dirty girl
I do this thing, this horribly unhealthy, dirty thing, where I try to give meaning to my experiences, both painful and pleasant, when sometimes they just aren't ready to wear a label or own a lesson.
I tend to section my life in boxes, like my heart is on some kind of continual nomadic journey. I want to pack places, sounds, smells, and experiences in a brown cardboard box, tape it up, write on the top where it belongs in the house of my heart, scribble "fragile" in the top corner if needed, and put it the attic of my memory.
Maybe I do this because I want to remember specific life-shaping moments. I want to remember how those moments felt, what they began to stir inside of my soul.
I want to keep memories accessible, in case someday I feel like ascending up to those broken spaces or beautiful places that have made me who I am.
I want to be able to go back to steep struggles, like a sacred grave, and remember how difficult they were because I know I need reminders manifested in my heart.
I want to turn my hurts into healing, suck the purpose out of painful experiences, like extracting narrow from a fragile bone. I want to go around with a label machine, pasting lessons on every piece of my life.
As an external processor, writer, feeler, talker, thinker, and stereotypical woman, I want to give things meaning, especially the difficult times, and writing is the way I stumble upon conclusions. It is the way I process, ungainly and gracelessly most days, but always with a gutsy flair.
I want to understand the things about life and faith that are not necessarily begging to be understood.
So on the rare occasion when I have an epiphany of sorts, I write and write and write and when I have brief moment of understanding, I go crazy. I celebrate.
I dance around the computer lab or my room, fist-pump the air like Jersey Shore, and proceed to high-five myself. Welcome to the absent mind of the unashamed.
But what happens in those moments when I find myself at a standstill, feet cemented at the end of a season, unable to wrap my words and mind and heart around what that specific experience in my life was about?
It's like having ten loads of dirty laundry but not knowing how to wash them, when you know you have washed a thousand loads before.
And if you're like me, you like things to be clean and crisp, folded, organized, dried off and put away.
But I'm realizing the way I treat my laundry is becoming the way I treat my life.
When I'm walking through a season or entering a new one, I so desperately want to say I have done everything in my power to understand the purpose of it so a better version of myself can somehow emerge.
But sometimes when you expect Understanding to knock on your door, Faith is the one who shows up.
Most days, I end up force-feeding pain with spoonfuls of purpose.
There are many moments I have yet to understand, parts of my life I have yet to find an adequate label for.
And those unlabeled, perplexing experiences sit and fester, to my extreme frustration and impatience, like dirty dishes in the sink, like wadded up clothes in the laundry room, relentlessly taunting me with their disheveled arrogance.
Maybe I need to stare at those piles of laundry and dirty dishes and just be thankful I have clothes to wear, food to eat.
Perhaps our experiences are not always about the summary or the moral lesson.
Our experiences could quite possibly be more about the questions rather than the conclusions.
Perhaps Faith has the courage to stare at the dirty dishes and rejoice, because even without understanding, a label, or an answer, Faith believes God's purposes always prevail.
So today, I'm not doing my dishes.
I'm letting some things in my life stay dirty, because some experiences do not fit in boxes and others look really frumpy when dressed in a label.
Maybe I do this because I want to remember specific life-shaping moments. I want to remember how those moments felt, what they began to stir inside of my soul.
I want to keep memories accessible, in case someday I feel like ascending up to those broken spaces or beautiful places that have made me who I am.
I want to be able to go back to steep struggles, like a sacred grave, and remember how difficult they were because I know I need reminders manifested in my heart.
I want to turn my hurts into healing, suck the purpose out of painful experiences, like extracting narrow from a fragile bone. I want to go around with a label machine, pasting lessons on every piece of my life.
As an external processor, writer, feeler, talker, thinker, and stereotypical woman, I want to give things meaning, especially the difficult times, and writing is the way I stumble upon conclusions. It is the way I process, ungainly and gracelessly most days, but always with a gutsy flair.
I want to understand the things about life and faith that are not necessarily begging to be understood.
So on the rare occasion when I have an epiphany of sorts, I write and write and write and when I have brief moment of understanding, I go crazy. I celebrate.
I dance around the computer lab or my room, fist-pump the air like Jersey Shore, and proceed to high-five myself. Welcome to the absent mind of the unashamed.
But what happens in those moments when I find myself at a standstill, feet cemented at the end of a season, unable to wrap my words and mind and heart around what that specific experience in my life was about?
It's like having ten loads of dirty laundry but not knowing how to wash them, when you know you have washed a thousand loads before.
And if you're like me, you like things to be clean and crisp, folded, organized, dried off and put away.
But I'm realizing the way I treat my laundry is becoming the way I treat my life.
When I'm walking through a season or entering a new one, I so desperately want to say I have done everything in my power to understand the purpose of it so a better version of myself can somehow emerge.
But sometimes when you expect Understanding to knock on your door, Faith is the one who shows up.
Most days, I end up force-feeding pain with spoonfuls of purpose.
There are many moments I have yet to understand, parts of my life I have yet to find an adequate label for.
And those unlabeled, perplexing experiences sit and fester, to my extreme frustration and impatience, like dirty dishes in the sink, like wadded up clothes in the laundry room, relentlessly taunting me with their disheveled arrogance.
So maybe I need to learn how to do this:
Maybe I need to recognize and reflect on the pleasant and the painful, but be patient with each experience, give it space to create its own purpose in its own time.
Perhaps I need to let things be messy once in a while. Maybe I need to stare at those piles of laundry and dirty dishes and just be thankful I have clothes to wear, food to eat.
Perhaps our experiences are not always about the summary or the moral lesson.
Our experiences could quite possibly be more about the questions rather than the conclusions.
Perhaps Faith has the courage to stare at the dirty dishes and rejoice, because even without understanding, a label, or an answer, Faith believes God's purposes always prevail.
So today, I'm not doing my dishes.
I'm letting some things in my life stay dirty, because some experiences do not fit in boxes and others look really frumpy when dressed in a label.
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1 comments
So maybe I need to learn how to do this:
ReplyDeleteMaybe I need to recognize and reflect on the pleasant and the painful, but be patient with each experience, give it space to create its own purpose in its own time.
Perhaps I need to let things be messy once in a while.
Maybe I need to stare at those piles of laundry and dirty dishes and just be thankful I have clothes to wear, food to eat.
...girl...you are wise beyond your years....