Part One: Draw Bridge

          A year ago I was challenged to love when I feel unloved, hidden, or forgotten, I think that’s why I spent a year looking for a place to do so, yet after a year of no growth, still being stuck in that same feeling, and failure (which is okay, it happens) I believe I know not how to love others. Maybe it’s just my current situation what feels like a sea of physical limitations that I cannot begin to document here, physical freedom-sucking limitations that seem to be making deep emotional and spiritual manifestations. I know, most would say it’s the other way around that the spiritual ill births the physical ill, but these limitations are very much outside of me, and they are bleeding my insides dry. I am aware that most of the things affected are existing hurts, and I am also aware that God may very well be fortifying me, and cleaning me of those hurts through this time. As some would say, we all have times in the desert. A few months ago I committed myself to a community of people, most of whom are strangers to me, and I have failed. I cannot commit to them and I am mourning the day I uttered such false words. Deep in my heart I think I knew it, I would have to swallow those words after speaking them like a dog returns to vomit, but the thought at the forefront of my mind then was “only time can tell.”

          I never knew how intensely I cherished the thought of being a person who can keep her word, even if they are little ones, and this has cut me deeply. I know, like I said already, failure is not the end all and be all of life, but I think there is a certain level of mourning I cannot even grasp enough with words when one fails at something held closet to one’s core. Everything I do, and everything I want to be, in Christ, for me is based around this, knowing who He is, who He made me and is making me, and being who I say I am to others, this is the way I know how to love; honesty, consistency, perseverance, fighting until the bitter end to engage the other and giving my life away as best I can therefore showing others a piece of who He is through my imperfect fragment of light. I know I’m not perfect, I know I fail at this in little ways every day and big ways too, but to outright lie knowing, somewhere, that my words could not be, I feel my edges fraying, and my insides raw and deteriorating. I feel I have betrayed the very one I love most.

          Ironically, I wondered for weeks if I could keep my word if I were able to become self-reliant and therefore able enough to even try to commit. If I could make all the stars align, shape the face of the world, change racism, classism, poverty, sexism, egotism, unfair wages, privilege the unprivileged, repair the image of family and what it is and does then, and only then I could go, let my yes, be yes, and my no, be no and not have to think about everything I face every time I wake. I thought, maybe then I could find a community, plant my roots, learn how to love others and not God, alone, far off, not out of sight and therefore not out of mind, not out of my mind.

          I haven’t been completely cut off; I am not a hermit by any means. Yet, the thought was crippling, when I was most desperate to find a bridge out of my lonely world, it became a draw bridge and it was only let down at the hands of others, and at their whim. Yes, you can have a friend today, because she needs to talk, the draw bridge lowered. No, not today, the bridge is raised, even though you are distraught with your pain, it is incommoding me. Sure, you can come to gather with others like you, lowered again, because we need you to fill a roll that is convenient for us. No, not this time, I can’t (or don’t want to) help you the bridge is raised, and though I have plenty of more resources than you, you need to take initiative and find your own way; I am not your keeper. Come be a part of planning who we are, and what we want to do together this year, oh but figure out how to travel 12 miles in limited time, with a limited income all on your own, don’t be late. Those who had privilege and power over me planned my dreams, contained my wishes, left me to burn in this desert…

          I’ve said it many times. I know I have God love and commune with and to communicate, and I know He loves me, hears me, and speaks to me. In my darkest moments, it is the only thing I can cling to, and know I am not insane. However, this God I love, with all I know to give, which never feels like enough and always fails to be given fully, also asked, begged, pleaded and bled in so many ways, for me to love not only Him, but to love others, and every time I fail I am spitting in His face. I am leaving Him cold, hungry, lonely, sick, desperate for human contact of any sort, and I ask myself, does anyone else feel the weight of this charge? Each time that bridge was drawn against me, and my family more so, I felt less than human, less than what He made me to be, less than living. After trying to find ways to cross that bridge and be able to come back, because I have a home here I am committed to not out of obligation but out of love and duty, maybe, and a calling I felt Him give me, after trying to find ways and failing attempt after attempt I couldn’t even commit myself to keep trying. I gave up. In the end, as lonely as it is, it’s easier to not ask, to remain out of sight and out of mind, and not be a burden to anyone else. I said to myself, “Until I find a way to be a gift to anyone without having to take from them first, I will remain. I trust that God will show me, in time, a way that the working poor can give and be a blessing without being a project or a parasite because God made beautiful symbiotic relationships, even where one is stronger and the other weaker, yet they coexist without one always taking and never giving, and the other always giving but never taking.”

This is part one of a series of three related blogs, please see my next post to read on…