identity
be yourself, everyone else is taken.
* some of you have already read this post; it was a guest post for lisa colon delay’s blog series on spiritual guidance for bloggers in april. i wanted to post it here in its entirety for my archives. i know a lot of you might not blog, but i think we can easily replace “blogging” with “anything-we-are-trying-to-do-that-is-hard-for-us-to-feel-free-in”. that could be our faith or a vocation or a new passion or a relationship or a whole host of other things. the same principles apply. i am more convinced than ever that learning to be comfortable in our own skin is the work of our lives. have a great weekend!
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“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken” – Oscar Wilde
I first discovered what a “blog” was in 2006, when we planted The Refuge, the wild little faith community I am part of. Honestly, I had never heard the word before; I had been immersed in a hectic ministry role that was very insulated from the wider church conversation and I just wasn’t online. This transition from mega-church to small-church-plant was a messy one for me. I was in a lot of pain from my experience, so I reached out online after stumbling across some blogs while searching for church website ideas. I felt an instant and immediate sense of relief when I discovered I wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t alone in some of my feelings. I found others with similar stories & similar church dreams.
The men and women I read were honest, bold, raw, and pure.
They weren’t selling anything, trying to push their agenda, or attempting to make-people-come-over-to-their-way-of-thinking.
Rather, they just told their stories. Shared their experiences. Responded to other people’s comments with simple kindness and respect. And above all, they remained honest about what they were wrestling with and learning along the way.
Reading their blogs gave me hope.
They inspired me.
They pointed me toward God (even when they were wrestling with God).
They challenged me to think.
January 1, 2008, I started my own blog and dedicated myself to two simple commitments:
1. Write as honestly and purely as I could without editing or trying to worry about what other people might think.
2. Write once a week for one year.
It’s been a wild ride, and I have learned so much through the process over the past 4 years.
Out of everything, I think blogging has helped me learn to become more comfortable in my own skin, with my own voice, with who I am.
I think that is a very holy and sacred experience on our spiritual journey–learning to find safety and security in who we really are.
Not who someone else is.
Not who we think we should be.
But in who we are.
I am someone who has always struggled with the message that I wasn’t enough somehow–not spiritual enough, not quiet enough, not domestic enough, not skinny enough, not organized enough, not-whatever-enough.
Blogging definitely intersected with this message, initially making it even worse.
In the first few years of my blog, I had so much internal anxiety about not being good enough, funny enough, theological enough, wise enough, or concise enough. Whatever “enough” it was, I wasn’t.
But something began to shift in the past several years as I continued to find my voice and become more comfortable in my own skin out here.
I began to realize that the world doesn’t need another _________ or __________ or __________ (Insert name of any bloggers you are jealous of, and my guess is they are wrestling with similar feelings and go a little psycho about the same insecurities).
What’s missing is me.
Not because without me the world would stop spinning or the blogosphere would come to a screeching halt.
But because everyone else is taken.
I think God wants us to learn how to become comfortable in our own skin, to be who-we-are, and not try to become someone else.
Blogging is a great place to practice this.
Making peace with who-we-are requires the ongoing-work-of-the-Holy-Spirit. I doubt and question it all of the time. I obsess before I hit “publish” and freak out about not being more like ______ or _______ (insert name of other blogger also obsessing about the same thing).
I need God’s help to remind me: “Um, Kathy, just so you know, in the big scheme of things, it’s just a blog post. And one other thing: it’s a great place to practice just being you–with all your strengths & all your weaknesses. Just you.”
And then I hit “publish” and take a deep breath and am reminded yet again, this is what transformation looks and feels like.
This is how we get more comfortable in our own skin. This is how we learn to offer ourselves grace. This is how we become “us” and not someone else.
Yikes, it’s hard to learn! But blogging is a great spiritual practice that can help integrate this important truth into deep places in our hearts.
Yeah, my spiritual guidance for all us bloggers is this: Be ourselves. Everyone else is taken.
Read Moreyou is smart. you is kind. you is important.
yesterday was oscar night; i was traveling so didn’t get to enjoy the party but always play my part in seeing as many of the movies as i can. so many of you have probably read the help or at least seen the movie. a friend reminded me of one of my favorite lines from it this week, the words of the black nanny telling the little girl she cared for: “you is smart. you is kind. you is important.”
sadly, this little girl also received a powerful message from others in the her life that she wasn’t any of those three things. her mother was caught up in christian activities, putting on a good face, and keeping up with the jones’. passing on love & encouragement & acceptance weren’t her mother’s strong suits, and the nanny did whatever she could to make up for this lack.
when we’re honest, many people don’t feel smart, kind, or important.
many people don’t feel really secure.
many people don’t feel really loved.
sure, most can articulate “yeah, yeah, i know God loves me” but feeling and experiencing God’s love remains elusive.
we’re afraid to believe in ourselves. we’re afraid of our passion. we’re afraid of our gifts. we’re afraid of goodness.
we are much more comfortable and familiar with our badness. our lack. our always-falling-short-ness. our so-not-okay-with-who-we-are-ness.
my theory is that a lot of our faith experiences haven’t helped us with security; rather, they have sometimes increased our insecurity. the messages passed on to many of us through our families, relationships, and some of our church experiences are more like:
“you’re somehow not enough.”
