Pushing

It’s strange when you discover a part of yourself, a longing, a hurt, a love, that you never knew existed. It’s like hearing the sound of a baseball game far off in the distance and suddenly discovering that you want nothing in the world more than a good hotdog. We push things down, we push them aside, we push them far away, but soon we realize that we only pushed them deeper into ourselves. We push them because we don’t have the time or the energy. We push them because we get distracted. We push them because they hurt too much.

.

I have been pushed before. You know you’ve been pushed when you wake up one day and find that you don’t exist anymore. You reach out and where there once stood flesh and bone and love, there is only an empty void. The only choice once you’ve been pushed like this is to close the gap, to keep moving. To sit at the opening of that void and mourn will only drive you crazy, because it’s the choice of the other person to turn their face toward you once again. And sometimes they never do.

.

Sometimes things get pushed out of necessity or chance, like they just drift into the margins of our psyche as other things take their place. People drift apart or move away, and at some point or another, they don’t occupy our thoughts anymore. Our focuses shift and our priorities rearrange, but nothing ever really leaves.

.

Our pushing, I believe, whether by chance or choice, is never permanent. Someday the things that drift, or those that we try with all our might to distance ourselves from, will reappear in our line of sight, suddenly and without notice. It happens without our permission, when we run into a face or a smell or a sound that we thought we had forgotten. It’s seeing a picture of an old love whom you thought you had left behind, and finding yourself wishing that you were in the picture too. It’s hearing distance in someone’s voice and feeling a rush of pain at every rejection you thought you had overcome. This is our minds screaming at us, fighting against the movement that takes us further from ourselves, that distances us from feelings we were supposed to look full in the face. We cannot run from our own minds, and soon enough they will force us to be honest with ourselves.

Get ready.

.

This happened to me last week when I helped my parents move the rest of our belongings out of our house in Elko, NV. My family moved to Arizona a few months ago, and this was the final step in making the transition complete. I thought before coming that I was ready to leave Elko. I used an interesting mixture of denial and bitterness to distance myself from the goodbye that was imminent, and it would have worked had I not come to help with the move. Walking through my home with no furniture inside of it, I started seeing everything with new eyes. Home, I thought. This is my home. It started to sink in, started to become real. Denial was no longer useful, as I could not ignore the permanence of the move any longer. And bitterness was slowly slipping away as I came across fragments of old memories. One afternoon, cleaning out my parents’ closet, I found a lamp that a very old friend gave to me on my 16th birthday. Nostalgia and longing washed over me at the thought of Julian, this friend who had left Elko a few years prior. I hadn’t talked to him in so long, hadn’t thought of him in ages. But my thoughts became consumed with him for the rest of the day, wishing I had his number so I could tell him that I found this lamp. But it was too late, and I would never see him again.

.

That night, God rearranged the universe in order to give me a gift. Circumstances that should not have been, were, and I found myself all of the sudden face to face with a flood of memories that had only been slowing creeping back into my line of sight as Julian walked around the corner into my yard and caught me as I leapt into his arms. And I suddenly discovered that I need him. I suddenly discovered how much I have always missed him. My heart remembered a time when he was utterly important to me, and suddenly I was 16 again and Julian was one of my dearest friends.

.

My house in Elko.

It wasn’t a new feeling, or even a renewed one. It was more like a reminder. I found my love for Elko all wrapped up in my love for Julian, just waiting for me to remember it and accept it, despite the most certainly painful goodbye it would cause. And it was a painful goodbye. Goodbye to Julian after so many years and so little time to make up for it. Goodbye to my home. Goodbye to my memories.

.

But it was a goodbye that needed to happen. If Julian’s presence hadn’t pulled my love for Elko out from the corners that I had pushed it into, there would have been no goodbye, and such a huge step in my life would have been left incomplete. As humans, we are meant to experience things, good and bad. We are supposed to make transitions, leave things behind, love so deeply it hurts, and hurt deeply for what we love. To avoid any necessary action of human emotion or growth denies what our hearts and minds are at their very core, what they were made to do. Our challenge is to avoid taking the easy way out, when we have a choice. Sometimes things get pushed out of chance or necessity; they need to be pushed. But we must not push those things that our hearts and minds yearn for us to pay attention to.

