When Life Weighs on You

It’s been a minute since I felt truly stressed - graduating from a grad program and no longer having class has that effect. But, I’m feeling it. School feels overwhelming though I feel more on top of instruction than ever. I return from Boston the night before we start testing. I can feel the ire toward state testing bubbling up in my heart - that I want my grandma to be okay for much longer, partially because leaving school at year end to deal with what the fallen earth throws at me is hectic and impossible. It’s hard enough dealing with grief without the thankless and unforgiving struggle of working as a public school teacher. There is pressure from every direction, and duty wrapped up in many of those. Testing means nothing to what I teach, but it feels as if the whole earth stops rotating for testing - and I feel like a person who has been robbed - I feel like testing has stolen from me, and I’m powerless to stop the theft.

All of these pressures and busyness remind me what I really want - I really want more time at home. I feel like I have no time to make my house a home and to enjoy the fruit of my labor. Today, I wrote in my bullet journal that it’s not the job I work so much as it’s the freedom a job would offer. I want to be at home more, but I don’t want to sacrifice serving at church. That feels like my current option. I enjoy working with the kids at my school - I enjoy working with people in general. But I am over the systems in place and the workload and the legalism of American education - and it keeps taking. Legislators keep taking and entitled people keep taking and county ideas and initiatives keep taking. I have run out of life’s blood to give. I’m nearing the end, which is a shame because I work hard to have positive relationships with people I work with and for. The standard I am held to while at the same time the treatment we teachers receive, means that the cons are truly beginning to outweigh the pros. I hate it though - most of the teachers I work with are selfless individuals - what other industry will I find coworkers like that? Many of them ARE my family. I am struggling to make a decision because of the family I leave. Time is ticking though.

And then there is life before me. My grandmother is ailing - the one who took care of me and my brother while my mom managed her currency exchange part-time. She’s the one who was the boss of the applesauce in the States for her nieces and nephews. She was Hispanic Woman of the Year in Chicago one year. My heart is just plain sad. She jokes about being ready - and I have to say, I am not. A lot of times in my life, I simply don’t feel ready - and for this time of life, I am the very most not. I’m not ready to shift generations - the loss of one and the continual growth of the next. I’m not ready to lose the Queen Mother, and I am begging the Lord to have mercy on me. I longed for my mom’s mom to be at my wedding one day, but losing this hope feels particularly hard amidst all the other painful adjustments. I have mourned life being radically different than what I hoped for before, but not with such immense sadness. My mom’s family has endured so much, and it feels a little impossible to believe that we must endure more. My great hope is the comfort of Jesus - that our mutual faith in Christ means that goodbye is not forever. But I reiterate - I am not ready. And I don’t know what to do with that besides weep every day that I need to. I’m reminded to love my people well through all of this - what our energy should be spent on. I can tell you, it isn’t anger. But what I wouldn’t give for a little more time - a little bit longer.

Dying to Hopelessness

I have a confession to make. My house is a mess.

And it's not in the cute, "life is crazy," things are hectic, clothes are everywhere mess. Clothes ARE everywhere, but it's bad. I have been RUNNING, escaping from it, avoiding.

I just can't anymore. Today, I had to confront what is going on. See, my classroom is tidy - I've grown so much professionally. And while I can make the desk messy all over again, each week I make sure to straighten and hand back grades and get things managed.

But the house... I joke is like Hoarders, but truly, it's like Hoarders. And I can throw things away and get rid of plenty, but haven't. I've had these conversations with myself like "what is the MATTER?" because it isn't normative. It also isn't what I know. It is, however, the result of deep, abiding, hard emotions I have about my worth and what I believe about myself - it is stuff that isn't true. I know it's not true because it's not biblical. I have a belief problem, though. And self-help books give me nothing - they aren't true either.

So, today, I did an exercise. And I wrote out the things that I do that aren't good to get really honest on paper about what I know about me. But then it morphed into something - it morphed into me taking thoughts I have and refuting them with what I know to be true. And there it was.

Over nearly 15 years, God has been able to peel back the brokenness of isolation (I was healed through dealing with the past), anxiety (I was healed through dealing with the present), depression (I was healed through dealing with others). Today was the day for a new one. Today was the day I was confronted with dealing with hopelessness - I will be healed through dealing with the future. In each case in my life, I am reconciled to my time here. Today, I realized something big and very difficult.

