspaper each year.  It sits above my desk where I've started working again, and it's been the catalyst of my journey in letting go.  I haven't fully embraced the journey yet (that whole fear of failing thing), but I'm stepping out in faith, and trusting that God will take my hand and lead the way.

Someone told me once that I could write a book about my life experiences.  Maybe I will........

Coming out of the dark

(image credit http://thypolarlife.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/a-light-in-the-darkness/)

The last few months have been pretty rough for me, I’ve had some major health issues that put the brakes on life in general for a number of weeks, and of course this didn’t affect just me, but the kids and my friends and family around me.

Long story short, at Easter I had a flare up of the arthritis I’ve been dealing with for nearly 3 years, which landed me in the hospital for a night and rendered me unable to walk very well for about 6 weeks.  Because it’s an auto-immune inflammatory disease, the effects are systemic, so the pain wasn’t localised to the main joints that were affected, my whole body was affected – pain, fatigue, swelling, inflammation, nausea.

Sleep was a fantasy, moving without pain a seemingly far-off dream, and the nausea made me all but lose my appetite completely, eating became a chore.  The worst part though, was the sense of utter hopelessness and at times despair I felt.  I have been dealing with this disease for nearly 3 years, and whilst it had flared up and down over that time, it had never been as bad as it was at that point.  The medications I was taking weren’t managing the symptoms, yet I didn’t qualify for the ‘heavy-duty’ medication that was incredibly expensive, yet was most likely to be the most effective.  I had had a doctor tell me that I would very likely get worse before I got better, I had no idea how much worse I had to get.

The blessing of this experience was that my symptoms did qualify me for the miracle medication, and within a few weeks I was injecting myself once a week with what I was hoping was going to kick this awful disease into submission.

You would think that throughout this time, I would have been turning to God and letting myself fall completely into His arms to take care of me, as I had no capacity to take care of myself.

Um.

No.

During this time, I turned within myself and shut the world out as much as I could, aside from the necessary (you know – work, kids, parental responsibilities, minor details like that!), and all but withdrew from God.  Except I couldn’t completely.

The only prayer I could manage consistently was ‘Thank-you, Jesus’.  Exactly what I was thanking Him for, I don’t really know.  In the middle of the night, laying in the dark, my body screaming in pain, ‘Thank-you, Jesus’, was all I could pray.

Even in the state I was in, I knew my healing had been completed on the Cross when He bore my illness and disease, the struggle lay in trying to understand why I wasn’t seeing and experiencing the healing.  Was my faith not strong enough?  Did I not really believe that I had been healed?  Was I not good enough, not worthy?  Is there something I was still not ‘getting’, that was ‘blocking’ me from being relieved of the symptoms?  

Was God really enough? 

Did He really love me?

I know now that all that was a lie, a deception the enemy used to try to convince me that God had deserted me, that I had to deal with everything on my own, that I wasn’t worthy of being a whole, pain free person.  As I wrote yesterday, the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, and he will take every single opportunity He can to do that, he knows our weaknesses and knows how to exploit them.

But he’s no match for the power of God’s love and grace.

The new medication has worked, and for the first time in a very long time, I’m pain free.  More importantly, my heart is being healed, and God has used this experience to show me just how much He truly loves me, something I haven’t fully allowed myself to believe before.  Oh, I’ve never doubted that He loves me, but I haven’t allowed myself to fully embrace His love.  My experience of receiving love has been one that comes with conditions and strings attached (because as human beings that’s what we do, we’re not capable of loving someone unconditionally), and I had never realised that I had put God in that same category, that same box, had the same expectation.  

It took my body and spirit being nearly completely broken for me to allow myself to start to believe that God loves me simply because He loves me, not because of who I am, what I do, how I think, how many good works I do.  He loves me because He loves me, nothing more, nothing less.  He is enough – more than enough – and there is nothing more powerful than His love.

A few days ago a song seemingly randomly popped into my head, ‘Coming Out Of The Dark’ by Gloria Estefan.  As I read the lyrics, I felt like what I've been experiencing had been put into words, and that coming out of the darkness is exactly how I feel now, as if I've been wandering aimlessly with the lights dimmed.

