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.

On abandoning dreams

"Hey, Dan. Have you considered yet that maybe this is not where I want you?"
It was that still, small voice that I had not heard in so long.
I had nearly forgotten the sound of his words, the cantor of his tone, as my eyes glazed over towards the candles burning in the pew aisle.

I had decided that grad school would be happening in May 2015.
"Lord, where do you want me to go?"
I saved my questions for the second line.
I had already decided the plot. I only needed God for the solution.
I needed a hero, a Savior, but I had missed the wanderings in the desert.
Yet I still somehow found myself lost in the middle of nowhere, buried in a pile of applications, mystery, and frustration.

You see, I have been fighting for months to make grad school happen.
Punching, kicking, screaming, swindling, doing - controlling whatever I could.
Going to bed exhausted at night.
Waking with eyes glazed, not a spark left, but still stuck on the prize.

"Okay."
Freedom. Anxiety lifting. Peace rising.
The candles kept flickering, slow and steady.
The spark returned.

It wasn't fighting against opposition.
It was beating down a path I wasn't meant to be on.

This doesn't mean grad school will never happen.
It doesn't even mean it won't happen this summer.
But it's hard to abandon dreams.
It's hard to hear "Trust me."
It's even harder to say "I will follow you."

How the church can be a voice among the voices of mental illness

I woke up at 5am a couple of weeks ago, ready to start my day with the sunrise and a run to clear my head before going to the clinic.

As I sat in bed checking emails and Facebook posts to wake up to the bright light of my phone, my heart stopped. A shooting at FSU.

I frantically began texting friends.

As the news unfolded, we discovered that the shooter had heard voices and believed the government was after him.

I have seen this before.
In fact, I see this every day in the mental health clinic I work at.
Symptoms noticed.
No intervention.
A psychotic break.
Tragedy.

It is time we start talking about mental illness boldly, constructively, with open and welcoming arms.

It is time "depression" can carry as much stigma as "hay fever" and seeing a therapist is as normal as seeing the dentist.

In my own experience with mental illness, I turned to my church for support. I was met with both judgment and acceptance. It was the former part that stuck with me when I could not unstick myself.

"If you have anxiety, you aren't trusting God."
"Pray and read your bible more."
"Count it all joy. You are blessed."
"Taking medications is cheating."

Paying, reading Scripture, counting our blessings, trusting God, and having faith are all excellent things. Maybe faith is being able to say, "I believe God is good, but I am still broken and hurting."

Here's twelve ways the church can be a voice among the many voices of mental illness.

1. Accept that mental illness is as valid and legitimate as any other disease. There are reasons we call it mental health and use terms like "symptoms, diagnoses, treatment, medications," etc. It's because mental illnesses are medically, biologically, and scientifically based - but incredibly more complex than many physical illnesses because the spirit, the personhood, is what gets attacked. It is difficult to admit to mental illness because there is no x-ray to show, no wound to bandage, no surgery to have. Legitimize your neighbor's experience.

2. Understand that mental illness is not a spiritual deficit. Would you tell somebody that their asthma is a result of sin, something they need to "snap out of," or would be cured if they simply had quiet time each morning? No? Great. Yes, mental illness, like any other illness, can cause strain on your relationship with God. Research even supports that spiritual beliefs and practices can have a positive effect on recovery. However, that does not mean that somebody is automatically an unfit Christian. Your neighbor did not do something wrong to cause this. His feelings are not a sin. Talking about trauma or abuse is not holding records of wrongs or dishonoring a parent. It is truth-telling, redemption, and healing - and that's what Christ was all about, isn't it?

3. Educate yourself. Be willing to throw away old assumptions. Read reliable resources. Watch documentaries. Ask your neighbor what she recommends. Invite, but don't press, your neighbor to share about his experience. There's plenty of bold people on UpWorthy who bravely share their stories.

