Enough

When I was in fourth grade, the school psychologist IQ tested me. We played  with puzzles and she asked some questions like,"How far is it from the US to London?" to which I answered "Well, it depends. Where in the US are we starting from?" (My snark started young.)

When we were all done, she spent a few minutes with a calculator, my papers, and a pen while my  heart raced and I pretended to do another puzzle. I didn't know God, but I sure was praying.

Praying that the score would be high enough.
Praying that I would be good enough.
I didn't know what "enough" was, but I believed this score could make me one step closer to it.

The psychologist shuffled some papers, flipped my academic file around towards me, and started pointing with a pen. I guess she never got the memo that you don't tell nine year olds their IQ score. She pulled out a chart that showed what scores fit into which categories. I held my breath as she told me my score and my eyes scanned for the category that I had hoped and prayed for.

I was enough.
I was special.
I literally fit into a nice little box with nice little definite numbers.
I knew where I stood in the world.

I went home that day, a spring in my step and a new sense of pride. At dinner, my mother asked me my score (because, ya know, that's casual elementary school table talk). I beamed, yearning for her approval, and blurt out the three numbers that now defined me.

My mother, without missing a beat or looking my way, snorted and said "Yeah? Well my score is XXX," a number three points higher than mine.

I deflated.
I was not enough.

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I spent the rest of my life fighting for numbers, fighting to be cerebral, to be the best, to have the highest scores and GPA and grades.

Consequently, I also spent the rest of my life attacking myself when this naturally could not happen.

Somehow I also believed that our intelligence was a natural gifting; an IQ score was something we are simply born with and maybe can fluctuate slightly during early development thanks to nutrition, caretaking, and other environmental factors.

I was simply the product of a lucky roll of the dice - and therefore could not pride myself in my accomplishments, because I was "cheating" the system by riding on a gift that I had not worked for.

I shrugged off everything my dear mentors, friends, and professors tried to show me about who I was. I ignored everything that Christ said about who he made me to be.

At one point, I was praying that I never got a head injury because I would lose all of my worth if I was no longer smart. (Ironically, I did have a MTBI my sophomore year of college - and my friends still loved me, I still had a job, and I still graduated.)

But grades were never meant to be enough.
IQ scores were never meant to define us.
Numbers were meant for making exchanges and keeping dates, not for defining people.

I knew this - but I also had no other way to judge my worth.
Ironically, nobody really likes a kid that is fighting to be the smartest in the room.
In our culture of success-is-best, any other redeeming attribute I had was largely overlooked by an over-inflated GPA.
So I assumed that I was not kind, compassionate, funny, empathetic - all of the characteristics I thought were far from me because I was too smart.
Or maybe because I was just smart.

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A lot of people ask me why I am in social work and not science.
I need to be a good social worker for myself as much as the world needs good social workers.
I need to discover strengths and talents beyond my head, and I need to learn to lean into my weaknesses.

Today I won Field Intern of the Year in my cohort. Not the Research Award. Not the Outstanding Student Award.

It's the biggest honor I have ever received - because it has nothing to do with IQ.

My supervisor said she had clients in her office crying because I had left. She described me as intelligent, innovative, creative, and empathic.

Empathic.

Finally something that I could not judge by a number.
Finally something that wasn't centered around intelligence.
Finally something that was human to human, Imago Dei.

I think a lot of my clients struggle with some of the same beliefs. When you have a severe mental illness, it is hard for the world to see what you have to offer. It's hard to believe in your God-given value when everything around you tells you you're invaluable. Like my biological gift, it's hard to see yourself beyond a pervasive biological barrier (sometimes science and numbers will mess you up). It's hard to make room for Christ when you don't feel like you can even make room for yourself.

The good news is that Christ made the room for us.
And he made many rooms in his Father's house.

Finally, after a year telling, reminding, modeling, and providing a safe space for my clients to discover that they always have been and always will be enough, I can start to believe it for myself too.

The last 100 days

A paper chain hangs in my dining room. It takes over an entire wall, zig-zagging back and forth because special reasoning is not my strong suit and one-hundred strips of paper is apparently a lot.

