Spiritually Honest

Some years, Lent is quiet and reflective.  Some years it’s a struggle. This year, thus far, it has been a swift kick in the ass. Ash Wednesday really hurt and while I’d like to say it happened, it hurt, I’m okay now, and walk away from it, I can’t. Because if I won’t take the time to understand what broke loose that night, I’m just going through the motions and at that point, the weight of this holy season would be completely lost on me.

I learned some things that night:

1) I have panic triggers I didn’t know even know existed, even after seven years out. This scares me.

2) I have incredible, supportive, faith-filled friends and family. This encourages me beyond words. I love you all.

3) I was lazy, dishonest and prideful Wednesday night and I paid a heavy price for that.

These three things will take a lot of working through over the remaining 37 days of Lent.

I have my list of excuses. I was legitimately exhausted, having not slept Tuesday night. It was dark and brutally cold. I opted to drive the mile to my old familiar Catholic parish rather than the ten miles to my Lutheran church. Even though I brought my mother to Mass, I didn’t want to tell her that I would rather go somewhere else for Mass because I didn’t want admit anything that even remotely resembled weakness. I stayed in a situation that I realized would be difficult because of territorial pride. This was my parish first! I was here since childhood! How dare this interloper come in and take over!

I set myself up and I got knocked down hard. It was a wake up call I needed. Showing up in my Catholic parish because I didn’t feel like dragging my sorry self to the next town over for Lutheran services is nothing less than spiritually lazy and worse, spiritually dishonest. Bringing my mother to Mass is a good thing and had that alone been my reason, all would be well. But settling for what is convenient, familiar and, therefore, comfortable is wrong. I can’t continue with a foot on either side of the line. I’ve always been an all or nothing kind of girl. In or out. Yes or no. Can I accept all that the Catholic Church believes, teaches and professes? No. Okay, then I need to be out and quit running back because it’s a mile away and I’m quite fond of the pastor. Those are not valid reasons to be there.

It took me about a day to fully reset the emotional switches after Ash Wednesday but I learned a hard lesson in love and trust. It’s easy to love and to trust when things are going good.  But when the bottom drops out unexpectedly, when I get clobbered with far more than I can handle, can I love and trust Him even then? More than that, can I let Him love me, even when it scares me to admit I screwed up? Yes. God doesn’t want perfect. He wants honest. He can work with honest. And I needed to learn that  – again – for the hundredth time – and God knows, I learn everything the hard way.

What does all that mean for the next 37 days?  I don’t know yet. This year Lent for me has slowed to a one-day-at-a-time crawl. And that’s okay. I got knocked down and I will crawl until I can walk and walk until I can dance.

Unglitzing New Year’s

New Year’s Eve came around last night. Again. I have a serious love/hate thing going with New Year’s. I ricochet between, ‘Now what?’ [excited that good and new things are headed my way] and ‘Now what?!’ [fed up and overwhelmed already, what further crap could be coming]

I know the latter is not exactly inspiring, is it? But it’s honest.

I had planned to be celebrating with friends but my body had other plans. Between the cold, the coming snow, the stress of the busy season at work and my insane willfulness to just keep going full tilt during Christmas, the RA finally caught up and flattened me. I came home from work at 2:30 in the afternoon. I had to double up on the pain pills. Instead of heading out, I collapsed on the couch with my woobie blanket, feeling exhausted and rather betrayed. I spent the evening migrating between reading Rumi’s poetry and scrolling through Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr all while wearing compression gloves to help ease the pain in my hands. I’ve found that I read with different eyes on my down days. And from what I read on social media last night, I’m not the only out there who feels this kind of ‘oh crap now what’ trepidation as we head into 2014. But we gloss over it. We dress it up, take it out, buy it a few drinks and hope it will either change into blindingly brilliant optimism by the time the ball drops or at the very least, stop reminding us of all the things that could go catastrophically wrong in the coming year. Nobody that I’ve seen goes out on New Year’s Eve saying, ‘This year was tough and I’m afraid 2014 will just be more of the same.’ Not because we don’t feel it, but because it’s not acceptable to say it. New Year’s Eve is always the night of the happy, happy, joy, joy song and dance, insincere promises and staged optimism.

But the party is over now. The ball has dropped. Auld Lang Syne has been sung. The sun has risen on a new day, a new year. So the question still remains: Now what? The inflection and tone and the unspoken words carried behind it are up to you. As for me, it will be another quiet down day. But I managed to drag my sorry self down to the beach this morning and kneel in the sand with the sun of the new year on my face. When I stripped away all the glitzy, glossy, staged woohoo optimism, shoved away all the fears that are nagging at me, and took the time to really know the ground beneath me, I was left with one simple thing:

There are 365 dawns in a year. How many do I choose to ignore because I decide, for whatever reason, that I don’t like the way my day is headed even before it starts? I throw away a gift before it’s even unwrapped.

I could make a resolution to change but to be perfectly blunt, I suck at keeping resolutions. They’re too big for me to handle. I’ll stick to unwrapping today. I can thank God for the beauty I saw this morning…

… And for making sure no one saw me trying to stand back up after kneeling on frozen sand in 17 degree weather with knees that aren’t working right. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t graceful. But it was grace-filled and that feels like almost too much for me to accept.