Where is that smell coming from?!

Yesterday I cleaned out someone else's refrigerator. It has become a weekly tradition, but this week I walked in the doorway and was hit by a particularly rancid smell and knew the job needed to be done. I opened the industrial-sized doors and could have groaned out loud. Bins of food were haphazardly shoved together, and there were open plates and containers of food stacked on top of those. My friend and I started going through the bins one by one, pulling them out and sorting the rotten food from the fresh. It would be difficult to name a culprit of the smell. Perhaps it was the raw ground beef clearly past its expiration date, or any one of the curdled gallons of milk, or possibly the mushy plums dripping juice on the shelves below. And yet, it would not have been easy to find any of these things without digging through the fresh food that had been stacked on top of the rotten.

I wonder, how often do I just bury what is rotten in my heart, leaving it to taint everything there? It had been months, probably years of bitterness toward someone I love festering there. It wouldn't have been obvious to anyone; I had stacked lots of fresh and tasty foods on top of the rancid beef. But it affected my interactions with this person like that fruit fly-infested plum juice dripping on everything beneath it. It wasn't until the refrigerator of my soul started oozing the rank odor of bitterness that I realized I needed to do some deep cleaning. I slowly started unpacking the initial root of hurt that had been left there years before, examining the cause and allowing myself to feel the pain in a way I hadn't before. It wasn't fun, but slowly that putrid smell started to dissipate and my interactions with this person felt less strained. 

Maybe I should start taking weekly inventory of my heart, just like I do that refrigerator. And perhaps I need a friend around to help me from time to time, someone to smell the milk and tell me if it gets to stay or needs to go. What about you? Is there a faint smell leaking from your soul? Is it time to separate the fresh from the rotten? And who can you ask to smell the milk? Let me tell you, cleaning out the fridge is a lot easier when you have someone to help you. 

Dear Woman,

I read that yet another celebrity has been convicted of drugging, assaulting, and taking advantage of you. It seems there is not a day that goes by without a story like this unfolding. The world would like to reduce you to a flat caricature of beauty that can be exploited, devalued, and controlled. I know that is not true, though.

YOU are my friend, who throws open her door and welcomes refugees with a wide embrace even though it would be easier to climb into bed and watch Netflix after a long day.

YOU are the strong mother I met at the homeless shelter who walked all over town today attending appointments and fighting for a better story for your kids.

YOU are my dear sister, who creates and fashions blooming works of art so that others can fill their homes with fragrant and smile-inducing beauty.

YOU are so many of my friends who wake up far earlier than they would prefer to selflessly meet the needs of the tiny humans relying on them.

YOU are my wise and courageous friend who defies all obstacles set before her to teach teenagers how to use the written word to change the world. I am convinced I would not occupy this space if it were not for the hours I have spent with you.

YOU are my friend donning a raincoat and taking up a sign that says "Free Mom Hugs" in rainbow lettering, making sure every single soul you encounter knows his or her dignity and worth as a valued human being.

YOU are my coworker standing before committees and calling government leaders to advocate for those in the clutches of addiction.

YOU are my teachers, my sisters, my mentors, my mama. I sit next to you in coffee shops and pass you on the street. You are fierce, wise, gentle, bold, and creative. You have a fire in your soul, but you also take care to kindle a flame of burning passion in those you love. There are some who will try to hurt, exploit, or steal what is not theirs to take. Here is what I know, though: No man, political entity, religious institution, or paradigm of oppression can ever rob you of that fire inside you.

Shine bright, Woman. YOU have a gift this world needs.

Perhaps No Subtext Is Necessary

"Don't say anything nice about me. I don't like it when people give me compliments because I know they are not true. I hate myself."

I cringed inwardly as the precious girl in front of me said these words. If I wasn't already familiar with hearing this deep-seated shame oozing out of her, I think my face would have contorted into astonishment. The world had taught her to hate herself. It would surely be an uphill battle to invite her into a different story.

When I look at her, I see clever wit, impressive athleticism, and an easily identifiable beauty and intelligence. She had come to embrace a different set of identifiers, though:

Failure 

Ugly

Nuisance

Stupid

Nothing

I try to imagine her as a little baby. When I scoop up a newborn, I do not trace her with my finger and identify all her faults. No matter how wrinkly or red-faced she is, I can only inhale her preciousness. What if we looked at all of humanity through this same lens? What if we took care to mine the preciousness from every human being we encounter this week? 

In marvelous poetic form, the author of Genesis tells a story of the Divine fashioning a majestic creation, of which humanity was the crown. What was spoken over this incredible work of art? "It was good." It was good.

