Seeking Advent

My wonderfully insightful friend Jeff Nelson has been recording a daily Advent video reflection. He’s encouraging others to join in his conversation – this is my response.

Each year, I struggle to journey through the dual realities of Advent: what it is and what it should be. I suppose I’m seeking to find where those two sides of Advent overlap. And how that overlap might change my understanding of what the event of Christmas was and who the person of Christ is.

As each day draws me nearer to Christmas, I find that my heart is just a little more open, just a little more vulnerable, just a little more willing to see the joy and beauty and simplicity of a world that welcomes babies every day. And also a little more easily hurt, a little more easily broken. Sometimes in the midst of the hurt, I can’t see beyond that. But God isn’t breaking my heart, God is opening my heart.

If broken is what Advent is then open is what Advent should be.

I’m in the midst of reading and teaching from Adam Hamilton’s book, “The Journey”. He includes a DVD segment each week filmed on location in Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the surrounding countryside. Nine months ago I stood in the same places that I see in his video footage. I walked alongside the same buildings and looked into the same scenes.

What I learned from being on the ground of that place is that it is not so different from any other place. It is not covered in the shadow of angels’ wings or the soft sparkle of star light. There are wise men, but also dumb men and mean men and just average men. There are new mothers and old mothers, scared mothers and those who would be mothers. It is an every day kind of place where families have lived for generations. For these people, in this place, the Holy Land is not a place to deepen a theology but a place to find a husband, to build a home, to build a life.

If miraculous is what Advent was then normal and everyday is what Advent should be.

As I wrote about last week, I find the joy of Christmas is often overshadowed by long hours and impossible expectations. Some of us in ministry – myself included – are the worst offenders. We pick and prod at each other, complaining about lighting and greeters and poinsettia arrangements. The season should thrill us with excitement and energy. But we seem to spend most of our time exhausted.

In the last three years, I’ve watched three close friends each experience the joy, surprise, and pain of pregnancy. In each circumstance, the waiting and expectation began long before a pregnancy was confirmed. Each one spent months, even years, praying for a child, hoping for a future full of new life. These women have taught me that our time of waiting and our desire for new life often begins before we even know what we’re waiting for. And often continues long after we’ve prayed and wished and begged for it to become reality.

If desperate is how Advent leaves us feeling then hope is what Advent should inspire us to seek.

From one seeker to another – don’t allow the bright lights of Christmas to drown out that more important inner light that Advent provides. The wisemen, the shepherds, the seekers and the dreamers who sought a baby they hoped would be king didn’t do so because all the stars in the heavens pointed the way. They sought one star, one direction, one truth. They sought a difficult and winding path because of the light in their own hearts.

Be merry. Be joyful and full of laughter. Rejoice in the bright reality of Christmas. But also keep your heart open, live simply and have hope that the true shining light at the summit of the season is a light that remains in you always.

Faith. Hope. Love. But the greatest of these is love.

So It Begins

In my book, fall isn’t officially over until Thanksgiving. This means that the winter season can not officially begin until the leftovers are finished. Because I might love fall, but I pretty much hate winter.

The only thing I don’t hate about winter is Christmas. It is totally cliché, but I love Christmas. I love lights and garland and Christmas trees. And I especially love early evenings spent reading by a fireplace or watching one more holiday movie. (As always, I suggest: Elf.)

Christmas is one of the few protected holidays in my family. We don’t go anywhere. We make no plans. We simply get up, stay home, and practice being a family. I know that as my brother and I get older, we will eventually have families of our own and may want to start new traditions. But that only serves to make these remaining Christmas Days all the more special.

This year, Christmas falls on a Sunday. Now for you, that might not make you shake in your boots. In fact, you might think that sounds awfully nice, kind of fuzzy and warm, to celebrate Christmas Day on the traditional day of weekly worship. I would wager that you probably didn’t have a small panic attack when you looked at the calendar and in fact, it’s not unlikely you didn’t even know Christmas was on a Sunday until I just wrote it here.

Well not me.

I knew since last Christmas that this year’s Christmas was on a Sunday because I work at a church and Sundays are kind of our thing. I love the church at Christmas time. It feels warm and friendly; Christmas is the time when I’m reminded that the church still has hope, still has a chance to reach people, to help people, to be a good and tolerant place. But it’s also where I have an office during a crazy busy season.

Earlier in November when work was a relatively normal state of busy, I started to wonder if maybe I exaggerate the work load of the weeks leading up to Christmas. I mean, shouldn’t it really be one of the easiest seasons at a church? We basically do the same things as last year and the year before that. Jesus was born, away in a manger, while shepherds harked to herald angels on the very first noel. Joy to the world!

