Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, community, poetry on June 23, 2012 | 9 Comments »
I want to be a tree in the woods
Where my branches reach rough and tumble
toward the sky
And tangle with the leaves of neighbors.
A tree with a child’s uncombed hair
Where vines climb
And moss points the way home.
Where survival is both fight and collaboration
In the struggle, we share all we have.
In a storm, the forest trembles together
The one shelters the other
And no tree quakes alone
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, changes, depression, spirituality on June 13, 2012 | 3 Comments »
“There’s a problem with the baby,” said the doctor, pressing the ultrasound probe to my belly. It was 2002, and I was 16 weeks pregnant, at the hospital for a normal prenatal checkup. I looked over at Steve. I could tell from his face that he understood that “problem” was a euphemism. The baby was dead.
The next piece of news was almost as bad. I was too far along for a D&C. I had to go home and wait for labor to start. A midwife told me to try not to think about it. Right.
Not only did I fail to distract myself effectively, I obsessed about this dead baby I was carrying. I felt like I couldn’t grieve, couldn’t say good bye, couldn’t move on. I was sad, but what I felt most was out of control. I so badly wanted this ordeal to be over.
I didn’t put this into words, but looking back, I can see that somewhere deep down I believed that if I prayed hard enough and often enough, if I wanted it enough, if I used enough mental and emotional energy, that somehow I could end the torture of waiting.
For two weeks I agonized over continuing to carry my lifeless child. Then the doctor decided to try to induce labor. I spent the weekend in the hospital hooked up to an IV, waiting for labor to start. At one point I was weeping under the weight of it all, and a nurse told me, “Don’t cry. You’ll give yourself a headache.”
The induction didn’t work. I went home again, still praying and straining with all my emotional might, as if I could do something.
About a week later, something clicked. I realized that ending this ordeal was truly not in my hands. Instead of praying that I would go into labor NOW, I started affirming that I released the timing into God’s hands. I made myself a mix tape (yeah, this was a while ago) of songs about release, surrender, and God being into control, and I listened to it over and over. When the ache of not being able to do anything hit, I came back again and again to opening my hands in a gesture of letting go.
The last week of waiting was actually peaceful. One month after finding out the baby was dead, I finally went into labor. I had previously wondered how women handled labor when they knew there would be no live child to hold on the other side. That wasn’t an issue. My experience is that labor pains fill our vision and we can’t think of the future, whether beautiful or tragic.
We saw our baby. I remember how each tiny rib stood out under the purple-grey skin, how the eyes were closed and the head a little misshapen from too long in a temporary grave.
The waiting was over. We could say good bye to our baby, and life could go on.
In another post, I talked about how during depression, something beautiful is growing, hidden in the darkness. But this gestating beauty often has a twin—death that is waiting to be released. The birth of newness and the letting go of death both create labor pains that eclipse the view of what’s ahead.
Though unseen during depression (as in labor), a future still exists. That future holds the relief of final good byes to parts of our lives we have been needlessly carrying, and the future holds the emergence of new life that would have been unimaginable before going through the depths.
To me, these thoughts are gifts from a painful experience. The hope of both release and beauty occasionally peeks through the darkness of depression and encourages me. May these thoughts encourage you as well.
Photo by Jon Ovington, CC License
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, spirituality on May 29, 2012 | 12 Comments »
Gestation of Darkness
(This is a silhouette of a pregnant woman in case you can’t tell)
I have recently been in the midst of the most severe bout of depression of my life. That’s saying a lot, for those of you who knew me 6 or 7 years ago. Part of how I have been helping myself is to draw almost every day. I’m not sure I’d call it art, but it is therapeutic.
When we are depressed, our bodies and everything around us seem consumed with darkness. But, because of my previous experiences of depression, I believe that hidden deep in the blackness is beauty that is growing and waiting to emerge. (It took me about two months and a hospital stay to start believing this again, so I’m not saying hope comes naturally in depression.)
In my first significant experience of depression as an adult, I experienced a deep knowledge of God accompanying me in my suffering. In my second depression, which also marked the beginning of what I would call the Dark Night of the Soul, I found all the foundations of my life unravelling. But most significantly, what unravelled (and still is coming undone, honestly) was a lot of unhealthy and unhelpful ways of relating to God. This period of time started opening space in my life for new appreciation of mystery, a reluctant willingness to face uncertainty, and a new practice of courage and authenticity both with myself and with others. These painful periods of my life have changed me for the better. And I’m beginning to believe that good change is on its way this time too.
