I'm an addict

Hey. So I'm writing you all of the sudden, because I stumbled across the blog I wrote about you so many years ago. I wanted to send you the best part of it, but also tell you that these things are still true about you. The reason I know this is because the things that were good in me at some point and no longer seem to be, are still good in me somewhere, even though I can't find them.

I just blew up at this guy I just met tonight. He pissed me off and I didn't stuff my feelings, I sort of let him have it. I just went to this seminar this weekend called, "The Genesis Process". It was started as a support system for drug and alcohol addicts, but has since filtered into where it is needed the most, churches. I have been avoiding any form of church lately. I am unhappy and unsatisfied. Sound familiar? I am moving back to Kansas City. I can hardly believe it, but I am dying out here and I can barely breath. I realized that I must have done some growing and feeling in the last 10 years of my life because, whereas before when I lived in the Northwest, so much of the stuff in Portland that makes it Portland wouldn't have bothered me. But now, I feel as if I have experienced more pain and hurt from people in this city then I ever have before. I just realized that I am a different person, not the same edges. but let me tell you some of those edges have come back, because I needed protection. These people are ruthless and mean. I have been ruthless and mean. I blew up at this guy tonight because he was condescending and wanted to pigeon hole my friends into a label, like "emergent church, charismatic" It made me soooooo freaking angry because I didn't feel heard, or cared for (Ironically he is going to be a pastor), I felt like he was just looking for an angle to dismiss what my friends are doing. I got angry because all of the sudden I felt what it was like to be on the other side of my pigeon holing and judgement passing. I literally wanted to scream at him.

I don't know why I am writing you, except that you are sort of this nebulous idea that sort of exists. I know that inside your heart is the same I know it to be. I also can imagine that you might not feel like that. Like you may feel like you are completely lost at sea and have no way of finding land again. I am feeling that way myself. Not to assume or anything, but after living out here for the last year and a half I can imagine that it has been really hard for you to find a safe place to grow and flourish and to be loved.

The reason I brought up this Genesis thing that I went to tonight was because in light of going to this inner healing type of a thing I completely lost it with a poor unsuspecting soul that just happened to be the wrong person for me to pass. At the seminar they talked all about neurochemicals and the limbic system and how they effect us at the base human level and cause us to break down and respond by using coping mechanisms, of course I loved that. I also had a memory of when I was a little girl my first best friend stole the jacket from my favorite stuffed dog (we had the same ones together). She lost her dogs jacket and so she took mine. I confronted her about it, but she lied and said it was hers and I must have lost mine. Well, I tried to get my parents to listen to me, but she was the associate pastor's daughter who did nothing wrong, so it turned out that I was the one that got into trouble. I made a vow after that that I would never trust a friend again, to never share what was mine again. Later it became that I would get really close to them, gain their trust, learn their secrets so that they couldn't leave me, so that I could control.

I don't know if it is appropriate for me to apologize again, when I feel like I have done it a lot with you, but after seeing this in myself, you are sort of a safe place to start. Because you are far away and you can't hurt me.

I've pushed almost everyone I love away, systematically. I don't know if I ever told you this, but Amber and I were talking about you one night. This was a long time ago, I was living in the Bristol house. I was relaying something about what was going on with us and she asked me a question that I will never forget. She said, "Anna, what would you have to say to him if you weren't giving him advise all the time and tell him what he should do? What if you stopped giving advised and just talked about yourself?" I actually remember the change I tried to make after her saying that. I don't feel like I ever really trusted you with me. Not that it matters anymore. I am just saying.

So without further ado, here's hope, hopefully, for me and you.
He sauntered into my life a really confused boy who thought that if he could just look good and look like he was always having fun that no one would see the “cavernous depravity” that wracked his soul, mind, heart, spirit. I am astounded at what God can do to a human in such a short amount of time. He opened up his heart in ways he never knew he could and found life there. He opened his life to people on levels he didn’t even know existed and he turned and turned and turned until he discovered that he had been twisted into a horrible disfiguring knot of humanity and then he broke. He broke at the sight of his own bloody mess and found love waiting for him there. Love that began to untie and untwist and undo the years of injustice wrought on him by life and poor broken people who never knew any better. He all of the sudden began seeing with new eyes, it was like he woke up to these amazing depths that had always been there, but just could never have been recognized before. One day my friend got a real glimpse into eternity and he has never been the same again. I don’t know if it was the drizzly night we stood outside of a kinko’s on the Plaza and I talked to him about the God of Revelations, the one enthroned in light, and with fire in his eyes…etc. but at some point he got it. At some point he began seeing that he had an eternal purpose on the earth and that he had a voice that Jesus gave only to him, and that he had a role to fill so that people who were broken like himself could find healing too. He found confidence, and OHHH what a difference that made in him. He began giving out of himself and speaking life into the hearts of people all around him. He brought life and hope to strangers to whom he served coffee. And best of all, he didn’t know it. He had no idea how his life was affecting the people around him. He was never aware of how his negative actions affected people as well. But Jesus is sharing that with him now. He is showing him how to walk a life worthy of his calling, fully pleasing his Father in the process.

Jane Austen Strikes Fear

I watched a OPB special this evening. It is a Masterpiece series on Jane Austen and her works. Tonight happened to be, "Miss Austen Regrets". And OH how depressing. She dies, and there remains in her, till the end, the conflict of freedom vs. attachment, marriage.

My roommates commented on how much I reminded them of her, not necessarily of her brilliance in writing, but of her propensity to flirt shamelessly with ridicules crushes and to use humor as a defense. I have this grip of fear in my gut when I hear things like that. Anything that attaches me to anything I don't want to be makes me incredibly nervous. Somehow I think that the mere suggestion might make it so. It's like when you were making faces as a child and someone said that your face would become stuck there if you sneeze (or whatever it was that they said to get you to stop). I feel like people have power over my future sometimes when they compare. Silly I know, but true nonetheless.

I have yet to learn that I am the one with the power in my own life. You wouldn't think it so hard for a woman of almost thirty to figure that out. And yet I still wonder who will say that magic word that will turn me from an ugly duckling to a swan. That moment when someone will hear me singing and call for me to let down my hair.

I was thinking about living in the present moment today. Something I am not good at, at all. I was thinking of what it would be like to finally have the opportunity to live where I want to be right now. I wondered if I would ever be satisfied with the present. I think one must become comfortable within their own present state before they ever become comfortable with being in a moment with anyone else.

The wisest, most profound and powerful people I have met are people who live their lives in such moments. The mundane moments, the exciting moments, the sorrowful ones, as well as the joyful. Here they live. Experiencing the fullness of life, while I just wish and pine for something better. These are the people that scare me. The ones that can look the moment dead in the eye and embrace it. Cherish it. Put it in their pocket and carry it, fingering it from time to time. Moving from one to another with grace and ease, with poise and confidence.

Jane Austen strikes fear in me, because I fear that I am like her. I think she created people and moments in her head that never had the chance to walk off the page.