And I have another tradition each Christmas season – believing that this year won’t be so crazy. Each year I enter the season thinking that this is when I’ll get everything right. I won’t work long hours, won’t commit myself in too many places, won’t wait to do Christmas shopping until the week of Christmas. This year will be my year.

Basically that means my tradition is to lie to myself. But please don’t burst my Christmas bubble. I need some denial to get through the season.

So if we see each other, maybe we should just talk about blinking lights and frosted cookies. Maybe you shouldn’t mention that I have two concerts in as many weeks and don’t know the music to either. Or that my brother is moving away and this might be the last regular family Christmas we have. Or that our office is barely managing a schedule change for the New Year and I’m feeling pulled in so many directions I might actually fall apart. Or that I don’t know how I’ll afford any Christmas presents this year.

And when Christmas Sunday finally does arrive, maybe you could let me lean on you just a little bit. Maybe you could remind me that Jesus didn’t enter the world so that we could run faster through the check out lines or become trapped in traditions or exhaust ourselves for the bigger and the better.

Maybe on Christmas Sunday you could remind me that Jesus was about peace and love and rest. And if you feel like reminding me of any of those things a little early, that’d be okay too.

And who knows – maybe this really will be the year.

Do you find yourself overwhelmed during the Christmas season? Or is it a season of rest and renewal? How do you make time for family and traditions during Christmas?

Music.

All the songs quoted here are from Page CXVI, "Hymns - IV". I strongly encourage you to visit their site here to stream these songs live. If you do it now, you can even listen as you read!

\\ The air feels thin \ Hard to breathe \ Fill our lungs Lord, fill our lungs \ On darker days \ We lift our eyes \ We find a trace, we find a trace \\ Bursting through the sky with glory \ A savior comes to save the saints \ Redemptive eyes, we see your mercy \ You made the choice, you took our place \\ I’m coming home \ I’m coming home \ To a place, to a place \ Of love and mercy, truth and glory \ I’m home, I’m home \\ I’ve got a home in glory land \ Outshines the sun \ Outshines the sun \\ ("Song of the Saints", track 4)

This weekend has been a reminder that I’ve been missing something in my life. Music. On one hand, my every day is filled with nothing but the business of music. But just like the business of worship is not worship, the business of music is not music.

On Saturday, at a children’s festival, I saw anew the joy of experiencing music with one’s whole body. An amazing reminder that through music we praise a loving, living God, who revels in our dancing and loud clashing cymbals and full expression of the Creator-placed love within us.

Saturday night I went to support a friend’s band and was filled to overflowing with the peace of music, the way in which music can fill you with a feeling of contentedness. I was in exactly the right place, in need of nothing outside the music. His is an eclectic sound – a melting together of rhythms and melodies that speak into the night.

Music draws us together. It calls to a deep, ancient part of us that seeks connection and understanding. A part of us that acknowledges our lives continue only in relationship with those rhythms – internal, external and eternal.

\\ I will sing to you this song of thanks \ For giving me abundant grace \ You broke the stones around my heart \ In you I’ve been redeemed \\ Amazing grace how sweet the sound \ That saved a wretch like me \ I once was lost but now I am found \ Was blind but now I see \\ ("Amazing Grace", track 1)

In my world, I have a tendency to ask how music can serve others. So much so that it can become the only way I look at music – supply and demand. And in my experience, that is exactly the point at which music ceases to be. Music is never about supply and demand. We don’t sing along with our favorite song because it’s demanded of us. Most any musician would say that if they made music on a supply and demand schedule alone, they’d probably never make music.

But indeed music is my job, or at least a big part of my job. As such I get lots of emails and samples of new music to preview or download. Sometime earlier this year I received a sample of some new tracks by a band called Page CXVI and have become enamored by their collections. (Even as I type, I have my headphones on and find myself pausing every few minutes to close my eyes and rest in the sound.)

Maybe that is the center of what divides music from the business of music – rest.

\\ God is my shepherd \ I won’t be wanting, I won’t be wanting \ He makes me rest in fields of green \ With quiet streams \\ Even though I walk through \ Through the valley of death and dying \ I will not fear, ‘cause you are with me \ You’re always with me \\ Your shepherd staff comforts me \ In all my fears and the presence of enemies \ And surely goodness will follow me \ In the house of God forever \\ ("House of God Forever", track 6)

I have been reading and seeking a deeper meaning of rest. Of sacred, spiritual rest. Only very recently have I been rediscovering the power of music as mediator; its power to bring about this sacred rest.

I’ve been told that when people who self-mutilate are asked why they cut they respond that cutting makes sense of the pain. It gives the pain a center, a tangible location. And don’t we do this in less drastic ways all the time? Lash out at our friends, our children, our parents, our colleagues – ourselves. We find a center for the pain; a point to focus pain that otherwise confuses us and spins away.