That hidden gestation of beauty in the darkness is what I was trying to capture in my sketch this morning. And I wondered if it might give hope to someone else as well. I would love to hear in the comments if it means something to you.
From my heart to yours,
Christen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, cross-cultural issues on February 19, 2012 | 3 Comments »
Who is that? I think frantically to myself. I’ve just come out of the store, and a woman completely covered in black has just called out my name. All I can see is her eyes. They say the eyes are the window to the soul, but I’m not sure I know this woman’s soul well enough to tell who she is. Of course she recognizes me—I’m a blonde American wearing an abaaya. I stand out. We kiss and exchange greetings, and I finally figure it out—she’s the oldest daugher of my neighbors, here visiting from Qatar.
Rather than seeing people out and about, I much preferred sitting in women’s homes with them and drinking tea. Then I got to see them without all the coverings. I got to see them be funny and passionate, exuberant or sad. I got to glimpse who they really were.
Relating cross-culturally, it can be hard to get to that place. Because once you get off the literal veils, which don’t really matter that much, you still have a lot of unveiling to do. Invisible veils cover who we really are. There’s awkward communication and cultural disconnects, trying too hard to adapt, worry about unknowingly offending, feeling like you stick out like a sore thumb, wondering where your commonality lies, and if you have any at all.
But this is not just a cross-cultural phenomenon. It’s true for anyone, anywhere. There are veils of who I think I ought to be and trying to please people. Veils of being ashamed or insecure. Veils of reactiveness and triggers. Veils of how we get what we think we need and what it takes to feel safe. Veils of our paradigm for seeing the world and how we mistake that for who we really are.
I heard a beautiful illustration this week. A woman sits in the middle of the room. Each participant reads a sentence about painful experiences in her life, and then drapes a scarf over her head. One after another they read and drape, until it’s impossible to tell who is underneath the layers of cloth. Then, when we interact with her, we see all those coverings, not who she really is.
If we could see it, all the people we interact with, and we ourselves, are walking around hidden by layers of scarves, or swathed in black like my friend inBahrain. But we know and believe that underneath is something beautiful. Underneath is the image of God, the person we really are, the beauty we were created with. I want to see through the veils and recognize that reflection of God in each person I meet. And I want others to see that in me too.
Photo by Emerentian, CC License
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity on February 11, 2012 | 2 Comments »
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” –Howard Thurman
What is your gut reaction when you read that quote? Mine is joy and then fear. First, I feel like someone handed me the world, and I glimpse joy, gratitude, and freedom. Then fear grabs me by the collar and yanks me back, saying, “You’re not allowed to take that gift!”
But my “word” this year is permission. That’s what I’m saying back to those nasty little voices that say “you’re not allowed.”
There are many mixed messages about the meaning of life, being a good person, what it means to follow God, what our lives are “supposed” to be about, and I could cite an authority, along with a Bible verse, for every straightjacket that we wear. So who says what is allowed?
I’m giving myself permission to go with what I believe in my gut. And that is that God created each person unique, not so that they can fit into a mold or live within someone else’s idea of what God wants us to be like. Not so that we fit into a narrow vision of what the world needs. But so that we can experience what is a gift to ourselves and a gift to the world at the same time, the gift of unwrapping the uniqueness inside of us, and of living authentically, even if that doesn’t fit with who we thought we were supposed to be.
I want to be fully alive. What does being fully alive mean for you?
Photo by Dario Sanches, CC License
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, spirituality on February 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
I have a confession. I worry a LOT about getting things right. Sometimes I worry so much that I get stuck and don’t make any decision at all. For me, this happens most often with spirituality and with writing, but sometimes it’s when I have an hour free and I have so many things I want to accomplish that it takes me the whole hour to choose one.
Does that ever happen to you? Do you know what issues summon this paralysis for you?
I first hit on a solution in Quaker meeting. Our meeting is “unprogrammed,” which basically means that we sit together in silence for an hour. I love it, but as I mentioned, I worry a lot about getting things “right” spiritually. I was finding myself spending so much energy trying to decide what I was going to focus on, and then second-guessing myself once I had decided on something, that I never really focussed at all. Near the end of one of those hours it hit me: I needed to start the hour with an intention and then stick to it.
So the next week I did exactly that. In journaling the night before, I noticed a theme that I needed to marinate in a bit more, so I summarized it in one question. I decided that I was going to keep asking myself that question throughout the meeting, and whenever my mind went off on a tangent, I would bring myself back to that question. No second-guessing allowed!
