kylee-larson

Last night I went to a basketball game.  Because my husband is a youth pastor, we sat in the student section (I should say stood, they stand the whole game, which I am too old for).  They stand the whole game, and they cheer (I should say mostly cheer, but sometimes it’s more like taunting).  And I love it because I love just watching them have fun with their friends and be kids. 

I mentioned that there is some taunting going on there.  This, of course, is directed at the other team.  So, number eleven, he’s a guard for the other team, and way in the beginning of the game he shot and totally missed.  So every time this kid gets the ball for the next two quarters (which was a lot) the whole student section from our team chants, “AIRBALL!  AIRBALL!”  rhythmically.  Doesn’t matter if he makes it or not after that, “AIRBALL! AIRBALL!  AIRBALL!”  They shout his failure out like it’s his name. 

It got me thinking about the description of love in 1 Corinthians, which really, is a description of God and how to be like him.  Specifically I was thinking of, “Love keeps no record of wrongs.”  In The Message paraphrase it actual says, “Love does not keep score.” 

Sometimes I feel like if God really knows everything, then he’s seen a lot of my bad shots.  Surely he never forgets it either.  And this cosmic voice is just yelling throughout the universe:  AIRBALL! AIRBALL!  No matter what I do.  And if I could just play really well for the next half…maybe he would be able to overlook it.  Let it go.  Maybe I could prove myself worthy of something.  Or maybe I should just sit it out because, well, I did totally miss, and it’s not like it’s wrong to call me a failure.  I am. 

What freedom to actually get our heads around this:  Love (God) does not keep score.  That voice yelling out our failure is not His.  He is patient.  Kind.  He’s not proud or boastful or out for Himself.  He always protects.  Always hopes.  He always perseveres.  He never ever fails.  And that kind of God, that kind of love is in our corner.  Always for us.  The only thing off his lips is the victory that’s already been won for us as we continue in our process toward it.  He always has the pompoms poised. 

The first step in recovery programs is to admit that we are powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors.  The first step of doing that, of course, is admitting that we have addictions and compulsive behaviors, and that they hurt us/others.  = Coming out of denial.  Defined: “A false system of beliefs that are not based on reality” and “a self-protecting behavior that keeps us from honestly facing the truth.”

For me, and for many of us, the processes started early.  Life presented us with tough situations and we learned ways to cope.  The coping worked and we made it through whatever it was.  For me, I dealt with my feelings of being out of control, abandoned, and unlovable by developing what I’m coming to term “codependency,”  “performance addiction,” and “people approval addiction.”  This all has lead to a false system of belief that I need to and can earn people’s love.  It helps me deal with my fears of abandonment and betrayal by making it my fault if someone lets me down, leaves me, or doesn’t love me (if it’s my fault…at least my worst fears of betrayal can’t be true).  I guess this all made sense for a time, problem is, it doesn’t make sense anymore.  This behavior (insert yours here, I guess) doesn’t make me feel safe.  It doesn’t put me in control.  And worst of all, I can’t even live up to it.  The very thing I am depending on to protect me is unreliable.  It doesn’t work.

It’s hard to admit that it doesn’t work, whatever “it” is for you. It is much easier to believe that this low is passing, that it’s some else’s fault, that it isn’t that bad, it was in the past, that compared to most I’m doing okay, that it’s not worth bringing up, not worth remembering or going through the pain.  Denial. 

Out of Romans we read, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.  For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” This is why it’s hard to take an honest look at ourselves.  It’s very probable that what we find is going to be of a profoundly unhealthy nature.  Our hearts are ugly.  All of us. In this sense, we are doomed, I guess.  It’s the human condition.  If this is all there was, denial sounds like a good idea.

But that’s not all there is.

It’s true, we know, or will come to realize when we take an honest look, that nothing good lives in us, that is, our sinful nature.  But that isn’t all there is to us.  At the start of everything, we were not ugly.  At the start of who we are, before we even were, God, a beautiful God who can be nothing but beautiful, dreamed of us.  Came up with us.  Created us.  With gifts and purpose, made for love and wholeness.  At the start, we are beautiful.  And then, if we have a relationship with Christ, the Spirit of this beautiful and powerful God dwells in our hearts. 