\\ Don’t lose your heart \ To doubts and fears \ Take in his word \ And rest in his grace \\ He laid out a path for me \ That I may see \\ I sing because I’m happy \ I sing because I’m free \ For his eye is on the sparrow \ And I know he watches me \ Ah… \\ ("His Eye Is On the Sparrow", track 2)

The storm has begun to feel like a familiar place. In some ways, I suppose that’s just how it is sometimes. Certain times of our lives are stormy times. But there is a difference between the storms that surround us and the storms that are self-inflicted.

I spend hours upon hours in an attempt to control the chaos around me and maybe more to control the chaos within me. But music is my safety net. It offers me peace, a lullaby in the storm. It redeems me.

\\ I’m so glad I’ve learned to trust thee \ Precious Jesus, savior, friend \ And I know that thou art with me \ Wilt be with me ’til the end \\ Jesus, Jesus how I trust him \ How I’ve proved him o’er and o’er \  Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus \ Oh for grace to trust him more \\ Jesus, Jesus \ How I trust you \\ ("Tis So Sweet to Trust In Jesus", track 7)

I truly believe that music can heal us. Music speaks to our spirits, opens our hearts and purges our pain, nurtures our joy. In our creating, appreciating and resting in music we mirror a Great Comforter who creates, appreciates and rests.

In a complex, dissonant, sometimes cruel world, I am seeking just such simplicity. Heart to hand, breath to lips, fingers to dancing.

Tis a gift.

\\ When I feel lost and clouds arise \ I long for a home \ As hope within me dies \\ Jesus is my portion \ He sets me free \\ I sing because I’m happy \ I sing because I’m free \ For his eye is on the sparrow \ And I know he watches me \\ ("His Eye Is On the Sparrow", track 2)

Mud.

I vaguely remember being on a community soccer team when I was in elementary school. And every practice or game was a reminder that I am not cut out for such things.

I remember playing once after it had just rained; it was miserable and wet and muddy. And I hated it. All I wanted was for the game to be over. I honestly felt with all my might that I could actually die in the middle of a stupid soccer field while my miserable, wet parents looked on.

In an unusually athletic(ish) maneuver, I tried to kick the ball away from an approaching player – and failed – landing instead on my wet and muddy rear end, while the game went on without me. I remember sitting there, thinking:  This. This is what my life is at this moment. I think I hate this. Why am I DOING this?

Well, mud; I’m back.

Half a year and many moons ago, I wrote what I foolishly thought could be a final chapter on weight loss. And for such a significant part of the year, I felt a new-found sense of control over food. But if that was a peak, then the rest of it has been a muddy ditch. And once again I repeat:  This. This is what my life is at this moment. I think I hate this. Why am I DOING this?

In the game of weight loss and new-life living, I can't really pinpoint any one moment of failure. I can't even tell you when I peaked because, not knowing I was about to slip, I didn't think to notice. All I know is that somehow I lost my footing and slid down to here. Again.

In an attempt to grab some traction, I recently quit my second job. It was a logical, intellectual decision about time and Sabbath and living a sacred lifestyle, but in those silent moments that I've created, I don't know what to do with myself. So I end up watching episodes of CSI or Bones or Ugly Betty. I sleep a lot or build villages with the help of computer-generated pirates. (None of which is very sacred.)

Truth? What I want is a brand-new me: a brand new start and a brand new life. I don’t want to figure out how to live this new life; I want to have lived a different life. Before writing this, I read someone else’s blog that said something like:  People sell the idea of going from misery to happiness in three simple steps. But really, it takes more like a million steps.

I guess the part they don’t want to tell you is how many of those steps are going backward.

Life is a lot more like ‘Chutes and Ladders’ than a three-step self-help book anyway. You exhaust yourself trying to climb up to yet another vantage point, trying to stay in control despite the unknown spin that may or may not move you on to the finish line. And then, just when you’re so close, you slip and go all the way back down to some stupid square you already passed by three times.

My brain gets it. It gets that my life is not so bad. It gets that what I choose to do or not do with my time is ultimately up to me. It gets the logical reality of cause and effect, decision and consequence. But sometimes I feel more like I’m back to playing a game I never wanted to play. And I want some assurances that if I do climb back up, there won't be some surprising fall again.

But, sigh, there are no assurances.

There is just the next roll or spin; the moment after you fall on your ass in the rain. Not the moment when the world closes in and not even the moment when you slap at the helping hand of your friend or coach or teammate. It’s not the moment when you lose your breath; it’s the moment when you find it. When you put your hand on the ground and push up into the rain. Into the miserable reality that in fact the game isn’t over yet. And maybe you aren’t the best player, but you can sure do damn better than sitting in the mud.