“you’re a wretch.”
“you are missing the mark.”
“if only you were more like or had faith like ____ or ______.”
“if you could just do A and B and C, then X, Y, or Z will magically be yours”
“you’re not supposed to want anything good for yourself, because that’s selfish”
in these moments, there are some that would say i am soft on sin and dismiss our depravity. they don’t know me very well. i am well aware of our human tendencies toward doing-all-kinds-of-stupid-things-that-mess-with-our-freedom. i am well aware how much i need God, even though i don’t really want to. i am well aware that i am a flawed human being in desperate need of Grace.
but i am not only a broken, jacked-up sinner. i am also a whole, fully-loved-just-as-i-am saint. God’s beloved child.
and i think God’s children are supposed to feel smart, kind, and important. not so that we can be haughty or prideful, but so that we can be free and secure, holy and dearly loved, shining Christ’s light instead of letting it remained buried & hidden.
if we are reflections of God, what are we reflecting?
it’s said that the world will know us by our love. is that what the world sees when they intersect with us? do they see freedom? do they see hope? do they see security? do they see belovedness? do they see gentleness? do they see kindness? do they see passion? do they see something that they are drawn to?
i often don’t think so. in so many ways, i think what the world sees is angry, mean, insecure, and harsh. because that’s how many of us feel toward ourselves.
Jesus calls us to love others as we love ourselves. that’s probably a big piece of the current-state-of-the-church’s problem. how can we love others when we hate ourselves?
this is one of my deepest passions when it comes to cultivating a redemptive dignity-restoring faith community–that we could participate in helping each other shift from feeling insecure to feeling secure. from feeling imprisoned to feeling free. from feeling unloved & unworthy to feeling loved & valued. from feeling stuck to feeling empowered. from feeling dumb to feeling smart. from feeling useless to feeling important.
the other day i was with a friend who shared, “i’m starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, i really am loved….i’m liking myself for the first time in my life.” for me, one story like that will sustain me all year!
only God can do this work. it is a wild & beautiful movement of the Holy Spirit. but i also believe it flows most directly through people. God’s love will remain elusive unless we have tangible examples of it here. now. on earth. in our real lives. in our real experiences.
we need to not just tell each other the truth (that’s easy and a lot of churches are good at that).
we need to start showing each other the truth.
that we are loved. important. valuable. worthy.
that we have stories to live and songs to sing.
to get there, we must ask God to break through all of those crazy messages life & the church has passed on to us, to help us see more clearly our worth, our value, the possibilities that exist before us despite the obstacles. this lent, that’s what i hope we could know more deeply:
you is smart. you is kind. you is important.
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dying yet again.
“The process of conversion begins with genuine openness to change–to be open to the possibility that just as natural life evolves, so our spiritual life is evolving…. Each time you consent to an enhancement of faith, your world changes and all your relationship have to be adjusted to the new perspective and the new light that has been given you. Our relationship to ourselves, to Jesus Christ, to our neighbor, to the Church–to God–all change. It is the end of the world we have previously known and lived in.“ – Thomas Keating
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today is ash wednesday, the beginning of the season of lent. i admit this year, it just came up way too fast & it’s a little hard to believe we’re already here. right now, i am in the middle of a refuge 4th step group that is working on an inventory, a very painful & soul-searching process. the 4th step of the 12 steps is: “made a searching and fearless moral inventory” and step five is: “admitted to God, myself, and someone i trust the exact nature of my wrongs.” and following that, step 6 is: “were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” and step 7 is: “humbly asked God to remove my shortcomings.” i have done 4th steps before, but never has it coincided with this liturgical season in such an intentional and sort of freaky way.
it’s really good & it’s really hard. a big part of the process is dying to the old to step into something new.
i’m reminded of this familiar passage. “for everything there is a season…a time to be born and a time to die. a time to plant and a time to harvest. a time to kill and a time to heal. a time to tear down and a time to build up. a time to cry and a time to laugh. a time to grieve and a time to dance.” ecclesiastes 3:1-4
lent is a season of dying.
