Eating Mangoes while Naked.

*Note: This was written in the Spring. God was revealing my loneliness but has continued to bless me with friendships that are providing a place for me to be more "naked". I'm super grateful for these friends.*

I sat down over a cutting board full of almost rotten mangoes with a friend the other night, I felt the Spirit move my heart to talk about a strange feeling I had experienced earlier in the day. While I peeled back the much too soft skin on my mangoes, I explained feeling like I would jump out of my own soft skin. Recently, I've been experiencing these rushes of anxiety; there's an energy within my body that must get out. I need a release of this pressure-like feeling building up in my mind, body and soul.

An invitation given by my friend's poignant question, "What in your life might be contributing to this feeling?" prompted my soul to begin bearing itself, revealing deep feelings of loneliness and struggles with sin. I am always astonished, no matter how many times it happens, how the right question can trigger soul bearing, especially if we have begun to trust the person sitting across the cutting board of mangoes. This "practice of emotional nakedness" is a practice I haven't done in my new community very often or very well. I think of that scene in The Proposal where the two run into each other completely naked unintentionally and the guy keeps saying "So naked... just so naked." hah! Though that's a funny scene, that's what it feels like, just SO NAKED.

I almost shocked myself with admitting that I have felt lonely here. In the most practical sense, I am usually not lonely, or rather shall I say, usually not alone. I have an incredible community of brothers and sisters who are always getting together, sharing their gifts of hospitality, and meeting over cups of hot coffee or St. Louis brewed beer. I typically have some grasp about what is going on in my heart and mind...at least some glimpse of the tip of the iceberg of why I may be experiencing a certain emotion. (A brilliant but exhausting gift of insight/discernment that God bestowed upon me.) Yet, recently, with these surges of anxiety, I have felt as clueless as the nautical minds steering the Titanic full speed into the iceberg they couldn't even see. I needed a friend to help me discern --"clean up of Pride on isle 4 please".

As I mutilated the mango infront of me with our largest kitchen knife (my body's way of dealing with the stress I feel when revealing my inner hurt), I was vulnerable in sharing with my friend these feelings of loneliness and recent tendencies to want more and more wine, addictive exercise, and have even felt like I might be beginning to understand the feelings behind why practices like cutting seem appealing. It just feels like there is something inside of me that wants to get out. As we talked, sharing similar testimonies, feelings, and honest answers to hard questions,  we began to weave our thoughts into a tapestry that we could begin to step back from and begin to understand a broader picture of what may be going on in me.

Last August I left behind an environment in which I felt deeply known. Space and time has separated me from those friendships in which I feel fully myself at all times as seasons of transition have many times before. My tendency is to think that because I have people in my life, though they don't live near me in distance , I can live within a new community without needing those deep friendships in which people know the places I feel the most shame, the stories of my past, and the nooks and crannies of my deepest passions.  As I kept verbally throwing up my mind over the mangoes, I realized that I only feel comfortably known by someone when I begin to allow them to see both my shame and my silly. As I finished up my sharing of deep insecurities and places of shame with my friend, something triggered me to use a funny voice and act out a scene from a movie with a piece of mango skin, causing my two roommates in the kitchen to bust out laughing. I felt even more vulnerable and naked, but known at the same time.

What baffled me most, is why didn't I see this iceberg called lonliness before it was ripping a hole, threatening to sink the vessel. I think I didn't recognize it because I had a false sense of being known.

For the last ten months I have lived in a community that understands the need for people to have their stories known. My hospitable  community here at seminary is a buzz with the questions of "How are you doing?", which is typically answered by a "Pretty good.", and combated with a "Really?, How are you really?" There is great dignity in this converse between friends who are learning that to shed light on our struggle, hurts, and deep shame is both healing and redeeming. There is a sense of freedom created by sharing our struggles even in our "surface level" conversations. Typically, below our surface we are indeed "wrestling", and to not have this known creates a sense of not feeling known all together by those around us. And friends, we were created to be DEEPLY KNOWN WITHOUT SHAME.

In this moment I realized the significance of this conversation between friends, and the hard work that it takes to experience it. It's not a surface level interaction. It is a conversation that required so much vulnerability - whether it be vulnerability by sharing shame or vulnerability in being silly, but a conversation, none the less, that drips with beauty - something of our Garden Origins.