Have you ever fallen and given serious thought to just staying down?

Prayer and Laments

Two of my very dear friends have endometriosis (more fully explained here). Both have experienced multiple treatments and medications and adapted to ever-changing pain management plans while also: working on their marriages, raising their children, and being amazing friends to me.

These wonderful women are part of my small group that meets each Wednesday. We’ve cried and lamented and shaken our fists. And we’ve lifted thanksgivings and given praise. We’ve done everything we can think of on their behalf in our conversations with God each week. And still our friends are in pain.

And while one of our friends seems to be finally finding some relief, our other friend’s case is decidedly more difficult and complex, with what seems to be a never-ending list of complications.

I won’t lie. I am pretty upset with God about this. Why God? Why would you be faithful to some and not to others? Why would you turn a deaf ear to all of us who literally beg each week, each day even, that you would heal this hurt and end this suffering? Why would this faithful, trusting, joyful person who does nothing but look to you in thanks and hope still be lying in a bed with a broken body? Should she suffer until her spirit is broken too?

As a small group, this has become a difficult storm for us to navigate. Often when we meet to study or discuss, we’re able to find answers in scripture or in history. We turn to the words of Jesus and the stories of faithful people. We turn to a tradition that lifts up psalms and prayer as a means of connecting with God. Of being heard by God.

And yet our deepest prayers seem to be left unanswered.

Last night one of us raised the question: “Why do we pray?” One response was that we’re not entirely sure; we don’t really know what prayer does. And we talked a bit about it before going off in another direction.

But all the way home I continued to roll that question around in my mind. Why do we pray? Why do I pray?

Personally, I’m not so sure God changes events in the way some people seem to believe. I’m not sure if God heals our physical bodies or stops us from crashing our car in the rain or moves tornados from a particular path, although I know people pray for those types of situations (and have even done it myself).

My experience is that through the Holy Spirit, God is able to provide peace, wisdom, patience, perseverance, and other similar things. For example, I often pray that God would “multiply my time”. And even though I know it isn’t literally happening that way, I find that I have focus where I didn’t before or wisdom in responding to people that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I can’t quantify it but I know that those things aren’t coming from me; they’re coming from the piece of God that’s in me.

These days I often question God’s work in the world. In fact, I sometimes question whether God is at work in the world or whether God is waiting for us do the work. I suppose it might be a bit of both. And if God is working – through us or through some supernatural intervention – why would God choose not to work in the lives of deserving people who are hurting despite the faith of a million mustard seeds.

But in my questioning I’ve also discovered that, despite all evidence to the contrary, I do believe God answers my prayers. It’s just that sometimes (or probably almost all of the time) I’m asking for the wrong thing.

I guess it’s kind of like this: If I go into a shoe store and I ask every clerk for a new coat, I would feel like no one was providing what I need. Because that’s not what clerks at a shoe store provide. So when I turn to the Holy Spirit and pray for my best friend to stop being a jerk, I might feel like God isn’t answering my prayer. Because that’s not what God provides. But if I instead ask for patience, wisdom and clarity, I find that most often my prayers are answered, because that’s what God does provide.

I have always been a relatively healthy person and have never had to deal with any kind of chronic pain. But I doubt that I could do it with the grace and patience of my friend. Every email, every hospital text message, every plea for prayer she’s sent has included equal amounts of praise for what God is doing in her life. I’m constantly astounded at the joy that is in her heart, even while disease is in her body. Her living testimony is a complicated, compassionate reminder that God is a mystery to me.

I pray for her almost every single day. And they are complicated, compassionate prayers. But through them, God reminds me that he is a complicated, compassionate God.

Sometimes in the storehouse of God’s resources, I am desperately seeking a coat – to cover myself or those I love in new layers of protection; to weather the winds with a custom made, rain proof exterior. Perhaps though, God provides me something else: a new pair of shoes to support me through the storm; that in all things I might first be standing in his love.

And what girl can’t use a new pair of shoes.

What about you? How have you experienced God at work in your life? How has God been responding to your prayers or laments?

Missing the Mark

A few months ago when I restructured my blog, I decided on a short description that runs along the top of the page. It reads: “Thoughts on living a life of faith in a world of doubt.” Arriving at those dozen or so words was a singularly important step toward the renewal of my blog project.

The reality of a world that is often discouraging and exhausting, bumping up against the idea of a faith that promises renewal and rest is a fascinating convergence to me. Those moments of collision inform my writing, both what you see and all the scraps that never make it.

I try not to make any false claims that I am actually living a model life of faith just that I am attempting to write from a perspective of faith. By doing so, I have found a means of spiritual renewal, a sort of forced transparency about how I am living my life and how I am experiencing the world in general.

But these days, I’m having a hard time living up to my mission.

