Is This Love?

No, but you are getting warmer...

I believe in a blessing I don't understand.

~Sara Groves

The hurt that broke your heart

 and left you trembling in the dark; 

feeling lost and alone

Will tell you hope's a lie 

but what if every tear you cry

 will seed the ground 

where joy will grow.

From the ruins, from the ashes

Beauty will rise

From the wreckage, from the darkness

Glory will shine

~Jason Grey

When I was 18, I fell in love.  Head-over-heels, fairy tale kind of love.  I knew he was "the one".  I felt safe for the first time in my life and I gave my heart completely to ... let's call him Fred.  As the young and foolish do, we moved quickly.  Four months after we started dating, we were engaged.  I had a man who truly loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.  Of course, by then I had our lives together mapped out.  I saw the future - the kids, what kind of wife I would be and ultimately the life I wanted.  All with Fred by my side to love me forever.  There was not a doubt in my mind that this man loved me, wanted me as much as I loved and wanted him.

Until he didn't two months later.  He said he'd never loved me and that all his old girlfriends were prettier than me.  He was a fool.

I believed in that love so completely it took four years (and Fred to marry someone else) before I finally believed that Fred didn't love me, actually had not loved me - not the forever love I had believed in so strongly.  

~20 years later

After I moved to Seattle, I picked up a book by a little known author named Don Miller.  As I read his books, I fell in love.  Not literally of course.  But there was something in how he wrote and what he wrote that made me feel less alone.  It was like he, if he met me of course, would understand me.  Ways that I thought about God and faith and relationships, he expressed those same thoughts in his writing.  One week-end, I signed up for a youth workers conference he was speaking at.  I was not a youth worker, so I went incognito (smile).  While his writing was powerful, his speaking was even more so.  I left the conference completely overwhelmed with emotion. But I didn't know why.  Since then I've had several opportunities to meet him and I know is it isn't really him that provokes these strong emotions. But something in my heart responds to his writing and speaking.  For some very bizarre reason, I feel loved.

Over a year ago, I met someone.  Someone who has become a friend and has come to matter a great deal to me.  This person has encouraged me and connected with me in an entirely new way from what I've experienced before.  My friendship with him has truly changed my life.

In my hyper-analytical brain, I began to wonder if there was any intention beyond friendship on his part.  While I care about him a great deal, I have known that a romantic relationship with him is not possible.  This week I finally worked up the courage to ask him.  I needed to know.  It was awkward and awful and the poor man was completely confused and kept saying "I'm sorry."  I tried to reassure him there was nothing to be sorry about.  It was something I needed to know but not something he had done wrong.  At this point, I hope our friendship recovers.

What I am slowly learning and experiencing rather painfully is a re-awakening.  My heart is beginning to remember how it feels to be loved.  I am catching glimpses of it; through Don Miller's writing and speaking and through my friendship with a man I respect and admire.  God is slowly (very slowly) causing my heart to remember.  Why?  To prepare me for something or someone and to help me choose not to run away at the first sign of it.  Because let's face it - the first time around crushed me.  I would never choose to go through that again. However, experiencing how love might feel even in a very small way is a feeling like no other.  And as my heart begins to remember, I begin to hope that it may happen for me yet.

Trading What's Broken for Beauty

If I had the chance
To go back again
Take a different road, bear a lighter load
Tell an easy story

I would walk away
With my yesterdays
And I would not trade what is broken for beauty only

~Nicole Nordeman/Sunrise

My identity was formed by a belief that what I did for others defined who I was.  If I did enough for someone, they loved me and I was valuable.  If I made a mistake, their love was taken away and I was worthless.  By the time I was in my mid-twenties, this belief made me desperate for deep lasting relationships and extremely co-dependent.  I believed I was intrinsically flawed.  That who I was made it so no one could truly love me.

When I chose to leave Montana to move to Seattle seven years ago, I was very lost.  My business had failed, my attempts to "fix" my family were for naught and I hadn't thought of romance in over a decade.  All I knew is I had to find out who I was apart from the people and relationships that had defined my life.  I remember praying as I crossed Snoqualmie Pass, "God, here I am.  A wreck and a failure.  And, by the way, extremely angry at you.  You seem to have led me here so let's see what You can do."

