cling.

this semester, B and i talked about the importance of discerning who to tell your story & important parts of your life to. making sure that the receiver can not only appreciate the words and stories you offer, but also, if wanting to relate to it, to relate in a comparable way... not in a way that shares a story for the sake of pretending to know how the sharer feels.

this morning i read this "journal entry" from a little book i'm reading and it was encouraging to realize in B's and my desire to share pearls and recognize pearls, we're not alone in that desire and realization.

from cling to the promise in the inner voice of love by henri nouwen.

do not tell everyone your story. you will only end up feeling more rejected. people cannot give you what you long for in your heart. the more you expect from people's response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule.
you have to close yourself to the outside world so you can enter your own heart and the heart of God through your pain. God will send you to the people with whom you can share your anguish, who can lead you close to the true source of love.
God is faithful to God's promises. before you die, you will find the acceptance and the love you crave. it will not come in the way you expect. it will not follow your needs and wishes. but it will fill your heart and satisfy your deepest desire. there is nothing to hold on to but this promise. everything else has been taken away from you. cling to the naked promise of faith. your faith will heal you.

-h.n.

so although this isn't exactly what we talked about, i thought it was nice because he also had the realization of throwing pearls to swine. it took a difficult time in his life to come to some of the self-realization-entries he writes in "the inner voice of love." but the important part is, he did and i'm sure that coming to the realization of where he had invested much, expected more, and lost a lot, ultimately pushed him to cling to the faith he had in J.

i see you.

i just finished watching "the joy luck club" for the first time. there were so many scenes in the movie that were heartbreaking. it's been a long time since i've seen a movie that captures pain so clearly.

my favorite scene occurred between june and her mother. after years of feeling like she had disappointed her mother, june and her mother had a sort of break through moment. the mother confessed that she had so many hopes for her daughter. they weren't expectations, but merely all the good things she wanted for her daughter.

the mother repeated so many times to june, "i see you."

i couldn't help but think: isn't that what we all want? to be seen?

in my own relationship with my mother over the years, it's been such a weird cycle. when i was little, i just knew my mother knew everything. but then i was a teenager and she knew nothing. now i'm an adult and i know she knows so much. but i can see where our lives have diverged and although she continues to love me and counsel me, she doesn't have all the experiences i do and it's very often hard to believe that she understands the things i experience and have experienced. i don't mean this to discount anything about her. i am blessed with a mother who takes time for me, who loves me, who has sacrificed a lot to teach me about living life with integrity and strong character.

for so many years i have been concerned about what my mother sees when she sees me. wondering what she really thinks of me, asking, what are her worries for me? does she have thoughts about me that she would never say to me?

i think it was the repetition of "i see you" from june's mother that stood out to me since june so needed to believe that her mother did care for her and that her mother didn't look at her and see a disappointment. that she looked at her and saw past those things. but i also think, looking at the end of the movie, that it was important for june to be able to echo those same words back to her mother: "i see you."

it took june a long time to feel like she could see her mother. it made me wonder about my own mother: does she think that i see her?

my mom has treated me like an adult ever since i began acting like one. it was right around the time i went to college. things were just different. i didn't mind. it was a smooth transition. but it has shocked me in the last hour since seeing the scene from the movie and thinking about what it means to say "i see you." i feel challenged to not just see my mother, but to somehow let her know that i see her.

the thought on the index card.

a couple of weeks ago i got to thinking about how people explain themselves or their journey to where they are today. for example, saying, before i became a C, i drank all the time, and was super unhappy, did drugs, etc. not to say the separation of the life before C and the difference after isn't important. it definitely is.

i kept thinking about why we explained ourselves by those outward "seen" behaviors. before i went to bed i sloppily penned down the following,
"we speak of the outer proof because we either don't have the words to explain the condition of our hearts or the condition of our heart was much uglier than the actions that manifested as a result."

talking about the heart is so abstract. technically, the heart is just an organ in the body yet we use it to express how we know, understand, and feel about so many different things. i think about that verse somewhere in the bible that talks about how G takes away our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh. but it really is talking about our being, i think.

honestly i have no clue. but my point is (and even more so proven by my inability to adequately discuss what heart even means) that due to how abstract it is and difficult to explain the change, it's easier to talk about the actions that changed (the more tangible evidence) rather than the actual conditions that changed. maybe it would be like talking about the aftermath of a tornado hitting and describing how everything looked and then the months of cleanup rather than talking about the conditions that made the tornado occur and the assembly of people it took to clean up the storm's aftermath. at least, that's how i see it.

i think what i've come to see is that i want to better work to describe the conditions and not just the change of action. i feel like talking about the condition of our hearts, the real gross and ugliness, is vulnerable activity, but nevertheless much more important in enabling us to move toward real long term changes. i don't want to merely say, "before C, i did this and now i do that" but to say, "before C, my heart was ugly. it was rebellious and so my actions were different than they are now. but the heart itself, that was the real issue. the actions were what was indicating that something was amiss in my heart."

or something like that. i don't want to be so afraid of what's in my heart anymore. i mean, G does see it, whether i admit to what's going on in there or not.