Overflow: When tears become words

I am raw and broken.
I am a boat tossed in the sea.
Waterlogged and splitting, falling
apart as fiber after fiber
comes undone.

I can't continue, not without losing
the essence of who I am.
What do I do?
Do I surrender to the process?
Do I let myself be unmade in the
hope of being remade in a more
complete and whole way?
What do I do when what I thought
was my purpose is
no longer my purpose?

We talk about our desire to be
real, authentic, intentional.
But what do we do when the realness
is too much, when the unpolished
and ugliness of real overwhelms our persons?

Real requires time spent with the
pain and unpleasant as well as the
joyous and thought-provoking.
Real see the dissonances within living.
But what do we do when Real gets
too real?

I want to pull the mask up.
I want to pull away from Real.
Because...
Real is hard.
Real is brokenness.
Real is raw.

remembering

One year ago today, the world stood in solidarity as we all experienced the horror that was the Sandy Hook Massacre.

One year ago, we struggled to find a way to express the pain and heartache that filled our hearts as the news came that twenty of the twenty-six people were kiddos.

How do we stand in the tension between horrific events such as Sandy Hook or Columbine or most recently Arapahoe High School in Centennial, CO? How do we express our heartache for tragedies that impact communities so much like our own? How do we move on from these events in a way that acknowledges what happened yet doesn't dwell in the past?

It seems like we have a tendency to sweep horrific events under the rug, to medicate them away with reality TV, sporting events, facebook, or food. We take to Twitter with posts of horror along with hashtags of solidarity. We take to Facebook with our posts about the tragedy and an analysis of why it occurred. And once we have taken our two seconds of social media silence, we are back to our posts about what food we're eating and giving our opinion about the current Twitter-argument between two celebrities. 

The thing is, tragedy doesn't end in two seconds. 

The horror doesn't dissipate in two seconds. 

It lives on in the lives of each person affected by the tragedy. It lives in the eyes and memories of each survivor. And it resurfaces each time there is another tragedy. 

Two seconds is not enough for me.

It reminds me of the Advent season that we are in. Advent is a time of waiting for the arrival of the Messiah, of sitting in the uncomfortable place of "not yet." It is about acknowledging that something or someone is missing and knowing that it is coming. 

And so, I acknowledge each person who is missing this day, who tragically lost their lives for an unknown reason. Because two seconds of silence is not enough.

In memory of the twenty-seven women and children of Sandy Hook, but most especially for the children whose faces and names will forever be in my heart.

Rachel, Lauren, Victoria, Dawn, Mary, Nancy,

Charlotte

Madeleine

James

Caroline

Daniel

Photos via CNN, collage made by blogger

Dylan

Grace

Jessica

Olivia

Catherine

Emilie

Avielle

Josephine

Chase

Jack

Benjamin

Ana

Jesse

Noah

Allison

medicating and dashes

Why is it that we medicate the uncomfortableness? Why is that we medicate and drown, and drug instead of sitting in the awkward, and often, painful moment where every fiber in your body is telling you that something is not right? Why is it so difficult to face the fact that there is something broken in our lives?

We medicate by flipping the channel until we find a show that makes us laugh or horrified or sentimental. And the second that it is no longer giving us that "high," we flip the channel to the next "drug."

We medicate by going out every single weekend, running ourselves into the ground in order to make sure that we are doing "life" right with money and interesting hobbies and a glamorous career and a confident fashion sense and the perfect partner and the "best" kids and… When does it stop?

What has happened to quietness? To stillness? To not doing anything? To being uncomfortable? To resting?

I don't have the answers. I am caught in this cycle too. But I want out. I want to start caring about the people around me. I want to know and be known. I want to be uncomfortable at times. I want to acknowledge what is broken in my life. I want to admit that I don't have it all together, that I struggle with taking risks.

Maybe that is my whole point. Maybe what I am trying to express is that there has to be more to life than just drowning out the imperfections. 

There is this saying that on your tombstone there will be two dates on it with a dash in the middle and that the dash is our living. So, what will your "dash" look like? If the dash took on the characteristics of your living, what would it look like? Would it be long and thin? Or maybe a fat, squiggly line? Maybe a double line? Would it be a colored dash? Or a sparkly one? What about a simple black line? Whatever your living, your dash, looks like, let's not drug and drown out the entire experience. 

Just one more thought about the whole living without the medicating. I'm learning that in order to make the most of my living without medicating, I have to do less. I have to set aside time to be quiet, and still, and even be uncomfortable.

But it is worth it.

And on that note, I'm going to find some quiet.