dying to the things that are robbing us of life.
dying to the things that continue to do us harm.
dying to the things that separate us from who God really is.
dying to the things that separate us from who we really are.
if you’re like me, i’m not too keen on dying to the unhealthy things that have kept me “living.” i kind of like my little-strategies-for-living because i am used to them. they are comfortable. they are predictable. they are my reflexes, the things i know how to do without even thinking.
i know how to judge others to make myself feel better.
i know how to give, give, give, and receive a little here and there.
i know how to feel insecure, inadequate, and not quite “enough.”
i know how to speak instead of listen.
i know how to keep things in my control.
i don’t have to try very hard to do these things. they don’t take a lot of effort, they tend to be my first response, my reflex. when i look back at the list i can find all kinds of ways to say “but i’m getting better at it, i am changing, it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be” and that may be true.
but lent is not a season to hide or jouk or jive our way through.
rather, it’s a time for honesty. radical honesty.
for light to shine on dark places. for the dead branches to be pruned off. for stripping away the things that hinder. for conversion.
it used to scare me to say things like this out loud. i also used to believe that because i struggled with these things, that’s all of who i was. that unless these struggles were “gone”, i wasn’t where i needed to be and God was always annoyed with me. i am thankful for the healing that has come through embracing paradox. and grace. and even though i’m not crazy about my weaknesses, i am indeed grateful for them. they remind me of my humanity & God’s divinity. for my need for God’s help & hope in the midst of my real life.
but accepting their reality does not mean i want to stay where i am and have life choked off from me in places it could more freely flow.
this lenten season, that’s what i hope for.
God’s revealing on what needs to die. yet again. yet again. and yet again.
so that i can keep learning to live.
what are you hoping for this lenten season?
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some of you have already seen some of these posts, but if you haven’t, here are some good resources & thoughts to ponder:
- 40 ideas for lent – rachel held evans, love that thomas merton prayer at the end
- christine sine always has awesome lent reflections & resources. for today, ash wednesday, here are a few beautiful prayers.
- she also has a lovely 40 day journey through lent called: a journey into wholeness: a lenten guide
- you may not be familiar with the national association for christian recovery, but dale & juanita ryan write some of the best daily devotionals out there. you can subscribe to their daily meditation here. they are from their book rooted in God’s love. beautiful words of hope.
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comfortable in our own skin
one of the things i’ve always tried to do here is write from my heart. to be as honest as i could. to not worry about who would think what. it’s pretty hard to do! there are so many different tribes out here in online-land with different passions & people & ways-of-living-out-their-faith. for the past five years, i have always struggled with not fully connecting with any of them. for some folks, i’m not sufficiently theological or liturgical or serious or christian or universalist or denominational or missional enough..to feel like i’m tracking all the way. i love & value them all and appreciate the various expressions more than i can say. but sometimes it can just feel..weird. off, somehow. like i don’t fully have a place in any of them.
and at any moment something i say here can bug pretty much any of them for one reason or another.
this is a really familiar feeling for me. all through middle & high school & college & pretty much all of my adult life i have always been friends with a bunch of different people that rarely all come together in the same place. i love it because i know such beautiful, diverse, amazing people. but it can also feel unsettling & uncomfortable. i miss some of what you get when you are deeply embedded in a particular tribe. i think one of the things that i appreciated about being on a mega-church staff for those couple of years is that it’s so big that you don’t really need anyone else. it’s its own island and a really clear tribe with no room, or apparent need, really, for much else. now, out here floating around on a lifeboat for the past five years clinging for dear life i have had to learn something that i knew i needed to learn–how to be comfortable in my own skin.
my skin.
not someone else’s.
not what this group is doing or that group is doing. not what this church is doing or that church is doing. not what this ministry is doing or that ministry is doing. not what this person is doing or that person is doing.
i’m learning to become more comfortable with what i believe.
not what this group believes or that group believes. not what this friend believes or that friend believes. not what this blogger believes or that blogger believes.
yikes, it’s hard to do! the systems of the world are built upon people conforming to each other somehow. my friend & awesome refuge teammate karl always says that we mistake uniformity for unity. true unity is diversity, bound together with a common thread. to me, when it comes to issues around “church”, that thread is God. but we’ve built systems that call for uniformity, that we need to be like “them”, whatever the them is, in order to belong.
i do not think that any of the things i believe are really very heretical! they’re just one expression of faith that i feel dearly and passionately about, and stem from how i view the gospels & the Bible & what God has stirred up in me through the years. my point in my last post, yep, i guess i’m a heretic, is that by believing & practicing these, somehow i’m “out” of certain circles because of their interpretation of theological truth. that’s so bizarre to me. and sad.
