Leveling with God

 Lets face it. Sometimes we have to be honest— brutally honest. Like, punch-you-in-the-face, kick-you-in-the-shin, steal-your-wallet-and-throw-it-in-a-river kind of honest. It’s just necessary every now and then. Being nice is fantastic, but it’s overrated, and “nice” never saved anyone’s relationship. Actually, “nice” is probably the number one relationship killer. It’s different from “kind.” You can be kind and still be brutally honest with someone you love, but “nice” is never honest. “Nice” is a bit fat lie. “Nice” turns us into throw rugs, and then we end up resenting the object of our niceness: mom and dad, spouse, best friend, co-worker— as if it’s their fault we never leveled with them.

“Nice” is shallow. It keeps a relationship at the surface, a perpetual first impression. It’s not raw and upsetting and messy, like it should be. We all have raw, upsetting, messy qualities about us, and they’re just as worth sharing as our pretty parts, probably more-so. “Nice” makes us angry. It has it’s place sometimes, like with bosses or people who could kill us, but if one is forced to bring “nice” home after work, it’s a sure way to make them pissed off. It doesn’t let you shed your skin, doesn’t let you love or be loved, doesn’t allow freedom or utility or grace or forgiveness. “Nice” is a clever way to lie to everyone around you about who you really are and how you really feel. “Nice” kills passion, and it puts us in a state of slavery to everyone around us.

So why are we so nice to God?

If I’m being perfectly honest (that’s what this whole thing is about, right?), I’ve found myself resenting God many times before. I lied about it, of course. You’re not supposed to resent God, it’s a HUGE no-no. So I just kept my mouth shut and tried to work it out on my own, but that was the problem to begin with. I’d run into all these things I hated, that hurt me and made me angry and sick to my stomach. But I had stopped doing what the psalmists did and crying out to God, questioning Him, even yelling at Him. Yelling, not in anger at Him, but in desperation for Him, in anger at the lack of Him I saw. Instead of raging and allowing Him to hear me, I kept my mouth shut. And instead of making God like me any better, it only made me angrier. It was “nice,” and it was a lie.

I believe God loves us very thoroughly. I don’t think He only loves us in spite of who we are, but because of who we are, even if who we are is a big fat mess at the moment. We are not divine, and God is well aware of that. But when we try to force divinity in ourselves, we end up lying to God and to our own hearts. Some of the nicest people are the farthest from God, because they refuse to let go of their facade. They lie to their loved ones, they lie to themselves, and they lie to God in prayer.

It’s true that some of the nicer prayers are necessary: “Thank you” and “Thou art holy” and “Thou art good.” But in conjunction with recognizing God’s goodness in our prayers, we must also acknowledge the state of our own hearts. Sometimes it sounds semi-nice: “Forgive me” and “I love you.” Other times it might be something like “I’m so #@$%*!& angry!” “I’m lost.” “I’m addicted.” “I don’t understand” or “I don’t care.” If we are angry, we must invite God into our anger, as uncomfortable as that may sound. If we are helpless, we must invite God into our helplessness and allow the Creator’s strength to be perfected in our weakness. If we are bitter, we must invite Him into our bitterness, even if our bitterness is toward God Himself. Because no relationship is saved by “nice.” Relationships are destroyed by the failure to level with one another. Just as we trust our loved ones do not love us because they think we are perfect, we must have faith that God loves us for an entirely different set of reasons as well. Not because we are perfect, but because God is love.

I think many of us would find ourselves at the beginning of healing if we would all learn to level with God. Let us be a church of ragamuffins and misfits once again. Let us allow honest passion back into our lives, even at the expense of harmony and white picket fences, even at the risk of scandal. Let us not treat God like He can be fooled and not treat each other like strangers, but instead like family. Honesty is neglected in favor of happiness and harmony too often, in our churches, our families, and our personal lives. I’m trying to make that change in myself, and I pray we all make the same change, for the sake of ourselves and our relationships with God and others.

Sarah out.

Let A Little of Your Human Show

Today I found myself sitting in the bathroom with the fan on and the door locked, quietly sobbing. It was a bad day. I spent most of it locked in my head, wondering, worrying, making horrible predictions about the future. I spent quite a bit of time trapping loved ones in these precious little boxes of self-pity, built entirely out of meaningless instances I have taken out of context in order to prove that they really don’t love me at all like they say they do. I was locked in my head— swimming about, sifting through stressors and insecurities and anger and fear until I felt the only possible solution was to break a whole lot of stuff. Lamps, mirrors, kitchen chairs— whatever I could get my hands on, really. But being the good passive aggressive Christian that I am, I didn’t destroy my parents’ house. Instead, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried (after angrily hitting a ruler against a suitcase many times).

It’s been one of those years, you know? Followed by one of those months, and then one of those weeks, and then… apparently, one of those days. The most frustrating thing about it was that I couldn’t pin-point exactly what made me want to grab the next person I saw by the ears and shake them until I passed out. I suppose I could blame it on whatever it was that triggered it. Probably something I saw on Facebook, or my stupid tank top, how the sleeve kept on falling down over my shoulder (I hate that!). But really, it was so much more. It was one of those moments where the world comes crashing down: that shadowy, imaginary world where you’ve got everything that has ever worried you, angered you, or caused you or your family pain under control. There it all is, laid out in nice concentric circles so you can see it all at the same time and assure yourself you’ve got this. Then those nice little circles turn into razor sharp ninja throwing stars, and they come racing toward you all at the same time and you freak. out.

That is what happened to me today. I know, I know. I really should have been dealing with that shadowy world a long time ago. I know that it’s partly my fault. I’ve sort of bought into this lie that I have to be ok all the time, which doesn’t mean that I am ok all the time, just that I pretend to be. I really don’t do enough crying in the bathroom, that’s what it is. I don’t do enough crying on friends’ shoulders, either (probably because they don’t love me at all like they say they do). It’s taken me a long time to learn how to take care of myself, and still, it is usually one step forward, two steps back. Until someone who loves me (truly, I’m so lucky to have as many people who love me as I do) grabs me by the shoulders and tells me to quit being a martyr before I lose my mind (or destroy someone’s house).

I think most of us have played the martyr at one point or another. Bottle it up, shove it way deep down inside— “I can handle this”— until the lid blows off from all the pressure and we club someone to death with the nearest tree branch. Some people go most of their lives keeping it all shoved away. Me, well, I made it ‘til today. I’m sure I could have found some other corner of my mind to shove all those skeletons into. Or I could have kept hitting that suitcase until it was just four wheels and some zippers. But instead I went into the bathroom and cried. And then I took a drive, and I screamed, several times, at the top of my lungs. And then I laughed.

I might have to do it again tomorrow. I’ll probably have to do something similar to it many, many times throughout my life. Hopefully I’ll quit making those boxes and I’ll cry into someone’s arms, instead of the bathroom mirror. The cobwebs have not all been cleared away yet, but I think I made the right decision, for once. And I’m feeling a little bit better.

The choice is not simply between destroying ourselves or destroying others. I believe we can decide against destruction altogether, as long as we're willing to let a little of our human show.

Dear (Our Names Here): Stop being a martyr and go scream at something. 

Sincerely, Your Increasingly Fragile Psyche.

Being Human and Alive.

My eyes turn fiercely green when I cry. Perhaps it’s because my tears, as an expression of my humanity, indeed make me more alive than when I do not cry.

Humanity, in humans, is incurable. It is irreversible. And it is good. God said, “It is good.”

May every unabashed display of our humanity, in laughter, in tears, in screams of fury, be an act of worship to the Creator who made us that way, as portraits of his own beautiful complexity.

Amen.