My Job I Love, Doing What I Hate

I love my job. I mean I LOVE IT. I used to watch the show “The Office” and feel sad because I wished I had a job where everyone was friends and joked around.

My office is BETTER than “The Office.” My office feels the way a “Friends” episode feels. It feels comfy and cozy. I have never before seen such an amazing example of what Christian community should feel like. I think I’ve found in my office what most people spend a lifetime searching for in churches. We share life together. We know when someone is sick, we know when someone is sad, we know everyone’s kids and even their kids’ likes and dislikes and personalities. I feel like I intimately know everyone’s pets. We eat together, we talk together, we pray for each other. They are my family right now.

Not only that, I love what I do. I love that it’s a little bit complicated and complex so I can think about it. I love that I still feel challenged. I love that there are things I don’t know and everyday I can manage to pry a little more information out of my coworkers to learn an extra tidbit. I love to learn and love that my job is one where learning is a constant.

I love the tasks that I do – contacting people, organizing, putting things together like a gigantic puzzle and then when it all comes into place and everything fits just right...ahh it’s beautiful! I love the feeling of accomplishment. I love that sometimes it is just a little bit bigger than what I think I can handle and at least once a week I feel a little bit pushed to do something I don’t quite think I can do, but I begin and then BOOM I do it! And that feeling of accomplishment is a confidence boost like nothing I can explain.

I love that I now have enough information that I can figure some things out for myself. Sometimes I don’t know the the answer to a problem but I have enough tools now to know where and how to track down the solution. I love that. I feel like an investigator on the prowl. I love the incredibly goofy grin on my face when I have a problem, tell no one, solve it all by myself and then present the finished product (complete and problem free!) to my coworkers. TA- DUH!

I love that this job pushes me to have a positive attitude. I’m a person who loathes failure and demands perfection from myself. And this job has A LOT of little details so failure is inevitable. I love that. I love that it forces me to tell myself “You win some, you poop some.” Because if I allowed myself to scream at myself for every failure, I would be screaming at myself all day every day. This job forces me to see failure as a learning opportunity. It forces me to be a little bit easier on myself.

Have I convinced you yet? I HAVE THE BEST JOB EVER. I LOVE MY JOB!

You know what I don’t love? Things that take a long time. I do NOT love anything that is a process. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE end results. I love pearls and grown up troubled kids and complete 25,000 piece puzzles. But I do NOT LOVE waiting for the oyster to hurry up and make the damn pearl and dealing with bratty, ungrateful teenagers and sorting through the thousands of puzzle pieces. I DO NOT love “journeys.” I love coming to the end of a journey. I love arriving. (I would make a horrible gardener.)

I do not like glue that takes a long 
time to dry or sitting through a commercial before I get to watch a YouTuve video. I love to get where I’m going. I am efficient. I take highways. I enjoy getting results in the fastest and quickest way possible.

It’s not that I’m simply impatient. That is too simple. It’s that from the very center of my being I operate from the core belief that my time is short. And because of that, I’m always in a hurry. I have never really taken my time with anything. I have always believed, my whole life since as young as I can remember knowing what death was, that death is near to me. I have always believed I would die young. I was born with a sense of impending doom. I was born knowing life is short and therefore time is precious, time is limited, time is valuable. No one ever had to tell me to Carpe Diem or to suck the marrow out of life.

I don’t want the glue to dry fast because I’m impatient. No, I want to glue to dry fast because I believe I’m dying soon and I have a lot of other things I want to accomplish so I don’t want to waste ten minutes waiting for that! This sounds extraordinarily dramatic but it is 100% true. It’s not that I am impatient, I am just always panicking. I’m always aware that the clock is ticking. I don’t like processes not because I don’t see the value in them, but rather because I have so many things I want to do in my life and I fear I won’t get them all done if I spend too much time on this one thing.

I’m always multi-tasking. I’m always trying to do something while waiting for something else to finish so that I don’t waste time just waiting. I almost go into cardiac arrest when I read those dumb statistics about how many years of your life you spend on the toilet or at red lights.

I remember when I was eight years old and my mom was talking to me about puberty and all the changes my body would go through. She told me I would develop breasts and I was SO EXCITED! I kept thinking I would wake up one day with nice big boobs. I kept checking every morning and I was be so disappointed when they weren’t there. Finally I asked my mom when my boobs would appear and she explained I wouldn’t be “fully developed” until age 16 or 17. I remember crying so hard! I was so upset! Life seemed SO UNFAIR! Age 16 and 17 was FOREVER away and would basically NEVER arrive. There was no possible way I could wait that long to have boobs.

I remember a similar situation when I found out I would lose my baby teeth and grow adult teeth. I wanted to pull every last baby tooth out of my mouth that very night so that while I slept all my adult teeth would grow in and I could have them all by morning.

