Broken Praise

I’ve tried to write an entry for weeks now. Usually there are so many things I need to unpack, and writing is a way for me to express how I’m feeling. But sometimes, that's a lot harder than it might sound...

First, I wanted to write about burn-out. But nothing I could come up with sounded like anything more than complaining, and that was a no-go for me. I don’t believe in publicly complaining about my life. I want to declare the praises of God even through things I want to complain about. I would write and write and write, and it was nothing more than a collection of complaints about how difficult this semester has been, how many things have been drawn out, forced out, pulled out, and broken in me.

Then I decided to write about my prior addiction to makeup I had in high school, and how getting a nasty, itchy chemical burn on my face last Tuesday made me realize I still hadn’t completely surrendered the area of beauty and personal appearance to Him and how I still looked elsewhere to find satisfaction and reminders that I’m even just a tiny bit pretty. But I’m still not resolved on that. I still don’t want to look in the mirror and accept that something is weird with my skin, not to mention actually hear that maybe I still am beautiful, because they might choose to reject my looks instead, thanks to this burn.

Well maybe I’ll talk about creativity, I thought next. It’s true that God has been teaching me about a million things through that, from worshiping him with music and voice to physically drawing out my feelings with the beautiful 120-count set of Prismacolor pencils I picked up while home for spring break. (Seriously, does anyone remember how amazing these things are? I hoarded for 3 years to get the complete set!) But that idea died, since it’s so new and developing, and I’ve drawn, like, an octopus with 9 legs, one sunset, and half of a picture God gave me. It’s not time for this one yet.

My last, perhaps desperate-feeling thought was that I could write about my uncertainty over the coming summer. Things are pulling me each and every direction. Family in San Antonio, a boy and friends in CS, family and friends I want to see up north, traveling I want to do, an internship I should be looking into getting to honor my chosen career and schooling, and…a possibility of an adventure with God in Colorado. But then, as I started typing about that, I wasn’t sure I wanted to announce to the world my confusion over what to do this summer. Mostly because I knew that advice would start pouring in about everything and giving me even more trouble understanding my emotions.

At the end of this all, I think that I’ve decided I just have far too much on my mind. I haven’t had a chance to process any emotion since practically the start of the semester; I’ve been in survival mode, and the Cassian that has been rearing her head is a raw and nasty version of myself. I kick myself probably twice and three times a day for something I’ve said that was rude, inconsiderate, or less than kind. I’ve been beating myself up for missed quiet times. I’ve been desperate. Absolutely desperate. Stretched in every direction. It’s almost as if I’m at a cross-roads in life, and no matter what I do or where I look, everything hurts. To make it worse, for the entire calendar year thus far, I can’t remember a single day without raging anxiety.

I don’t like myself right now. I don’t like who I’ve been recently. I don’t like the feelings of jealousy, irritation, frustration, and just plain crappiness that have been surfacing. And all of them hide everything else that I’m trying to stuff down.

Feeling left out. Feeling walked over, used, forgotten, unloved. The list goes on. And yet I’ve also been feeling irritated at myself for even feeling like that. My mind is a battlefield between thoughts and emotions, made worse by the fact that I’m an internal processor and so since I haven’t been able to process anything recently, I can’t even tell you how I’m really doing. I can tell you how I feel right now, but even those words will probably ring hollow in my ears as I say them.

Man. It’s exhausting.

There’s a healing ministry I’ve been part of before that goes into the emotion and finds the root cause, which is a lie I believe either about myself, God, or others. I want it so badly right now. Unfortunately, time for that has been hard to come by, to say the least. But God knows me in the way only He does, and provided time for some good ministry time during spring break.

I was praying with someone during the break, and I started crying out about this anxiety I’ve been subject to. I begged God again and again to take it from me, or at least show me how to handle it. My friend asked if I wanted to explore the feelings a little deeper and see where they led. Yes. By all means, yes.

We started working through it, and then I felt a wall slam down in my heart. My emotions just turned off. I can’t remember much else about the rest of the session, except that it was a battle of emotions and no emotions, an open and closed heart, and that at the end, God gave me the most beautiful picture.

He showed me a river with a dam in the middle. The banks before the dam were bright green and healthy, but almost no water passed over the dam, and so the rest of the stream yielded banks much less bright and lively, banks that were suffering. The stream led to a small heart with my name inscribed in the middle. Then I saw that over the dam there was a stream of what my human mind interpreted to be like a mix of foam and gas, flowing gentle over the dam and right into the heart.

“Your walls are nothing to my Spirit,” He whispered gently to me.

For the first time in…ever, it felt, my heart was struck by peace and rest. All my worries are nothing, but in the best way possible. All my fears, feelings, and insecurities, none of it – none of it! – is too big for God. He’s moved in my heart in spite of my own issues and problems. Peace and rest captivated my heart as God poured into me his love, and the hurt of feeling overwhelmed completely shattered. I felt light, like I might just float away.

A few days later, I was hammocking in the park, and was struck again with an incredible truth. God heals us for our sake. He doesn’t need us to be healed or anything more than completely broken for His will to carry out. The gospel will reach every nation, every tribe will hear of His goodness, regardless of whether a single human looks more like Him than before they knew Him. It is true that a healed person can do more for Him than a broken person, but He’s bigger than that. That does not bind him. Yet out of His complete love and grace and extravagant generosity for us, He chooses to heal us, to make our life better. My heart soaked it in, the goodness of his healing that he pours out because he loves me, and a deeper part of my heart fell completely in love with everything that He is.

Going into the last half of this semester, I’m scared. I don’t want to go back to that sense of complete loss that comes from far too many things in my life to handle. But I feel like this time I have a lot more to cling to than ever before; the promises that God works in my life the whole time, and nothing is too big for his love, even the walls I’ve been building in my heart for years.

The sweet woman who somehow puts up with my broken self enough to disciple me shared a Psalm with me and prayed it over me a few weeks ago, and I see it grow truer in my life every day.

Psalm 30

I will exalt you, O Lord,

For you lifted me out of the depths

And did not let my enemies gloat over me.

O Lord my god, I called to you for help

And you healed me.

O Lord, you brought me up from the grave;

You spared me from going down into the pit.

Sing to the Lord, you saints of his;

Praise his holy name.

For his anger lasts only a moment,

But his favor lasts a lifetime;

Weeping may remain for a night,

But rejoicing comes in the morning.

When I felt secure, I said,

“I will never be shaken.”

O Lord, when you favored me,

You made my mountain stand firm;

But when you hid your face,

I was dismayed.

To you, O Lord, I called;

To the Lord I cried for mercy:

“What gain is there in my destruction,

In my going down into the pit?

Will the dust praise you?

Will it proclaim your faithfulness?

Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me;

O Lord, be my help.”

You turned my wailing into dancing;

You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

That my heart may sing to you and not be silent.

O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.