.

What we must understand is that pain, while unattractive, is not necessarily a bad thing. Our culture places a stigma on pain that is unhealthy, most especially on men. Strength, interpreted as the ability to hide emotion, is preferred-- but it is dangerous and destructive to our hearts. Our lives are essentially a journey in which God is drawing us to Himself, growing and changing us until we reach Him, our ultimate goal. We can resist this drawing. We can resist it by knowingly resisting Him, or by refusing to live the life we have been given by Him. We do it all the time when we lie to ourselves and to others about we we want and what we need. 

.

I don’t need to say goodbye. I don’t love you anymore. You’re not important to me. I’m over it. It’s not a big deal. It was a long time ago. It doesn’t affect me.

.

Our challenge is to be honest with ourselves in saying Yes, I am hurt. It does affect me. I miss you. It certainly hurts more to acknowledge these parts of us, but if we don’t, there is something lingering inside of us that is incomplete, and it will surely rear it’s head someday. It’s in the man who hated his father so much that he turned into him, or in the woman who ran all her life from intimacy and one day woke up to realize she had no one. Saying yes to whatever life brings our way is a step. Saying yes to our past, no matter how painful or confusing, is a step. And then the Lord will help us in dealing with it, face to face. This is how healing comes.

.

There is something beautiful about recognizing our humanity, even in small ways. There are profound moments when we discover a part of ourselves we had forgotten or pushed away, and we remember that we are made of flesh and bone. We are mortal. And it is ok. May we run this race to the finish, you and I, and reach the end complete.

.

I Am Not A Robot- Marina and the Diamonds

.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:1-4

.

It is better to go to a house of mourning 

   than to go to a house of feasting, 

for death is the destiny of everyone; 

   the living should take this to heart. 

   Frustration is better than laughter, 

   because a sad face is good for the heart. 

   The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, 

   but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure. 

   It is better to heed the rebuke of a wise person 

   than to listen to the song of fools. 

   Like the crackling of thorns under the pot, 

   so is the laughter of fools. 

   This too is meaningless.

Ecclesiastes 7:2-6

.

There is a time for everything, 

   and a season for every activity under the heavens:

   a time to be born and a time to die,
   a time to plant and a time to uproot,
   a time to kill and a time to heal,
   a time to tear down and a time to build,
   a time to weep and a time to laugh,
   a time to mourn and a time to dance,
   a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
   a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
   a time to search and a time to give up,
   a time to keep and a time to throw away,
   a time to tear and a time to mend,
   a time to be silent and a time to speak,
   a time to love and a time to hate,
   a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

For those who want to be new...

I’ve felt very far from God lately. Very far from everything. I’m in a strange place where nothing makes sense, like another world completely separate from my own. Nothing is finished. Nothing is familiar. Nothing is old.
.

I realized that I’ve often put God on hold these days, just like everything else, because I’m waiting for things to make sense again, putting everything off until life starts  and I can focus. Where am I? I don’t know this place, this house, these people. Everything is new.
<br>

I find myself coming to the end of what I knew was My year. A year filled with change and growth and crazy adventures with the Lord. It’s been marked by intense joy and heartbreak, and it followed a year filled with the same. I had expected something to be complete by the end of this year. But now here I am, Christmas day, and I don’t feel like I’m at the end of anything. I feel, rather, like I’m in-between things, with nothing but time to discover this new life that has somehow unfolded around me.
<br>

A little over two years ago I had my life figured out, a plan and a dream and someone to share it with. I had two lives: one at APU, new and exciting and terrifying, and my comfortable life in Elko to fall back on: friends, family, boyfriend, job. Home. And then everything started changing.
<br>

Exactly two years ago I was in Elko, helping my mom with Christmas dinner, and I stopped and turned to her with tears in my eyes: “It’s Christmas, mom. It’s Christmas and he’s still not here.” Suddenly home was filled with pain, a place marked with memories like fingerprints on a dirty glass, no space left without a painful memory. My mind reflected that glass, the fingerprints covering my thoughts. Everything was old.
<br>