In my writing, my goal has been to err on the side of forgiveness and on the side of uncertainty. It was never my purpose to tell anyone how things absolutely must be because I simply have no authority. I can speak my truth, but I can’t—and quite honestly don’t want to—speak anyone else’s.

My life, however, has taken a decidedly different turn. I constantly find myself atop the soapbox, demeaning the views and skills of those around me. I am angry often; edging on always. I seem to have forgotten my own mission in some desperate, misguided attempt at redirecting those around me.

So here is today’s thought on living a life of faith in a world of doubt. It’s hard. And it kind of sucks.

When have you found yourself missing the mark?

rainbows.

I'm spending this week at God's Treasures Camp on the shores of Lake Huron. (You can read more about the camp here.) As I prepared last night with the rest of the counselors and staff, we practiced with the colored bells that I'll be using with the campers. Immediately my mind went back to the story below; this was originally posted on June 19, 2008.

My friend Megan goes to the same church as me. Every Thursday night, from September to June, I have dinner with Megan and her mom. It’s a high-point of my week and when I’m with them, I feel blessed and loved and understood. Megan is five years old and she has autism.

We met when Megan was two and her mom would bring her to a store where I worked. In those first days, Megan was in a stroller and couldn’t walk on her own. She had no verbal skills and would almost never make eye contact. She was in her own world and had very few bridges to let others in.

Megan and I have come a long way from those days. We now see each other at church instead of the mall and Megan walks and talks and makes connections with lots of people. She still has trouble making eye contact and needs a reminder to use her words but from those first days of our friendship—she is a different child.

Along this path we’ve walked together I have been so blessed by this little girl who is truly a friend. Megan has taught me the truth of unexpected, undeserved, and truly unconditional, love. Not because of how I have come to love her, but because of how she has loved me.

In the beginning and still in many ways to this day, Megan thinks highly of only three people—her mom, her first teacher, and me. For no reason what-so-ever, Megan took it upon herself to love me. And no one loves as an autistic child loves. With Megan I am invited into a new world. A world that exists inside and around and throughout this mundane world that everyone else sees.

In this world there are mysteries around every corner. In this world, green is a magic and wonderful and most beautiful color and it should be on every surface we can possibly touch. In this world there should always be frosting and no cake. In this world, chocolate is made out of moon sand and a broken lightbulb is as dire and distressing as a broken heart.

With Megan I eat tacos from the inside out and bananas from the bottom down. And I watercolor just to color water.

Megan has given me tools I never knew I needed. I’ve learned to embrace my life in a way that I didn’t do before her and couldn’t do without her. Through my friendship with Megan and her mom, I have met other children with autism. And I have begun to open my eyes to the beauty of God’s creation. A beauty that makes itself known in tubs full of lima beans and rice and in purple shaving cream.

Today I sat in a circle with seven of these children—my new friends—and watched them making music with colored bells. After the last resounding chorus a tiny voice reached up from next to me and whispered, that sound was a rainbow. It was the best secret I’ve ever been told.

The Food Fight - part two

“The Food Fight” is a two-part entry about my on-going relationship with food and overeating. You can find part one here.


I don’t know what gives birth to an addict and I don’t know exactly when I became one myself. Even in childhood, I could tell that the way I turned to food was entirely different than the way most of my friends did. It didn’t take long before that difference showed in a physical way. The school year would begin and I’d be just a little bigger than most everyone I knew, then the next year, a little bigger than before and so on.

Those are already difficult years and a lot of women I know barely survived. They entered high school or college or young adulthood devastatingly scarred. Though I tended a few deep wounds, for the most part I escaped relatively intact. By weaving together odd layers of confidence and self-preservation, I managed to protect myself, but I also succeeded in burying the root of my addiction.

This week has been a tough one food-wise. It’s the kind of week that reminds me that peeling back those layers can be a dangerous process. It leaves the heart more exposed than it was before and I have to retrain myself to face those little hurts rather than ‘layer up’ again.

I’m a work in progress.

Luckily, there has actually been some progress. Since the start of the year, I’ve lost about 30 pounds. And I’ve welcomed glimpses of a newer, brighter, healthier version of myself.

This is not a piece about ‘dieting’ or ‘how to lose weight with five simple exercises’. I don’t know much about those things. All I can say is that the weight I’ve lost came off because I started making food with my own two hands and moving around with my own two feet. And little habits like drinking more water and walking after lunch. Surprisingly, those small things weren’t really hard at all. So why wasn’t I already doing them?

Well that is a little more difficult.

I am coming to believe that we make poor choices not because they are easier (which they sometimes are) but because we’ve programmed ourselves that way. I’ve put a picture in my mind of a person who has no time to make dinner, doesn’t know how to anyway, couldn’t ever ride a bicycle to work, and is, in general, too busy to change.