4. Understand that each experience is unique. Like our faith journey, one's experience with a mental illness is very unique, very personal, and very difficult to share when there is not a solid foundation of trust and acceptance. Understand that your neighbor may not fall into the extremes you saw on television (hello, Hollywood). This makes their experience no less difficult.

5. Resist the urge to say "But you're not..." See above. Does your neighbor suffer from depression, but he somehow miraculously got out of bed today and is smiling right now? Panic attacks, but you've never seen one? Anxiety, but she looks so composed? Bless the Lord, it truly is a miracle. Refrain from making assumptions of what your perception of somebody's illness is or should be like. Refer to #1 if you're still confused.

6. Understand that your neighbor is hurting deeply. Many mental illnesses carry a myriad of overwhelming, diverse emotions. Regardless of what the specific emotions are, your neighbor is likely hurting and confused. Additionally, he or she may be dealing with the aftershocks of trauma, even if the incident happened years ago. Even not being able to identify a specific trigger can be frustrating, guilt inducing, and leave our friends feeling like they do not "deserve" their illness or are being overdramatic. The mind is a tricky thing, and it will do anything to protect itself. Mental illness is often associated with poor coping skills - not due to a failure on your neighbor's part, but because we simply were not built to deal with all of the evil in this world.

 

7. Ask how you can support your neighbor - then follow through. Maybe she needs the kids picked up because she just cannot handle everything today. Maybe he needs somebody to simply sit with him. Maybe she cannot articulate what exactly she needs and crying ensues. If your neighbor is not sure of what he or she needs, make a few offers that you are actually willing and able to do. Fold some laundry, make some coffee, watch some reality television, or drag her out of a house for a walk. Do something - but also respect the space to simply not.

8. Provide a safe place for your neighbor to process his or her experience. Provide this space, even if that means anger and frustration at God, hopelessness, or doubt. Often, but not always, mental health includes some sort of trauma or abuse. Regardless of abuse history, it is an incredibly difficult and confusing time, and a safe place to talk or just be is a blessing. Faith takes a lot of work and energy that they may not be able to muster. Hold that space for her until she can fill it again herself.

9. Know your limits and where your neighbor can go when you've reached them. This works on two planes. First, know your own boundaries. Supporting somebody with a mental illness, like any disease, can be draining on you. This is okay. Take care of yourself, and be able to set loving, firm limits. Second, know what resources are available in your community. Do some research, make some phone calls, and offer to take your neighbor to appointments if appropriate.

 

10. Support professional treatment. You are not a therapist, so please do not try to play one. If you are a therapist, I probably do not need to say anything about "boundaries" or "ethics" or "conflict of interest" or "just plain awkward." Support your neighbor getting help, and support whatever treatment plan the professionals and your neighbor agree upon. Know that treatments do not need to compete with the church. They can complement and support each other. This is not about you and your beliefs, but about your neighbor and her well-being.

 

11. Advocate for the mental health community. Y'all, it is tricky terrain to navigate in the mental health land. It's hard to fight for treatment when you're exhausted from your illness. Maybe your neighbor has been diagnosed with a chronic illness, but only has ten therapy sessions allotted by insurance. Maybe there are not adequate resources in your area. It's hard to have self-worth and believe you can get better when the world is telling you that you are not sick "enough," whatever that means. Maybe the stigma is too much, and he lives in fear, guilt, and shame. Advocate for your neighbor in your communities by spreading the word about the truth of mental illness. Join the anti-stigma fight. Write to lawmakers to advocate for equality in insurance coverage and treatment provision. Let your neighbor know that he is not alone, he is part of a team, and you are on it.

12. Keep the door open. Many mental illnesses are chronic, like diabetes, or can cycle between remission and relapse, like cancer. Check in on your neighbor, even after it seems like everything is okay. Continue to provide a safe, welcoming space. Provide support and reassurance when symptoms return.

Outrun the sun

I woke up to darkness in Colorado.
I slipped into my hoodie, pulled on some black gloves, and strapped an ipod to my arm.
Then I ran.

