Love. Really?

I Do Not Love God. The day I said those words was the beginning of a very peaceful time in my life. Almost as soon as I said it I was overcome by a sense of relief. The world fell blissfully silent. I was done pretending, done postulating, done apologizing; for the first time, I was honest. All my life I had chased after God. It is hard to have a relationship with someone who is invisible and silent, but I had always been told that it was possible. So I tried. The relationship I fashioned in my heart was as real as any non-mortal relationship can get. I talked to Him all the time, I read the bible whenever I could, I waited desperately for Sunday to come around, so I that I could go and sit and wait for the chance to experience God’s presence. There were many spiritual epiphanies along the way, many moments of deep conviction. There were times where I was certain I felt God reach right down from heaven and touch my heart. There is something incredible about being connected to being so incredible and unexplainable.

Dad always told me that love is not a feeling, it is a choice. Love is a duty, it is a commandment. Even though I never “felt” it, I had absolute faith that God loved me. So of course I “loved” him back. But I always felt secretly guilty. I was never moved to tears like some of the women at church. I found it difficult to talk about God, because I had no personal proof of his existence. I poured all my emotions into the words “I love you Lord,” but it never seemed real. I felt like I was lying, and I felt like God knew.

We had been dating for about a month when Husband first told me he loved me. By that point we had already fallen hard for each other. We connected on a level I had never experienced before. Our relationship was effortless and incredible, but I didn’t know if I should call the feeling “love.” Love meant duty. Love meant debt. He didn’t owe me anything, and he wasn’t committed to me, so what did he mean when he said “I love you?”

Along with the passion and excitement of romantic love, I also recognized a familiar feeling of attachment, not unlike what I feel for my brothers and sisters. Could it be that “love” is that aching sense of missing someone when they’re gone? Is “love” the name of the feeling you get when you’re watching movies and laughing hysterically with your sisters? Is “love” that swelling in your chest when your baby brother recognized you’re face after 2 months away from home? I do not know if a person exists who REALLY wants to spend their time with God. But after falling in love, I knew that I felt nothing for God but awkward, frustrated, desperation.

Does anybody really truly LOVE their god? Would people still claim to love him if it wasn’t “the greatest commandment?” Is it even possible to love something so invisible, intangible, and unbelievable?

Starving

This is a short story i wrote about anorexia for my Fiction Literature class. It is a modern retelling of "A Hunger Artist" by Franz Kafka. I drew from my own experience with disordered thought to write this.

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In the College years, mom and dad’s interest The Girl’s anorexia suffered a marked decline. It used to be that she could never take a breath without being asked if she was feeling well, but College changed all that. High school was a different time. Back then the whole family was engaged in keeping her “healthy”. At first they didn’t notice when she stopped eating, but it was never long before her hollow cheeks gave her away. Parental involvement grew from day to day, suddenly they wanted to talk to her, suddenly even her teachers seemed to care. Two weeks would go by, maybe three, and then they would take her to see the “Doctor.” It was a new one every time. They examined her with stethoscopes, needles, and prying questions. Some nights, mom and dad would make her sit at the table with them for a talk. So she sat there, knee’s pressed tight to her sharp unpadded ribs, and pretended to listen. They would cling to each other for safety, and mom would sputter and cry. The Girl would smile and nod, and sometimes let mom hold her hands, (if only to let her feel how skinny she was.) But inevitably she would withdraw back into herself. She wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, just feeling. She focused on that deep, delicious emptiness inside and took teeny tiny sips of cold black coffee through a straw.

Eventually mom and dad would give up on conversation. They would work together (for once) and take shifts discretely watching her, like guards. She often heard them whispering about drugs and boyfriends, trying to find a way to fix her. They thought she was troubled, or that she had become a victim of some kind. Sometimes they would lay traps for her, pretending to be late in picking her up from school, so they could watch and see what bad crowd she had fallen in with. Nothing was more frustrating to The Girl than these traps. They made her almost want to eat again, just to prove that she was fine. She stopped talking to all her friends, and would spend every weekend at home with the family. But this just made them all the more suspicious that she was hiding some bad influence. The Girl was quite willing to spend every waking hour with them, just to prove, again and again that there was nothing wrong with her. She was happy and well adjusted, and skinny.