Our past might be full of hurt, resentment, failure, and fear.  But we began for greatness.  Our present might be full of the same, but it is also full of God’s love.  God’s power.  Our future may look dim, or scary, or unsure, but it is full of His promises.  If we are willing to look, to see it all, then we have a choice.  If we take an honest look at what’s there, an honest look at the path we’ve been on, that’s the only way to know what the next steps toward Him are.  Toward healing and recovery.  We get to pick what to follow even when that seems impossible; He makes everything possible.

All of this to say, yes, there is ugly in our hearts, but there is also beauty.  If we are not allowing an honest look at ourselves…sure, we don’t have to see the crap, but we miss all that is good too.  If we’re hiding behind a mask, we miss who He’s really made us to be.  If we’re stuck pretending we’re okay, we never get to actually be okay.  If we keep trying to make ourselves alright, then He never gets to make us right.  Everything we are doing to stay in denial, to not deal with those situations, is robbing us from actually coming out on the other side of those situations.  We were made for much more than coping.  Let’s not miss what He has for us!

I want life to be beautiful.  I want to see.  I want to see lines and colors—graceful curves and sharp angles, and all of my favorites: red and gold, orange and green, all the blues woven together—I want to run them through my fingers.  I want to feel them like heat on my skin or shade grass between my toes.

And I want beautiful words.  Words that taste and feel and go forth like silk from our lips.  I want beautiful words with life inside them like seeds underground—waiting to spring forward into first light—pearls off our lips and life in our ears. I want words and the hearing of words to be beautiful.   

I want life to be beautiful.  I want to see love that transcends us.  I want to be washed in it. Watch as it pours over us until we are soaked—heads dripping with love as it runs down our noses and into our lonely, thirsty throats.  I need beautiful, powerful, heart quenching love. 

In the midnight black of my hell, in the gray blur of day after day, I want to decide that life is beautiful.  Because the blues are still shining.  And words can still sing. And somewhere there is something more than ugliness—in truth, it is everywhere.  Give us eyes to see.

I felt inspired to write tonight, but didn't have any good ideas.  I started looking in my poetry files for something to work on...then I just got into older and older stuff, even into high school and junior high.

This left me with several thoughts/feelings.  I found that I used to be a more honest person, but also more confused and self-isolating.  So much was explained, too.  So much I had forgotten.  So much the same, but enough different not be discouraging...mostly, it was just very much the next step for me.  I feel connected to my story and my life in a way that I haven't before...and more clearly saw the source of the distance I had put between my self and my self, and my self and others (if that makes any sense).  I also feel an overwhelming need to share this story and its progression.  The form of this, of course, is unclear...as are the motives.

Here is an excerpt from a piece I wrote in high school called "Babbling":

This is a story about a girl who doesn't really know what is going on.  Her room is messy and so is her head.  She hasn't washed her hair in three days and you can tell by her slicked back ponytail.  She wore those socks yesterday and she never feels complete.  She always feels like she just covers herself. She is never clean.  No one likes this girl because she is fake.  Her heart is not true.  She does not like herself because she knows she is not honest with herself.  Her whole life is a play.  She shames herself away from vain attempts at praying...she feels that she is trying to fool God.  She feels like her lame and tired attempts at pleasing the Lord of Lords is seen as transparent as it actually is.  She feels inadequate.  She feels incomplete.  She feels fake.  She is not clean.  She wants to be.

This is a story about a girl who when left alone digs into her soul so deeply that she makes up things in the dark of it.  She pretends that her life has been miserable and that she is insane.  And that she has dark deep spots.  She pretends that her life has meaning and that she is depressed by the dim light through which she sees the world.

This is a story of a girl who lies to herself a thosuand times a day.  She might tell herself that she is beautiful or that someone admires her.  She might tell herself that she is ugly and that she shouldn't hid.  She tells herself that she is loved and then says she isn't.  She tells herself she is normal and tells herself she is strange.  She is talented.  She is tired.  

I had cut these writings (there were so many like this) off.  I see now that I've been writing the same poetry with different words for about ten years.  All in an attempt, I think, to make sense of things...give them an order...make them into something with a rhythm...make a mess into a beautiful, ordered, containable truth.

I'm not sure why I post this here, in an inspirational space, other than to invite any interested parties along for a journey that started long before we did...a story that is about me but not, and maybe that could be about you a little if you let it.  A story of recovery?  Redemption?  This is the story of a girl in mid-stride...to be continued.