I raced against the sun, fighting to beat it to the top of the highest hill in town, fighting to taste some of its hope for the day.

That's what I do when I run. I solve the problems of the world, only to forget the solutions once I've got my breath back.

I have seen some of the darkest places of the world.
The dusty villages in Mexico and South America made of old tires, cardboard, and rusting metal.
The sleeping bags and cardboard lining Skid Row and the sidewalk outside my gated apartment.
The inner walls of an inpatient psychiatric facility.
The red clay and bricks of Auschwitz, as if the blood literally seeped down the walls and into the earth.

I have also seen some of the most beautiful places in the world.
The same dusty villages with the toothy grins of children, the warm tortillas and hugs of mothers, and the firm handshakes of hardworking fathers.
The landlord who gave one of those sidewalk tenants a job maintaining the grounds.
The residents who finally got to go home.
The vineyards etched into the cliffs above crashing waves in Cinque Terre.
The amber gravity defiance of Moab.
The moss and fog blanketing the sea of trees in the Pacific Northwest.

Both places give me hope.
We have to create space for the darkness as much as we allow the light in. We have to allow the evil in, not to condone its presence but to say, "I see you. I know what you are doing."

We cannot say, "You are not welcome here," until we say, "I know you are there."
We cannot say, "I will fight for you," until we say, "I see what hurts you."
We cannot hope until we know what we are hoping for, but maybe also what we're hoping from.

The darkness comes again and again - but the light does too. The sun always rises, even in the darkest of nights.

 

Maybe if I could run fast enough I could leap right out of my own tattered skin that holds me captive. Maybe I could reach my hands out far and wide, touch the sun, and soak in its goodness. Maybe I could reach the light and let hope pour in as my selfishness, anger, and grief sweats out.

Maybe I could run fast enough to pass right through it like my own crucible, coming out on the other side to allow the sun to warm my back and light my path. Maybe the darkness could be all behind me.

Even if I can't run that fast, the sun still rises.

Pots and pavement

I looked at my calendar for the spring semester this morning, fighting to squeeze in a camping trip here, a beach day there. Time management gymnastics. March rolled around and I scratched my head at the thought of being out of town three weekends in a row.

Not too long ago, this would have been my dream.
To sleep in a different bed, bury boarding passes in my purse, squeeze shampoo out of a three ounce bottle, eat at a new table for each meal.

The journey was in the chaos.
Today, my heart feels more chaotic. Maybe I'm getting old, but I need the consistency of life to balance my wandering mind. I need the rhythms of alarm clocks and garbage trucks on Thursday at 7am and traffic creeping up right at three in the afternoon and a calendar that has more white space than marked.

I still love to adventure and explore, but maybe there is something valuable in planting roots.

I always thought I was a windowsill kind of girl. Never really committing to life inside or out, I could sit perched up on my slab of granite, watching everything around me. I could move to catch the light, be carried to a new window, even go to a new house. I could see it all, have it all, maybe even be it all.

 

 

But that's no life to live, stuck in a pot.
Potted plants live within harsh borders, unable to move and grow beyond the size of their confines. Sure, the pot can move - but it can never grow. Secure? Yes. Safe? No. Daring to push beyond the boundaries, to stretch and explore, will only lead to death.

If I am such a windowsill girl, such a wandering heart, then why am I being pushed towards the life of the trees?

Still. Strong. Waiting.
Generation after generation, growing higher and higher. Covering afternoon naps, supporting young climbers, stretching limbs out to wrap around all who come near.

Maybe now the journey is in the stillness.
Maybe my nomadic life is coming to an end.

Why then, am I being pushed to move again?
To uproot myself in the place I call home.
To pack up the boxes again and get a new driver's license.

Maybe because this place is built for nomads.
Everybody should live in LA or New York at least once - but leave before it makes you too hard.
It's been four years.
Maybe it's time to go.

Maybe it's time to explore a new place, to walk its streets enough that they become mine, to trip on pavement and forgive it anyway.