Untitled on purpose

Since I was the age of 12 I have been told to write a book. So I started a Xanga. And filled it with shallow personality quizzes, gifs, and day-to-day logs of what happened that day in middle school.
At 19 I started a private blog. I wrote on the internet with hopes of showing no one on the internet.
Then a sweet guy I now call my husband told me to go public. So I did. But never shared the link with anyone but him. 

Then a few years later the same sweet guy made me this website to softly encourage me to get the dang words out of my head. He bought me a URL. Showed me which widgets would be beneficial. And so I started sharing more. I published links on Facebook and Instagram.
Then the whisper of fear I was all too familiar with came back. My words didn’t matter. They were empty and shallow. Plus I was running out of content. Content I would be okay with publishing to my audience because the lessons I was writing about were learned. The miracles were reality. The messes cleaned up. 
And here we are, on the 12th month of 2020 and I have barely posted this year for that very reason.

I think I don’t want to write my story because it shows I am weak. It shows me being vulnerable. Especially when this chapter of my story isn’t wrapped up into a tiny bow yet. I have been waiting for the happy ending to come before I shared the lessons I learned in between. I wanted to share this journey by looking back, not while I was currently walking through it. 

Why? Maybe it’s because, in my darkest days, I have a hard time staying there. I have a hard time staying still, staying sad, and staying not okay for longer than a few days. I have this eternal clock in me that counts down the moments of grief, depression, and sorrow from when they first knock on the door of my heart. If they stick around longer than I like, I try to push them so far down in hopes that by the end of day number 2 or 3 they’ll be long gone. There’s too much to be done to stay here, I think. I want to… I need to… make sure others are okay. 

I am not one who eats when I am down. I don’t punch walls or people. I don’t go buy a bottle of whiskey and mix it with my coke until both are empty and I’m left snoring on the couch. I don’t run as much as I used to. I just ignore. I just cover the pain with beautiful words and optimistic thoughts, which truly come easily for me. Every dark thought my brain has is met with an auto-response of feel-good messages and truths about Jesus. Things like: it could always be worse, at least they were a believer, I should be praising God that I even had this experience (no matter how temporary) or that I knew this person (for however long). I should have joy because I know Jesus. In my brain, to feel this broken feels the very opposite of holy. It feels the very opposite of trust.

(I want to note here I would never say this to my best friend. For when I am with someone who is beaten up and broken-hearted, I would never once call them weak, unfaithful, broken because I know they are not. They just aren’t okay right now, plain and simple. And it really is okay to not be okay for a little white. Have you ever heard that quote “We tell ourselves things we would never let our best friend tell herself.”? It’s like that.)

Even when I journal, I find myself at the end giving a pep talk to the reader (future me). Almost as if I am convincing them (myself) that I am fine. I am okay. They (I) don’t have to worry because I know the truth. That I know this pain won’t last forever and God is ultimately in control. It’s almost like I am convincing my present self and my future self all in one single curly scrawled paragraph. 

Because of the instant chorus of feel-goodisms (be a dear and pretend that’s a word) I have a hard time sitting down and processing through what I am actually thinking. I truly am sad in the beginning. I even cry in the beginning and do feel the weight of the dark clouds, but then I see what it does to everyone around me and I stop. I stop my sorrow in order to help them through their own. In order to not add pain or sorrow to their life, I save them the trouble and heartache of having to carry me too. I know what it’s like to carry someone when you aren’t quite healthy yourself. I know what it can do to one’s soul if one isn’t careful, and I hate to think of being that for someone else. I love to be needed, I hate to be needy. And the last thing I want to be is a burden. 

Even now tears well up in my eyes because these words above feel extremely raw and real. Every fiber in me wants to delete all the paragraphs so no one sees. When I die, I want them to see the metaphors and narratives God spoke into all throughout my writings and journals. I want them to see all the good that he has done in my life and the lessons he has taught me, not the weaknesses that I still stumble through on the daily. Not the moments of distrust, discontentment, and dissatisfaction. 

But that’s not what captivates people’s hearts. It’s not the happily ever after lessons, it’s the messy middles. It’s the crawling to the cross when we still don’t have what we want, again. I can feel the very temptation to wrap it up here with so many words to convince you that I am okay, that God’s teaching me the value of authenticity in my writing, and that maybe the lesson is the faithfulness to write anyway… but I can’t. I have so much joy for the Christmas season and so many good good things in my life right now, but there is another part of my heart that is longing for something I don’t have right now and it sucks. And if I am being honest, it just really hurts today. 

And I thought you should know.