Safety Dance

I’ve had Safety Dance stuck in my head ALL DAY!

I could totally analyze this song. It’s so deep. If you think of dancing as living out relationships, when your friends refuse to dance with you they aren’t cooperating and making the relationship harmonious. They are just on the sidelines or worse just standing still in the middle of the dance floor.

There’s a picture of God as the one who dances with himself. I think it’s really cool that he invites me to join him in this crazy dance that he’s inventing. I don’t think I’m a good dancer, I’m more of an expressive sloppy dancer really, sometimes I get stuck in a pattern and it looks weird. Communal dancing is kind of a hidden art form in America. We used to dance as a community (you know square, or contra dancing). The few times I’ve done that I loved it, because it’s moving together and just like playing a game and you don’t even have to be good at it to enjoy it. 

There are so many things that I feel like we think we have to be “professional” or expert level at before we’re allowed to enjoy it but the pain of getting there just kills it. So we say we like things when really they feel shity because we have all these expectations that we would be good at it. I hope I can dance badly and have the best time of my life because I suspect that dancing badly and enjoying it is far better than dancing well and hating it.

Shifting to a different topic

As you know if you’re reading this thing with any sort of regularity I quit my job recently. Now I’d like to give you an idea of what I’m thinking my next career step will be.

 After thinking it through, for like a half my life, I’ve come to the realization that I do better with very small groups of people. Also that I am more comfortable in an environment where healing and progress are goals. I’ve been told many times that talking to me is just like talking to a therapist. At first I resisted this idea because I was tired of doing school and there are things about the therapy business that I don’t like. Now I think it’s a real possibility. But first I need to figure out how to support myself through more school.

Another thing that’s reoccurred to me a lot since I was 15 is the spa industry especially esthetics. No I don’t think it’s perfect there are things about the beauty industry that make me sick. But I think it’s valuable to have someone out there who genuinely is about the health and wellness of the person in front of them not attaining the impossible image on the magazine cover. (Because let me tell you right now, those images are paintings they are not real. I know they look real, sort of, but they aren’t. I mean Google it there are a bunch of before retouch after retouch comparisons out there.)

So here’s the two step plan. One, become a licensed esthetician preferably the more advanced kind that can work in clinical settings. Build up a little practice then do that part time as I, two, get a master’s in some sort of therapy field as yet undetermined. I think this is a great plan and if I only succeed in doing the first step, no problem, that’s also a sustainable career. 

The as yet undetermined part is a little worrying. Oh well, that’s what I got now. That and the urge to point out that Esther and esthetician share the same first five letters, cheesy, I know, but people love cheese and it sells. AND I’m well aware that my name sake was a beauty queen (literally).

That really is all I have.

About Quitting

2" By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." Genesis 2:2-3(NIV)

10 “For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.” Exodus 23:10-11 (NIV)

Recently I quit my job. It was interesting to see my coworkers’ reactions. Every one of them secretly wished they could do what I am doing, just stop and not work for a while. 

My two favorite reactions were these; one actor openly admitted he was jealous and wanted to do what I am doing and the other went straight into telling me, “it’s a hard job marked out there…” I highlight these because the honest one was a bit of fresh air, no digging through subtext, but the worried one was more typical of how people respond to hearing that I don’t have a project lined up to jump into.

What the phrase, “it’s a hard job market,” really says is that, I should stay in this situation because it is a sure thing. What it does not take into account is my real situation. What the person who said this does not know is that staying, at this point, is way more dangerous than going. Yes, I work hard and I do a good job but the parade of crises I have been managing for the past two and a half years has left me depleted. There has been no recovery time. 

As a fighter I know that training should be challenging and sometimes hard but that rest and recovery are equally important to achieving the lasting goal of success. In work and personal relationships the same is true; there must be times of renewal. Without renewal I am dangerous because now I cannot be present to the circumstances that are actually in front me. I am too busy nursing old wounds and too distressed to properly care for the new ones. I am also unable to care for anyone else’s wounds and am more likely to lash out and wound others both emotionally and physically (you don’t know how many times I nearly punch someone in the gut).

In the environment that we were working in this was not a good position to be in. 

I have learned a lot about myself through all of this, that I need a good network of friends who can support me through these hard times, that sometimes it is better to be broke than broken, and that we all put way too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect. I have become very pragmatic, or cynical (I’m not sure), about perfection. I realized within the last few months that, though I am not living my ideal life I am living someone’s ideal life, and within the past year or so I have come to believe that we humans have no clue what perfection really looks like. We actually may be living perfectly already but unaware of it because part of what it means to be a perfect human is to be flawed, or at least unique, which oddly we do not like right now.

This does not mean we stop trying to mature and become “better” people. It just means that it is ok to own your mistakes and immature habits as your starting point and to not put another layer of pressure on yourself because you are not what you want to be yet. All this beauty and maturity of character takes time and pain to develop. But there must be rest.

See, even God rested and that is a lesson to us. We were created to need rest so that there would be an opportunity for our community to carry us. On my own I am insecure and very weak but if my friend and family carry me I am powerful. With this support I can and have survived two and a half years of difficult work. With this same support I can do something new and equally good. The quest now is for healing and sustainability.