His light is bright and beautiful, and I'm drinking it in.

What do you struggle with?

I was presented with this question today in an e-mail from Jeff Goins, he invited readers to respond to his e-mail with a struggle they're having.  My initial response was 'just one?  I could write a book!!' (yes, pun intended.....)

I knew immediately what it is I grapple with - perfectionism and not feeling worthy.  The two are intertwined, perfectionism is the biggest head of the dragon I need to slay each day (thank-you, Michael Hyatt) because the thought of not being able to make something perfect fills me with fear, and I'm deceived into 'knowing' if I don't do it perfectly, that means I'm not good enough, and I'm not worthy - of anything.


I know all this is a lie, that the enemy would love for me to believe, and I fight it with the Truth everyday - while the enemy has come to steal, kill and destroy, Jesus came that we may have life, and have it to the full.

I was so grateful for Jeff's invitation, because as a society, a community, we don't encourage each other to share our struggles, our challenges, what it is that causes us pain.  We don't like doing it, because there is this perception that to do so would be a display of weakness, that to say 'actually, I'm not coping' would be admitting defeat.  I hear people say so often 'I don't like to ask for help', and I'm the biggest culprit of that.  We don't want to impinge on anyone else's life, to be an added burden, so we continue to float down the river in our boat without a paddle, desperately clinging to the sides and praying that we don't end up dumped into the current, completely powerless to make it to the surface.

And as much as we don't like to admit our own struggles and ask for help, we're also collectively not very good at asking the people around us how they're going, how we can help.  It's not because we don't care, it's because we don't really know how to - how to ask, how to respond, we're fearful of making things worse, of not being able to say 'the right thing'.  So we don't.

This is not how it is meant to be.

We are made for more than this.  I know I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record, but we are made to live as a community, each individual connected as a whole, to bear one another's burdens and to encourage each other through this maze of life.  People want to be heard, to be acknowledged, to feel a part of the whole.  Most people don't want someone to solve their problems for them, they just want someone to listen, to hear their voice, and more often than not, that's enough.

So I'm asking today, what do you struggle with?

..........................................................................................

I have been very blessed by some writers/bloggers/artists in my journey, by their encouragment and how they give so freely of themselves.  I'd really encourage you to go and check out their blogs, and be blessed by what they have to offer.

Emily Freedman at chatting at the sky
Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience
Tsh Oxenreider at Simple Mom
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee at Yarn Harlot
Jeff Goins at Goins, Writer

I'll be sharing more blogs/sites as I come across them.

Finding my voice

 (image from http://blog.vistage.com/business-leadership/values-statements/)

'He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.'

(2 Corinthians 1:4)

This is why I write.  

I have been through a lot of challenges in my short time on this earth, in nearly every facet of life we have to deal with -  growing up, my marriage, having kids and raising them, my health, career, financially, spiritually and creatively.  I cannot say that any area of my life has ever been without pain and loss, and failure - I have often joked that I'm the friend that people like to have because having me around makes them feel better about their own lives!!

In all seriousness, I have a very blessed, wonderful life, it's just one that has been fraught with obstacles and challenges, many of my own doing, some out of my control.  But you know what?

I wouldn't change a thing.

Not. One. Single. Thing.

Every single experience I've had, every challenge I've faced, every triumph I've rejoiced over has shaped who I am now, has moulded me into being the person I'm just now really getting to know (and actually like). 

Even before I came to truly know God and His purpose in and for my life, I've always believed that going through whatever we do can serve to help other people, that our experiences are never wasted, without purpose.  When I first started getting to know His word, I came across the scripture above, and it was like a light went on, discovering that what I had always thought and believed was His truth.  It was such confirmation of how the truth of God and His word is placed within us, intrinsic to our very being even if we don't know him, aren't actively seeking Him.

I've tried to think of that passage when I've wondered what the purpose is in my pain and loss, when there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to an experience, I can't say that it's always brought me peace and comfort, but I'm always reassured that my experience will serve a purpose bigger than me at some point in my journey, and someone else's.