What He's done is amazing.  A miracle really.  Much as been healed.  I called it recovery for a long time.  It was hard and painful and so much work.  Now I call it life.  As I approach 40, I can honestly say I'm not the same person I was.  I've grown and changed and am better for all the circumstances that led me here today.  And I'm far from finished.

There are a  few people that have believed this for me and that it was in me long before I did.  People who loved on me, some who prayed for me and all have walked parts of the journey with me.  People who are not surprised by the success and life I'm enjoying now. 

When I was offered a permanent job at Amazon; as I was listening to my boss say "I believe in you.  I'm taking a chance on you, with the belief that you can do this" I heard other voices as well.  It wasn't just him saying it.  It was the people who have said it before.  I didn't listen before; I didn't believe you meant it; I didn't believe it was true.  When I said "yes" to the job, in that moment, I truly started to believe in the person God made me to be.

When I only saw brokenness, you saw beauty.  What an amazing gift!

There are not words to express how humbled I am by the people that love me.  The people who see beauty in me.  I am truly thankful.  I want you to know that I feel like you are a part of what my life will be from here.  I'm so excited to see what the next chapter looks like.  My counselor, who recently quit his practice, said "I'm not going anywhere.  Your story is just getting good."  I love that.  After healing and recovery, comes redemption.  It is beginning and I can't wait to share with you what that's going to look like for me.

Wanted vs. Belonging

I've been silent for five months on this platform.  I haven't had the words or the clarity to honestly answer the question posed to me "How are you?".  For you who know me, that is not a question I take lightly.  I want to know "how I am" and "why I am" and a host of other questions that are exhausting to answer at certain times in one's life.  I spend a good deal of time internally evaluating "how am I  _____" - feeling, doing, thinking, believing, ad nausea...(smile)


Tonight I don't have any answers but I have something to write; something honest.  My heart was full of a question that kept turning around in my brain.  The question is: "Is being wanted the same thing as belonging?"


Let me define a bit more of what I mean when I say belonging.  Safe, the opposite of lonely, at peace, no trying, no "shoulds", no "have tos" and no "making it work".  I would not say it's only a feeling, although that's part of it.  I want it to be a place of being or something I experience often.


I've moved into a house (rental).  It's the first time I've lived in a house since I left home after high school over 20 years ago.  It's wonderful - big kitchen, big living room, hardwood floors, fireplace.  It's quiet.  And I feel safe here, which is no small thing.  It's close to my friends and will allow me to "do life" more often with them.  It's not a home yet though.  I do not equate belonging with a physical place.  As I child, we moved every 4-5 years.  I've now lived in Seattle longer than anywhere my entire life; six and a half years.  For me, belonging has not been a place.


There are times, especially right after reading Jane Austen, I believe belonging is and/or involves another person.  Some as-of-yet unknown person who will belong to me and I will belong to them.  To complete me; fill in all the things I lack.  It's a child's day dream.  A fairy tale that isn't meant to be true. But wouldn't it be lovely if that is how it worked?  If all of one's happiness depended entirely on another person? (another smile)


At my current job, I am, for the most part, wanted.  I've been trying very hard to convince myself it is enough.  Be thankful; be content and stay in the security of this opportunity.  The struggle is, I want both.  I'm not saying that I'm looking for a job where I can fully belong (although let's face it - that would be nice).  There are levels of belonging.

Being wanted, in my history, has very little to do with me as a person.  Can I do great things for someone at my current job?  Of course.  Is there a need for my skills?  Absolutely.  And here is where the ideas finally come together (possibly).  I want, at least in part, to be wanted for me as a person as well as what I do.  That could give me a small sense of belonging I think.  It could be as small as someone asking me a personal question; taking the time to get to know me.  As I write, I realize that I believe belonging is relational.  Whether this is true or not, remains to be seen.


I question sometimes if this means I have less faith or that my relationship with God is not very strong.  I do know, believe and sometimes feel that sense of belonging I am searching for in my relationship with God. God also created us to be in relationship with other people.  The Bible says that it was not good for Adam to be alone.  And he had to have had the closest relationship with God in the history of man.  I think both are good.


No tidy endings tonight.  Just a window into my heart and mind - "how I am doing".  I love that I get to share that with you and that you will listen and care.  Thank you!