Feet On the Ground

I try to have faith, to be strong, to believe it will okay, and to keep pressing on even though I’m miserable and terrified.

Sometimes I can’t.

Sometimes I just cry and cry and cry and cry because I have no hope that things will get easier.

Tags: fear, nightmare, pain, uncertainty

The guy that broke my heart got married on Saturday.

I thought I’d be slightly more than devastated.

But proving His majesty and ability to create a happy ending even for the broken, God has allowed me to feel…

Freedom.

For the first time in months years, I feel completely free from all of those ties. I feel as if I could fly, do backflips down the street and let loose on a crazy Pentecostal hallelujah dance.

He moved on with life. I actually felt a smidgen glad for them and that they’re happy together at present (even though he’s gotten far less attractive and well, she always was and they’ll probably get divorced because he’s selfish and doesn’t love Jesus). I realize how much better off I am now. Even though there are still hurts and regrets, those aren’t as specific to him anymore. It reflects upon where I was emotionally and how much hurt had built hurt over the years.

I’m moving on too.

Tags: change, excitement, heartbreak, love, nightmare, pain, peace, romance

She sat at the table and recounted a story that is the closer to hell than anything I’ve ever experienced. Her straight posture and matter-of-fact manner didn’t welcome pity for her pain that she hid well behind a mask of cynicism and wit and bluntness. Yet as we sat there, my heart broke for her. It was too late for me to do anything about her pain, but I knew it was tangible and wondered if I could have done anything beforehand to help her through it. I even realized that such thoughts were useless, but it all felt so real in that moment that I could barely hold myself together.

And then when we were alone, she had the audacity to apologize for possibly offending me with her tale.

It was an issue that countless people have underwent, even in the church, and it’s something that usually results in immediate condemnation. Yet condemnation was the farthest thing from my mind. I haven’t known her for very long, but I can honestly say that I love her. And in that love there was no judgment. Only deep regret that I hadn’t been there to support her.  That she had to endure it alone.

The thought that she could have kept her story to herself out of fear of offending me made me feel a whole host of negative emotions toward myself and the religious community in general. Yet it felt so powerful because she chose to tell me and my first response was grace.

This isn’t a post to talk about how fabulous I am. The desire to extend grace was the most humbling thing I have ever felt in my life. I realized that grace means you’re aligning yourself with someone. It’s not showing that you’re condoning their actions but rather that you see them as they were made to be and are willing to help them close the gap from there to where they currently are. Extending grace means that you might receive condemnation simply from associating with them. It doesn’t mean that you’ll receive grace in return and almost certainly guarantees that enemies will rise up immediately to punish you for daring to give them a free pass.

I would never presume that I’ve made any impact on her life at all. If you could write a life story that was exactly the opposite of mine, hers would be it. But I’ve learned so much from her. Even if we never spoke again, I will forever remember her as striking. Her appearance, her wit, her ability to cut through all of the crap in a situation or a person and call them out on it. Her tenacity is unparalleled and the way she can rebound from a bad situation and push through everything life throws at her is remarkable. She warns and even apologizes for her brashness but refuses to curb herself to fit a mold. She’s the type of person that everyone wants to tame but she’s exactly what we need to make us realize that molds are completely useless.

She’s changed my life.

We’d be offended by her story, and that’s exactly why we need it.

Tags: appreciation, discomfort, grace, learning, nightmare, pain, risk

I’ve struggled with depression for as long as I can remember. People shrug it off when I’m down and they wave away statements that admit to depression, and I’ve been guilty of it with other people myself. But for me, well, my first stark memory is of being in kindergarten playing with a toy in the sand in the classroom and realizing that I was alone and that no one wanted to play with me. This stands out vividly. Not so much the whole thing of being alone and realizing it, but the first drops of that toxic feeling started, I believe, in that moment.

By the time I was in first grade, at 6 years old, I was thinking of ways to kill myself.

Six. years. old.

There is something wrong with that. I think that’s proof of demonic activities and attacks and that anyone is subject to them. It’s not natural. A six year old shouldn’t even be capable of those thoughts or have a reason to think them. It wasn’t because I had a bad home life or was being abused or anything. I hadn’t even realized that it was abnormal to grow up without a father yet, and it was a while before I would even realize that not having a daddy was something that negatively impacted my life. My mom was, and is, awesome. I know that she covered me in prayer constantly, and that’s why I haven’t followed any of those very strong urges to end my life.

Although I still think about it (and I’ll be honest, over the past few months I have actually had dreams of it which is something that has never happened before), there has always been something blocking me from actually taking action. It’s almost like a tangible wall that I cannot break through- and I’m very thankful for that. It’s obvious that God has some reason for keeping me here and that He truly does care.

What has been one of the hardest aspects of this is that I have had to deal with this for about 15 years. I haven’t understood why God hasn’t stepped in to lift this burden off of me. I was raised to take authority over the enemy and was always told that he had no power in my life and allllll of these other things that are good and right but that made me actually feel like I was doing something wrong and that it was all a punishment and that there was something within me that caused this to happen to me. I felt like I had the responsibility of fixing it, and until I did, nothing was going to go right.