In trying to discover my voice, to work out what the purpose of writing in my life is, I'm realising that I have a story to tell - not just to myself, but to share with the world.  Every single fibre of my being wants to apologise for that, to add a caveat of 'even though no-one's interested, who am I to think people will want to hear what I have to say?', and I fight against that every time I sit down to write. 

We all have a story.  We all have a voice that needs to be heard.  We don't know the power of the words we share, what impact they can have on those who read them, but we have an obligation to reach out and offer up our lives to each other, to form connections and relationships.  John Donne said it so eloquently - 

No Man Is An Island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

It is as I posted yesterday, we are created to be part of one body, and for a body to function well, all parts need to connect and communicate.  We know that when a part of us is injured or unwell, our whole body is affected.  The same goes for us as a community - when one of us is sick or not functioning well, we all feel it, whether we realise it or not.

I don't know where this journey will take me, who'll travel it with me, what I'll learn along the way.  I know I just need to start, to take a deep breath and step out in faith.

So here goes.

 

The Voice

No, this post isn't about reality TV, just to clarify.  I'll bet that was the first thing that came to mind for some of you, which interestingly enough ties into what I'm writing about today.

How many voices do we have in each of our lives?  If we stop to think about it, to count what it is we're hearing around us, all the time, I think we'd be quite surprised.

The voices in our heads

The voices of the world around us

The voices of those we love

The voices in our hearts

The Voice that speaks to us, constantly, whether we hear it or not

All that we hear, everything that we absorb consciously and unconsciously has influence on our thoughts, our decisions, what we do, how we live, we are shaped by the voices around us and within us.  And yet we often forget the most influential voice in our lives - our own.

Our own voice holds much power in the words we think and speak, more than we realise or appreciate.  Power to speak life or death, power to lift up or tear down, power to encourage or ridicule, power to soothe or maim.  We aren't careful with our words, our voices, what we say to ourselves and those around us, Proverbs tells us that 'The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit' (Prov 18:21), meaning that as we think (and speak), so we are (Prov 23:7) That old adage of 'you are what you eat' applies to our voices as well - if we think negative, self-destructive, posionous thoughts, that is what we speak, live and feel.  We have the power to think and speak life into every area of our lives and the lives of those we love and live with, yet this is not what the world encourages us to do.  We're not 'allowed' to think that we're good enough, that we're worthy, we're conditioned to be critical and cynical of our environment, to look for the 'catch' in any situation, which makes us almost incapable of accepting love and grace without hesitation.


God created the world with His voice, He spoke the world into being with His words.  If that's not a display of the power of a voice, the power of words, I don't know what is.  We each have a responsibility to mute the negative, life-draining voices that threaten to overwhelm us, to bring the power of life-giving words and thoughts into the light, into our world.  

We each have a unique story, a tale of the journey we've travelled so far, and the world needs to hear these.  We need to find our voices and speak the message that God has planted within each one of us, even if we think that we're not worthy, that no-one would listen, because this is what builds community, what connects us to each other, and we are created to live as one body.  


Raise your voice, share your story - the beauty, the ugly and the pain -  bring the words of your life out of the dark and into the light.  The world is waiting.

The habit of stealing

(Image sourced from www.wordsoverpixels.com)

I've been encouraged to steal today.

Following Jeff Goins' 15 Habits of Great Writers series is really challenging me and pushing me out of my comfort zone (especially by having to do things like, you know, actually start writing..., but this 'habit' I actually find easy.  Stealing, borrowing, being inspired by, whatever you want to call it, I find inspiration in the world around me every day - I'm just not consistent at actually translating that into anything on a regular basis, so I end up with stories, ideas, blog posts and the like bouncing around in my head, never seeing the light of day.  So the challenge for me is to actually do something with my inspiration, and when I read Jeff's post on 'stealing', the image above was the first thing that came to mine.

