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To the one standing, blinking, in the rubble,

Welcome.

Welcome to the other side, to the bottom of the slippery slope, to the edge of the exhilarating wilderness. You are the one they warned you about.

Should I introduce myself? I’m not an expert in much of anything; only I’ve been out here for a while now. I watched the high tower of my own religion crumble around me and arrived here, exhausted and broken and without a map.

I know everything you’re feeling—and, of course, I know absolutely nothing you’re feeling. I don’t know if you’ve slowly dismantled everything you once held dear, or if you’ve been blindsided by the spectacular, irresistible implosion of it. I do know “deconstruction” is too tidy a term for your story; I know labels and categories are too convenient to contain the betrayals and losses you grieve.

Even when you have stumbled upon the welcoming committee, this can be a lonesome place. That doesn’t have to be all bad. If I tell you you will feel belonging again—can you accept the lonesomeness? If I tell you the worst has already happened, there’s not so much to fear out here—can you believe this barren-looking place could be fruitful?

This lonely expanse where you feel so lost is inviting you to the very place you need to be. You will look back on this outcast moment as the place you learned to belong to God—and therefore, to yourself.

Maybe it seems abrupt to greet you with congratulations on your loss, but, well, the wilderness is an honest place.

I could try to tell you so much more. I will tell you I’ve already lied a little: the worst has already happened, but it will probably happen again. This is why you must find a way to love this wilderness you were taught to fear: if you can learn to quit resisting and reach for the gifts of these stark, hard places, the next time things fall apart they might not fall quite so apart. It will hurt, deeply, but maybe you won’t be left gasping, clawing, unanchored, frightened. Maybe you’ll find grace—a deeper, vaster, more spacious wilderness grace—waiting to accompany you through.

Here and now, as you arrive on the ground—your high-tower-home in pieces around you—your instinct may be either to run away or to declare that you will rebuild! I’m not here to pretend this place feels comfy, but I am here to offer the third option: stay.

We don’t always talk about what it means to stay. There are aspects of this wilderness we know how to name, like “deconstruction” and “reconstruction.” Then there are the things happening underground, in the dark, in the mystery, that we don’t know how to say. In between “deconstruction” and “reconstruction” is your journey-without-a-name, your transformation, and that is why you are here.

You are not going to live with this sense of homelessness and exposure forever. But you’re not going to escape it by rebuilding from the rubble around you. No matter how discerning you are, or how nicely you decorate the pieces you choose, they’re not going to fit. And they’re not going to stand.

Friend, pick up a busted block from your tower. Find the one called belonging or grace, scripture or body or freedom or joy. Every single one will look like something new before you’re done here. There is something true at the core of each of those cinderblocks—but the piece you need for now will fit in your pocket. It’s a seed. Someone cemented it in, trying to save it for you; your job from here is to set it free.

The tower didn’t fall apart because it needed to be rearranged. It came down because you have work to do outside those careful constructs. You have a truer you and a wider, wilder God and a deeper kind of community to meet.

Say goodbye to the rubble, crack the blocks open, find the seeds—even the ones you’re not sure you want. Then wrap them in a rag, stow it away, and forget it. Your only job right now is to heal. In a wilderness, especially, that takes time; and intuition, interdependence, maybe some luck. Here are some wayfinders to your healers:
acceptance.
desire.
questions that seize you.
unexpected openings.
humility.
the lure of failure.
finding yourself at rest.
scars you keep explaining.
all the vast beauty that tower tried to protect you from.

Someday—eventually—you’ll remember one of your seeds might help you heal, too. You’ll take it out, small and unimpressive, hardly there without its huge, protective, blocky, sensible cinder shell. Brown and hard, it doesn’t look like a wild thing; but you (another you, months-or-years-from-now you) will know it to be one. (Kin, recognized.)

So you will drop it, perhaps without much expectation, into the soil of wherever you are. In its own time, slow and sure, forgiveness or faith or truth or breath or creation or a story you never much liked will blossom and stretch into the sky, a living altar to God’s work in that moment in your life.

And just as those seeds find their place in the earth, one day you will glance over your shoulder and recognize you have not reconstructed a tower at all, but grown an orchard, humble and vast; and you will discover you are at home.