You know what? It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t the most amazing experience of my life. But it was powerful. I started where I was, I made progress, and I didn’t have to wait until I found the yellow-brick road before I started off for the emerald city.
Intention-setting has become my new favorite tool in overcoming fear and perfectionism. In order for it to work, I have to challenge the feeling that life will come to an end if I don’t make the right choice. I also have to remove the option of questioning myself after I’ve made a decision. Not surprisingly, I’m a lot more productive when I settle on something and stick with it, whether we’re talking about prayer or what to get done during the kids’ swimming lessons.
So now, when I start noticing that anxiety creeping up and threatening to paralyze me, I take a reality check on how dire the consequences of imperfection really are, and I just choose something.
Photo by brO, CC License
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, cross-cultural issues, spirituality on January 14, 2012 | 4 Comments »
On Thanksgiving morning I checked my facebook, as I often do. I clicked on a link a friend from the Middle East had posted, and all of a sudden I was face to face with pictures of a man whose head had been blown open during the Arab Spring protests. As I clicked the images closed, I felt almost as violently assaulted with the juxtaposition of this suffering and pain against cheery Thanksgiving messages.
All day I struggled. Physically, I was in the world of turkey and stuffing and apple pie, but mentally I was feeling guilty and ashamed to be celebrating in a safe place with my family when I have friends hurting in other places.
When I talk about this kind of survivor’s guilt, other people’s heads nod in solidarity. It’s a common experience, but not a road that ends well.
Here are some thoughts I have about survivor’s guilt and combating it:
Recognize dichotomistic thinking. When we see thousands of people dying, wounded, and homeless from an earthquake, our brains tend to go to a place where our lives are perfect and their lives are terrible—and why should we have it so good? We separate “our lives” from “their lives,” and we paint a sharp contrast between the two. Not only is the reality is less clear cut, but this automatic way of thinking separates us from those who are hurting rather than connecting us.
Focus on our connection rather than our separation. In truth, our lives are not all good, and their lives are not all bad. Though we may not have experienced the same disaster or magnitude of suffering, we do know pain. Whether we are faced with a large-scale tragedy or a friend who is hurting, opening our hearts to the common experience of loss and heartache allows us to replace guilt with empathy.
Accept our shared helplessness. I think feeling guilty is one way we cope with the terror of seeing the helplessness of the human condition. We cherish our sense of control and the related fantasy of fairness in life. When we are confronted by undeserved tragedy, it helps to allow ourselves to grieve over the powerlessness of both the sufferers and ourselves, rather than mentally fighting to maintain our illusion of control.
Choose actions carefully. Acting from guilt or from separation rather than from connection can do more harm than good. For large scale problems, we may desperately throw money at the tragedy without carefully considering the most helpful channels for those resources. For more personal problems, we may feel inclined to try to fix the problem or make it go away in order to deal with our discomfort. This often ends up coming across as “helping” from a position of superiority, rather than from a place of equality, and it belittles the sufferer. In either situation, slowing down, allowing ourselves to connect and be vulnerable enough to empathize, and waiting for wisdom can lead to more purposeful, calculated, and useful action.
Do you struggle with guilt when you see others in pain? What helps you overcome guilt and move to a more constructive place?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, changes, spirituality on March 9, 2011 | 8 Comments »
This is part of the March Synchroblog, multiple bloggers writing on the same subject. In the spirit of Lent, this month’s theme is “Experiences in the Wilderness.” Links to fellow synchrobloggers are at the end of this post.
I have a confession to make. I am one of those people that peeks at the end of a story to see how it’s going to turn out. I don’t go straight to the end before I start the book, but sometimes the tension just gets too much for me and I have to see that everything is going to be ok before I dive back into the conflict.
This does not serve me well in real life, because (shockingly) I never get to flip ahead to the end of my story to make sure things will work out. And being in the middle of the story is hard.
There are times when it is encouraging to look at someone else’s whole story, to see how dark their situation seemed and then to see the good that came out of the darkness. Sometimes that annoys me, though. Sometimes I would rather look at a snapshot of the hero at the height of the drama or the depth of their pain and confusion and feel the compassion, the “suffering with,” of someone else having been there, not knowing what would come next.
It is one thing to look at a hero and conclude that their perseverance in the face of hardship was worth it because their side won, or the situation worked out in the end. I can look at Madame Guyon, 17th-century Christian mystic, and take courage from her seven-year-long dark night of the soul, where she truly believed that she was going to hell and that God had abandoned her, because I know that that period of suffering ended with great spiritual strength. But can we take courage from those pictures of darkness even when we don’t know the outcome?
