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.