Today my home sits on a map at the edge of hurricane-force winds. We use so many distinctions to measure and define these storms; it sounds much more serious to withstand hurricane winds than tropical storm ones—but in reality it’s the difference between 73 and 75 miles per hour. In reality, we label and categorize the storm to distract ourselves from everything we can’t control. The tree on the house, the person swept under the floodwaters—after a certain point, these have nothing to do with our categories, everything to do with split-second timing and the will of the storm.

After four years in a row, we are learning hurricane rhythms like we can rehearse our own disaster lineage: floods, Matthew, Irma, Florence, Dorian. Prep, leave, wait, watch.

Do you pray? I halfheartedly fling bewilderment at a blue sky a few hundred miles from the dark one that threatens my home, my neighbors.

And today, even though hurricane winds stalk my neighborhood, I also breathe something like relief.

Over the last two weeks depression has slammed into me out of a clear blue sky; I’ve never been so grateful for an excuse to flee. Calls and texts trickle in from friends and family wondering if we are OK. Some of them get chipper replies, but to a few I say, things could be better. I want to say, I’m scared. Stay on the line. I don’t know what to do. I’m angry and everything is out of place. But that’s not about the storm.

We’ve taken our eerily predictable September trip to wander distractedly around my parents’ house. There is a corner of my room where I sat in a beanbag chair for twelve weeks when I was sixteen, listening to music and raking in zeroes on all my homework. See, I’ve never been diagnosed with depression, but mental illness isn’t a stranger to me. At sixteen I was good at pretending—I wanted people to think I didn’t carry an unbearable breathtaking heaviness under my ribs. But I couldn’t hide the dullness, how whatever gripped my heart also fell over my eyes.

I hoped the tears I cried for no particular reason might cleanse that thick veil between me and the world, but they only ushered me into oblivion every night. Each next day I woke up exhausted. I’d be exhausted by the effort of not crying through the day. Then exhausted by the wracking sobs at night.

I don’t have a beanbag chair anymore, but I listened to music and cried for hours over a jigsaw puzzle one day last week when I’d planned to work. But these are only tropical-storm-force winds. I haven’t sobbed myself to sleep.

During hurricane season, everyone in the country suddenly has an opinion about your decision to live on the coast, to evacuate or stay, your preparation methods and contingency plans. But you also drop everything to check on your neighbors and you joke about your shared dread with the rest of the town. And those calls and texts from friends in other places are such lifelines; you live at the mercy of a raging ocean, but at least you are seen and held.

But depression doesn’t show up on a map, even when your Very Online job is to tell the truth about your life. If only everyone with opinions about mental illness could pull up an image of the elegant, ferocious swirl bearing down on you, bigger than everything that used to keep you safe.

To be clear—if Dorian had flattened our house, I wouldn’t yet have words for this storm. Likewise, this essay is not a cry for help. When you’ve done four hurricanes, you learn how to read forecasts and how to prepare; and when you’ve weathered mental illness before, you can learn how to list your next right steps. I’ve talked to some close family and friends. I’ve made an appointment with a therapist. I’ve taken myself outside on my walk every day. I am feeling out what it looks like in this season of life to do my very best and to be very gentle with myself, both at the same time.

But I’m here dropping my pin on this map because it’s a vicious lie that this world, this life, this spiritual life can’t make room for sadness. Because even as my world shrinks and all my energy goes to keeping myself present and OK, the one thing I can do for someone else is maybe remind them they’re not alone. Because when your hurricane is invisible, sometimes you need a reminder that if you can only do one thing, the thing you need to do is ask for help. Because silence and isolation breed shame and fear—and I can’t keep them from knocking, but I don’t have to invite them in for tea.

Instead I am choosing the way of openness. The way of here I am. Not to scare anyone—but to say that for so many of us, depression is a part of life. One we pray will blow over quickly; but not one we can weather alone.

And because writing down the truth reminds me I can accept what’s outside my control and still make choices of my own—as we say during hurricane season:
We can do hard things.
God doesn’t cause our suffering, but God bears our pain with us.
It gets better.

Check on your friends.

With gratitude to the many people who’ve walked with me through the unfamiliar work of reaching out recently. I truly would not be writing here if I didn’t feel basically OK, thanks to you.

Dear youth group girls,

Some days I write at my desk at home about bodies, then make my way to our youth group—and all the nice words and ideas on my desk dissolve into thin air. Bodies come up a lot for us—fat jokes and general teenage awkwardness—and so often all I can think of to say is, “All bodies are good bodies!” Then we’re on to the next game.