but alas, my responsibility is not to change that system or anyone’s minds.
my responsibility is to learn to be comfortable in my own skin.
my skin, not someone else’s.
but the skin God made that’s me.
this is maturity. this is healing. this is transformation.
and this doesn’t have to have to be perceived as something that only has to do with faith or church or anything “spiritual”. it has to do with becoming better human beings, stronger, more secure, more free men & women, who discover who we each are in deep places of our hearts & practices.
one of the things i love about the christmas story and this time of year is the reminder of Jesus’ humanness. he had to learn to be in his skin just like us. and obviously, many, many people didn’t really like his skin. he had to have his feet on the ground & his head in the clouds in order to walk out the journey he was on here on earth. he had a huge advantage, being God and all, but i take great solace in knowing that Jesus understands humanness.
in all its mess & all its glory. in all its struggle & all its joy. in all its reality & all its beauty.
the wise & prophetic father richard rohr says that other “a” words for advent are: alert, awake, alive, attentive, aware. i’m not big on alliteration but i love these words! this season i am trying to be awake, aware, attentive to my story, God’s story-in-me.
and i think it’s a story of growing up somehow, of learning to be comfortable in my own skin. learning to be be less codependent & independent and more interdependent. to be more free. to be less afraid. to be more clear, even if its only about a few important things. to be more brave. to be more weak in some areas & stronger in others. to care less about what people think & more about what God might think.
God knows our struggle to be comfortable in our own skin. God is E/Immanuel, with us. here, now. down here in the muck and mire of our real lives, our real struggles with life & faith & relationships & all that it means to be human, created in the image of God, living in this broken weird wild world.
enthusiastically wanting to teach us to be comfortable in our own skin.
i’m trying to listen.
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ps: i stumbled upon this original advent song this weekend by matt staniz. i loved it & thought i’d pass it on to you today as we reflect on our skin, God’s skin.
yep, i guess i’m a heretic
heretic [her-i-tik] 1. a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church. 2. anyone who doesn’t conform to an established attitude, doctrine, or principle. synonyms: apostate, backslider, recreant, dissenter, skeptic, freethinker. (those made me laugh!)
my post up at rachel held evans’ blog last week–insecure christians–got some great comments, both positive ones & negative ones. the negative ones tended to come from the perspective that by me saying there is something good in us (because we are originally created in the image of God) that it somehow devalues the work of Christ in our lives. i’m personally so confused by this fear, that if we have even a little bit of good in us, it somehow untangles the whole rest of the story. to me, it enhances the Story and the work of God in this beautiful, messed up world. it doesn’t dismiss the power of sin and the reality of its presence in each of us from the moment we step into this Genesis 3 world. but it isn’t our starting place.
and i guess sometimes these i-honestly-don’t-think-they’re-all-that-crazy-when-you-read-the-gospels ideas make me a heretic.
i’m called one now and then.
and for the most part i always take it as a compliment.
it’s part of the cost of being a dreamer, lover, and status-quo rocker.
honestly, if believing that there’s some shred of good in every human being because we were created in God’s image makes me a heretic, then yep, I guess i am.
if thinking that even though we are full of brokenness, we are also beautiful no matter what we believe makes me a heretic, then yep, I guess I am.
if holding that women should be fully equal with men and free to lead fully and completely in whatever way God is calling them to lead makes me a heretic, then yep, I guess I am.
if refusing to build entire oppressive & mean systems of belief about homosexuality based on a few passages in the Bible and loving my gay friends freely & fully makes me a heretic, then yep, I guess I am.
if valuing practicing the ways of Jesus over nitpicking about doctrine makes me a heretic, then yep, i guess i am.
if being convinced that it’s possible that men and women can be true brothers & sisters & soul friends without all kinds of sexual weirdness and fear makes me a heretic, then yep, i guess i am.
if passionately believing that a lot of the modern church has been built on power, put-togetherness & serving itself instead of extending the tangible love of Jesus & restoring dignity to hurting people makes me a heretic, then yep, i guess i am.
if loving & valuing the Bible without making it more important than the wild-and-mysterious-Holy-Spirit-at-work-in-people’s-lives makes me a heretic, then yep, i guess i am.
i have a feeling a lot of you are heretics, too!
it can feel scary & lonely to be a heretic. i experienced the weirdest feeling when i was reading some of those comments over at rachel’s blog–a feeling of being an outsider. of being someone who no longer is part of a system that many still ascribe to and i used to fully embrace. it was mildly painful on a weird level but a huge relief on another. i respect the beliefs of some of the commenters and our differences; the world needs all different shapes & sizes of christianity. but it made it even more apparent how “out” of those particular traditional evangelical circles i really am.