So the harder, every-day-I-have-to-remind-myself kind of change is in reforming that inner picture. It’s in realizing that in my life I need to be number one – which means I can’t let anything become more important or time-consuming than taking care of myself.

I can be a person who carries a water bottle, who joins a work-out class, who walks during her lunch break. I can also be a person who cries when she is upset and is angry when something goes wrong without having to drive to Dairy Queen or McDonalds. I can become a person who is able to make good decisions in bad situations without ordering pizza and cheesesticks.

These may seem like small, specific examples, but they’re the outer face of an inner change. In the process of dropping a few pounds, I’m realizing that it is actually possible to see myself as someone new, not only in the area of food and weight, but in every area. That darkness I mentioned last week had been filling my head with nonsense, taking mistakes I’d made and telling me it was who I am. Telling me it was all I’d ever be.

So the question becomes how do we learn, as a community and as individuals, to fill in our empty spaces with positive, nurturing, compassionate things instead of these destructive lies? How do we become new and better versions of ourselves with visions for the future and inner strength to get there?

My first step was brutal honesty. I tried to dig under every defense and identify all the ways I use food to hide from conflict, from pain, from my past, from my future. It requires me to be ruthless, to take stock of all the ways I’ve been reinforcing what the darkness has been whispering all along – that I’m not strong enough to handle this. The darkness lies.

With list in hand, I began to chip away, to analyze how I respond to anger, fear, loneliness and other all-around bad feelings. Where my instinct might be to crack open a pint of Haagen-Dazs, I’m learning to train myself in healthier responses. And by not covering the pain with food, I give myself space to identify what upset me to begin with, which helps stop the cycle from repeating.

Now to be truthful, this is pretty much as far as I’ve gotten. Because it’s really, really hard to be honest all the time. And it’s really, really tempting to say – next time. Next time I’ll make a better choice. Next time it will be easier.

And that’s why I do this.

I write and share and talk about how hard it is, because I’m afraid I might otherwise bury my head in the sand. I basically tell everyone:  my small group, my bosses, people who come in the coffee shop, singers in our band, strangers on the street.

So, this week? Not so good. Next week? Maybe better. When it comes to food, I might always be trying to balance the darkness, searching for a new beginning. I know food isn’t done fighting and I know I’ll always be deciding whether to give in or not. But now I’m holding on to hope and have no plans to let go. Not for food or fear or anything else that tries to take root.

Because I’ve had a taste of something new and no interest in losing it.


Your fight might not be with food, but I welcome your own stories of struggle and renewal. Are you seeking a new beginning?

The Food Fight - part one

“The Food Fight” is a two-part entry about my on-going relationship with food and overeating. Here in part one, I am reflecting on my struggle with obesity, self-control and fear. In part two, I will reflect on the small but important success I’ve had this year with eating, finding strength and redefining myself. You can find part two here.


I have grown tired of being the one in the room that proves the obesity statistics. I am exhausted from worrying and wondering about five million things every day that have everything to do with my weight and nothing to do with my self. I am terrified that I might become someone I don’t recognize.

But as tired and exhausted and terrified as I am, I’m also inexplicably drawn to the self-destructive therapy that food provides. When I’m sad, food picks me up. When I’m happy, food is my celebration. Whether I’m with friends or alone, food makes me feel more connected. Food is my meditation when work is overwhelming. Food is my closest friend when I feel like no one understands me. Food has always been there for me.

The truth is: I love food.

And maybe that is why I find it so hard to understand why food hurts me the way it does. I want to call the world a liar – “Food is not my enemy! Food feeds me! Food fills me! Food gives me something when I feel like nothing!”

And yet food is killing me.

Sometime since our love affair began, food started to abuse me, to hurt me, to look for my weakest, most vulnerable parts and squeeze the life out of me. Maybe it started before I even really knew food. Somehow food found the darkness in me and rooted itself there, waiting for me to mess up, waiting for me to come back, tail between my legs, begging for food’s help again.

Rooted in the dark, food became the seed of fear. And it fed the fear. Fear of losing control, of dependence, of addiction – it grew and flourished until finally fear became reality. I have found myself out of control, dependent and addicted to the lies that food feeds me.

This idea of the darkness is the only way I have found to express myself and my overeating. But don’t get me wrong, I know there is no mysterious force driving to Taco Bell at night and forcing a cheese quesadilla down my throat. Just as I know there is no cloaked villain, forcing cigarettes, alcohol or other drugs down the throats of hundreds of thousands of people fighting those addictions every day.

We make choices, all of us, but the reality is that sometimes we get caught in a cycle of really bad choices and “darkness” is the best way I have of describing something which feels overwhelming and all-encompassing. I am almost thirty years old and am only now discovering how truly out of control that cycle can become.