Of course no one could watch her at all times of day and night, so they remained suspicious that she was harboring some deep psychological damage. Only The Girl herself knew that there was nothing wrong. She starved because she wanted to, because it made her happy. She knew that starving would completely satisfy her, if it were not for all the questions and doctors and worries and fears. There were other things that made starving unsatisfying for The Girl, things like Grandma’s eyes filling with tears at every family party. The little cousins were always afraid to come near her because they found the sight of her gaunt flesh too terrifying. She supposed they all thought she hated herself, but The Girl knew what nobody else knew: starving felt amazing. She made no secret of the fact that she was happy. She felt good and clean and delightfully hollow, but everyone insisted on pitying her. They all thought she was sad and sick, and she became more and more determined to prove them wrong.

The girl soon learned, however, that mom and dad would only withhold judgment for a little over a month. After about 40 days she would inevitably find herself in a cold white hospital bed, with vile, liquid nutrition being pumped in through a tube. They often came in the night, when she was lying deep in a mountain of blankets, hovering next to sleep. Dad would roll her up in the blankets like a straight jacket and carry her down the stairs while mom stood by whimpering and clutching at her nightgown. More than once The Girl had considered struggling, but she always found that her body was strangely weak and unresponsive. It never failed to make her angry. Why now after 40 whole days? Why did they insist on robbing her of her source of joy? She could have gone on so much longer, but they had no respect for her body, no faith in her choices. They would leave her there in treatment for days, and eventually welcome her back home with an obnoxious feast. “This time she’s cured for sure” they would say, and mom would spoon tiny mouthfuls of soup into The Girl’s dry mouth.

And so she lived for many years, with brief periods of “health” in between sessions of happiness. Eventually however, mom and dad grew tired. Grandma stopped crying, and the cousins got used to her horror story body. Every Doctor in town had long since given up, she was a lost case. They had all come to wrong conclusion, still after all this time, no one believed her when she said that starving made her truly happy. After graduation, she left for a college 9 hours east. It was a big busy place with a thousand new faces. There were people of every shape and size, and no one ever thought there was a thing wrong with her. They gave her a tiny room at the end of a hall, and she spent most of her time there with stacks of books and tiny little coffee pot that brewed one weak cup at a time. Sometimes she would leave the door open, and the occasional burst of young voiced would bring a surge of emotions. It was not long, however, before she learned that the voices were not coming her way. Every once in a while the Resident Assistant would stop by for a little chat, but even those visits became infrequent.

So The Girl turned her focus to starving. Soon she grew too tired to bother with class. She sat in the dark and felt the sweet shudder of the air slipping in and out of her lungs. She was finally doing it, starving for longer than she had ever hoped. The name tag on her door grew tattered and fell down as time lost all meaning. No one came to her door any more, of course they didn’t! They had nothing to be worried about. Finally they understood that she was perfectly fine. Starving filled her soul filled with unshakable satisfaction.  Days passed, the semester ended and another one began.

One day, the facilities manager happened to notice the tiny room at the end of the hall. “Why haven’t we rented out this room?” he asked. Then someone remembered the tiny girl, with feather soft hairs all over her body. “Did she forget to move out?” they wanted to know. They poked around in the dark until they found her, curled up under a mountain of blankets near the floor heater under the window. “Are you alright?” asked the manager.

 “Did I miss my finals?” she asked, her voice now a raspy breath. The manager gestured to his attendant to get to a phone. He mimed a 3-didget phone number, and then leaned down closer to the figure on the floor.

 “It’s okay” he told her, “they will forgive you.”

“I just wanted you all to respect me” she whispered.

“Why shouldn’t we respect you, you poor thing?”

“Because I HAVE to starve. I can’t help it. I can’t stop” The manager seemed moved by her pitiful words. He found her skeletal hand in the blanket cocoon and held onto it tightly.

“Why?” He sounded tearful, “why can’t you stop?” He moved his ear closer to her chapped lips.

“Because I couldn’t ever find anything else to make me happy. If I had found it, believe me I would have loved to live just like you and everybody else…” and those were her last words. The ambulance came, and calls were made to the family. Dad tried to sue the school for neglect, but The Girl had been an adult, and nothing ever came of it. The school cleaned that tiny room right up and rented it out to vibrant young soccer player named Maya. Girls congregated in her room every night, and caused a cheerful ruckus that kept the RA on her toes. Some people found Maya to be too boisterous and loud, but they mostly just braced themselves, surrounding her like planets to the sun, and never wanted to move on.

Heartsick

I have spent the majority of this week feeling heartsick. My days are interrupted every hour or so by a sudden pang of sorrow. My stomach drops and my chest constrict, and I swallow hard to keep back tears. Earlier this week, a very dear friend of mine shut me out of her life forever. Even now I can’t believe that she meant the things she said… Our friendship hasn’t always been perfect, but I always thought of her a sister. You fight with your sisters sure, but you laugh with them more. It doesn’t matter what paths your lives take, you will always be connected by that unbreakable childhood bond. I guess I was wrong.