I am carrying around hopelessness - it's not biblical and it is selfishness. But it is caused by a very deep fear of mine - fear of emotional pain. I'd list out all of the pains, but we all have them. What I did distill for myself is that I have two types, which is why my hopelessness is so bitter - I feel the pain of good things destroyed by the fallen-ness of man - death, divorce, destruction, and denial of Christ as the Lord. At one point, things are good and felt good, and time has passed, and nearly all the once good things have gone, leaving a very grief-filled ache. I don't want to move forward because I fear the loss of so much good going bad.

But then there is this other, very awful pain - the pain of regret - the what ifs and could haves and should haves - and that scale is tipping me over these days. I want to do things and be with people, and I am surrounded by fear. And my fear is manifested in a home where I live but I also abandon. "What's the point?" battles against "but I want to have people over" - "it'll never be exactly the way you like" battles against "but it can be better." So, today, I discovered the stuck - stuck between two massive fears, and I escape to avoid it. The stuck has a name - and it is hopelessness itself.

I can't anymore, though. I can't do it because hope is still alive in there - maybe it's blind, but I refuse to give it up. I want to feel normal and not screwed up - I want to know Earth is broken, but I'm living well because of what I believe and how that informs my actions.

Confronting hopelessness, I prayed today - hopelessness is a type of self I need to die to. I told the Lord in prayer that I would trust Him enough to kill my unbelief of hopelessness. I wrote that I would die to my fear of pain and bear what cross I'm called to - I'd live it out and not let pain steal the joy of life and the calling to serve others and show them Jesus. Connected to that is taking care of all that God has given me so that I can use it to serve Him. I'm not doing that with wholeness - and I haven't been trying.

I wanted to share this because it never occurred to me that dying to myself is not just selfish indulgence stuff that I want - but that it can be selfish belief stuff that I refuse to deny. I wrote down evidence I had for hopelessness, and I felt God impress upon me through all the scripture I know and love, "And?" Because we must press through it - we should not embrace it. Like He put to death depression in my heart, so I can feel the truth of hopelessness as a version of self that I must crucify. On the surface, it looks strange - how can hopelessness, depression, anxiety, and isolation be selves to die to? But when you encounter how you have knit your heart to them and called them your own, they are just as much identities to crucify as the hedonist who knits addiction to his/her soul, the money-consumed miser married to his/her greed, the sexually obsessed to lust. They are harder to see because it seems like it wouldn't make sense. But they are there as identities, and let me say, they can be just as overcome by the Lord as those "pleasure"-oriented identities.

My house will take some time to rectify. It's not floor to ceiling in the least, and I'm not eating off of a frisbee like parks and rec, but it will take time. God will need to continue the renewing of my mind - I can't do it - I don't have the authority. His goodness, of which I have no doubt, can be relied upon. I just needed this first push to move forward. I believe others can know freedom as well.

Girl, Plant Your Face

It's a rare thing that I miss work (please don't think it noble - it is so much work to lesson plan when away that it's easier to show up even while mildly sick), but for a conference with some incredible Bible teachers, I didn't hesitate nor hem nor haw about burning my last two personal days on sitting under teaching that I knew would help my weak understanding of things. What was fantastic about this conference was being with my church family as well. A massive group of members from my church attended - not even at the behest of the church itself but simply because we are people who want to hear God's word and God's word preached.

I wanted to distill some of the things I came away with in my heart and share those things because I think they may be of value to other women interested in going deeper in God's word. These are my own feelings, so please do not feel pressure that I feel if it is not for you. But I want to share just the same.

1) Women have a great responsibility to the Church for the Gospel of Christ - this has a vast many contexts not limited to wife and mother. I hope other single women like me hear that - you may have many roles, but the greatest defining characteristic is not what you do or who you are to others but Whom you have been called to worship. Women can and do evangelize other women, and they should. Women can and do teach other women, and they ought. I love what Dr. Paul Washer said this weekend - that women could arguably be the most unreached people group - SO MANY are illiterate. Those women cannot read the word for themselves, and the implications of that for future generations are huge. Envision women empowered to read God's word and teach those under their care - children, family members, students, etc. There is so much that a woman can do that has gotten lost in the discussion of what little the Bible says they can't. I was reminded of God's provision for women, as leaders in their own lives, when He tells the Hebrew people that a father's inheritance should not be entailed away on account that he has no sons. That is RADICAL considering the things we women read in 18th and 19th century European literature. God has given us serious duty to uphold His word in the Church, care for, support, and minister those whom God has given us, and walk according to a way that honors Him. And I say all this with the deep conviction of my own sin weighing heavily on me that I have not been diligent in fulfilling my duty of others first in my own heart. There is so much we can do!

