i still don't know how to be

I live with a lot of inner turmoil, and I’m not really sure how to explain that, especially to myself.

It seems like there should be a reason. A justification. It seems like there should be a cause that can be addressed. Be fixed.

Photo by Kawê Rodrigues on Unsplash

Is something off in the balance of hormones in my body, chemicals in my brain? Is my blood sugar low? Am I anemic? Do I not sleep enough? Or do I sleep too much?

Is social media rotting my brain?¹

Am I not faithful enough? Would I be better if I prayed more? Is God standing ready to give me peace if only I asked and believed He would give it? Would I have better days more often if I could stick to keeping a gratitude journal, if I did my morning pages?

Maybe I just need to move my body more, get more cardio and more vitamin D.

The questions always end up in the spiritual realm and then circle back to self-help. And they always pelt me with possible solutions always rooted in what I should be doing that I am not.

Because clearly the problem is with me. Something is wrong with me. With my actions or my decisions. Or my indecision.

Maybe I’m just not doing what I’m made to do, what I’m called to do. Maybe I’m not listening to myself or to God. Maybe if I could really unlock what I want and actually do it, then, then, I’d be truly and always happy and at peace.

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The turmoil I feel is fueled, you see, simply by the fact that life is not perfect, that I am not perfect.

I should be over this by now, I think, but I can’t get over the lie that things are supposed to be perfect, that I am supposed to be perfect, and that even my feelings are supposed to be perfect. It seems to me like that’s the only way to know I’m doing things right, right? If I had things together like I should, I’d always be faithful, always hopeful. Never anxious, never downcast, never doubtful. Always happy. Or if not happy, at least content and at peace, no matter the circumstance.

This, by the way—this unshakeable, impossible-sounding contentment—is the “all things” Paul could do through Christ who strengthened him.

Philippians 4:13 (the unofficial biblical sponsor of American ambition) hits different when you actually read verse 12:

I know how to get along with little, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.

Paul said that, through Christ’s strength, he could contentedly live in any circumstance. He could get along with a lot or with nothing.

Here again, I feel the weight of all I must be doing wrong because, over here in my world, a problem as small as not eating enough breakfast is enough to ruin my day.

Meanwhile, over here in my troubled little self, a few unpleasant feelings are enough to rock my world for a couple days, a week, however long the gloom lasts.

I am oh-so-far away from Christ-who-strenthens-me-in-all-things-contentment.

It seems like, no matter what progress I feel like I’m making, I always end up back in the cistern², circling around in the mud looking for a way out, a rope, a foothold, a solution.

And when that fails, I circle deeper into the mud, defeated and dwelling on what must have gotten me here. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, or I wouldn’t be in this pit. Again.

With no hope of getting out, I wallow in anger and resentment and shame and regret.

Photo by Gary Meulemans on Unsplash

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And, then, the light gets through somehow.

Something lifts me out.

I try to replicate how the hope got in the next time, but I still don’t have the perfect prescription.

I plaster my wall with reminders that this is just how life is, imperfect, a little bent (or a lot bent), beautiful in the brokenness.

I swear and binge-read Anne Lamott and Nadia Bolz-Weber and turn the last page feeling better.

I put in my AirPods and let the lilt of Kate Bowler’s laugh make me feel hopeful in the darkness. I navigate over to my weekly dose of Kendra Adachi talking me down off the cliffs of perfectionism, showing me the small and incremental progress of a Lazy Genius.

I turn on the familiar strains of my indie Christian playlists. And if I’m really doing well, I play Taylor Swift and dance while I clean something.

I look at Scott the Painter’s artwork in my room, remember my favorite parts from his shows, and try, once again, to Say Yes.

Say Yes to this world, to this life, to the rough edges and broken places. Accept them. Learn to love them?

Is that what we’re supposed to do?

I think there’s a limit to that. There’s a level of brokenness that shouldn’t be accepted. I don’t think God approves of our violence, our war, our destruction, our hate. I don’t think God ordains suffering of any kind.

There’s a lot of evil, a lot of hell here, and I think God wants to eradicate it even more than we do.³

But I don’t think God hates us like we think He does—like religion tells us He does (with the same mouth it uses to say He loves us).

I stake my claim with John, the disciple Jesus loved, Son of Thunder gentled by age and writing with love-worn wisdom:

God is love.
1 John 4:8, 16

I don’t know how this is the conclusion to the turmoil I’ve been trying to untangle, but it is. God is love.

God is love that made me on purpose and with love. God is love that sees the best in me when I can’t see it myself. God is love so real it makes me squirmy, uncomfortable because it’s too much and I can’t live up to it. God is love telling me that love never asked me to live up to it anyhow. God is love that isn’t earned and isn’t conditional and doesn’t go away.

In 1 Corinthians 13 (the unofficial biblical sponsor of American weddings), Paul uses the same Greek word for love that John uses, agape. Is it a stretch, then, to say that Paul’s characteristics of love are also characteristics of God?

God is patient.
God is kind.
God is not jealous.⁴
God does not brag, is not arrogant. ⁵
God does not act disgracefully.
God does not seek His own benefit.
God is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered.⁶
God does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth.
God keeps every confidence.
God believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I don’t know whether this “if a=b and b=c, then a=c” kind of math works here, but I know I want this interpretation to be true. I know it feels true in my spirit. I also know that I’d like to type all that again and replace the word love this time with Natalie.

I’d like to be kind of human described here, marked and motivated by love in every action. I’d like it to be true of me, and I think we all would, wouldn’t we?

We might not agree that it’s possible, but I think we all want it. I think, in the best part of us, we know that our best hope would be for each of us to embody this kind of love.

It’s easy to twist that into the same kind of performative, perfectionist checklist that sucks me down into the mire of the pit again, if I make love something for me to do.

But what if loved is something I am?

Love is something I receive.

Maybe my inner turmoil isn’t going anywhere. And maybe God loves me anyway.

Maybe, the more I really know that God loves me, the less the turmoil will rage. Maybe.

I hesitate to draw that conclusion because it reduces God and His love to a solution. And we see how quickly my solution-spinning becomes deeper pit-sinking. But maybe. Maybe one day, an older, wiser, gentler version of me will get to testify that God’s love stills my storms more often than they rage.

Even if not, turmoil or no, contentment or failing at it again, God loves me.

Yes me. All of me. No matter what. In all ways, in all seasons, whether I want it or not.

God is love, and I am loved.

So love me or hate me, I'm not going anywhere
Leave me or take me, you still bear my signature
Know me or not, seen or forgotten
I'm not walking out on you
Love me or hate me, I'm not going anywhere
Leave me or take me, you still bear my signature
Know me or not, seen or forgotten
I'm not walking out on you

1. The answer to that one is most certainly yes, and yet I can’t quit it, nor figure out how to isolate what’s helpful about it from all that pulls me under.

2. Shout out to Jeremiah, weeping prophet, who reminds me that ending up in a pit doesn’t always mean you’re doing something wrong.

3. Looking around, I know that feels questionable, but that belief keeps hanging on to me.

4. The Torah says God is jealous a couple times. Maybe our language fails here somewhere.

5. If Jesus is the image of God, and I believe He is (Colossians 1), then we can see this is true in Jesus of Nazareth, humble in all He did.

6. When the Torah and the prophets seem that they might say otherwise, I have to think they must be understood differently in the light of Christ. (John 5:39-47, Matthew 5:17-18)