Pleasant

Excellent

Valuable

Right

How would our interactions with people change if we led with this foundation of love? It was good.

That driver cutting you off? The Divine called her good.
That sweet child throwing a temper tantrum? The God of the Universe called him valuable.
That coworker driving you nuts? Fashioned to be excellent.
That person with whom you disagree? She is the crown of all that was created, pleasant to God.

That person you stare at and sometimes degrade in the mirror? The Divine looks at you and says, "You are good." 

Too often I think we land on the broken and depraved, dismissing this notion of goodness planted inside humanity by the Creator of all that is. That precious girl who told me she hates herself? Yeah, she hurts people and punches holes in walls. She runs away and screams profanities at those trying to love her. It's not difficult to identify her brokenness. But God first proclaimed goodness over what was created. Sometimes I think the most sacred and important work is uncovering this goodness.

What if we responded to brokenness by re-identifying what is good and precious, rather than highlighting what is broken? When that sweet one lashes out at me, she doesn't need to be told that she is broken and bad...it is that message of brokenness and badness that likely caused her to hurt me in the first place. She needs to know that she is excellent, valuable, and worthy of love. She needs to know that I see her for who she really is, what she was fashioned to be:

Good.

Loved by the Creator of the Universe. 

...I tend to think there is no subtext necessary. 

The World Needs Your Scars

I had but one favorite pastime when I was a little girl. At the very back of my childhood home there was a small, cement-floored room that we dubbed the "play kitchen." It had book shelves along two walls, but the rest of the space was occupied by my imaginary world. Dolls became my children, and let me tell you, I could dote with the best of 'em! I fed my babies, changed diapers and outfits, and boy did we have a lot of appointments to attend! I practiced my dream life day after day before I could even read. I imagine if I had told little Abigail that she would be living a very different life at almost 30 years old, she would have looked at me with wide eyes and said, "No! I want THIS!"

**************

It was only a month after I watched my dad take his last breath. I felt like a fragile tower of blocks propped up against a wall and just waiting for the slightest little breeze to topple me. At 19 years old, I was desperate to make connections in this new town where I found myself. At the same time, I felt like I was swimming in mud, moments away from suffocating. I decided to join a young adult church group on an excursion to the local Labor Day fireworks display. As I sat on the floor of the van, surrounded by strangers and listening to them prattle on about youtube videos and stupid things pet owners had trained their animals to do, my skin crawled and left me wishing I could crawl back into bed! 

I have always had an "old soul." I remember despising my place at the "kid table" from the time I was pretty young. But the trauma of watching my dad slowly wither away from a terrible cancer aged my soul on overdrive, I think. The world, once my oyster, now seemed a very dark and unsafe place. I went from giddily pursuing my dreams and the possibility of independent life in the big city to attending oncology appointments with my beloved hero. I struggled to relate to this group of my peers who seemed to be more concerned with what others thought of them than the fact that we were all slowly dying (morbid but true). 

I am in a different place now. I can be silly and appreciate the beauty of a sunset. I can engage in frivolous conversation and plan for the future. Cancer changed me, though. My eyes were opened to suffering and brokenness in a way I never desired but deeply needed. I developed a gut-churning empathy for others meeting the shadow side of this world. Do I wish within the deepest part of me that I could reclaim the innocence and dreams of that little girl in her "play kitchen"? Yes. As I look back on the last decade of my life, though, I am deeply humbled by this mark on my life. You may not be able to see the cancer-scar on my heart, but it has afforded me relationships and experiences that little girl would not have otherwise experienced in her future. I have held the hands of the suffering, smoothed the brow of the sick and dying, scooped up traumatized babies and soothed grown-up traumatized babies with nothing but my gaze and voice. 

Do you ever wish you could live a different life? Claim the skin of another? Maybe you, like me, bear scars you never dreamed of wearing. You may wish you could dig those scars out with a scalpel. But friend, hear me: The world needs your scars. This broken, beautiful world needs you and your marvelous story, wherever you are within the pages. Your brave, bold scar will remind someone else that she is not alone in the breaking, and it may be that message alone that revives her for another day. So today, my friend, let's show up for each other...scars and all. 

Defrosting My Windshield...and My Heart

With the sun rising behind the mountains beside me, I climbed in my car this morning and realized my windows were frosty. "Ahhhh...back to this again," I thought. I turned my defrost on full blast and waited approximately nine seconds before putting my car in reverse and easing down the driveway, only to realize my nine second threshold of patience had done nothing to melt my obstructed view. I rolled down a couple windows, looked both ways, and pulled into the street. As I turned out of the neighborhood, the big ball of blinding light that had only seconds earlier been hiding behind the mountains now beamed directly at my face.