So, have I painted an accurate picture of how absolutely insane I am? Well, here's the best part! God being God and all, decided He would bless me beyond belief and be more good to me than I could ever possibly imagine. He gave me a job I love, with people I love, in an environment I love, with management I love, with a desk I love, in a location I love

...doing what I hate most.

I have to wait. I have to take time. I have to gather details, small details, one at a time and sort them and piece them together. I have to send out emails and wait. I have to order things and wait for them to arrive.

And I love it - I love what I do. I even love the irony in it all.

Okay so are we all clear here?

Processing (a/k/a my job, putting things together, getting things ready) = Love

Processes (a/k/a things that take a freaking LONG time, journeys) = Don’t Love

God is hysterical

Because I Knew You...

I wanted to say something but I felt frozen solid, like someone suddenly placed my entire body in an ice cube. Three times I opened my mouth but nothing would come out. What do you say in a situation like this? “Hey! I miss you more than the earth misses the sun in the dead of winter!” Don’t think that would be received well. And that’s just it; I don’t think anything I said would be received well so I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. I was frozen.

I stood among a group of friends in a crowded place, watching an event, when out of nowhere my pastor’s wife and her three munchkins unknowingly moved literally two feet beside me. I could have reached my hand out and touched them on the shoulder. They were so close to me. Seeing their faces again tugged at my heartstrings in so many ways. 

I wanted to hug each little one and tell them how tall they were and how grown up they looked and how much I missed them. I wanted to ask them about school and about their new life adventures and about their new favorite Disney shows. I wanted to thank their mother for everything she’s taught me. For the ways she taught me to pray. For the times she made me feel so special. For the days she went out of her way for me. For each and every special moment we shared. For the times she listened to me. For the times she gave what she had to me. For the times she made me feel like family.

How could something happen to get it all so twisted? How could this person, who gave so much to me, and whom I gave to in return, how could life happen to create a moment where we are standing two feet from each other and cannot speak?! When I think of all the moments, of all the times, of all the gifts, it just breaks my heart into pieces. How does this happen?

\

There are day when I feel anger. Days when I want him to apologize not only for what he said, but also for lying to others saying he did not say those words to me. There are so many questions I still have unanswered, so many times when I want to take justice into my own hands, but I am constantly reminded that I serve a God who is much wiser and much more Just than I ever could be. I serve a God who is righteous and He continually assures me that He can handle it and I don't need to worry. 

There are days when I feel angry. But most days, I just feel sad. I miss them. I feel sad because I miss them and I feel even more sad because I don't think they've ever missed me. I don't think there's an empty spot in their church where I used to be. They don’t think like that. They are different people than me because they just shrug their shoulders and say, “we aren’t for everyone” and move on to the next person. I wish I could shrug my shoulders and say "I'm not for everyone," and just move on and forget about them but I don't really operate that way.

I know they wouldn’t be able to comprehend the way I think about them. How chip clips from IKEA get me choked up and how famous Disney songs make my heart ache. How a perfect evening in my mind would be spending two hours helping her eldest with homework. They have no idea how when I go to the aquarium or speak Spanish or hear our cities nickname, how it stings my heart and all I can think about is how much I long for closure, for kind words to be spoken between us all, for reconciliation.

I don’t want reconciliation like us to be friends again. I don’t want to hang out with them. I don’t want to have dinner together. I don’t want to go to that church ever again. I don’t want us to text again or share stories or even have an actual conversation again. I do not desire any of those things. All I want is in some way, some how, for them to know I don’t hate them, just the opposite, and I want to know in return that they don’t hate me and that they didn’t lie to their kids about what happened and that sometimes maybe even just for a millisecond they sorta kind a teeny, tiny bit miss me.

I feel so unheard. I feel so cut off.  I have started a letter to them so many times but what can I say? I feel as though nothing I say, even if I said it out of complete love and forgiveness would be “taken” right. I feel like anything I want to say would only bring up more anger, hurt feelings and defensiveness. On both sides.

I just want to say “Hey.” Not even “How are you?” or anything complicated or phony. I don't need a conversation or to “catch up," I just want to clear the air I guess. I wish I could just look at them all and say...

Because I knew you, I am different. Because I knew you, I have been changed...because I knew you...

**cue song lyrics**

"It well may be

That we will never meet again

In this lifetime

So let me say before we part

So much of me

Is made of what I learned from you

You'll be with me

Like a handprint on my heart

And now whatever way our stories end

I know you have re-written mine

By being my friend..."

Grace Upon Grace...Grace Multiplied

It’s so difficult to put in to words the experiences I’ve had lately. I don’t think I’ve ever truly experienced something that is so indescribable.

