Part Two: Fear and Other Things You Shouldn’t Let Run Your Life

The blog post with this title has been sitting in my drafts folder for three months, untouched and untyped.  I have felt so incredibly unqualified to do everything this summer—I’ve been working as a pretty good bakery employee, but I’ve not been doing half so well at everything else.

(And this is going to be a long post sort of analyzing why.  I kind of meant it to be a follow-up to the first post with this title, but it only loosely ended up that.)

Um, I’m going to Istanbul, Turkey in the last two weeks of August.  I’m going to the School of Ministry in Toronto in September (literally two days after getting back from Turkey.  ohyai).

And—well.  That fear thing?  It’s been getting worse.  Steadily and insidiously worse.  It’s consistently the first thing I feel when I wake up in the morning.  More often then not, it’s been getting me at night, too—I’m impressed I’ve slept even passably well in the past month (“passably” being 5-6 hours a night, even though I’ve been more or less scheduling bedtimes to allow 8-9 hours).  These things I should be really excited about—traveling and doing ministry and immersing myself in God’s presence—have become monolithic lists of Things To Do and Money To Make.  I can barely remember why I wanted to go in the first place—I only that I did, so very, very, very much.

I have all the money I need for my Turkey trip.  I’m turning in my passport paperwork tomorrow.  I still have research to do for the trip, and shopping, and packing.

By the time I take a hiatus from my job in mid-August, I will have saved about $2000 of the $7000 I need for Toronto.  I’m in the process of sending out support letters.  I should be able to turn in my application at the end of July.  I have to pack and plan and shop for this…and I have to raise $5000 in five weeks.  Which looks like lunacy.

I’m terrified.  And I’m trying so hard not to hate myself for allowing fear to keep me paralyzed, in a stranglehold, for the past year.  I’m trying so hard not to look at the entirety of 2013 so far and feel like it’s been a failure—like I’ve been a failure.  I mean, I got my first paying job, and I’m working at it about 38 hours a week, which is almost full-time.  Six months ago, I honestly did not think myself capable of that.  So that’s really huge.  That’s an accomplishment.  That’s an important milestone in my life.  I’m learning from it.

But I’m keeping up with my friends only barely, or not at all.  I’m short-tempered and irritable with my family most of the time.  I’m doing next to no writing at all—creative or journaling.  My relationship with God consists primarily of lots of guilt and frustration and not enough listening (all on my end); cracking open the Word and reading a chapter looms like a huge amount of work; taking twenty minutes to soak and pray feels like it would be just another opening for my overactive mind to be dangerously introspective, another foothold for the fear.  I feel like I have to distract my mind all the time, or else I literally begin to panic.

It’s been constant for weeks.  I can barely even talk about either the Turkey or Canada trip without my insides just clamping up with stress.

I know—I know—that letting God in is actually the solution.  I know that He shows Himself strong in our weakness.  I know that His grace is sufficient. But because I feel like all of this trouble is my fault—that I brought this all on myself by procrastinating—it’s that much harder to really trust that He’s going to come through.  I’ve had so many prophetic words about it this year—some of them from people who had no idea what I’m planning or what I’ve been feeling—and I can barely listen to them.  It’s incredibly painful, because right now looking grace in the face exacerbates all the shame I’m feeling about not being proactive for so long.

I think my problem is that I lack proper perspective.  Fear and shame = about me.  God showing Himself in my situation = not about me.

Why can’t I take hold of that?  Why can’t I just let Him in?

my big news of today is

I got a job.

Yes, I’m using a reaction gif on a blog that’s not Tumblr.  Sorry not sorry.

That’s right.  After three-plus months of feeling useless and having angst and frustration and emotional meltdowns, Kiersten Lawrence is now a real adult with a real job that actually pays money.  MacKenzie’s Bakery hired me after an interview that was approximately 8 minutes long and consisted mostly of the hiring manager telling me stuff about the bakery.  I think the only questions she asked me were “Tell me about yourself” and “how do you know Jo?” (the lovely lady who gave me a reference).  She literally wrote me into the schedule less than five minutes after meeting me.

If that’s not a God-thing, I don’t know what is.  I’m excited.

I’m not as nervous about starting as I thought I’d be–maybe I will come Tuesday, which is my first day.  (But I’m not going to try to psych myself out.)  I’ll be shadowing the manager, and be on shifts with Erika (another fellow New Day-er, whom I don’t know all that well but is extremely sweet (no bakery pun intended)) for a few days.  It’s easily accessible by bus and the employees are nice and it smells good and IT IS AN ACTUAL JOB.

I am going to choose to be EXCITED ABOUT THIS.

New thing I learned:

Sometimes, crying and praying and asking for answers doesn't do anything but get me more and more worked up. Sometimes I can (and/or need to) be like "Enemy, you suck." and just go to bed.

I turned 21 today.

And … I don’t know how to process it.

It was off to a great start this morning…I had some lovely worship/soaking time with God; I had a dance party; I made some tea and French toast.  I hung out with my siblings (all of them) when they got home from school, and that was good, too.  I did some sketching, which I haven’t done in awhile.  My mother brought me home a massive bunch of fabulous helium balloons.  We went to my dad’s apartment (all of us, and it wasn’t awkward at all, which was really good) and had real grilled steak and garlic mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole with marshmallows for dinner.  We watched The Help and my birthday cake was confetti cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, which is a new thing for me on birthdays (having in previous years had cream cheese pie, until it started being less of a birthday thing and more of a regular holiday dessert) and supremely tasty.  I got some chocolate (the expensive foreign-sounding stuff) as a present. A few dozen people left me birthday messages via text and Facebook, many quite personally complimentary and sweet.