i live in a different more grace & hope-filled world than ever before and i love it.
i have tasted “goodness in the land of the living” (psalm 27:13, i love that psalm) and there’s no turning back.
i do not want to raise my kids in the former system i was in & i don’t want them to believe that being a miserable wretch is their primary starting place. they, like most human beings, will probably have the same basic reflex toward shame and somehow feeling like they are falling short despite all their efforts. what i would like for them, for me, and for all-those-i-know-who-struggle-with-believing-they-are-worthy-of-anything-good to know is we are loved fully and completely by God just as we are–in all our mess & all our glory, in all our goodness & all our badness, in all our strength & all our weakness, all our beauty & all our ugliness–no matter what small or big faith we might have.
yep, i guess i’m a heretic.
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insecure christians
this was a guest post i wrote for rachel held evans‘ blog last week (see, i do know how to use capital letters!). i wanted to re-post it here so i had in my archives; plus, some of you may not have seen it or wanted to comment over there because there were loads of them. anyway, i’d love any thoughts you wanted to add to it.
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I had an amazing conversation last week with a non-Christian counseling grad student who had a project in this class to “move toward something in their culture they were uncomfortable with.” He chose Christianity. His experience with it wasn’t a positive one so he was trying to bravely explore it. We had a delightful conversation because he asked the best questions, the kind where trite Christian answers won’t quite do. He wasn’t talking about atonement theories or biblical interpretation of certain passages (for the most part, I think only Christian insiders give a rip about that kind of stuff).
He asked–Why do Christians never seem to feel very good about themselves?
I laughed that he had hit the nail on the head. The basic premise of Christianity is that there is nothing good in us. That original sin has ruined us and we are miserable sinners, unworthy of anything good without the blood of Jesus. That depravity is our essence.
With that as our starting place, my experience has been that despite all of the “God loves me” messages that get tossed around in church services and Bible studies, nothing completely fills in the cracks of that deep chasm. That somehow, no matter what, we just aren’t good. We aren’t worthy. We aren’t secure. We aren’t loveable. We are fatally flawed as human beings.
I know this well in my own life. I come from a liberal, non-churchy family that believed in the basic goodness of people (we were those people who evangelical Christians worried about!). When I opened my heart to following Christ, I needed a real, tangible God and was strangely and beautifully drawn to Jesus. I always say that if I had just stuck with that and never became involved in the kinds of churches I ended up attending, I would have been better off in the security-as-a-person department. But alas, that is not my story, and the rigidity and rules sucked me in, and I learned about what a miserable person I was without the cross of Christ. I ended up feeling worse about myself than when I started, and I brought a lot of shame and guilt to the table from the beginning! Christianity seemed to cement in me my badness. It reminded me constantly how much I fell short and how unworthy I was without God in my life.
About 17 years ago a wise and beautiful friend rocked my world with an important theological twist that some of you might say “duh!” at, but it was never taught to me in my hyper-conservative-evangelical circles. We were made in the image of God. That goodness is in us from the beginning. Sure, sin and brokenness has infiltrated this Genesis 3 world, but we must remember it all started with Genesis 1. Man and woman, created in the original image of God. That is our essence even though brokenness buries it.
I think that the spiritual journey is to uncover God’s image that was originally placed there.
I know from experience in my own life and journeying alongside many others that this is no easy task. It makes it far worse when the starting place is “I am really a miserable wretch.”
The Apostle Paul in Romans 7 talks about the struggle of our humanity to lean into sin. This passage is used all the time to hold up basic depravity, but we forget the twist that is there–”It’s not me, but the sin that lives in me” (vs. 7:12).
As a mother of five, the last thing in the world I want my kids to think is that they basically suck and are unworthy, unlovable. I want them to know they are beautiful, created in the original image of God with his imprint built into every fiber of their being. I want them to know they are worthy, secure, free. With a great human capacity to sin, fall, fail and really mess things up, sure. But I do not want a faith that forces me to build in them a basic insecurity from the start. That feels cruel. And completely counter to what I know about being a loving parent, and I’m only a human one.
My experience in working with people in pain in the church is that there’s an awful lot of insecurity going around in a system that is supposed to be built upon freedom, healing, and wholeness. Far too much fear, depression, inadequacy, unworthiness exists in countless Christ-followers when they have a chance to be really honest. Something is gravely wrong with this!
But the systems we’ve created and the theologies we’ve clung to perpetuate it.
Ultimately it not only damages us personally and relationally, but keeps the real power of the church paralyzed and stuck.
And really insecure.
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