What I want to do is call a halt to everything and ask you if you know how precious you are. Sooner or later I will ask how you’ve been told bodies “should” be—and if you see how much of it comes from those who want to use you, profit from you, or dim your light. 

Adolescence means sometimes you feel trapped in a body and an emotional life far outside your own control. As everything shifts on the inside and people start to treat you differently outside, you wish for a cocoon—but this whole growing-up process is something we all have to do in community.

Now your community has expanded through technology to fill every waking moment of your day, and your awareness stretches far outside our own town. Do you feel equipped to live in this crowded world, or just that it’s become more complicated? You’re more aware of broadly feminist ideas and the #metoo movement than I ever could have been, growing up in a suburb like yours. But I wonder how much those grand theories and historical moments matter to you, alone in your room, after the thousandth airbrushed ad of the day—or when the text pestering you for nude photos comes through.

There is a difference between believing you should love yourself, and knowing your worthiness in your bones.

When I say “All bodies are good bodies,” I want to find some way to fill in that gap. Because others’ anger about their past wounds doesn’t necessarily teach you how to advocate for your own right to respect. Because understanding that women are systemically disrespected and disadvantaged doesn’t mean you know how to stand in your own power to make change. And believing in the value of humanity doesn’t mean you have heard God’s voice singing love over your very-good self.

I want you to know how deeply God values you, how precious all of our right-now, right-here bodies are to God, how safe you are to choose your own light. I want to give you some kind of shield to deflect the thousands of messages about what other people think your body should be, look like, do, want—so, even if only for five seconds, you could simply be and be at home with yourself. 

I wonder if I say “All bodies are good bodies” often enough, if it will begin to drown out all the noise, pushing back a space for you to listen to your own voice, and God’s.

Because that thing we call “confidence” doesn’t come from thinking you’ve lived up to impossible expectations; it comes from knowing yourself well beyond the limits of those expectations, and loving yourself regardless of how other people choose to measure your worth.

But sometimes, everything about being a teenager seems to be an exercise in other people measuring your worth.

When that text comes through.
When people who call your counterparts “young men” still refuse to take you seriously.
When the pang of hunger feels like consolation from the sting of rejection.
When catcalls make you feel small.
When you can see yourself through everyone’s eyes but your own.
When their judgment steals your time, your attention, your brilliance, your peace.
When having a body is hard, and living in a woman’s body feels like too much—

I hope someday I’ll teach you something about how to settle into your own breath, and dance to your own heartbeat, and encounter this world with your own senses, because God is always pouring God’s love into your own embodied self. 

Your body is a safe place to be. Your body is your self, and you are worthy of dignity, respect, power, and joy. You deserve to be confident, because you deserve to inhabit your own body, connect with your whole self, and know your own God-given value in every cell of you.

Even as you struggle against injustice, on behalf of yourself and others, I hope you know your greatest power lies not only in being right, but in being worthy and being loved.

As many lessons and letters as I may try to write, I know I can’t only communicate what you deserve by what I say. This whole helping-you-grow-up thing has a lot more to do with asking good questions than providing brilliant answers, more letting you surprise me than thinking I know what you’re capable of, more praying than fixing.

And it’s about letting you see me continue to grow up, because the truth is we’re all sometimes wishing for a cocoon, and afraid to trust the process. So I’m learning to meet God and reconnect with my body in every hard moment and every peaceful place—because if I can’t show you, I can’t tell you how to live at peace with yourselves.  

I promise to be present with myself and with you. I promise to keep learning to love myself, because that’s the best chance I have of reminding you there’s another way: the way of abiding ever deeper in love, awkwardness, flaws and all— because all of us embodied creatures are created so very good.

Love,
Lyndsey
Your youth director

Intentionally taking up space. Stretching my arms over the backs of chairs. Using the damn armrest. Legs crossed like a dude. Stretching. Breathing. When space doesn’t fit me, I do what it takes to be comfortable. I quit apologizing for having mass.

Because here’s the thing: the space outside my 2-foot radius doesn’t belong to *everyone else.* It belongs to *everyone.* And there is enough of it to go around, and enough for *me* to go around having whatever size body I have, in whatever size area I need to be comfortable…

Maybe you don’t mind sitting prim and proper and staying in the box. But this world needs you to take up your space. To advocate for your body and its needs. And the person “behind” you—the woman with less privilege than you have? She’s waiting for you to become someone who takes up your space—someone with the courage to fight with her to take up hers.