But all is not lost.

Because over the years of struggling with my weight and eating habits I have managed to learn a few positive lessons as well. For the most part I haven’t had much luck putting these lessons into practice, but over the past six months or so I’ve begun to experience a change. I’ll write in more detail next week, but want to leave you with a hint of that here.

Perhaps the one most consistent part of this struggle is that I have never been alone in it. Don’t get me wrong – addiction tries to isolate the addict. No matter who you are, what the problem is or how innocent the behavior might seem to the outside world, the darkness will tell you that no one understands, that no one can help you or, perhaps worst of all, that no one wants to help you.

These are lies.

People do want to help. In my life, I have found these people to be my family and my friends. And in lovely, surprising ways, to be the people I work with and work for, sometimes even complete strangers. The world, as it turns out, is full of people who want to love me. More importantly, the world is full of people who want to love us all. And these people want to help us succeed.

The other truth I’ve uncovered is that failure, partnered with forgiveness, is in fact the key to success. And believe me that has been a difficult pill to swallow. But forgiving myself for bad choices has been the only way I have been able to find better ones. And forgiving others for their own ways of brokenness is what has bonded me to the support system I have now.

It is possible – even likely – that you are caught up in a dark cycle of your own. And if that is the case, I invite you to tell us about it. If you are tired or exhausted or terrified of being overwhelmed for even one more day, this is my invitation to you to say it out loud. Write it down, lift it up, tell your friends, call your mom or your church or your best friend.

Don’t let the darkness keep you silent.

I welcome your own stories of struggle and triumph. Have you felt isolated or alone in dealing with a particular issue in your life? Have you been able to find your way out of the darkness?

Starting again

Back in the very early days of blogging, I found that if I sat down and wrote for long enough, something was bound to come. Now I sit for hours, literally HOURS, and end up just as I began--with a blank page. I'm worried that I've lost it. I'm worried that I took something precious and fragile and untouched by the outside world and opened it up for everyone to see. And now that I know they're looking, I can't come up with anything. The words are too frightened to come out. Instead when I sit down to write, I insist on filling the page with a bunch of nothing about nothing. What happened?

Writer Shauna Niequist wrote a blog recently about taking the time to do the "work" of writing. (Actually she's writing a whole series about writing.)

“It’s my responsibility to live a life that sustains me creatively, so that when it’s “go-time” and I’m staring at a blank screen, I’ve got something to say.” -Shauna Niequist

Through her post she speaks strongly about the importance of creating our own inspiration; that we are in charge of living lives worth writing about. Maybe that is the root of this panic that has grabbed hold of me. The foundation of my wall may actually be the secret fear that I am not living a life worth writing about.

Maybe that's really everyone's fear. But this time I'm not going to write for everyone. I need to get back to writing for me.

I am not living a life without struggle or success. In fact, I experience both everyday. So I have decided to start there. As often as I can, I will take time to sit and write about a struggle or a success that I am experiencing in my life. Sometimes I will write about both and sometimes not.

Want to help? Let me know you're reading -- comment or talk to me. It really goes a long way. And mostly, I hope you start to think about the struggles and successes in your own life. Are you living a life worth writing about?

Twists and turns and change

I could not survive without my small group. Every Wednesday, we gather in a circle in someone’s living room or basement or back porch and share stories about pets and husbands and books we love. We read together and laugh together and cry together. Most importantly, we lift each other up and endure together.

Last night we read Lent by Shauna Niequist and talked about the things in our lives that have control over us. We talked about the danger of a quick tongue and sharp words. We talked about disciplining children and how to love each other. And from my side of the circle, I talked about the ways I’ve given up control to negative self-talk, resulting in a series of destructive self-fulfilling prophecies.

Example: I think I am not worthy of a cute, clean, tidy home. That depresses me, so I don’t feel like cleaning. Leaving me with a messy, dirty house. Proving that I’m not worthy of a cute, clean, tidy home.

I know. I’m twisted. And it permeates every area of my life.

I don’t deserve to be a professional singer because of all the ways I’ve mistreated my body and voice. Years of imperfect behavior means I can’t access areas of my voice as I used to, resulting in few viable vocal “prospects” or performance gigs. Therefore I find nothing to stop me from all sorts of general debauchery that leaves me sounding like a frog. And in the end, after all this bad behavior, I conclude that I don’t deserve to be singing those professional-level performances anyway.

You would think that knowing I do this would stop me from falling into such mental traps. But it doesn’t. All these horribly cyclical things happen over and over again.