I met her when I was 11 years old. We didn’t go to church before that because Dad couldn’t find one that was “Christian” enough. We met a pastor and his family at a home school convention and they invited us to their church. The first day there I was felt so awkward and alone, and then I met her, and we hit it off immediately. She was my first friend really, outside of family.

It wasn’t long before we started begging our parents to let us spend more time together. We wrote stories and made home movies, and played piano together, and mostly we talked, about everything from theology to mythology. We had sleepovers all the time and would stay up till 3am jabbering on and on.

She was the only person who noticed when I started cutting myself. I remember she cried, and begged me not to hurt myself.

 As we got older, I spent a hundred free weekends at her house. We took the dogs out on ridiculously long walks in the country. When I was dealing with depression, she was dealing with a panic disorder. I didn’t judge her and she didn’t judge me, we supported each other no matter what. We were sisters. More than once I fiercely defended her to people who dismissed her as “the holier-than-thou pastor’s daughter.” They didn’t know her like I did. She was sweet and sensitive and misunderstood.

She was third bride’s maid in my wedding, right after my two sisters. And when I lived 900 miles away, I drove all the way home to be there for her bachelorette party. I was the only one there who knew the right size to get. Of course I knew, we had borrowed each other’s pajamas a million times. A few days before her wedding we sat and talked about how fast this day had come. Wasn’t it just yesterday we were 12 years old; fishing with her grandpa and joking about our someday weddings? We walked to the park that night while comparing wedding rings. We talked about having babies, and I promised that my kids would call her “Auntie,” she said hers would do the same.

It wasn’t until I started to question my faith that I saw a change in our relationship. She became a bit distant, almost suspicious. We had periods where she wouldn’t even speak to me because she was offended by a link I’d posted on my Facebook. I wised up pretty quick and stopped posting links to things that didn’t accurately represent my thoughts. After one too many uncomfortable Facebook chats, I called her one day to sort it all out. We talked for a good hour and I explained how I just wasn’t sure of things anymore. “I still believe there is probably a God” I told her, “but I don’t really know for sure, I just need time to heal.”

When she told me she was pregnant, I was overjoyed. We went to dinner and she had twice as much food as I did. I remember smiling and thinking that someday I would tell the baby how mommy forgot her wallet and Aunt Sarah bought enough food to feed Mamma and Baby.

The last time we really talked was in January sometime, and then my life got really busy: school, tax season at work, marathon training, I kind of lost track of her. Last week I heard that she had finally publisher her first novel. I had read a dozen rough drafts of that book and I was VERY excited to see it in print. I bought it on my kindle, and half way through I decided to go write a quick note on her Facebook wall about it. And that’s when I noticed that she and her husband had un-friended me. Confused, I texted her to ask what was up, and the answer I received made me instantly sick to my stomach.

“You become like the people you hang out with. I don’t want to become bitter and anti-Christian like you”

There was more. Much more. She told me she couldn’t have me in her life anymore because I disrespect the things she believes in. Her husband texted me as well, ordering me to cease contact with his wife. What did I do? “I will still look back fondly on the memories of our friendship,” she said. Fond memories? Is that really all that’s left? I thought we were sisters. She could have converted to Hinduism and moved to India and I still would have loved and respected her. I would have gotten up in the middle of the night so I could call her in her time zone.

I am miserable, and I’m trying to find a way to blame myself. But what did I really do wrong? What could I do to make everything okay? Should I apologize for questioning the existence of God? Should I swallow the pain I feel when I walk into church? Do I have to pretend to be someone I’m not in order to keep the people I love in my life? The questions I ask myself are painful enough without the reproach I get for asking them.

She gave birth to a daughter this week; A little baby girl that I will never meet. She will never call me “Aunty” and I will never get to tell her stories of how adventurous and silly her mommy always was. My heart breaks a little more every day. How many more friends will I lose on this journey?

(Because this post received so much traffic, there are a few things I would like to clear up for my readers. I did not write this post out of spite, anger, or impulse. After a year of distant disapproval, my friend and her husband purposefully removed me from their lives. The words they used were clear, forceful, and very familiar. My relationship with my friend had been falling apart piece by piece for almost a year. Since the very first day I started struggling with my faith I noticed a distinct and negative change in our relationship. If there had been a way to salvage our relationship I WOULD HAVE DONE IT. But I was told in no uncertain terms that she was through with me. If I somehow misinterpreted all of this, I wish she would tell me. I have tried to reach out to her many times since this post was published. All I have received in return is anger, and some of the most hurtful language I have ever experienced. I wrote this post with a broken heart. I was certain my friend would never be contacting my again, much less reading my anonymous blog. I am emotionally exhausted from this entire experience, maybe I shouldn’t have tried so hard to get her back when she started shutting me out. Maybe if i had just let her drift away like she wanted, then all of this wouldn't hurt so bad.....)

