Experimenting with vulnerability

My mother loves to tell about how I made up songs and stories when I was little, particularly one where I created a marvelous diddy about a doorknob.  Singing and story came naturally to me, I suppose, as a child.  Books were my friends and companions, my teachers and my rejuvenation.  One time as discipline, Mom took away my books for two weeks. I remember sitting in front of my bookshelf, pining to read, gazing longingly at them.  That was the worst punishment I ever had.

In high school, I sang in the chorus and participated in theater. I was average, at best, in these endeavors.  I always felt a little behind, less polished and refined than my peers. When I was a senior, I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life when I settled into AP Psychology.  I LOVED that class.  And yes, today I am a psychologist.  But one little fact has rested with me for years, in the same jar I keep all my other secret comments that I take out and hold on crappy days.

I took AP English that same senior year.  Our teacher was cranky and quirky, with long toenails that edged out over her Birkenstocks.  She wore those gross shoes every single day.  I remember reading stories like Beowulf and A Prayer for Owen Meany, and writing and reading poetry.  Sitting down at the end of the year to my AP English exam was painful; it was the last one and tiredness was threatening to overwhelm.  I remember writing, and the cramps that resulted from actually using my hands (do they even still use blue books????), and then the next memory is the results coming in.

AP Psychology: 3

AP History: 4

AP English: 5

Now if you are not familiar with Advanced Placement scoring, you might think, wow that girl busted all of those with awful scores. But the best score you could get was a 5, and there it was on my writing.  It was not on the one I had pinned my career hopes, but on the one that housed my creativity and passion.  

Those do not pay the bills.  Nor are they believed in, respected, or supported as adolescents age and move toward college.  So psychology is where I stayed, and I believe that my gifts are well suited and have flourished within it.  But this is the feedback I have gotten over the years since that score, from a variety of people.

You have a way with words.  

You should write.

Have you ever thought about writing Bible studies?

When are you going to have a podcast?

When are you going to blog again?

Of course you should write a book.

You have wisdom beyond your years.

Hearing these across the years planted a secret garden inside of me.  But I would not tend it often, and when I did, it was through a hailstorm of shame phrases.  

Others are more eloquent.

There are so many voices, who needs another one?

Your thoughts are no good to put out there.

No one will read what you write.

You have no idea what you are doing.

You're not funny enough to write.

You're not smart enough to write.

Wisdom? Haha!  They have no idea what goes on inside my head. 

In the last two years the comments from others have increased and so I sit wondering when I am going to listen to the feedback handed me gently for many years.  It is scary, vulnerable, and uncertain to put your story and thoughts and beliefs out there in this wide internet.  Sitting with these feelings inside myself is excruciating.  Believing that there are words that could bless others is shaky.  But it finally feels like time to tend the garden, even knowing that there will be hailstorms from myself and others along the way.  

Thus the blog.  It will not be linear. Some days it might be boring, others insightful, and others where we can connect in vulnerability.  Psychology, spirituality, parenting, strength, weakness, sexuality; these are all paths it could go.  It may bear fruit of encouragement, one day it may make a book.  But what I know right now is that writing whatever is the obedient thing to do.  

In fifth grade I drew a picture of a plant with craypas.  It is not hideous and it is not amazing; it is just fifth grade average art.  My mother framed it several years ago and hung it on her wall, much to my huge embarrassment.  Every time I visited I would cringe internally, wishing she would put it in the attic, or better yet, the garbage.  Who hangs onto such poor art?   And I am not talking a small picture, it is HUGE.  It is still there, and over time I have grown to love seeing it.  I am getting used to seeing my vulnerable, imperfect, wonderfully average self displayed on the wall for all to see.  The crazy thing is that the more I see it or others see it, I love it a little more.  I love my whole self a little more.

Here's hoping that is what will happen here. That as I learn to hold my vulnerability a bit more, I will love my whole self more. And that my whole self can love others more tenderly and hospitably.  Welcome to the obedience project.