Fighting For...

The other day I was shopping for the perfect gift for this amazing girl I know that is headed off to college. She is moving into her dorm tomorrow, and this is the culmination of almost two years of her fighting for something different than she grew up in. Yearning for something more. Except she, unlike many people, had the courage to turn that yearning into action. She took all of the difficult steps to shed the dysfunction, the dead, the poison, and to seek and to search after life, love and for what she knew had to exist outside of the life she had known. I met this girl when she was 17. It happened to be at the darkest time of her life. I helped her start the ball rolling, walked with her through the darkness. At the same time, someone else also came into my life. Someone else who was hurting and alone. Someone I felt God had called me to show grace to...tangibly. So for a time, I did life with these young women.

So back to yesterday... I was in search of that perfect gift. And I found it. But in the process...I also stumbled upon this sign. And like most people who come to my town (tourists), I pulled my camera out and snapped a picture. Not because I am a tourist, but because these words are the fabric of who God made me to be. They are the motto by which I chose to live, for as far back as I can remember. These words are what drove me to get involved with these women in the first place. To take chances. To show grace. To offer hope. The one...has had her entire life change before her very eyes. It has been a grueling and difficult process...not easy by any means. But she starts her sophomore year of college at Calvin tomorrow and I could not be more proud of her. If you knew what this girl has overcome, you would feel the same. She made so many difficult decisions, overcame so many obstacles, and has come SO far. The story of redemption is just beginning, but her story is to the point that you can't wait to turn the next page to see what happens.
The other story did not end that way. It did not end well. At all. In fact, (using the words of the sign I saw yesterday), my risks were not "safe", and the care I offered hurt me a thousand times more than any help it gave her, and the dreams were not real, and my expectations for this girl which everyone told me were crazy...really were. What I thought I saw and hoped and offered came back to bite me full circle. Now when I read the words of that sign, all sorts of memories come crashing back like angry waves in a hurricane until I am knocked flat and the last thing I ever want to do, is live those words.
Since then, I have so often wondered what we ARE called to. I have believed my entire life that we are called to love tangibly, to give grace freely, to get our hands dirty, to give more than we think we have. But in small ways over the past two years, and then in a huge way a year ago, this belief became my demise. I am a therapist. I preach boundaries. And I have them. But with these people I literally felt God calling me to go further. To love radically. To get my hands dirty. And I did. And I risked a lot. One story is beautiful. The other a mess. And the mess was so damaging to my heart that it has largely caused me to back pedal away from the beautiful. For fear. That binding awful fear. So many times I have fallen prey to the idea that if we do what is right...what we are called to do...that everything will work out and the story will end beautifully. And when it doesn't, then what? The few people I was able to let in on the details had a miriad of responses. Most were the threads that wove together to help catch me as I fell. But a few said things I had heard other times in my life that are very damaging. Things like, "Well its such a mess, you must have heard wrong or you must have rushed ahead and done your own thing...this can't be God." These messages threw me back to my core beliefs on God. And you know what I found? I found that most often in the Bible, when God asked something of someone, it did NOT end well. In fact, many times the person ended up dead, or suffering in some way. Which in an earthly sense, we look upon and ask what kind of God rewards His people like that? But we fail to see beyond this life. We don't realize that the greatest grace ever extended to us...is heaven. So what we view as so awful (death), is in fact the very entrance gate we must walk through to get to the greatest victory.
But here is the thing. I still feel stupid. And weak. And vulnerable. And while I want to be true to the person God made me to be, I am so much thicker skinned. So much more cynical and jaded. So much less trusting. So much. And terrified of getting involved or getting my hands dirty with anyone else's life. I know the right response to all of this is to go forward, smarter. To be who God created me to be, but with better boundaries and more wisdom. But I haven't yet found the practical landing spot for that. I am at war within myself. I gave so much, and it could have cost me everything. In fact, my last time speaking to this person, I told her that I wished she "had stolen every dime in my bank account, because what she had taken from me was far, far more valuable." I knew that then...even in those early days.
A few months later I was pregnant. And lots happened the months before that, and even more the months after that. And I spent the last year feeling weak and vulnerable and insecure and depressed and utterly alone. And sick, both physically and at heart. At one point I remember laying alone in my room and feeling lost on so many levels. This was a year of deep loss....friendships, relationships, ideals, faith, and lots more that I can't share. And as labor neared, I viewed it as an opportunity to start something new. That if I could just have my physical health, perhaps the rest would start to fall into place. And here is where the natural labor thing fell. I know for many women it makes NO sense. Why would I ever put myself in a position to feel such pain when I could dull it? Why dip my toes into more hell, when I could avoid it? But I FOUGHT this entire pregnancy. I fought on so many levels. And I felt so weak by the end. For so long I had let people make me feel weak and I desperately needed to feel strong again. I wanted to FEEL and to fight back. So many people dull their emotions...its the American way...easy and fast fixes. I don't want to dull.To grow, we must feel. I don't want a bandaid. I want to heal. I am fine with the scars left behind, but I want new flesh to grow. I want something new.
And that something new started August 3, when I labored to bring my youngest son into this world. The labor was a picture to me of how I had been fighting for a long time. A couple of weeks ago, my sister stayed up ridiculously late one night to finish this amazing slide show (link to follow at bottom of post). She sent it to me and I loved every.single.second of it. I cried as I relived it all. But no one really knows all I was fighting for the past ten months, or those three hours in that hospital room. But I see it in these pictures. And it reminds me to keep fighting. I hesitated to share this with the world because it felt too personal. There is nothing inappropriate in the pictures...but the emotions captured are raw. However, it tells a beautiful story. Child birth...new life...is a redemptive story.  We go through the worst pain to gain the best gift. And its so easy to get lost in the pain. While my redemptive story is still being written...my hope is that by sharing this slide show, you will see your own redemption story. The things you have fought so hard to let go of. The things you  have fought so hard to keep. The memories that haunt you that you fight so hard against. The lost dreams, relationships, failures, and hurts that you fight against every day in the hopes that one day it will make some measure of sense. I hope you see that story. Your story...and that you find hope in the midst of it to lead you out of the darkness and into the Light.

Labor...a Redemptive Story
Courtesy of Brennigan Gilson-Burnett of BgPhotography
http://bgphotographystudios.com/