Un-Ignorable

My feet pound the pavement relentlessly.

It’s been an hour and I’m coming up on mile 6. Four more to go… I’m cold and sore. I need motivation. On days like today I have to dig deep for the strength I need to keep on going. But my damaged psyche doesn’t know the difference between inspiring and belittling. My footsteps turn into words:

“fat, fat, fat, fat.”

I can suddenly feel the eyes of every passerby on my enormous body.

“fat, fat, fat, fat”

 I am mortified. I resolve to run faster.

 Maybe if I push harder these thick legs will melt a little,

                                                      these strong arms with shrink a little,

                                                                                  these breasts won’t protrude so far.

I find myself apologizing to the sidewalk for the weight of my body. More than anything in the world, I want to disappear.

As I drag my tired body over the last few miles, my mind is full of images. What would it be like, I wonder, to grow too small for all my clothes? To take up only half of a chair? To blend right in with the crowd instead of standing out like a sore thumb,

                                                                                 or a black eye,

                                                                                              or a broken nose?

I don’t want to be a skeleton, just small enough to be ignored. Maybe without all these eyes on me I wouldn’t have to hate myself so much.

I reach my apartment at long last, thankful for the opportunity to disappear behind my uniform grey door. It is easy to ignore my little home, and that makes me feel safe. As I’m stretching, I stare mournfully down at my legs. They are short and stout from the bottoms of my shorts to the top of my wooly running socks. I imagine how they will look one day, long and willowy and narrow.

 I reach down and grab my calves for deeper stretch,

                                                                                  .....and suddenly my daydream ends.

 My legs are all muscle; completely solid from the knee down and only a little softness around my thighs. Reality hits me like snow ball to the face: startling, refreshing, and somehow exhilarating.

I am not a big version of someone else, I am a healthy version of ME.

Call me big-boned,

                                     fat,

                                             athletic

                                                             or plus sized,

it doesn’t matter. I need to learn to call myself Sarah.  I cannot change my body any more than I can change who I am.

My body is muscled and curvy,

                                                           ......just like my heart is strong and compassionate.

Like it or not, I will never be able to disappear.

I feel a smile creep across my face.

Could it be that I have already arrived?

 Relief floods my heart as I realize the truth. My endless struggle for the perfect body finally over. My body IS perfect. Every unique inch of me is a reflection of who I am inside.

I am bold,

                       I am strong,

                                                   I am beautiful.

                                                                                 I am un-ignorable.

Something to Rant About



Is this real life?

 If you're feeling a little too happy today, or just looking for something to fuel your frustration; google the phrase "Godly Marriage." This is sure to ruin your day!

I was doing some research today for a blog post I'm working on when I typed in that unfortunate phrase. "Godly Marriage." Most of the articles I found said the exact same things:

Men must lead, women must follow, follow these rules or your marriage will fall apart, etc etc.. This article however, takes the cake. It spells out (in no uncertain terms) what all the other christian marriage guru's were too PC to say. I've included a few quotes, but be sure to stop by the website for the full article. Sweeping generalizations and stereotypes are not enough for Dr. Keith Sherlin. He will not rest until you are thoroughly convicted of your many marital sins. Enjoy the ride folks, and be sure to tie your computer down to the desk or you might end up chucking it at the wall....

"A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation"


"Men must love the wife enough to work and provide for the essential needs of the woman. Procrastination, or being lazy, will damage the relationship."


"The woman must understand that God has designed man in such a way that sexual fulfillment is one of the most essential ways that he understands his mate's love"


"In the cases where the woman neglects her body, appearance, or other detail to make herself attractive to her spouse she has become to some degree a liar. She deceived her mate into thinking she would maintain this appearance in the courting process. Then when she thinks she has won the man she lets her body go to waste, her appearance dwindle with little to no concern to please the senses and eye of her mate. This is deceptive and sinful."

Now granted, this is one of the worst articles I've ever seen, but it was on the FIRST PAGE of my "Godly Marriage" google search. And i found nothing by a Christian that refuted it. Just lots of other well-known Christian leaders saying the same exact thing in softer words.

I really want to believe that Christianity is not really diametrically apposed to equality, but Christian literature is making it pretty hard.

"The Girls"

If you have ever worked in an office, you know how indispensable Administrative Staff is.