For the past eight years, I have felt more failure than I think anyone can imagine. Eight years ago, I had an experience that changed my life forever, a day that I was publicly humiliated in front of my entire high school for a wrong feeling I had and for wrong words I said. I have held on to that guilt and that hurt and made it a large part of my identity. I have seen that event as a dot in time, a point of reference, to which I can trace back every failure ever accomplished by me back to that specific moment. I have seen it as a day in which I failed so miserably that I couldn't possibly move on from it.

I seemed to think that ever since that day, all I’ve been is a failure. I charted how that day began a cycle of unhealthy relationships and how every insecurity and nightmare I have is linked back to that one event.

Three months ago the head pastor of my church told me I was “an extra grace required person.” He explained to me that is why I am not invited to things at their church because I’m “like crazy Uncle fester at Thanksgiving that no one wants to be around.”

Those words cut me more than anything has in eight years and brought me right back to the public humiliation of high school. I hear the words so clearly “You are worthless. No one likes to be around you. You are too difficult to love.” All those lies I have believed for eight years and this pastor re-enforced every lie. 

Both of these experiences and the ones mentioned in the Worthless post can be summed up in one word: Shame. I have been ashamed of who I was, ashamed of what I did, of what I said, of how I should have done things better, of how I “failed.”

I have felt shame in even telling the stories because I felt that people would agree with my pastor or agree with my high school and acknowledge even more that I am more trouble than I'm worth. That the good in me doesn't outweigh the bad. 

I have felt so much shame that I thought I was beyond love, beyond hope, beyond forgiveness. I believed that my earthly life would have to be one of heartache and the cycle would never end and the shame would never fade until the day I die. I have been unable to accept Christ's freedom and therefore unable to value myself.

But not today.

Today at church, God reveled Himself to me in a way so intimate and so personal that it’s difficult to write about.

Today marks change. Today marks a new beginning. Today marks difference.

I have felt shame. So much shame I didn’t think there was a way to be free from it.

But today, the Holy Spirit filled me.

I looked up what the number “25” means. It means “Grace upon Grace” or “Grace multiplied.” I was born on the 25^th. And today on the 25^th is when God gave such a beautiful intimate gift to me at church this morning. So my life truly IS one of "extra" grace, but not in the way that I need more of it than others, rather in the way that God has so freely and so lovingly given me more Grace than I ever could fathom.

Grace means "Dignified" and Dignified is the opposite of shame. Grace is free, it is unmerited, it is the condition of being favored and being favored is the opposite of being humiliated.

Up until this moment, in the past three months, every time someone has said the word “grace” I have cringed. It made me feel dirty, it made me feel marked. I would hear the enemy’s lies so clearly “grace is a bad thing. You require more of it than other people! You are so bad that normal grace doesn’t even cover you!” How bold it is of someone of Christian faith to turn such a Godly word into an insult, into something dirty.

But tonight, on the 25^th, I accept Grace upon Grace. I accept that I have Grace multiplied on my life. I accept that for nothing I have ever done or said, or not done or not said, God has favor on me. I accept the truth that God has made me whole. And today, I am beginning my journey towards anchoring my worth and value in Christ.

And I thank Him for all the extra grace He has given me.

I Am Worthless Because

I am worthless because when I was 16, I acted in ways that I shouldn’t and felt things that people shouldn’t feel and I got in trouble at school because I was obsessed with this popular girl and they told me I was never to speak to her again and we’ve never spoken since.

I am worthless because even after I got in trouble at school, I continued to act out, did horrible things like stick my tongue out at the principal and get suspended, steal some girls notes and ditch class all the time and I became “bad.”

I am worthless because that was eight years ago and I still let it define me.

I am worthless because I’ve allowed a pattern in my life to begin since I was 16 where I get in relationships and ruin them.

I am worthless because when I was 19 I got in a relationship with a man who had another girlfriend and I continued to try to make it work because he made me forget about what happened when I was 16.

I am worthless because when I was 20 I fell in love with my theatre professor because she made me forget about what happened when I was 16 and when I was 19. But then she moved away and the whole world felt like it would stop spinning.

I am worthless because when I was 22 I became obsessed with the school secretary because she was one of the best friends I had ever had and she made me forget about what happened to the theatre teacher, the man, and the girl when I was 16. But then we got in a fight and nothing has ever been the same since.

I am worthless because when I was 23, I decided to move twelve hours away to get rid of all this baggage and to start over, clean, fresh and new and I just realized you can’t do that because baggage just jumps in the car and moves with you.

I am worthless because no matter how many people tell me I am pretty or good or I am a nice person, all I think is “Oh good I’m fooling them, they don’t know me well enough yet.” And I know that eventually they will realize the truth about me.

I am worthless because I believe I am worthless

When will I ever stop believing I am worthless? When will I ever believe I have value? When will I ever stop getting into friendships that hurt so bad? I came here to start fresh and new and instead got fourteen more wounds to pile on to the heap.