Love cannot be earned...

Love isn't earned.

It cannot be.

I got my tail twisted in an anxious knot the other day, over a friendship that means a lot but isn't quite where I'd like to be.

"What if they don't like me? What if I'm not good enough? How can I change me to be what they want?"

The anxiety put a knot into my left shoulder, the one that always aches when I carry tension I'm not meant to carry. And the pain reminded me to take it to my Father, who knows me (and the other person!) much better than I can.

And there it was. The simple, profound thought. Love isn't earned. It cannot be.

I can't earn someone else's love. They choose to give it.

But neither can they earn mine. I choose to give it. (There's tremendous freedom in that.)

Love isn't earned. It cannot be. Love is a gift.

.

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Photo from the beach on Thanksgiving, which was its own kind of gift. 🥰

Blessed are the kingdom beggars

Blessed are the poor (beggarly, destitute, helpless, lacking in power) in spirit.

What a rich picture this is! Me, having nothing. Helpless. Asking. Crouching down, asking for alms of the richest King in the world.

And He, seeing, smiles and calls it very good [happy, to be envied].

I cannot express what joy this conveys to my heart. My weakness, my helplessness, my inability to effect change and healing…. This is the very thing that the King blesses, and calls good. AND. And, He says that to this beggardlyness, He WILL give the kingdom of heaven, the right to reign over His domain and to use His authority upon earth.

Going Back to Go Forward

This was supposed to be the summer in which I make big strides towards my physical fitness goals. The summer in which I attain new levels of emotional and spiritual maturity, gain new skills, and advance my career.

What actually happened was that back-to-back injuries put me in physical therapy, a counselling/therapy group revealed a lot of emotional immaturity that I hadn't known was there, and I faced spiritual doubts and wrestling that I thought I had already settled. As I pursued new skills and knowledge, I realized how very much there still is to know.

As I've been reflecting on the last six months, I am deeply grateful. Although in many ways, this summer was the opposite of what I wanted, but exactly what I needed.

Sometimes, we need to go back to go forward. I needed to regress my physical training to find and address the injuries and weaknesses that were holding me back. And the same principle holds true in the emotional, spiritual, and career areas.

Because of the regression I experienced this summer, I am more mature, more settled, beginning to be stronger, and have a clearer idea of where I need to work on, learn, and grow in.

Regression before progression. Going back and restoring the foundations. It's a good thing. And if this is happening in your life, I'm excited for what God is doing, and for what will be.

Tuesday Thoughts on Singleness and Imposter Syndrome

Image by Pawel Czerwinski via Unsplash

There are some things nobody really talks about. And I don’t mean the random and largely unimportant things like having a favorite burner on the stove, or always putting the same sock on first, or secretly being afraid that you’ll trip on concrete and knock your front teeth out.

I mean things like how we all feel inadequate, and how hard it is to make friends as an adult, and how many times we’re blindsided by an idea or realization that we hadn’t ever seen, somehow. We don’t usually talk about these things.

While hanging up the laundry on my sturdy wooden clothes rack tonight (find a similar one here), I got to thinking about being single and thirty-five, and how unexpected it’s been, somehow. Not the part about being single so much, although twenty-year-old-me certainly didn’t expect herself to be still single at thirty-five. But what it’s been like, that’s been unexpected.

35. The big three five.

No big deal, I thought. Another birthday. Except that for some reason I really didn’t feel like celebrating this one. So much so, I considered hiding it, not mentioning it to anyone, and hoping nobody remembered to send cards. (I’m almost embarrassed to admit how very much I wanted to avoid it.)

Tonight, in the midst of the rhythmic movement of hanging clothes, I found some ideas about why.

1. Myth: If you’re single and don’t want to be, it’s all your fault and there’s something wrong with you that you aren’t willing to fix.
   There’s a LOT of books, Instagram accounts, podcasts, and “dating coaches” perpetuating this idea. Just follow this process, buy this program, do these four things, change this attitude, and you will have good men falling over themselves to date you, they promise.
   Swallowing this idea has tripped me up, stomped my ribs, and left me gasping in the dust. And the vicious thing is, there is just enough truth in the idea to make it seem all true. For many of us, there really are areas that we need to work on in order to become “marriageable”. Where I got tripped up was the notion that I could somehow earn a relationship and that if I didn’t get what I wanted, it was a reflection on my own worth. Which becomes a vicious cycle wherein passing time constantly and mockingly affirms my lack.
   I’m still working through this one. No wise words of wisdom, no neatly wrapped package of ideas on how to work through this belief and come out the other side happy and secure.