So there are two things I learned from this:

 1. What is at risk in a community like my present community is that our brief interactions of sharing "struggle-bus feelings and thoughts" may become a mask in which we avoid the deep interactions with a few close friends. This avoidance I believe to be highly unintentional. I myself began to believe that I was living with small interactions of deep honesty spread through out my day, believing that this somehow would result in being known. I still believe the way in which our interactions are at least providing room to answer with something other than "Great. And, you?" is a good thing. I just am hyper aware now of it's tendency to become the new "surface"-- a surface level interaction that may be even more detrimental to us having intimate conversations which are the essential ingredient of feeling known. The danger is to lose the deep sacredness of sharing and to be caught up in the false sense of feeling known and thinking we know others. I must iterate here that I am deeply thankful for every, "Really? How are you really?" that has presented itself as a challenge to my tendency to hide behind the answer, "Good." And I want to acknowledge here that most of this problem of not being known does not lie within friends ability/inability to ask the right "How are you doing questions." Rather it lies within my willingness to be vulnerable. Which brings me to the second thing I learned:

2. What kept me from feeling known which in turn perpetuated my loneliness was the dragon within myself called self-protection. An all familiar foe. I'm afraid to risk.To be known, you have to begin to be vulnerable and be willing to risk.  In one of my seminary classes this year my professor Dr. Zink said brilliantly, "Our sense of being alive is rooted in connection." I think the thing inside me trying to get out during those intense feelings of anxiety was me.  I needed to feel alive, to feel like I had a pulse - and typically what makes my pulse most strong is intimacy with God and others. I want to deeply laugh, and for goodness sake I want to be spastic, silly and child-like in my relationships here. Yet, for me to do that I have to risk. We live in a broken world, we must accept our vulnerability will be taken advantage of at times, sometimes we will face judgment from others, our silliness will be squelched by those "more mature" (What ever the hell that maturity is.)...we simply, will not always be loved and cared for well. Unfortunately, I have to fight against an "all or nothing" way of thinking ... for the rest of my life. Sometimes the ways in which I've been "squelched" or others have literally run away from my vulnerability, makes me close up and not enter into new relationships of nakedness. And that, friends, is what leads to loneliness. We weren't created for the clothing of self-protection, control, and intimacy-avoidance. We were created NAKED; and to be that in a fallen world is a risky business. The risk is worth it, but in order to take it we have to bathe ourselves in prayer and live daily trusting God to provide. Sometimes I have to remind myself that God made clothing for Adam and Eve when they felt naked and ashamed. Thankfully I still have clothing today, but what's greater is I have the clothing of Christ; we put on Christ and are clothed by his righteousness. Because of that WE WILL BE OKAY when we are vulnerable, naked, and yet not cared for well by others. This helps us take the risk.

Celebrate Well, Grieve Well. (One of those horrible, extra womanly, typical bloggy posts.)

Today I feel fully alive. This morning, rather. So I think to myself... of course I think this to myself, I am always asking the questions of why. Maybe it's just my natural ability to analyze things, maybe it's my desire to always maximize opportunity, to create the most efficient efficiency, or to live in the best way possible.  Any who, I thought, why this morning? What has set me up to feel so alive?

First things, my setting. I'm here alone in my dim lit kitchen. No one is home. Sometimes my introversion screams for individual space, though I deeply love people in my home. The quiet is nice. I can think here. Let us not neglect the small details, either. No bra. If I had half the cognitive energy that most people have when they wake up, maybe I would have gone for no underwear too. Again, back to trying to maximize the comfort of life; always, trying. (Rabbit Trail #1: Which sadly, if we carry on that philosophical nature of thought, we end up realizing that our analyzing to maximize the comfort results in frustration and exhaustion. Thereby minimizing the comfort we did have. If only we (Or shall I confess to the pronoun, "I" here?) could rest in the "what is".) ... No bra; it's a nice thing. Furthermore, there is an incredible bouquet of large sunflowers on my kitchen table dressed with things that look largely like weeds, but beautiful ones. Nature is near. This creates a peace in me.

I also woke up to planning with my Mom via text for my parents and grandmother's arrival. Matters of what hotels to stay at are a small thing, but I love planning. So upon waking I was faced with an exciting task of event planning for people that I love. These things make me tick, hospitality and planning events.  Furthermore, no small joy, my roommates are allowing my parents to stay here with us in the large-ass house, which I am feeling incredibly blessed by recently. Over text my roommates and I are ducking and dodging each others plans of baking 800 cupcakes and hosting out of town friends whom they've discipled. My heart is all the while screaming "Yes! Let's plan well, women!" as well as "Welcome to our home friends and cupcakes!" ...Yes, I did say earlier that I'm an introvert, but who really knows? I'm as much half and half as the "ultra-pasteurized diary liquid" I  splashed into my "crap coffee" this morning. That has made me happy too. There are certain small details of life that make you feel at home - these details have no need for being super sophisticated. I like sitting down with what I call my "crap coffee, with my crappier cream, with my two "will give you cancer" Splendas". It's my thing.