While having faith in a certain ending can encourage us, it can also do us harm in our dark nights. If we attach our hope, our reason for perseverance, to a specific outcome, we can miss the gifts of the process. The problem with these gifts is that they are kind of like getting underwear and socks in your Christmas stocking—you need them, but you don’t really want them, especially not as a present. And to be honest, the gifts of suffering are often even less appealing than those Christmas undies.
It is hard to separate the gifts of the suffering from the outcome of our dark seasons because during the night the seeds are planted, and during the following day, the seeds come up and blossom. The seeds transition seamlessly into plants. Once we start seeing the plants, we forget about what they felt like when they were just seeds. And when they are still seeds, we may be blind to them because we are too busy looking or hoping for fully-grown trees.
During the last few years, which have been a desert, wilderness, dark night—whatever you want to call it—for me, the future has been totally clouded. That has enabled me to be more fully in the present. Though I have no idea what will come out of this time, I have been hanging onto the joy of the seeds I see going into the soil.
One of these seeds is that I have been discovering my limits. This is not a fun gift. It has been really painful to lose illusions about my time, energy, influence, and power. But one of the first gifts of this time of burnout was learning that I have much more joy when I accept my smallness and respect my limits.
Another seed of change is feeling connection with people that I used to think were different than me. Unravelling who I thought I was has torn down walls that I thought existed between me and others. Again, ouch! It’s just a seed, because I know more of who I’m not anymore than who I am, and so I feel homeless, community-wise. I don’t feel that I fit anywhere yet, but at the same time I feel a more universal connection—that I share something in common with everyone, when I used to only feel connection with people like me.
I have made brave baby steps. I haven’t turned myself into a successful writer, but I have put my writing out on this blog and submitted some web-content articles. I still struggle with being vulnerable and open, but I have shared scary things with close friends and still been loved and accepted. Steve and I don’t know our direction in life yet, but we made the step of acting on what we did know and moving back to America. In these things, the gift of darkness is the status quo growing so uncomfortable that I become ready to move into a new stage of growth, even when the way ahead is cloudy (or pitch-black).
Even though this is not a complete story with a glorious wrapup, I hope that the middle of my story is encouraging to some of you. I would love to hear some of the things that are being planted in your lives in the midst of hard times.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, exercise, spirituality, yoga on February 23, 2011 | 4 Comments »
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
–C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
You may be wondering what this quote has to do with yoga. Brené Brown (another one of my heroes) posted this quote on her blog on the day that I finished the 30 Days of Yoga program.
I was feeling puzzled on that last day. As you know, if you have been following this series of posts (starting here), I felt like I got a lot out of the 30 days. However, it had not gone at all like I expected, what with the strained hamstring and falling-domino-like pain travelling from joint to tendon to muscle.
I had to face the loss of my illusions of what my body can handle and the death of my expectations of how quickly I would be able to get back in shape. Our ideas and assumptions about our bodies amount to a good chunk of our identities, so unravelling these expectations did not leave me totally groundless, but I did feel off-balance (a little ironic during a yoga program). Coming to the end of the commitment did not mean that the lessons of the month had coalesced. I felt more like I had been gathering manna than as if I had bought a warm loaf of bread. All these pieces—what to do with them?
I logged in to my email and saw that Brené Brown had a new post on her blog. When I opened the post, I read the above quote.
I suddenly saw in my yoga adventure an amazing metaphor to the journey my heart has been on over the last several years. I’ve been a committed Christian for as long as I can remember, and I threw myself heart and soul into relationship with God, self, and others with the belief that Jesus was the healer of our souls. I got my heart broken.
The quote talks about how guarded we feel when we have been hurt, and about the high cost of carrying that protectiveness to the extreme. In my zeal to get in shape, I pushed a little too hard and found my limits the hard way. One response would be to stop exercising for fear of hurting myself worse. I did not want to do that. The cost was too high. So I kept getting gentler and gentler with my physical movements, trying to find the place where I could keep my body active and moving without causing damage that would take much longer to heal.
If I can approach my body with this gentle experimentation, trying to find movement that fits the reality of where my body is, then I can bring the same attitude to dealing with my heart.
After all the spiritual, emotional, and relational upheaval of the last few years, I feel cautious about making friends. I am fearful of allowing myself to be authentic because I feel so very vulnerable. (That, and because having my identity unravel makes it hard to know how to even be myself!) I still feel guarded with God and very mistrustful of everything I thought I knew about him. But I can approach all of those places gently and experiment with the balance of how to love, stay engaged, and risk brokenheartedness while working with the reality of where I am.