 I get up early every morning, put on professional business clothes, comb my short hair, and drive to the office just like everyone else. I unlock the doors and turn on the lights, make the coffee and turn on the phones. I spend 8 to 10 hours at the office every day. I keep the office supplied, I do all the vital paperwork, I pay the office bills, and interact with all our clients.

A job like mine usually requires a minimum 2 year degree and experience. My profession is not easy. It is not fun. It is not a joke. But every day I go into the office to do my job, I am dismissed, talked down to, and marginalized.

My boss consistently refers to the admin staff as “The Girls.” The other two women on our team of three are middle aged mothers. When do they earn the title of “Woman?” What do we have to do to be taken seriously as business people?

Am I the only one who cares about this?

I met a male Administrator once. He was a 20-year-old student who worked part time as a Receptionist. He did nothing but answer phones and browse Facebook. All. Day. Long. His boss (an older man) called him “Sir” and often praised his accomplishment of being a student and employee at the same time. He used words like “young” and “ambitious” and “smart” when he talked about his Receptionist.

But I’m just a girl. Married, going to school 10 hours a week, working full time, indispensable team member, but just one of “The Girls.” It disgusts me.

I mentioned my frustration to a fellow administrator once, and she called me “a crazy feminist.” I asked her to define “feminist” and her only response was that she “doesn’t have a fit when a man holds the door open.” Are American women so ignorant that they don’t see the oppression and discrimination going on before their very eyes? How can I demand the respect I deserve when the women around me don’t mind being marginalized?

I have news for you America: sexism is alive and well. I see it every single day. I just wish there was something I could do about it.

Value?

Leaning against the door of my bathroom stall, I closed my eyes tight and counted to 60, 3 times. The box said to wait three minutes for the best results. We’d only been married 2 weeks, and here I was in McDonald’s bathroom in Wisconsin taking a pregnancy test.

 A baby right now would ruin everything;

                   all our plans,

 all our possibilities.

                                                             But somehow I was still desperately hopeful.

When I opened my eyes and saw that tiny pink minus sign, I was shocked at the misery that swept over me.

 “I don’t want a baby” I whispered to myself. “I don’t WANT to be pregnant.”

 I quickly wiped away my tears and went outside to my anxious husband. “Crisis averted!” I joked, but I avoided eye contact. I didn’t want him to see the emptiness in my eyes.

That was the first of many negative pregnancy tests. Every time I bought a box at Walgreens I secretly hoped that THIS would be the time. THIS would be the test that would come back positive. And every time I would throw the negative stick in the garbage and cry on the inside if not for real. I didn’t understand why it made me feel so awful. Until recently, I was sure it was my god-given desire to nurture that made me hate myself for being childless.

In a sense, that is true. But it’s not a god-given desire: it’s just my P/QF programming.  

This is not a post about how Quiverfull taught me to want babies.

 This is not even about how Patriarchy taught me that I didn’t deserve to dream big and reach my goals.

                                                      This is about something deeper.

                                                             This is about identity

                                                                     and value.

Most Christian-raised kids are told that they have no inherent value. I was told to find my identity and value in God alone. I internalized that to mean that God was the only thing that made me worth loving. Without him I was I worthless, useless piece of garbage. As a kid I constantly reminded myself how worthless I was. It didn’t take long for that to sink in. I tried and tried to be close to god, but he was always so far away. I knew he didn’t care about me. And I knew it was because of how worthless I was.

Ashamed, I started looking elsewhere for something to bring value to my useless shell.

“I am valuable because I do my chores faster than anyone else”

“I am lovable because I sing in front of the church”

“I am worthy because I punish myself with a razor blade”

“I am respectable because I exercise 25 hours a week”

I have transferred my sense value from one thing to the next for my entire life. When I got married, it was like all of that was suddenly cut out from under me.

Everything in my life was

                   brand new,

       but I was still the same,

                  and now I had nothing left to bring value to my existence.

I have come to realize what was really going on in my heart every time I took a pregnancy test. I was hoping against hope that a tiny pink plus sign would show up in that window and give me a reason to keep on living.

Every day I am learning to love myself for the first time in my life. I am learning to find value in myself. I am slowly discovering that I have an identity apart from god,

                                              or parents,

                                                         or skills,

                                                              or accomplishments.

                                                                              I am valuable because I am human.

 And so are you.

 I don’t want a baby right now. But someday when I have one, I promise you I will tell them everyday how worthy they are. How precious they are. How VALUABLE they are.

 It seems like a simple lesson, but let me tell you: the older you get, the harder that lesson is to learn.