2) One of the great and awesome privileges that women can undertake that, to my mind, is neglected in this instant gratification world, is interceding for churches to be planted in the mission field. The theme of this year's G3 conference was missions. So often we again are consumed with what we cannot do, that we neglect the mighty thing we can: pray. We can pray. God was laying this on my heart over and over again this weekend as time well-spent for missions. As a woman, I will never plant a church - and I'm relieved, honestly. But I felt the great need for intercessors to pray for men who will - that God raises them up and that He keeps them honorable in their endeavors. In my overactivity on social media, I'm privy to the near incessant charges leveled at abusive pastors, which ARE serious, but also the minor gripes of people expecting perfection of mortal men. What amazes me about the current church climate in America are two issues: 1) that there is an absurd elevation of teachers we run to idolize and 2) that the vilification of men with minor/correctable failings is completely acceptable. Before we make another post, another comment, another blog post, another proclamation in this belabored public square called social media, let us stop and PRAY for these teachers - for real - for the one that has abused and shown himself/herself our enemy (because we are commanded to do so), for the one that blew us off and hurt our feelings inadvertently or in a moment of human weakness. I am GUILTY, especially when it is a teacher who has fallen into people-pleasing. But I'll tell you, the times where I stopped to pray and rethought a post or comment - I realized that adding to the online conversation would not do nearly so much as praying to the Lord would. I am a work in progress in this regard, but God will teach me to be quiet yet - may it be before I need to repent of something worse.

3) Women need quality theological teaching as much as men. AS MUCH AS. You may not think it's for you as a woman, but, WOMAN, it IS for you. The relational depth that we long for is only satisfied in a relationship with Christ - you will find that a good theology satisfies your longing heart that aches for MORE. While I don't talk to many women on the subject, my guess is that my own sense of longing for MORE love and deep relationship is not isolated to me. Though not married myself, I know enough to fear the expectations that my woman's heart can come up with for an imaginary man - He may love like Christ, but He isn't Christ. The sooner we see that our earthly love, while a precious gift and sanctifying mercy to us, is NOT enough and that we require more, we'll be in a place to seek what lies in the deep ocean of God's character. Good theology is not boring technicalities of God's Word - it feels like riches you have discovered; it will kindle your excitement for Whom God is, for what He has done, for what He will do, for the great hope we look forward to, I'm convinced of its curative properties - that plumbing the depths and breadths of God's Word can resolve depressions and anxieties, can replace deep grief with lasting comfort, and can enable us to BEST serve the Church and the lost. It can sustain a waning passion, and we find that it provides us the fuel for sustained joy. I cannot think how many times, in the midst of a heavy or exhausted heart that God reminds me of what I've read or studied or reminds me to rejoice in all that He had given me or done, and the more that women are in the Word of God and study it, the more frequent the rehearsal of what is good over what is fallen.

4) Submitting to God is not independent from submitting to a local church body for leadership. Submission still seems to be such a controversial subject for something to clearly laid out in Scripture. But as I see more and more women emboldened, there is this concerning, sour-tasting uncorrectable nature to this boldness. I surmise this is attributable to women constantly being told to do things that are by nature superfluous and extra-biblical, but just because we may have felt condemned does not mean we ought not be corrected. We have to sit under leadership - and for those of us where Christianity is freely proclaimed, it is possible to find excellent teachers. If you're single like myself, you have the exceptional luxury of choosing on your own. In either case, submitting to church leadership is an issue of obedience - and if you aren't in that position, you will not be nearly as effectual for Christ. God reined me in when I was drowning without a church family after college. He led me to a bible-believing church, and even just this year showed me my issues with submission to Him. That would not have happened without the near constant influence of the teaching and encouragement of my church. If you don't know what's good for you, submitting to a local body is such a joy - I feel like I have a true family alongside me. While we sometimes... oftentimes... fear that word submission, there is JOY found in the prospect and, quite paradoxically, abundant freedom.

I titled this post the way that I did because it is not about how God will elevate us, but how He magnifies and glorifies Himself through us. A worldly interpretation of that statement would say that doesn't seem like our best life. How wrong though, for it is the VERY BEST - it's what we're built and made for. The sooner we start operating in that "what we're made for" life, it will become abundantly clear what is the better life to lead. So girl, plant your face - in God's Word for wisdom and knowledge and on the floor, praying in humility and dependence.