Earlier today I watched a TED Talk by spoken word artist Sarah Kay. In addition to her work as a poet, she teaches and works with young people, helping them develop their artistic voices. First of all, she says, you must say to yourself “I can.” There’s no way to begin until you at least believe that you can. The second step... well, I don’t actually remember the second step. But the third step was definitely something along the lines of: “Grow; develop; move forward.”

Basically, her premise is that after step one and step two (whatever it is) the temptation will be strong to write the same poem over and over again. The poem people respond to. The poem that gets the applause. That is why step three is so important, why we must always be reaching deep, looking outward and pushing forward.

Well, she was definitely speaking my language. I’ve been struggling for months for a breakthrough in my writing, not to mention my actual life. Because the problem is larger than writing. I’ve been trying to regurgitate inspiration the way Sarah Kay warns against. I’ve closed my mind, content with experiencing the same things over and over again. In ways that really matter, I haven’t taken any risks that might change me. But change, after all, is a necessary ingredient to growth.

After sharing with my group yesterday, I read Love Song for Fall from Bittersweet, again by Shauna Niequist. As usual, through her words of struggle and triumph, I heard my own voice speak out in urgent clarity. And perhaps you need to hear the words as I heard them:

Find a reason to inspire change. Use a season, a relationship, a song – use anything you can find and squeeze the change out of it. Force yourself to sit and do the hard work. Write. Dream. Work out. Sing. Teach. Imagine. Just sit down and do it.

My friend Micah is a working pianist, director and composer in New York and once told me that in order to succeed in music, he had to force himself to be his own best friend. He had to be his publicist and agent and number one fan. And even though he carried all the insecurities of a natural-born artist, those other parts of him would never let on. They protected him. One time he told me – ‘Don’t you think Dawn Upshaw has an agent? Of course she does, she’s Dawn Upshaw. I just need to be that for myself.’

Sometimes we need to be our own best friend. We need to lie down next to ourselves and hold on tight. We need to tell ourselves that it’s going to be okay, that we’re worth it and the world just sucks sometimes. We need to be our own mothers and our own fathers. We need to tell ourselves to wear our hats in the cold and take an umbrella in case it rains. We need to love ourselves enough that we can stick out the lonely nights. We need to take ourselves out to dinner and drinks, and go home at the end of the night – just us.

And when one of those voices says something cruel, tell it to shut the hell up. You’re worth it.

Dreams and doubts

I have come to the conclusion that I am not a blogger. At least not a good blogger. At best, I am someone who sometimes posts something to her blog. I know this to be true because I’ve recently begun following the blogs of people who are bloggers. And it is an different game entirely. So far what I have learned is that to be a blogger you need to be: brave, witty, willing to say silly things, and have a camera nearby at all times. (Actually, the last is probably optional.) I am often number three, sometimes number one, think I’m number two and almost never number four.

Above all, my favorite bloggers are fearless. Or at least their writing is. In fact, I would say that my favorite singers, writers, poets, preachers and people are pretty fearless too. They appear to have overcome that one stumbling block that keeps the rest of us from putting pen to paper. They’ve beaten back the doubt and embraced the dream. Or maybe they’ve embraced the doubt and it’s revealed the dream.

My life has been a series of doubts and dreams the last ten months. Last May I made a decision to stand up for my dream of becoming a pastor. I can honestly say that I had no idea how many doubts would come with that. It was as if the two were all shoved into a little room in the back of my heart and flooded out together when I opened the door. A little doubt here, a little dream there, a dash of neurosis and ego in the corner. I was certain that if I just said yes – out loud and in front of people – that God would whoosh down and set me on a clear path to my future. My destiny. My dream. I suppose I was looking for the dove, for the Spirit’s voice telling me God was pleased. And when that didn’t happen, just the way I had expected it would, I guess my reaction was to wonder why God wasn’t pleased. Was it as I had feared? Was I too broken?

But here is where I’m discovering that dreams and doubts collide. Because I am too broken and cut with scars, full of pride and pain. I’ve tried to navigate this strange experience and calling on my own, without a god I thought was too busy with more worthy candidates. I’ve tried to patch up my dream, all the while turning a blind eye to the reality that I’ve only succeeded in multiplying my doubts. I blamed God for the unanswered questions. I blamed God for the stumbling blocks and the realities of life. I blamed God for being silent. I wanted a magical god, one who would do up all the undone things in my life. One who would make me brand new in every earthly way I could imagine. But here’s the thing. I don’t think God wants a blank canvas. I don’t think God wants us to be born again. I think God wants us to realize why we were born in the first place, to realize who we have the capacity to become.

God won’t erase the mistakes I’ve made. God won’t rewrite the dark stories I’ve lived. God won’t stop me when I hide away or cower in the face of what I’ve seen reflected in my life. And although I kind of wish that God would want to do all those things, I know that I could not be here, if I had not been there.