This morning, the ritual of a quick morning check of twitter (really just to see my boyfriend's tweets), Instagram and Facebook, surprised me with an interesting article of a guy and girl friend set who decided to embark on a 40-day experiment of "dating". My thoughts and curiosity dance in and out of the blogged thoughts from each of them, delighting in the differences between male and female, and finding myself continually relating to her thoughts. Twenty-one days into the timeline she says she's an INFJ; no wonder I get her brain. I LOVE diving into their thoughts, their problems, and their quirks. I find myself dying laughing at the miscommunication, and nodding my head with "Amen!, this rings true with me." to the ins-and-outs of the ambiguity of dating and her fight against her desire for a black and white world. If you gave my sisters a text book of medicine, biology, and pictures of muscles they would love it. Give me a dusty copy of, "Psychological Types" by Carl Jung, and my heart will sing. In this article the very things that make me "tick", people's lives, stories, problems and psychological curiosity have been beckoned forth this morning creating for a sense of aliveness that I long for.

Broadening the picture. I feel comfortable right now in my relationships. That is a specific ingredient to making me feel alive. It's like that 1/8 teaspoon of salt in the cake recipe of life. Sometimes you forget it and it can make the biggest difference. It's small but important. My boyfriend called me last night instead of us stringing along a conversation of text messages and I enjoyed a voice, the sound of laughter, and at least the amount of emotion that sound can carry without facial expression. I've had good conversations with my family and have a plan to see them soon. I am enjoying closeness with my roommates and friends within the past few days. So I feel comfortable, content with that. When these relationships feel content that adds significantly to my feeling of being alive.

I'm feeling creative. For me creativity is a feeling. So are dancing, whether I want to be with people, whether I have something to talk about, etc. Okay, so maybe I'm a feeler and I need to learn that I can't live life based on how I feel in any given moment. Even so, I'm thankful for the feeling this morning that I have DEEP ENERGY to create. I keep wanting to grab for my roommate's water colors tucked nicely away in this incredible box with a  picture of a weird lady on it... or write notes to friends.
I go to write in my journal, but my hand and pen are too slow, so back to technology and my Macbook.

Of course, if you are still following a long, and could keep up with my brain's rabbit, deer, and fox trails it is no surprise to you that I am now wondering whether or not I am bipolar, because sometimes I have a burst of creativity.  (Rabbit Trail #2) All the good writers and painters were depressed often. Right? Bipolar? Am I? Typical me. As soon as I begin to see the world for the beauty it is, a pessimistic cloud drops into the thought process to rain on my sunny day, "the earth is as it should be" parade. (Cue the Sesame Street song, "Sunny Days" into brain. - Rabbit Trail #3)

The hilarity of the sudden changes in my setting right now are loud and obtrusive. The kitchen just got darker because the gray clouds are forming out my window, literally. I just realized how little time I have before I have to go work a full day, and my email inbox has a beckoning call something like a crying baby on a plane that drives you crazy until you realize it's your baby. I'll try to harness this feeling of "things are as they should be" to carry it with me into the day. I feel like it will die out though. My sense of wonder will be squelched by having to wonder about bills, emails and student loans. My feeling alive quite possibly will be deadened by the fact that after I create writing I will feel too vulnerable and shamed-filled to share it. My sense of rest will be interrupted by the bride-zilla who thinks more about choosing a wedding dress than she did a spouse.  And yes, I'll have to wear a bra to work. Pessimistic, much? Maybe. I like to think I have a real sense of the brokenness and the beauty in our world. This is the world we live in. People say it's the good, the bad and the ugly. I say it's rather the gorgeous, the good, the bad, and yes, even the ugly. We live amongst the beauty and the broken, and I long for a different world. So what's the recipe to be HERE and feel ALIVE? Haha, no one knows. All I know is that when I have a morning like this, I must celebrate it well, and when the rain clouds form outside and the morning in which I feel alive slips away, I must grieve it well. Celebrate well, grieve well. That's my motto. What does that look like you say? hahaha, seriously... I will not even give the fuel to my desires for "how to's" and the love of "black and white"that drives me, in answering that question. To some questions there are no "answers" in the cognitive sense that we Westernized intellectuals long for. We learn by living. To learn this either will be the death of me or the beginning of living in adventure, creativity, and hope.