A couple years ago, my then-roommates scolded me about my dirty windshield. "How can you see ANYTHING out of this?!" they exclaimed. I believe my response was to shrug my shoulders and smirk. It's not that I don't want to see, it's just that sometimes the work of clearing the obstacles seems less important than other tasks. Until I'm driving down the road and realize I am operating a four thousand pound machine without the help of a very crucial sense. Like this morning. (Don't worry, I pulled over and waited another nine seconds for my field of vision to be restored).

Isn't this just how I am with heart tasks, though? There's that pesky feeling of sadness, or anger, or regret, but I don't have the time/energy/guts to deal with it right now. There's that familiar ache in my heart over a once again unmet desire, but it's easier to just keep driving and pretend I don't need to clear the frost in order to drive. Until I can't. Until I'm half a spoonful deep in a carton of ice cream and realize my sudden appetite for Ben and Jerry's is really my heart crying out to be defrosted. Until I wake up one morning with a crick in my neck and wonder if my aching but dampened spirit decided to leak the ache out my muscles.

I can ignore my blocked vision until I need to, well, SEE in order to survive. I can ignore my aching heart for longer, but she will only be cast aside for so long before she will come calling in other ways. Maybe taking an extra minute or two to defrost my windows and tend to my heart is more crucial than I am willing to admit.

What about you? How do you tend to your spirit, and what happens if you don't?

At the End of Myself

The night started out well enough. I endured the usual bedtime drama routine I had grown accustomed to over the last several weeks, and afterward sank into the couch with my roommates consuming blueberry muffins and blackberry lemonade (the adult version). I was in the thick of the why-did-I-think-I-could-do-this stage. I mean, it wasn't like I was bored. Exhausted might have been a better descriptor. I was working full-time as a pediatric nurse and simultaneously running a small but chaotically busy chapter of a ministry caring for families in crisis. I also didn't know how to say no or "I can't help you," which turned out to be my Achilles heel. Two little girls with nowhere safe to go and no other willing volunteers to host them. So, they were (finally) asleep in beds upstairs and I was drinking hard lemonade. Fist bumps to all the people pleasers and wannabe heroes everywhere.

It wasn't until the middle of the night that I reached the end of myself. Bedtime with two kiddos who have experienced trauma is no cakewalk, but we had endured it and made it to the other side. I fell in bed and woke up some three hours later with my stomach in knots. Uh oh. As my stomach roiled from the disturbance of some nasty virus, I also heard wailing from the upstairs bedroom. Double uh oh. How does one hold her head over the toilet while also comforting the distressed, AWAKE child in the next room? I felt like curling into a ball and moaning continuously, but instead dragged myself from bathroom to wailing child over and over again. I'm sure I prayed for relief at some point, either from the stomach cramps or the wailing disturbance next door. Neither came, though, and my thoughts shifted from "Why did I ever think I could do this?!" to "Dear GOD, I can't do this." I finally pulled the wailing child out of bed and into my arms as I collapsed on the bedroom floor, begging for morning to come quickly.

I've often wondered what would happen when I reached the end of myself...when my ego, pride, and all guise of put-togetherness was stripped away. Naked of these, who would I become? It's easy to be kind and compassionate when you are surrounded by goodness and easy living, but what ugliness would surface when I could no longer hide behind comfort and security? The next morning, after dropping the girls off at daycare as soon as the doors were flung open, I collapsed in my bed again and considered what was left of the Abigail I thought I was after a grueling night of facing my demons alone.

I thought I was doing something good. But why?

I thought I knew how to tenderly care for kids who have experienced trauma. But what if I'm too selfish?

I thought I didn't need a partner to play the role of parent. But are two hands really enough?

I thought Jesus called me to LOVE extravagantly. But is love sufficient to heal ALL wounds-theirs AND mine?

I thought I knew who I was and what I could handle. But maybe...maybe I don't.

I think about that night a lot. I think about what it means to truly love everyone always...even when I feel like I have no love left to give. I think about what my true motives are and what it will take to unveil them. So often, I live the safe and comfortable. I choose the easy road because it feels, well, easier. Every once in a while, though, I decide to take a risk. Sometimes I do so because I think it's the right thing to do, or I want to make someone else happy, or I think I have the resources to take the risk. Sometimes I'm dead wrong and I find myself hanging from the tightrope I thought I could walk. It is in those moments that I find myself whispering, "There you are, Abigail. Nice to see the REAL you. Now let's get to work." Maybe there are worse things than taking the risk (whatever my motivation may be) and finding myself dangling from the tightrope by nothing more than a finger and slither of hope.