2. “Advanced Maternal Age”. Thirty-five is the arbitrary age at which all pregnancies become automatically “high risk” because of the mother is now officially old. When I turned thirty, I grieved the fact that I will never birth a child in my twenties, like all my grade-school peers did (that’s right, every single one of them, except me). At thirty-five, I had to grieve the fact that I will never have a low-risk pregnancy, from a medical standpoint (I’m not getting into how I don’t agree with this, except to say that I don’t). And of course there is the increasing likelihood of never being able to have a biological child, which is also an unexpectedly heavy grief.

3. The myth of the expected career timeline. I’ve had an interesting and varied career, working in more areas than the average nurse, and gaining some unique skill and knowledge combinations, even including some overseas work. However, this jill-of-all-trades approach means that I feel like I’m barely getting started when my younger peers are often highly skilled in their niche. If I’m not careful, I will start to feel like an absolute failure. But the reality is…

4. Trauma affects one’s ability to learn and take risks. For almost five years. I stayed in a job that required far less of me than I was actually capable of. It took that long for me to work through several major traumatic events and regain my belief in my own ability to learn and tolerate risk. I wish it wasn’t this way, of course, and I wish I had been able to move on from it sooner. But I’m learning to have compassion and kindness towards myself, and to delight in the joy of learning as it’s returning.

5. The high cost of caring about excellence. Closely connected to the previous points. Imposter syndrome has been a near-constant companion all of my adult life, and probably even before. Imposter syndrome constantly whispers in my ear that I’m not REALLY good at this, I’ve just somehow fooled people into thinking that I am. Imposter syndrome says that I shouldn’t take risks, because I will fail and then everyone will know that I’m a fraud. It’s taken years to realize that some level of imposter syndrome is normal for anyone who cares about excellence and doing their work well. Now, when it whispers that I’m a fraud who doesn’t know enough, I just remind myself that I care a lot about doing this well, and that there is always more I can and should learn, and allow the discomfort to drive continual improvement instead of keeping me stuck. At least, most of the time. Occasionally I need a friend to bring me back to a more balanced view.

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29 Things Nobody Told Me About Adulting

Image by Averie Woodward via Unsplash

1. Being stressed is not a sign of being successful, important, or grown-up.

2. Growth can be RIDICULOUSLY painful; also absolutely and incredibly worth it.

3. Apologizing is a sign of strength and maturity, NOT a sign of weakness and failure.

4. Words of affirmation do not make someone proud, and shaming someone does not inspire them to excellence.

5. White shoes take a lot of work to keep clean. Boring old black sneakers are were it’s at. (Haha to my old-soul fourteen-year-old self on that one.)

6. Gummy bears are for adults too.

7. Silence does not always mean disapproval.

8. Budgeting is fun, and powerful, and immensely freeing.

9. Porn is present in the church. And not everyone who views porn is an evil person; most would love to be free.

10. You will never be done learning.

11. Letters after someone’s name actually tell you very little about how much they know or how well they can apply it.

12. Jesus really does love you.

13. Seeing people as all good or all bad is an incredibly stressful way to live.

14. Cars run better if you check and change the oil regularly.

15. Driving said cars is not a one-way ticket to hell.

16. There’s a lot of things the Bible doesn’t say that I was taught it does. For example: God doesn’t look down His nose at women.

17. Wool socks beat cotton, hands down, every day.

18. Most women have no idea how to properly fit a bra.

19. Sex and sexuality was God’s idea, not a dirty little secret that the devil slipped in.

20. Always carry a plastic spoon in your purse or glove compartment. It will come in handy more times than you think.

21. Classical music is not always boring. (Thanks, NPR on the radio, in taxi driver Frank Codera’s old stanky Chevy van, for giving me an intimation that this might be so.)

22. The world is much bigger than our little idea of it. In fact, the world is bigger than America, and it is incredibly rich and varied and beautiful and heartbreaking and harsh and glorious, all at once. Travel. It’s worth it.

23. Mission work will not automatically make your children leave God and “the church”.

24. Salads are good, if made right. Who knew?!

25. God still speaks to His people, and you can learn to hear His voice.

26. Steak is better if not overcooked. Meat thermometers help with this.

27. Women can wear pants and not be evil.

28. Cereal out of a box is a lousy breakfast.

29. Adults do not have everything figured out and often feel uncertain.