There’s so much talk about abortion and how everyone has the right to live and moreover how life is a gift and….it’s all exhausting to hear because I did NOT and have not ever really wanted to live. I just haven’t really understood the point, and I’ve never felt free enough to ask someone to help me.

Please wait for the second installment before you try to report me to a suicide hotline!

Tags: nightmare, pain, silence

You know how there is that one thing in your life that you are terrified will happen, and you try not to think about it too much lest it actually happen because you thought about it and revealed that it was your biggest fear? You beg God not to let it happen, to protect you from this, but it just looms there sometimes to jump out at you? You live in fear that it will happen.

Well, it happened.

I’ve spent so much of my life trying to be happy. I have had so many people tell me that I should be happy, that people would like me better if I acted happier, even if I just faked it. I’ve been prayed over, preached to, and had nearly every Christian tactic employed on my behalf so that I’ll be happy. I have completely ignored other areas of my life because I exhausted myself trying to be happy.

Yeah, well, that’s over. You know what? If you want smiles and cheer, go to Lakewood Church. A lot of people rag on this place because they think that it’s just motivational speaking, but I completely believe that the leaders of this church have a huge place in the kingdom of God, if nothing else than just to keep people like me from cutting our wrists while we read Lamentations and Ecclesiastes. Anyway, I am SO DONE trying to fight to be happy. I’m going to get on with my life and if happiness decides to find me eventually, so be it. If not, at least I haven’t wasted my life trying to chase it.

I don’t feel like happiness is even possible for a very, very long time now. I don’t even care. I’m actually kind of relieved. I don’t even know what happiness is or looks like and it’s nice to have a break from the whole ordeal, really.

It’s also nice to have a break from that looming fear. I’m not sure if I can make it through what happened, because my heart is so totally destroyed right now that I don’t even want to live. But at least rather than living in conjecture, I am living in the reality of what happened and even though it feels so much worse than I had anticipated, at least I have the relief of knowing that the initial discovery portion is over.

I also have the relief from believing for anything. Seriously, I’m done. I’ve never been this low in life and I’ve never had so little going for me. But you know what? It doesn’t even matter. In an ecclesiastical fashion, I’m so totally done with desire. This thing that I was believing for was the only thing keeping me motivated to do better and be better and accomplish anything in life. And now that my sole motivation is gone, I’m kind of relieved. There’s nothing stopping me from being average or below average anymore, and I just don’t care. I have no pride left.

My story ends here. I have no idea when it will pick up again. I feel like a writer who gets completely tangled up in the plot of her work-in-progress and just tosses the whole thing to the side because it sucks and she can’t figure anything out. I’m putting it into the bottom drawer, underneath the extra sheets, and I want it to get really brittle and stale.

Stupid story. Stupid life. Stupid Kayla.

Tags: heartbreak, nightmare, pain

All week, I’ve been thinking about and planning a post about hope. But something happened to completely subvert that whole notion.

Funny how that happens.

I had a horrible nightmare last night, and I need to write about it so that I can, hopefully, move on from it. Because I’ve been near tears since I woke up.

In the dream, Mom left me. Up and vanished. The scariest part was, it seemed like everyone was in cahoots. Everyone I knew had talked to her and told me that she was fine, no, great actually, and that she’d talk to me when she was ready. But somehow I knew that she planned to never talk to me again. No one offered me refuge. I couldn’t find the rest of my family, one of my best friends refused to take me in, and even my pastor was reluctant to talk to me. As soon as she left, I was completely scorned. It was as if she’d told everyone some horrid secret about me, ensuring that I was going to be an outcast as soon as she left. I was at her mercy, and there was none to be found.

I know that this would never happen, but the feeling of abandonment has plagued me since I opened my eyes. It was one of those dreams that wouldn’t let me wake up for the longest time, even though I tried. And then the usual safety and comfort of my bed was completely lost, and I was absolutely shaken to my core.

I’m not sure why I had this dream. I think it may have stemmed from some of the discomfort I felt last night. During our church service, I was “interviewed” by a pastor so I could offer my thoughts and opinions on some things. I was honest. I bared my heart up there, for everyone to see. In return, I got some smiles and nods, but I also received lots of frowns and follow-up comments like, “I love you, even though I didn’t agree with you.”

Thanks?

I have been really challenged by God lately to be honest about what I’m thinking and feeling. So I did that. But I guess I feel like it’s impossible for someone to truly see my heart, and completely disagree, and still love me anyway. And if they manage to do that, eventually they’ll just get tired of it…and leave.

Now we’ve reached the pinnacle, where all of my fears come together and He issues a challenge. Can I be honest, show my heart, face my fears of change and abandonment and being alone…but ultimately trust in Him? He created me, and to abandon His creation because she didn’t operate quite correctly would be contrary to His character. My two images of God are warring with one another, and I’m pretty sure the loving, nurturing one is winning. But sometimes the stern one comes back with a vengeance, and I’m left quaking.

Tags: nightmare