Because had I known, I would have chosen more carefully, because this shit is ridiculous.
Like for real. Like it's been real hard.
I get real drunk on the idea of reflection and new years at this time of year. I get real nostalgic and just totally overcome with gratitude and love and christmas lights, and looking toward a new year full of untapped promise and potential.
Have a I mentioned everything is sparkly? It's distracting. It makes me forget all the details and I just see rose colored film reels. The highlights of sorts, that run through my head. They crack and pop like an old fashioned projector even though I'm actually too young to remember a time when people used those for real.
Old soul.
This year has been great. So great. I have amazing people in my life. A great job. Also St. Paul is charming little gem who makes me fall in love with the world again and again. I am staring to see Jesus in places where I thought i lost him. This year has really been a year of restoration and kept promises, and challenge that has changed me or reminded me of what i believe in.
I'm rarely neutral about anything, but in the season of stuck, neutrality has become commonplace. It's the exact opposite of my nature.
Trying to break out of the neutrality has literally left me a like pendulum off it's hinges. One day everyone is the fucking worst and the next I feel like i'm queen of everything.
It's exhausting for everyone, myself included. Holy balls, I am a handful.
And really my nature is to be pretty even keel about most things. I used to let things roll off my back and now everything thats sad makes me have ALL THE FEELINGS.
it's annoying. The truth is, I've been hurt, but who hasn't. I'm still alive. I'm still functioning. The damage is really only permanent if i let it be. That's probably truth for you, too. I don't know you, but i think it's probably applicable to all lives.
Just because i'm feeling something, rational or not, does not give me free range to act like a goddamn lunatic and a first class jerk.
But holy shit. i've been such a jerk, and i feel ashamed and embarrassed about the way i've treated the people i love. Because in no realm of any sort of existence is it okay. My parents raised me better than that, and My heart knows that, too....but sometimes my head speaks on my heart's behalf and is a total asshole about it.
The road back to getting my sparkle back is fricken hard. and humbling, and it's made me cry a lot.
I think this year, more than being able to give grace (which i'm pretty terrible at) I am learning how to receive it, which, as it turns out, i'm also terrible at.
There are not many people in your life who love you like Jesus does, or at the very lease as close as humanly possible, and a lot of times they're not even people with whom you share dna.
One of my favorite lines of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is "we accept the love we think we deserve" and for a long time I didn't think i deserved much. Not because I've done anything wrong, but because i never really left like i was all that special. But when people love you like they're supposed to, like you deserve, it can feel foreign, and uncomfortable.
And sometimes to see how far it will go, if you're an envelope pusher like me, you're a total jerk and people love you back with grace.
and that's confusing.
So, grace. and more grace. and more grace. it just keeps coming at me. and it makes me weepy but what doesn't today.
Literally the St. Paul skyline this morning made me tear up because St. Paul and i have a beautiful history. It's a love story for the books. Maybe one day, i'll get outside of myself enough to write it all down.
This year was not about me handing grace out to people like sticks of gum. It was about me understanding how desperately i need grace, and that Jesus loves me infinitely more than even the crazy people who love me unconditionally.
Life is weird, man. And so hard. But so, unbelievably worth it.
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