I don't remember when I first came across this quote, but I saw this version of it on Facebook a few weeks ago, and I've been thinking about it every day since.  Ever since I bought my house (nearly 3 years ago), I've been wanting to put a big canvas on the wall of the front entrance, the first thing you see when you walk in the door.  When I saw this quote again, I knew it was exactly what I need to put there.  I love the idea of people opening the door and being greeted by this question, but even more so, it's been making me think about my own answers.

You know, I feel like I don't really know what I want to do with my own one wild and precious life.  I'm nearly 36 years old, and I'm still trying to work out what it is I want to do when I grow up.  I don't think this is a bad thing, not being able to see the path of my life before me, and my experience of living to date has shown me that really, nothing goes to plan and you'll cope with the rollercoaster of life better if you learn to just hang on for the ride. 

When people talk about their goals, their dreams, what it is they're working towards, I sit in quiet contemplation of the fact that I don't really have any of those, not in a defined, this-is-what-I-want-and-this-is-how-I'm-going-to-get-there manner.  I have concepts and abstract notions of what I want to do, the sort of person I want to be, but as for tangible, definable goals?  Not really on my radar at the moment.  I think the last few years have been a time of trying just to deal with the every day and all that it brings, of playing catch-up and at times of simply hanging on for dear life, I haven't had the capacity to dream, to dare to think 'what if.....?', to allow myself the luxury of identifying what it is that I desperately want to do, to be.

To be brutally honest, I'm scared of doing that.  Because if I do, I might fail, yet again.  And we all know that it's easier and less painful to not try in the first place than to crash and burn, don't we?

I know I focus more on my failures and lack of achievements than the things I have accomplished, which is the complete opposite of what I encourage people in my life to do, both personally and professionally.  I know I need to shift that perspective, to see what I haven't been able to to as steps along the way to what I have done.

I dropped out of uni after I finished high school, but I went back 11 years later and got my degree.

I failed as a wife, but I now know the true purpose of marriage and try to encourage the married couples around me in their discovery of the same, and am content in my own singleness.

I feel like I fail as a mum every single day, but I keep trying to learn from my mistakes and to be the best mum I can be.

I have abandoned every single art/craft I've learnt at some point along the way, because I'd give up if I couldn't make it perfect, I wasn't willing to make it ugly, when my frustrations became overwhelming and I couldn't make it turn out exactly how I'd envisioned it.  Now my motto is 'done is better than perfect', and wouldn't you know, I'm creating again.

Whilst I didn't exactly fail as a clinical nurse, I didn't get to where I wanted to be, but my path took a fork in the road, and now I have a job that I love, and strive to do better in every day (despite how often I feel like I'm not good enough!!)

I have avoided writing again for so long it, but now I'm writing everyday and finding my voice.  The writing is easy, it's what I do with it that still strikes fear deep within.  I know it is not God's intention for my words to remain hidden, just between me and Him, but the thought of putting myself  'out there' brings the ultimate fear of rejection.  I am learning that the world needs our voices, because we all have a story to tell.  I am continuing to learn that a life lived in fear is a life half lived, and I refuse to live in the shadow of fear anymore.

So now what do I plan to do with my one wild and precious life?  I plan to live wildly free, to live the life that God intended, live it to the full.  To stop living in fear, because a life lived in fear is a life half lived, and I refuse to live in its' shadow anymore.

What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Confessions

I have a confession to make.

For all I’ve talked about in my life – in real life with friends, here on the blog, in my head with myself – about being real and honest and authentic, being intentional - I’ve been holding a part of me back because I’ve been too fearful to expose it to the world.  Nothing earth-shatteringly terrible, nothing scandalous and juicy, just elements of my life that I’ve chosen to keep from public view – and to be honest, from myself - because, well, to bring them out into the light might open up a whole can of worms that I simply don’t want to deal with.  And because I can’t predict how people might react (more on that later...).

Over the last few days, I’ve started writing again.  I used to write all the time when I was a kid, right through high school, and eventually.......I just stopped.  Looking back now, I would say I didn’t really start writing again until I started a blog in 2004, and then when I started uni in 2005, writing became a necessary part of daily life, albeit for taking notes, writing essays and whatever else was required for the subject matter.  It wasn’t a practice that nourished the soul, but it did get me back into practice again.

