fear is a beast

Wouldn’t you know that just days after I write about my yearly resolution to be brave, I am reminded that to become brave you first have to be scared. Brennan Manning writes about people that aren’t prepared for their prayers to be answered. He says people pray for humility but they don’t prepare themselves to be humiliated. Every time I pray for courage and bravery, I forget that we don’t just receive these things, we learn them. We experience things that cause us to encounter humiliation or fear in order to learn humility or courage.

Fear is a beast

always lurking around every corner and always present in my peripheral vision even in my most contented moments.

After all this talk about how I feel a little more brave, I’m reminded that I have much farther to go and I am learning still.

Fear steps in, steals my breath, hollows me out and leaves me with just enough energy to close the curtains and lock the door. I am amazed at how quickly I throw my walls up when fear enters the room. I’ve had a lifetime of training in self-preservation and turns out, it’s not so easily unlearned, go figure. Once I feel that fear, it’s hard to choose courage; my words, my actions, my demeanor all turn themselves over to fear. Everything in me desperately fights to protect itself-and it gets ugly.

I’ve found that half the time I don’t even know the root of the fear in the moment. Fear knows my weaknesses and my wounds and knows just what will trigger that automatic response to sound the alarms. I’ve buried those things away. I have to dig and dig until I get at the root of the fear. It’s then that I have the choice to be hurt by it and bury it away again or I can acknowledge it for what it is, feel the weight of it and let it go. There’s a quote that I love that reads,

“the rain of grace pounds the dirt until life breaks through the mud and reaches for the sun”.

I just love that. It’s digging down deep, finding the root of the fear, letting grace in and allowing life to come out of it. It’s work. It’s not easy. It’s like soul gardening; it requires using mental muscles that I never use or haven’t used in years and at the end of it, I’m left feeling sore and tired, much like real life gardening. But, what I love about gardening is that sure I’m sore and tired and dirty at the end of the day but I can step back and look at the progress I’ve made. I can see something grow where I once thought nothing could and that is something to be thankful for.

this is the new year

And cue, Death Cab for Cutie’s song…this is the New Year. It’s funny how different markers in life or the year almost warrant a reflection, a mandatory looking back of sorts. I always feel that way anyway. I like that though. I am a reflective person and any excuse to look back on where I’ve been and where I’m going refreshes me. In fact usually when I sit down to journal, without fail I spend a majority of the time re-reading old entries and transporting myself back, remembering how my heart was at a certain moment in time.

What did I learn this year? How did I grow? What did I do? How did I spend my moments? So many questions that I ask myself-maybe one or two that I actually have an answer to off the top of my head. Without fail, every year I am just amazed at how much can happen in a year. It’s been a really hard but really blessed year. If you had asked me a year ago what the year would look like, I could not have predicted or forecasted this year in the slightest. Time goes so fast but so much life and healing can happen in that amount of time.

This year I was a bridesmaid in two of my dear friend’s weddings. I went to Haiti for the third and fourth time to complete a portrait project and teach a trauma support seminar. I co-founded a non-profit for Haiti. My best friend and I held our very first photography show together in Seattle. I showed my Haiti photography at the Dragonfly and shared my love of Haiti and photography with my community in Portland. I started my own photography business. I started dating and am still dating the most amazing man I’ve ever met. I shot five weddings. I helped shoot a destination wedding in Mexico and rung in the New Year shooting a dear friend’s wedding in Spokane.

Every year, I make the resolution to be brave. Perhaps not the most specific resolution and most of the time if one doesn’t make a specific and achievable goal, it’s just not going to happen. But you know, even with my vague resolution or prayer, I feel a little more brave. Brave in work, brave in relationships, brave in faith. I In those little or big steps toward bravery, I’ve found that it’s worth it. A year ago I would have stayed safely where the risk is minimal or the reward assured and that only takes you so far. I always fall back on the quote, “may you always do what you are afraid to do”. The best things in life are a little scary because there’s risk involved which means it’s worth something. I think back on this year and think of all the amazing experiences and people I would have missed out on if I hadn’t said yes to those opportunities. This year has been rich and full and I am so very thankful for that.

“But in the books again, great joy through love always seemed go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain– if indeed, they went together. If there were a choice– and he suspected there was– a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths." (A Severe Mercy)

As I look ahead to next year. I can’t tell you what the year will look like, I was never any good at making a plan anyway, but I can tell you that it will surely be really rich and full, full of both joy and sorrow as our days always are, I just hope that I keep a thankful heart through it all. Here’s to the heights and the depths.

perspective

Remember building the best fort ever?

And then how the dog charged through the living room and across the pillow and how the blanket slid out from the stack of books holding it down, and how the whole thing fell apart, but also how this broken down mess was what got you outside, out to that wide field where you found some jacked-up old wood and a random shoe, and then how you found yourself starting again, building something altogether new.

How you sat there with dirt under your finger nails, digging away.

