Just "us"

To the addict.

To the murderer.

To the divorced.

To the homosexual.

To the promiscuous.

To the thief.

To all the marginalized. 

Forgotten. 

or Condemned.

You are raw, vulnerable, and exposed.

Every hidden intent and action laid bare for all to see. 

Your mistakes, inadequacies, and misfortunes all held against you. 

You receive pointing fingers, malicious whispers, calloused judgments.

You’re tossed aside again and again by those that deemed themselves “good” or “worthy”.

I am just like you.

I am no better. 

If I am better at anything, its hiding. 

Just like the rest of us. 

Because we are all the same.

All broken in our own ways.

And the Truth is, I need you.

I need you to be a better version of myself.

A more honest version of myself.

Without you, I am stuck in my own false race of approval seeking and image keeping.

In your presence, I feel my own vulnerabilities.

I feel my own fragility as a human being.

I feel connected.

myself.

Home.

And maybe that’s why Christ seated Himself amongst the Humble.

Maybe He felt Home. 

My most vivid moments of Heaven on Earth have been seated across from those that are marginalized. 

I wonder how the Church would look if those that are marginalized had more of a voice.

Maybe we would all be a little more authentic. 

Maybe we would be able to confront more honestly our own demons.

Maybe we would realize that there really isn’t many difference between us after all.

Because the Truth is, the Root of our brokenness is pain. 

And all of us experience pain. 

And all of use seek to mend and stifle that pain in different ways.

I’m a therapist. 

I listen to people and their stories.

I get paid to listen.

But not just to their words.

I get to listen to their hearts

And I have yet to find a bad one.

Their hearts are the rawest, most authentic parts of themselves.

It openly reveals their intentions, and most of the time, that intention was to be good.

Most of them talk of how they feel ashamed and isolated. 

How they have been labeled “bad” and they struggle to not believe it.

They speak of the humiliation they have received amongst “Christians” and “the Church”. 

I cringe.

For I have felt similar things.

We keep tallies and measuring sticks in our back pockets at all times to ensure our “goodness”. 

If we are not like “them", if we have no done “that”...

then we are in.

“Us vs them”

Separation. 

Isolation. 

Not just from each other. 

But from ourselves.

The further we push “them” away, the deeper our callouses form. 

For there really is no “us” or “them”.

But just people.

Our Fathers.

Our Daughters.

Our Mothers.

And Our sons.

Breaking Boxes

There are layers to every person. Some operate mostly on the outermost layer and are completely satisfied. 

I have always immersed myself in the innermost layers and have had to force myself at times to surface in order to be functional. 

But lately, I have struggled to sink into those deeper layers. 

I think I am beginning to understand why. 

Fear.

I think there is a part of every person that deeply fears those deepest layers in themselves.

To have to delve into the mess of sorts is a nightmare at best.

Those are the places of deepest hurts, longings, betrayals, and all other forms of existential thought.

And something in us enables this sense of fight. To fight off those parts of ourselves.

Fight the feelings associated.

Fight the sense of hopelessness.

Fight myself.

I avoided most places where I had to engage in introspection. 

I think because it was going to force me to look at a part of myself that I had no control over… 

My brokenness. 

My Depravity.

And I hate being anything other than “good”.  

Or what I thought “goodness” was.

And I was so tired of wrestling.

So I just lived. 

Mundane day to day life. 

Wake up. 

work. 

eat. 

sleep. 

over.

and over. 

and over again.

And I was content for awhile, but it didn’t last long.

You can only run from yourself with yourself for so long. 

I was so tired of feeling like I never fit or belonged. 

So I sought to force myself into a box and tape my mouth shut. 

To keep myself from being myself. 

And because I’m a fighter, I fought. 

And in order to keep myself in the box, and from breaking out, I avoided most people and things that would force me to look at the being in the box. 

I just didn’t fit.

And it was so miserable. 

Cramped. Suffocating. Stuffy.

The only way to survive being in the box was to die slowly from the inside out.

And that’s what I did.

Very slowly. 

Almost unnoticed. 

Until one day, I looked in the mirror and didn’t know myself anymore. 

I began doing drastic things to try to break free, but to no avail. 

I had forgotten the being that I had trapped in the box. 

I had forgotten who I was.

My life was set out for me….

I would become a therapist, get married, have children, continue doing therapy (maybe while teaching on the side), grow old with my husband, and then our children would have children, and then we would be grandparents to those children, and then we would die. 

And that was my life. And that was what I was “supposed” to do. Because that would make me happy. And that was what all of my friends were doing, and it was “normal”. And I was taught that if I did not want those things, well then, there was something “abnormal” about me. 

Or maybe that I was afraid of commitment, 

Or maybe that I didn’t love children, 

Or maybe that I wouldn’t understand the fullness of God until I experienced marriage. 

The list of reasons why I did’t “fit in the box” was long and exhausting. 

And there is NOTHING wrong with those things. 

But they become wrong, if they become a box. 

And if the object or person does not fit in the box. 

Because then, they are not longer living authentically. 

They are living in rules, not in love. 

I always thought that my lack of “fitting-ness” was disconnecting me from God. That maybe my lack of “fitting-ness” was due to some inner sin or dysfunction that separated me from Him.

But I have found that Jesus aligned himself most with this that “didn’t fit”. 

Probably because He didn’t quite fit either.

He didn’t make it in the box that others had set out for who He was going to be and why.

Instead, He contradicted any label that was thrown at Him.

I cringe to imagine what would have happened if the Son of God would have forfeited who He was in order to fit in the box that we (depraved humanity) had set out for Him.

Maybe I should fear the same for myself.