Everything Hurts

I've been learning a lot about myself recently. The good, the bad, the ugly. One of the things I’ve been learning is that it takes a lot of emotional energy for me to face things that have conflict or pain attached to them in any way. It takes a lot of determination and bravery for me to enter into that space. I have realized that I have the tendency to sit and wait for a situation that forces me to deal with the hard things before taking action. It's not necessarily that I don't see what needs to happen, it just takes so much out of me to step up and do what needs to be done. One of the last things my grandmother told me before she died was to "Take action!". This was during a time in my life where I felt stuck and so out-of-my-depth. What I've found is that life seems to be comprised of circumstances where a person doesn't know what to do and then has to figure it out.

Recently, there have been several situations in my life that have forced me to deal with grief of lost relationships and hopes. How I understand it, grief is the process of letting go of someone or something that you have lost, whether by death or other circumstances. These are not just day-to-day disappointments, but are gut-wrenching and life-altering. They touch the core of who we are. That might sound dramatic, but let's just be honest, okay? 

With the grief I have been experiencing there are, what seem to be, a myriad of accompanying emotions. Among them... sorrow, despair, rage, regret, emptiness. It just hurts. I look back at decisions I've made and how I've dealt with certain things, and I feel unsure of how I've handled myself. It is a common occurrence for me, to look back and wonder if I made the right choice, and how other people are affected by those choices. It feels easier to avoid making any choices at all, because then I feel that I won't disappoint anyone by making the wrong ones. What I am learning is that by avoiding making choices, and just "letting life happen", I am failing to show up in relationships with people I care about so deeply for. I have withheld so much of myself from others throughout my life. If I'm being brutally honest, I don't feel that many people, if anyone, truly know the real me. A main contributor to this is my failure to share myself. I'm always afraid that when I share anything that is vulnerable and sacred to me and who I am at the core, the response will be one of apathy, that the other person will just not care and eventually drift away. I take friendship very seriously, but it feels as though there is a revolving door of people constantly coming in and out, and with them, small (or not-so-small) pieces of my heart. I fear, because I've withheld so much of myself (much of this unconsciously), that I will just be a "nice person" or a "good friend" that will fade into the background, that I won't have a lasting impact on people's lives. What's ironic is that so much of what I do is motivated by wanting to be there and support the people in my life.

I always find it easier to relate to people when I hear about what it is that they are actually going through, rather than only the lessons they've learned from it, so I'll share one of these griefs that I'm currently processing through. It's still quite raw, so bear with me. A few months ago, my aunt died. Everyone always seems to ask "Were you close?" when they hear a family member has died, as if to gauge how affected a person will be, and my answer to that question, in this circumstance, is that it's complicated. Throughout my childhood, I was over at my aunt's house a lot. She and her family, including my cousin, who is closest to my age and also a girl, lived ten minutes away from my family's home. I went over there all the time to play. As a child, I was never afraid to talk to or be friends with adults, so we would talk quite often. So, yes, she was one of my aunts I was closest to as I was growing up. When I was in high school, she struggled a lot with mental illness, and that continued until her death a few months ago. With her mental illness, there were a lot of things that happened and were said that I didn't know how to process or handle well, so I withdrew to protect myself. I also moved away to college several years after all of this started happening, and then out of the country. At the time she passed away, I hadn't spoken to her or seen her since my Sophomore year of college, seven years earlier. I think the reason for this was that I just didn't feel ready to deal with the pain of the whole situation, so I didn't. The part of this that breaks my heart the most is that I had the chance to see her just before she died and I didn't take it. I didn't know that it would be my last opportunity. More than the pain and anger I personally went through (and suppressed) in my relationship with her, I know that she was in so much pain and had tried to make things right and ask forgiveness from people who had been hurt. I deeply regret that I let my tendency to self-protect and not deal with things to override choosing to love and show up.

I refuse to live my life like this anymore. That's almost terrifying to say, because it feels like I'm entering into the ring, getting ready to go head-to-head with life itself in order to give the most I can give and also to get the most out of it. What I hate more than conflict (which I definitely have issues with) is "fake peace". You know when things are fine on the surface, and your life really isn't disrupted too much... well, unless you have a moment of quiet and start thinking... but really, underneath the "everything's fine" exterior, there's tension so thick, you could cut it with a knife? That's exhausting. As difficult as it is to confront the demons in our lives, whether that be destructive patterns in relationships, deep-seeded anger, addictions, etc., I think it's necessary that we do so, so that we can live, I can live, in true joy and peace. This is not a process for the faint of heart. Seriously. When Jesus said, "take up your cross and follow me"... just... yikes. Not sure if I really knew what I was getting into when I decided to follow him and give him my life. But, I have no regrets in that regard. Jesus has been my constant rock through pain and heartbreak in my life. He is a redeemer. He redeems people, relationships, mistakes... I'm beyond thankful for his faithful hand that guides me, comforts me, and supports me throughout each day.

I want other people to know the reason why I live my life, which is Love himself. I want what Jesus has done for me and in me, and continues to do, to be something those around me experience too. I want to love others as He first loved all of us, withholding nothing. Before I moved to France, the Lord told me that He was going to expand my capacity to love others. I believe that I'm going through the growing pains of that right now, and it's a painful process. Through this process, I'm finding that love isn't necessarily what I've always believed it to be. It's not always "nice" or "accommodating". Sometimes it's saying something that's uncomfortable, or setting a boundary because you know that is really what is best for the other person, or for yourself. Being human means that I will make mistakes, that I will not always love other people well, that I will fail and disappoint. I wish that it was possible to never disappoint anyone! That would feel so much better. I wish I could give myself completely to other people without the fear of being disregarded or rejected. A question that I ask myself is "Is that risk really worth it?" Then I think of my model for loving others well. It is written of Jesus, that "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we did not regard him." It goes on to say that "Surely he himself bore our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we thought of him defeated, wounded, and afflicted... (and the ironic part is that) it is by his sacrifice that we are healed." (Isaiah 53, paraphrased). Jesus gave his life to heal us, and he has been rejected and despised by so many. Knowingly, he still chose to love. He did not withhold, not even his life.