I learn lessons about the unseen so much better when my body demonstrates those lessons for me physically. That is what happened through the 30 Days of Yoga program. Thank you for allowing me to share the story with you. I look forward to taking C.S. Lewis’ encouragement to heart—to take greater risks in loving—while also listening to the story my body is telling me, and taking those risks gently.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, changes, cross-cultural issues, moving to America on June 7, 2010 | 7 Comments »
It is now less than a month until our big move back to America. Getting ready for a huge life change is a roller coaster ride. Steve and I keep reminding ourselves to expect and roll with the ups and downs. Aside from really losing it a few times when thinking about having to leave close friends here, my dominant emotion has been excitement. I’m excited about being near family and friends without having to say good-bye after a couple of months. I am looking forward to my kids getting to be with their grandparents more. I can’t wait to go out and walk in green, green Virginia and go for picnics in parks. I’m already drooling over having access to a public library and keeping a mental list of all the books I want to devour (A Primate’s Memoir, Stephanie Plum #16, a couple of Jennifer Weiner books, Pema Chodron…to name a few). I am hoping to watch the Colbert Report as often as possible, and I’m looking forward to seeing Season 6 of The Office. I am excited that I will get to homeschool both kids this coming year. Even though I slowly waded my way into homeschooling , I have thoroughly enjoyed diving in full time this past year with Bethany, and I am excited about coming into it with a little more experience this year.
Cooking is kind of a hobby for me, and I’m looking forward to having more ingredients available to play with. I want to take my kids to the museums in Washington, D.C. and to let them see Virginia in the fall when the leaves look like warm, colored snow. Winter, autumn, and spring have all been pretty much theoretical since we’ve lived in Bahrain, and I’m ready for them to be real again. And did I mention I can’t wait to soak up all that green? (you know, grass and stuff)
Of course, all that forward-looking excitement likes to alternate with anxiety. Culture stress is one aspect of that, and starting over with a new life is another. Whenever we visit America we experience that feeling of being out of sync, like watching a movie dubbed in another language. There are different particulars that catch us off guard with each visit, but some are always the same. I always feel strong anxiety in grocery stores in America. Go figure. Shopping is disorienting and overwhelming even though I look forward to the products available. Church is often the place of biggest culture shock to me, even though I feel like I “ought to” fit in there. I also find that I don’t know what is “normal” about me and what is not. I don’t really know what daily life is like for other moms because I’ve never been a mom in America. When I am at the playground surrounded by folks in my stage of life, I know that I look just like them, but I don’t know if I am like them or not.
I also really wonder how Bethany and Joshua will do with the culture change. Even as their mom, I can’t fully see all of the ways they have been shaped by growing up in the Arabian Gulf. Their differentness is invisible, and I hope I won’t miss seeing the things that affect them the most.
What scares me most is also what I am most deeply looking forward to–starting over. There are many reasons that we decided to move back to America. I find it hard to capture the reasons in words, and sometimes the factors are different for me and for Steve. One way to explain it would be that we have changed a great deal over the past few years. There has been stress and burnout and depression and disappointment…which all sounds pretty negative, but we feel like it has been a catalyst for a lot of positive change in our lives. The problem was that our life didn’t seem to fit right any more. We are still in a state of internal transition, so we are in the uncomfortable but hopeful place of knowing we want to change direction but not knowing what direction we are to head in next. So, we are ready to feel our way forward step by step in a new place.
I am incredibly grateful for this chance to start over, to let go of some of our goals and even long-time dreams and to find a new way of being. It is scary too. I’m not scared of being in the dark or of not knowing what’s next. I’m scared because I don’t know how to communicate who I am to people right now. I’m going to meet new friends, and I don’t know how to define myself to them. Scarier than that is people I already know–I have changed a lot, but I am too much in the middle of the process to be able to defend that change. I fear that I will not be who others expect me to be, and I am worrying about that a lot. In the last few years, I’ve been wriggling out of the expectations cocoon, which has taken a good amount of courage, but going back to America and not being what people expect is a really big jump for me on the bravery continuum. (As a side note, this is one of the reasons I have been rather sluggish with this blog–I keep second-guessing whether I really want to be authentic and honest about who I really am and what I’m really thinking.)
So there you have my excited and my scared, my hopeful and apprehensive. I feel really good deep down about this move, even about the bravery I will have to summon to confront my fears. I’m grateful for my friends on both sides of the ocean who walk with me through this process.