And how the sun was setting and you looked up to see a new view emerging from across the wide field and over the lake.

A world that was waiting for you, but which you wouldn’t have seen if the dog hadn’t charged through the living room.

- Sabrina Ward Harrison

I thought about this little story tonight as a group of us talked at home community. It's such a quick story but the message to me is massive and hopeful. Things in life may not turn out exactly how I plan or hope but often times what comes after the collapse of one plan is something new and beautiful and different and good. I hope I always have the eyes to see that new view and the goodness that can be born out of loss.

little bits

i saw an old man on the street corner yesterday blowing great big bubbles from his bike just as it started to rain and it made me so happy.

lovin' the song, 'your hand in mine' by explosions in the sky. the couple who's wedding i helped shoot this past week in zihuatanejo, walked down the aisle to this song. it's so pretty.

also lovin' the song, 'never let me go' off the new florence + the machine album. btw, this album is so great.

i want a dog more and more. while i was in mexico. on our beach stroll, this street dog just walked with us down the beach and back and then sat under our feet as we stopped for a beer-that cost one whole dollar (ohsogreat). reminds me of my beach walks as a little girl on the island. by the time i got to the end of the beach there'd be seven dogs by my side that joined me along the way. i just love 'em.

painful experiences are awful and i wouldn't wish suffering on anyone, but nothing connects people the way pain does, and i find that to be one of the most beautiful things. the redemption, if we have the eyes and privelege to see it is amazing and breathtaking, makes me heartfull and thankful and ultimately more faithful.

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

and lastly, love this quote.

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
-Emerson

quote.

"Charles Dickens tells us every heart is a profound mystery to the heart beating nearest it." Don Miller

and if you're curious of the original quote like I was...

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!" - Charles Dickens

just marinating on this little gem today.

hot potato

Sometimes an emotion will hit me upside the head, just right out of left field. After all this talk about sitting with pain and working through it. I definitely have those days in which I do that very thing and it's hard but it's also good. Then I have other days like today where it's like I'm playing that hot potato game, where you throw the potato around to others as fast as you can and you lose if you hang onto it too long, only it's my emotions that I'm tossing around. Throwing it right back before I even have the chance to be with it for even a moment. All I know is its discomfort, and the logical thing in the moment is to throw it right back before it has the chance to burn me.

I find myself thinking back to one of the first sermons I heard at Imago dei Community and the voice of a 92 year old woman saying the words, "hang on and hang in". You can listen to the sermon here.

I want to know

if you have touched

the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life’s betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

(from The Invitation)

the long way around

I woke up this morning earlier than anticipated. I tried to curl back into sleep for rest’s sake but my stubborn mind wouldn’t rest. I stayed nestled in my bed (which continues to be the warmest place in the house since we as a house have refused to turn on the heat) and turned on some music. I found myself reflecting on life and faith and reading old journal entries. I sighed as I remembered so many moments just like this a couple years ago, I call it “cocooning”.

Cocooning was that time I gave myself to just be still and give myself the space to process and grow and the cozier and safer that space was the better. I had just bought this book, When the Heart Waits randomly on a sale table at Powell’s Books purely because she was the writer of my favorite book, The Secret Life of Bees. In this spiritual memoir of sorts she writes about butterflies and cocoons and waiting. I took in her words like a desert to rain. I related with so much of what she had to say but especially to the cocoon. For a time, she recalls being inundated with images of butterflies and cocoons. One instance, she recalls a poster of a butterfly against a great big sky, on it were the words “Your soul is your greatest work of art” and right down in the corner is the husk of an empty cocoon. A painful reminder that bright wings and works of art don’t just happen, they require courage and letting go and a time of becoming. I think the most fascinating thing about cocoons is that on the outside it looks as if nothing is happening and it looks like the caterpillar inside is hiding, but on the inside, change and transformation are taking place. The butterfly is becoming. The cocoon isn’t an escape but a transformation place.

It got me thinking about this season of life that was so painful. There were ways to escape pain sure, but I was making an intentional decision to face it and sit with it. Funny how easy that sentence was to type out but so incredibly difficult to actually do. I think it’s a natural desire to run from pain, to numb out or pretend it’s not there. It’s so easy to want to arrive, to be at a point where it doesn’t hurt anymore, where everything is perfect and just so. I had spent most of my life thinking if I don’t look at my pain then all would be well. Sure, it worked for a while but you know what? I still knew it was there and my fear of it just grew. When dealing with our wounds, it takes time.

“We went onto heaven the long way around.” -Henry David Thoreau

I love this quote, so much.

Makes me think of something I find myself saying often. The most rewarding things in life take time to build and grow. Most people want heaven now, like every other pleasure in life, instant happiness. Taking the long way isn’t seen as desirable but I would argue that it’s the only way to truly live. It’s long and arduous and oftentimes painful, but there is so much more wisdom to gain and grace to receive along the way. Every day I wake up and commit to taking the long way and I think my soul will be all the better for it.