Between writing the blog (as infrequent as that was) and writing for uni, I began to exercise and hone forgotten skills, and I found that it really was like riding a bike, I hadn’t forgotten how to do it.  When I came to know Christ as my saviour in 2006, I started keeping a written journal, and I began to feel the need to write again. Fast forward to now, 2012, and my writing practice has been sporadic at best.  Blogging was sporadic at best, and effectively went by the wayside as I struggled with how much of myself I wanted to put ‘out there’ in the big wide world, and as much as I felt the need to write, I have essentially been too lazy to maintain the discipline of journaling regularly.  And I’ve also been fearful of what I might discover about myself when I start looking.

For the last few months, I have been feeling the pull to write so strongly, it has become like a constant hum in my head, through my whole being.  I know it is God calling me to be the person He has created, to be a writer, and I have been resisting Him.  Pretty much ignoring Him, actually, and I know it’s because of fear.  I have felt physically resistant to the thought of sitting down at a keyboard, or putting pen to paper, and even though I’ve tried a few times, I haven’t been able to break through this very real barrier I’ve felt. 

Since the beginning of the year, I have been reading just about everything I can about writing – how to start, what to write, how to develop good practices, and so on.  I’ve found some fantastic blogs and sites that are a wealth of information and encouragement.  And yet I still haven’t been able to just start.  I’ve blogged about creating, about being intentional, about living authentically, but I still couldn’t just start writing.   Blogging didn’t feel like ‘real’ writing, and writing became this huge concept that I felt incapable of grasping and acting on.  It felt like to start writing, I needed to have it all planned out – what I was going to say, how I was going to say it, what platform I was going to use (which in my warped perception meant being ready to write a book....), so of course it was all too overwhelming, and it was easier to not do anything.

Except it wasn’t.

This whole time, for months, I have felt a growing gnawing in the pit of my soul, a constant battle of wills within, between the truest part of me that knows I need to write, and the controlling part of me that has been too scared to do so.

Until now.

A few days ago, I came across Jeff Goins’ blog via chatting at the sky (one of my favourite blogs/writers), and I discovered his e-book and the challenge he recently hosted about writing.  For whatever reason, I knew it was now or never, and that the time had come to stop resisting and face that which was holding me captive with fear.  So I did.  I started writing again.  And I don’t remember the last time I felt such freedom.

It has only been a few days, but I feel like I’ve started a new life, a new way of living, and I know it’s not because I’ve been sitting and typing words, but because I’ve embraced God’s calling and am following the path He has been trying to set me on, I’ve just been too scared to follow.

As I posted a few days ago, I am a writer.  It’s not just what I do, it’s who I am.  It’s written in my DNA and in my soul, I’ve known for a very long time that I need to write as much as I need to breathe, and that because I haven’t been writing, I haven’t been really living.  

Fear is a killer, and it will destroy us if we let it, in so many, many ways.  I have let fear keep me from living authentically for too long, but no more.  That’s not to say that I won’t have to face it and deal with it every day, but I am assured by the knowledge that there is no fear in love, that perfect love drives out fear, and that I am becoming who I am because He loves me.  

I wrote earlier about not revealing this part of myself to ‘the world’ because I couldn’t predict how people might react, and I’ve realised that’s been one of the biggest things holding me back.  People might laugh at me when I say I’m a writer, not that I just write, but that I am a writer.  They might think that it’s nice that I have a hobby, or dismiss it because I’m not published, or laugh at me because really, what makes me so special?  It has taken me this long to allow myself to accept who I am (and I’m still working on that), then to declare it, and it really is a declaration, as much as I could say ‘I’m a mum’ after my son was born.  And as much as I don’t like to admit it, I do care what people think about me, I do value people’s opinions and am hurt by ridicule.  I do want people to like me and accept me (gee, I’m full of confessions today!!), so to make a statement like this that may invite criticism and scorn has been a challenge, but here I am.

I am a writer.

Hear me roar.