Diamonds

I just don't know.

Life is hard.

I'm just tired.

My heart is so tired.

I'll admit it, sometimes I really do get weary in doing good, in being good, in thinking good.  It's hard work.  My Facebook status on Saturday was, "Life is a series of crushed hopes and dreams."  People love it when I'm upbeat like that!  You know, I'm just trying to make the world a brighter place.  In all seriousness though, it's how I feel.  Crushed.

I've learned some new things about myself in recent days, and it's made my world a little topsy-turvy.  And although, I know ultimately it will be part of my healing story, right now it feels like a wounding.

I walked into church Sunday morning feeling broken and angry.  I didn't want to be there.  And within five minutes of the worship time, I was in the middle of a smack down.  God was in my face reminding me of his faithfulness, and my supposed surrender.  Sometimes I wonder how many people singing those worship songs actually realize what they're singing.  "Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord to thee...Here I am, all of me, take my life, it's all for thee."  Really?  Do any of us truly mean it?  It is a lot easier to sing those words than it is to actually live them.

And then of course, the message was about suffering, because God never let's me get away with anything.  I say those words to make you smile a bit, but they're very true.  And although, I know that his strict discipline with me is evidence of his love for me, sometimes I really just want to get away with some stuff.  I am human, and sinful, and I want my own way.  The message was so on target that afterward I said to Matt, "God was a little harsh with me this morning, don't you think?"  And he answered, "Uh, yeah!"

And again, here I am, just proving that all my righteousness is as filthy rags.  No matter how much growing and changing I do, I am only seconds away from turning on God.  "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.  Prone to leave the God I love."  That's me.  Prone to sin, prone to wander.  I don't have anything of value to offer to God.  Just my empty, brokenhearted nothingness.  The amazing thing is, that's all he wants.  Just a willing, empty, broken heart.

We are all just these fragile human bodies made mostly of carbon and water.  Think about it!  We're just these little lumps of carbon nothingness, with so little to offer, except hearts that are prone to wander, and God still wants us.  He wants our broken lives, and our broken hearts, and our broken bodies, and our broken dreams.  This life we live is full of fire, and pressure and crushings.  None of us get to escape the crushing.  You may think you have bypassed it, but if you haven't experienced it yet, it's coming.  I'm sorry to tell you that, but it's the truth.

If you've been following the blog for a while, you know I really love sparkly things.  Especially diamonds. But, did you know that scientists have discovered how to grow diamonds in a lab?  Real diamonds, but flawless.  They have machines, about the same size as a washing machine, and they take a piece of graphite, which is made almost entirely of carbon atoms, and heat it and place about 7,000 metric tons of pressure on it, and in about 3 days, it will be a diamond.  They're commonly known as HTHP diamonds.  It stands for high temperature high pressure diamonds.

I'm sure you can already see the correlation I am making, can't you?  Black graphite, high heat, tons of pressure...diamond.  Yes, God is taking our carbon bodies of nothingness and making clear, shiny, light reflective diamonds.  What feels like crushing, what feels like is absolutely going to kill us, is making us beautiful.  In my human limitations, I would still rather be given diamonds, than to be turned into one.  But God doesn't ask anything of us, that he hasn't already endured himself.

Isaiah 53: 5-6  But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.  He was beaten so we could be whole.  He was whipped so we could be healed.  All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.  We have left God’s paths to follow our own.  Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.

The Liquid Stage

Sensitive.  That's the way I came into the world.  And then I was tossed into the middle of a dysfunctional family.  I'm not throwing my family under the bus to admit that we're dysfunctional.  All families are dysfunctional.  If you can't admit it, you may be more dysfunctional than the rest of us.  It wasn't easy to be me.  Just like it probably wasn't easy to be you.  I was just this little bundle of feelings.  I had a lot of feelings of my own and then I picked up other people's feelings and wore them around like a backpack.  I felt responsible for the whole world.  I just wanted to make everybody happy and wanted them to feel loved.  It felt like it was my role to play.  As a result, this planet has been a difficult place for me to live.  Somewhere along the line, I decided that these feelings were just too much for me.  I lost myself.  I stopped being me.  I stopped feeling.  I became absorbed by everyone around me.  Kathryn disappeared and she became a daughter, a sister and a friend, but no longer Kathryn.

In order to stay this person who didn't feel, I started numbing.  I did it in a hundred different ways.  Starving myself, eating too much, eating junk, going blank, hating myself, destructive self talk, perfectionism, obsessing over my appearance, to name a few.  I got so good at the numbing that I didn't even know I was doing it.  I bought into my own game.  I believed my own lies.

When my first child was born, the exterior started to chip and crack and the real Kathryn started to seep out.  She was ugly.  Nobody liked her.  She yelled a lot and was mostly made up of rage from being in the dark for so long.

Since then, my life has been about letting that sensitive, feeling girl out of her cage.  It has been a blossoming of authentic Kathryn.  It has sometimes been slow with trepid steps, and other times gushing like water.  It goes something like this.

"What is this thing in my chest, in my heart?"  And God speaks quietly to my heart and says, "It's a feeling."  And I say, "Oh yeah right, feelings!  What feeling is this?"  And he says, "It's hurt'', or fear, or some other feeling.  And I say, "Okay, why am I feeling this?"  That one takes a lot more time, but I'm getting better at it.  And God reveals it in time and I deal with the fact that I have feelings, and the feelings are not bad.  And then I usually express my feelings to my husband and my friends, and sometimes on Facebook, and on this blog.  And God helps me to come to forgiveness, or resolution, or whatever the feeling requires.  And what has happened in the process is I have found Kathryn, and for the most part, I've started to like her again.  She's not so mean after you let her out of the dark.

But here's another thing that I've discovered in the process, I am not the only one uncomfortable with feelings.  Very few people like them.  And when you express them publicly, some people applaud you, but a lot of people scold you.  They don't like it.  I guess they think that you are saying that God is not good, or something like that.  I don't know, but they try to tell you what to do to get rid of your feelings and what to feel instead.  It's weird.  I don't get it.  I feel like proclaiming to the world, I'm in process, people.  I'm not planning on staying here!

On Sunday in church, I was reminded by our pastor about the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.  When a caterpillar is in his cocoon, he completely dissolves into liquid before becoming a butterfly.  It was like God tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, "Maybe you're in the liquid stage."

I don't think feelings are something to fear, they're just another step in the process of healing.  You and me, the ones who can't seem to pull it together, maybe we're liquid.  Maybe our tears and feelings are evidence of transformation.  Is that why I'm often a puddle of tears?  It's just my liquid emotions seeping out of the cracks.  Liquid can't hold itself together, it needs a container.

I read a couple of weeks ago in the book, "Why Give." by John Devries, "God is not hindered by our weakness but rather he uses our weaknesses as the 'holes' through which his streams of eternal life flow.  Every human weakness is a new opportunity for the Spirit to pour out more of his goodness, because we, in our weakness, must rely on him; and it is our reliance on him that opens the door to let the Spirit flow through us.  The more independent we are and the more we rely on our own strength, the more we shut the door to the streams of eternal life flowing through us.  When Jesus said that in order to get into the kingdom of God we had to become as little children he was teaching that being saved comes only to those who have a childlike dependency on the Father.  It is this dependency that opens the continuously increasing flow."

So, if you're like me, a weepy one, or an angry one, or a hurt one, or a scared one who can't seem to hold it all together, maybe we're just a bunch of melted caterpillars about to be butterflies.