I graduate in less than one-hundred days.
Eighty, to be exact.
In eighty-one days, I'll get on the 210 one last time, me and Bear and an auntie and uncle who are now my professional cross-country movers.
In eighty-two days, I'll pull up in front of a house that will seem foreign but become my home.
In eighty-three days, I'll wake up in my new bed for the first time.

I'm spending these last 100 days like I have spent the last four years.
Going to work, school, huddling with friends around a tiny laptop to watch trashy television while drinking wine in our yoga pants.

But I'm doing it a little bit slower. I am soaking in the moments a little bit longer and giving myself the grace to not mop the floors because I will always have floors, but I will not always have these friends or these hills or this taco shack down the road.

I'm tattooing what 6am looks like on my mind.
I'm doing things I always wanted to do but never made the time.
I'm etching the feeling of sand between my toes, the stop-and-go of 4pm traffic, and the smell of morning smog into my mind.

I'll need it later.

I'll need the 6am city lights when my new town has just gotten a little too small.
I'll need the sand when I sit through my first winter and learn just what the rest of the world was talking about.
I'll need the stop-and-go traffic when life has gotten complacent and just a little bit boring and my goodness, where is the culture and why do I keep seeing the same people everywhere?
I'll need the smell of morning smog when... well, never. That one I won't need. But it will bring me back to where I am, that much more grateful and aware of the fresh air around me.

I'll need these memories when I miss my friends and my beach bonfires and my rhythm that I have developed over four long-quick years.

I'll need it, I'll use it, and then I'll make new friends and new mountain bonfires and establish a new rhythm - because maybe the last 100 days are really just any other 100 days.

When home isn't home anymore

"It's so good to see you! How is it being back home?"

It's the most-asked question I get on my first Sunday back at the church I grew up in. I don't know how to answer.

How do I tell them that this is not my home? How do I tell them that my heart is out west and it aches to be back?

"What are you doing after you graduate? Are you moving back here?"
"It's going to be so good having you back here in May!"

How do I tell them that my sweet friend who dropped me off at the airport had to force me to get onto that plane? How do I tell them that I was filled with hesitancy when my plane finally landed? How do I tell them that moving back to Florida is nowhere on my radar?

How do I tell them that I feel like a foreigner in the town I lived in for fifteen years?

"Welcome home! Well, I guess it's not really home anymore, is it?
"There's not really anything here for you anymore."

At first, I was taken back by the last comment.
There's not really anything here for you anymore.
Does that mean I am not welcome? Does that mean I can't return? Does that mean I've locked and sealed a door behind me?
No. Not even a little bit. Unless that's what I want it to mean.

Finally, somebody got it.
I no longer long for the afternoon thunderstorms of Florida, the damp morning dew, or the familiar crashing of ocean waves. I no longer have to do the grocery store shuffle, shifting down other aisles to avoid awkward small talk with people I recognize. I no longer have to carefully schedule in coffee dates with old friends.

My life, my joys, my passions, my job and apartment and friends and sunrises and mountains and valleys are out west. I know the curves of the hills, the ebb and flow of the traffic, the rhythm of an urban life that was once foreign, strange, and frightening.

Some days it's hard.
When babies are born or babies grow up, sunrises on the beach show up on my newsfeed, and old friends have gathered together. When I want nothing more than to drink wine and watch Dance Moms with my aunt. When the traffic is piled up and I just want to get out of the car. When the desert hasn't seen a drop of rain in ages and there's no such thing as "weather."

Most days it's easy. It's gotten easier every day.
When the mountains get the first snow of the year, the foxes trot along beside me on my morning run, and the temperature is a steady 75 degrees for the week. When new friends pile up on the living room floor because we don't have a dining room or a big enough kitchen table. When babies are born here and babies grow up here. When the sun sets over the water, or the rivers flow along the street. When the canyons wind and a road trip is planned through the painted deserts.

Florida is no longer my home, no longer the place of familiarity.

And that's okay.