Over the next year I felt God cutting my ties to Elko, wiping clean those fingerprints that covered my life, and I thought it was so I could branch out more, maybe stay in California after I graduated. And then I met the 9 most wonderful people I could imagine and went to India for a month, and I felt God taking the broken pieces of my life and sewing them together. God healed me, and I felt so new, like a child. And as I was gone, my dad transferred to a new job in Arizona to start a brand new life for our family.
<br>

These past few months I felt rocked, broken, challenged. Those things God spoke to me through my team at APU and abroad were reinforced, dramatically, and I felt myself more humbled than ever. I felt heartbreak, that old familiar feeling, but it was not for myself this time. It was the most overwhelming few months of my life. And then I packed up all my things, left LA, moved most of my stuff into a new apartment at APU, and brought the rest to a brand new town and a strange home where my parents now live.
<br>

In all this moving and changing, I hadn’t realized just how much was different until I came here to Kingman. I think it’s just now settling in... I’m not going back to Elko. I’m not going back home. I’m thankful that God cut so many ties there now, thankful that this isn’t as painful as it could be. But it’s my mind that has to cut it’s ties now.
<br>

For those of you who know me, especially my friends from college, it’s clear how dearly I hold home in my heart while I’m away. I define myself partly by where I come from; Nevada is in my blood, it’s my culture, my heritage. The desert raised me, taught me how to be human and how to be quiet. Elko is where I grew up, became a woman, met Jesus.
<br>

But all of the most dramatic transformation in my life has come from out of my element. My first semester of college with no friends in a new place... A semester in the mountains of Yosemite... A journey to the other side of the world with new friends... Los Angeles, almost more foreign to me than India was. These are the places God broke my heart to make room for more of Him. These are the places I discovered what I was made to be.
<br>

And so now I am in Kingman and I am in a period of rest... nothing mind-blowing is happening at the moment, and so I step back and look around me to realize that this place is not familiar, and it is not temporary either. There is no lifeline home anymore. Everything is new.
<br>

And I’m scared. Sometimes, in moments of realization like this one, I’m afraid of where this journey is going to take me, and if I’ll be prepared when I get there, with nothing old and familiar to fall back on. I’m afraid that I’ll end up somewhere and be only a mix of different parts incapable of doing anything for God’s Kingdom. My crutches are all of the sudden gone, my lifelines broken, my regrets unimportant, my mistakes behind me, and my past... past.
<br>

And so there’s only one constant to fall on, the One who’s brought me through this journey and to this crucial point in it. I find myself needing to be reassured, to hear that every ounce of this instability is in His hands, every possibility under His control. I’m going over the past year in my mind to remind myself of what He has done, and that it was real, and it was beautiful. And I’m starting to see this time in life with new eyes... everything is new.
<br>

Instead of emptiness where there used to be something, there is something new. I haven’t simply lost my crutches; I’ve been given the strength to walk. I’ve lost old friends, yes... but new ones take their place. And I know that I am a different person in so many ways. But my mind hasn’t fully settled into the idea yet. I am in-between two people right now... I am shedding the old, saying goodbye, coming to terms... so that I can fully walk into the new, embrace it, believe it.
<br>

It is faith that tells me God will finish what He has started in me. And then He’ll start something new, because He is always moving, always creating. I feel distant right now, but I know that He is not distant. I feel lost, but I really am not. I’m just taking in the scene before me, floating above it until it becomes more real, and praying for encouragement from those who have seen me bloom this year.

<br>
<br>

Life, the big journey, is full of little journeys. Periods of growth and change, mountains and valleys, in-between periods and culmination points. It’s ok to be in those places. It’s ok to be in a different place in life than what you are used to, to shed the old and embrace the new, to have your heart broken or ripped out, and to accept the healing that comes only from our precious Lord. This is what life is about, all of it. All of the joy, all of the pain, all of the hard decisions and miraculous moments; life wouldn’t be the same without every little bit of it, big and small, easy and difficult. And it’s not our choice to opt of out it. Sure, we didn’t exactly sign on. But here we are, and it’s not going to change for us. All we can do is be thankful to have a God who knows what He is doing and who is fully good at the very center of His being. He won’t give us stones. He’ll never give us stones.