10 April 2013

With Jazz

I considered titling this post "I'm Not Alright," but after the outstanding reaction to my last post, I decided no. While I am thankful, flattered, and very pleased to have so many of you wonderful people in my corner at the end of the day - my last post was not meant to be a gasp at friendship ties. I maybe should have spent more time on wording...

I was raised in a nice big church with a nice big community of nice big Christians. I say "big" not because they were physically oppressive (although spiritually oppressive might be true...), but because their "Christianity" defined them. This meant that everything looked very pretty. Nice clothes, nice cars, nice houses, nicely put together families that were often really suffering beneath that gilded cover of "nice." Being defined by your Christianity is a big difference from being defined by Christ.

And I struggle with it too.

It would be really easy to tell you that I'm all laid back and okay with showcasing who I really am, but the truth is a little more complicated than that. In English, we often ask "How are you?" and we aren't really interested. It's like a greeting in American culture. You do not ask how someone is in: Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, France, Italy, Tunisia, Spain, or even really in England - it's not polite. And unless you know someone well enough to be informed of the intimate details of their life, it isn't really all the polite to ask someone how they are. But we do it anyway.

And we don't care. Not enough. We don't want to know about the affair or the struggle with self worth or the alcohol addiction - at least, not from the source. It's much easier to gossip and speculate than to empathize, sympathize, live the pain alongside the one experiencing it. And the church is the absolute worst at this. We get all dressed up in our "Sunday Best" and smile for posterity if nothing else, but what about the rest of the week?

What about when our marriages are suffering because of lack of time, communication, honesty? What about when we wonder if we were really cut out to be a parent because our baby doesn't sleep through the night, isn't potty trained, throws tantrums that make us want to assume the fetal position? What about when our friendships dissipate due to distance, time, stress? What about when our in-laws drive us crazy? What about when we struggle with depression, inadequacy, heartbreak, grief, mood swings? Do we have to be "okay" all the time?

I sincerely hope not.

Thank you. Thank you for all your love, dear dear friends. But I just need to be honest about where I am at. And last week and the week before? I was a hot mess of tears and self doubt - but that needs to be okay. The second we sweep our dirt under the carpet rather than letting it be seen? That is the moment it starts to accumulate. And sometimes, we don't realize it until it has buried us.

Am I a crazy person? Probably. But I'm fairly certain people would like me less if I wasn't.

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