And that’s about it.

Maybe I’m just lonely?  I wanted to do something, actually do something for my birthday, not just watch it go by like my birthdays usually do.  This year my birthday coincided with college spring break, though—which would have been neat if I myself were in school, but I’m not.  So my friends all had plans already. I miss them a lot.

I thought I could make it into a special day by doing nice things.  But that just makes it a nice day.

It was a nice day—a really nice day.  But it wasn’t…I don’t know.  I guess I was expecting more.  I don’t know what. Good grief, I didn’t even drink any alcohol—not like I wanted to party or whatever, but it is my 21st birthday.  My next “milestone” birthday isn’t until I turn 40, and that probably won’t be anything to be excited about.

 It was a very nice birthday.  But it wasn’t a special one, I guess.  And I’m sad.  I’m so sorry, but I’m sad on the night of my birthday, and I don’t have anything else to say right now.

Part One: Fear and Other Things You Shouldn’t Let Run Your Life

So this is the beginning of a long-promised (and just plain long) post about me and my life and stuff.  It’ll be an update about what I’ve been dealing (or not dealing) with in 2013 so far, a little bit of good and a fair amount of bad.  I would also say that it’s going to be an update on what I’ve been doing during the weeks of blogosphere silence, except that I haven’t been.  Doing things, I mean.

So as you may know, I graduated KVCC in December with an Associate of Arts in General Studies (it was going to be Liberal Arts, until they stopped offering the last foreign language credit I needed.  Uuuurgh).  That was…really anticlimactic.  I spent two and a half years toiling away at reading and papers and talking and making my brain do things and came away with a degree that, from a career standpoint, is totally useless until I get another degree (a bachelor’s at the very minimum) to go with it.  Yay.

Over New Years’ weekend, I went to the OneThing conference in Kansas City with some of the lovely folks from Dwell.  That was pretty much the most amazing four days I’ve had in a long time.  Unlike many conference experiences, it didn’t feel like it was “building up” to anything spectacular — God was already tossing amazing revelations at me and working in me from the very first worship set.  He felt so intensely present and thick and personal.  (One thing I felt convicted about over that weekend was reducing my relationship to God to what’s happening with me, and forgetting that He’s a person and it’s an interaction, not just about results.  I didn’t even realize it was a problem until He showed up in person, and woooo.  Another thing — let me tell you, in all seriousness, conviction is great.  I know I’m not perfect, so in comparison with struggling under condemnation all the time, Holy-Spirit conviction is inspiring, which is probably the point.)

So I heard lots from God at OneThing.  He taught me about relating to him as intimately and intensely personal, inviting Him into distraction when I struggle with it, spiritual warfare.  He told me my gift of empathy was important.  he told me to work on storing up knowledge in the spiritual sphere, like I already do somewhat in the natural.

The most intense thing that happened actually was during the last day.  I had wanted to buy a t-shirt from the merch table(s), so I wandered over there during the afternoon break. One shirt in particular caught my eye, one with Micah 6:8 printed on it:  “Do justly, love mercy.”  (The whole verse runs:  “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”)

It was like somebody rammed a fist into my chest, grabbed my heart, and squeezed it.  I had a physical, visceral reaction to seeing that verse.  So I bought the shirt.  I wore it to the evening session.  And in the middle of the worship set I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and then — clear as a bell — clearer than anything else I’d heard all weekend, probably one of the clearest things I’ve heard from God ever — He said, “Do justly and love mercy:  if you do anything with your life, do that.”

And I was like, “Yes, yes!  I am 100% behind that.  I want to do that, and not even because you said it just now.  That verse articulates what I’ve been noticing is a pretty important part of my philosophy of life and faith and success.  That’s perfect.  That’s it.”

And then I got home and was like, “Um.  That’s really hard to quantify.  It’s not like God told me, ‘Go to Romania and spread justice and mercy for homeless people’ or something.  So…now what?”

And that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for two months – going, “now what?”  I had a weekend that should have put a ton of impetus behind me, and instead I completely stalled as soon as I set foot back in Kalamazoo.  That stall has lasted for two completely ridiculous months.  I kind of spent the last week or two deconstructing why, and I’ll go into that in another post.  SOON I PROMISE SOON.

Thanks for reading, guys — <3

It’s been awhile since I made any of this…

they walked for a long time in silence
under the wind
and the westward winding of the sky
and the fall
of the dying colors
the wings of words left unheard
and the sun
goes down
scattering fragments of gold
at our feet
and soaking your face
in the color of everything that
you dream about
and i think
how much
i want to go on forever
but i am always looking forward
and every time i take a step
in the quiet
and the shifting play of light
i look behind
and barely recognize
the two who are walking
in our own footsteps.

original poetry by Kiersten M. Lawrence
26 February 2013

Apologetic

Good grief.

I'm sorry for being so long absent. I'm sorry for promising everyone I'd post in early January and then not following through (I have reasons for that, though they're mostly not very good ones). I'm sorry for other ways I've been unreliable and absent and lazy the last several weeks. I'm kind of dealing with (or cowering under) some spiritual and emotional rubbish right now—that's not an excuse, just an explanation. I've wanted to write about it here but, well, you can see how that's panned out so far.

I love you all (especially if you're still actually actively subscribed to this).
I'll try hard to update soon (meaning sometime in the next week). (Maybe committing to do so in writing will be that extra incentive I need.)

An Announcement:

To the Enemy:

You know what? Jesus wins. My God is bigger and better than you. So just shut up and let me celebrate at least one holiday this year in peace. You suck. HAHA. HAHAHAHA.