When the comments began flooding in on the Instagram post, I had to laugh at myself. I had wondered if I was saying something a little obvious, something others had said before. More than one person can say the same thing, I reminded myself. Go ahead and take up the space.

The chatter and excitement reminded me that we don’t get to talk enough about how loving ourselves subverts patriarchy. We’re all still learning how to develop joyful and life-giving practices of resistance.

Maybe some of us read or learn about “the patriarchy” or share serious stories about gendered violence. But maybe we forget to put the same amount of energy into discovering a new way of being. Amidst our (completely legitimate) anger and frustration, when do we get around to celebrating equity?

Is activism a dour thing we do, then take breaks for guilty moments of “self-care?” Does having fun and feeling good mean you’re unserious about dismantling patriarchy? Is imagining a new world something we can only get around to once we’ve already conquered sexism (and racism and homophobia and ableism and ageism and…)?

Or can something as simple as a stretch, as joyful as a dance, begin to usher us into a world where everyone is free?

This world is hungry for a different story, and we need a lot of practice to live into it. This work of changing the world is about embodying a better way of life—so part of the work is to share our practices for living the truths of our own dignity and worthiness.

I believe this with all my heart—I wouldn’t do this work if I didn’t think it was fun!—yet still I sometimes struggle to know how to begin a piece with a story of life instead of death. I forget to offer the vision of love and freedom that lives beyond today’s sorrow and rage. I forget that my experiences of joy are as unique and as important to tell as my experiences of pain.

At Pentecost, I preached about the Holy Spirit—a force as uncontrollable as fire, as all-pervasive as the wind. The Spirit, like our breath, lives within us and around us, between us and the creation, flowing through life and sustaining life, even in the moments that seem tired and ordinary. The Spirit sometimes fills us with a fiery power to rise up to an extraordinary occasion—and the same Spirit transforms us in mundane moments, speaks to us about actions as small as breathing deep and stretching on the subway.

The Spirit who liberates is teaching us, day by day, how to exorcise the demon of patriarchy from our systems and societies, sure—but she is also freeing us from patriarchy’s grip on our own souls.

In a world that teaches women to view ourselves through men’s eyes, the Spirit is reintroducing us to the very good bodies God made. She is inviting us to un-welcome the spirit of objectification and contempt we so easily adopted as children, so we can recognize and dwell in our own beauty from within.

In a world that teaches men to fear femininity, the Spirit is speaking strength and wisdom over men’s emotions. She is teaching you to reconnect with God’s gifts of emotion, creativity, and connection, so you can rejoin yourself in the hidden places of your heart and know the joy of true community does not have to be so rare.

Stretching out in auditoriums and airports is not simply “self-care,” if self-care means filling up some sort of gas tank of indulgences between items on our to-do lists. Making friends with our bodies and ourselves means bringing a more centered and well-equipped presence to our work and to our rest, to our activist-y actions and our closest relationships. It means finding integration, worthiness, and connection even in the midst of moments of exhaustion or oppression. It means in times when we can’t be “out there” making change and feel like we have no power, we are still making active choices to make our corner of the world a better place. It means embodying hope within ourselves.

Taking time to know and love ourselves is also part of how we keep from burning out. When comfort, strength, and dignity come from the Spirit’s work within, no hardship or hatred can take it from us. We love our enemies, not because we “should,” but because we are living beyond their world of us and them; we are living into a new world of belovedness. We can make space for anger and sadness without being ruled by rage and despair.

When God invites us into a life of flourishing, God isn’t asking us to teeter in an anxious “balance” between our individual well-being and the shalom of the world. Just as our connectedness means the liberation of others brings me life, in the same way, my own growth and joy contribute to the life of the world. The practice of making friends with my body and God is choosing to live good news within myself; choosing shalom in the small things that are everything; discovering that the joyful, whole, free-indeed kingdom of God can exist within the space of my body.

It’s making a life of freedom and joy and love part of who we are, not something we strive for. It’s bringing the gift of our whole selves into our relationships, communities, and work.

It’s allowing the Spirit who connects us to creation, who is rattling systems of injustice down to the ground and healing the wounded, who whispers God’s voice to us and empowers us to join together in community, to also bind up the pieces of ourselves within the most sacred spaces on earth—our bodies, this right-here life—called good.