I do not know what that will look like yet. I do know that it will require a shift in professional focus. I cannot do what I have been doing for the past six years. It just took too much out of me. 

I have a desire to see people understand themselves and to forgive themselves as I have come to forgive myself and am beginning to understand myself. This is the beginning of healing and the true evidence of salvation, because forgiveness is the first step of love, and love is salvation.

Half-baked Ideas

Lately I’ve found myself pacing from room to room with no real objective. It could be that the pain of being female drives me. It could be that I just quit my job and have no idea what will happen next. It could be I’m developing the latest cold going around. Anyway, now is a time for deep digging, attempting answers to questions that are hard for me to answer.

What do I want to do?

Who do I want to be?

It’s also a natural time to examine ideals. Naming them, I’ve been very reluctant to do this. I have a fear that naming them will make them permanent, like, I won’t be allowed to change them once I say it even if I disagree with myself immediately afterward. Somehow I got the idea that these pronouncements were permanent so I should be very careful what I admit. This is a harsh thing to do to myself. Do you understand the pressure I carry to never change my mind? What’s wrong with changing one’s mind?

It may be far better to let out half-baked ideas than to have one perfect thought. One thought lasts a moment. It’s vapor. But a gang of half-baked ideas builds cities. 

So I struggle to make lists, lists of possibilities, lists of assessment. I will argue with them until I see the truth.

Pride Based Anger

It’s not often that I write something and think; hey I could do a whole series of posts on this subject. But after the anger post I just did I realize that I may have started down a line of thinking that will take more time to fully explore. Why explore this publicly? Well we all get angry and I think we all bear a little anger at God. 

The funny thing about my experience is that my anger did not push me away from God. And though I was very upset he still blessed me and gave me good things that I did not deserve. I realize that my experience may not look like yours or anyone else’s.

Having said that let’s be honest, the anger has robed me of one thing I desperately wanted and needed and that was freedom to express joy. I was so preoccupied with trying to figure out a way out of my situation that I wasn’t fully present to those who needed me or to myself. That is a danger in anger.

(I just realized that danger is just anger with a d in front of it. Now I feel like a nerd. I also want to go down a tangent about the relationship between danger and anger. But that would be kind of confusing and really off topic, except I’ve gotten off already.)

Ah, anger. You know, it’s all wounded pride. Pride is a disregard, an ingratitude, toward all things even the self. It’s not arrogance. Arrogance is the thing that says, “I am and deserve the best.” Pride says, “You have done nothing for me.” or I suppose worse yet, “This is your fault.” Pride blames. Unfounded anger comes out as blame in the end. 

No wait let me back up. You need to understand that there are two angers. The pride based anger and righteous anger. All the above has nothing to do with righteous anger. That is an anger born out of true injustice and produces good. Whereas the pride based variety, when taken to extreme, ends in death, literally. Mine was pried based I know because of the things it prevented me from experiencing and because there was no real injustice in the situation. 

It would be so nice if I could just get over myself and not have to go through this struggle but that’s not how things are done here on earth. This is hard training.

More thoughts will come. This will take time to get through, probably a life time.

Unhappiness Toward God

Last Wednesday something quiet and amazing happened. I simultaneously realized, confessed, and marveled at my anger at the Holy Spirit.

Yes, I was upset about a prophesy I’ve been living under for about three years. It was so bad that I hadn’t told many people that the prophesy even existed. Whenever I did there was a deep pain, anger, I would be on the verge of tears. I didn’t know why.

And then while talking myself through an imaginary scenario, this happens all the time, I said to the other person, who wasn’t really there, “I’m angry at the Holy Spirit about X.” This caught me off guard. I’ve never expressed anger at the Holy Spirit before. I stopped the scenario and had to sit with this realization. 

Twenty-two years of walking this path and I don’t know how to be unhappy with God. I mean, it's kind of a crisis, right? Lovers can be angry with each other and recover and be better to each other for it. But I, I never knew I could be angry at God. Ok, intellectually I did know but I thought I wasn't when obviously I was. And God is one of my oldest relationships. If in twenty-two years I was never angry at, say, my brother wouldn't that be weird?

Maybe this unacknowledged anger is why I’ve been frustrated at every turn. Why I’ve fought so hard against good things. Why I’ve tried to control what people know. After this realization I found myself happily telling people that I am an artist, though I’ve fought that too.

Unhappiness toward God is actually common, I think. See there’s some part of us that tells us we’re the only one thinking this way or feeling these things when the reality, like, 98% of the time, is that someone else, usually many someone elses, has felt the same. But what I wonder about right now is the message, that I unknowingly carried, that said I shouldn’t be angry at him. Why not? I don’t think anger is a sign of disrespect.

God does and says plenty of things I don’t like, naturally I would be upset. He made me to get upset. Inside of anger I shouldn’t sin* but this acknowledges I will be angry. The source of my anger could be a flaw in my vision, or it could be a deep thing happening in me, or it could be injustice. I think injustice is the main and legitimate external source of anger. But honestly anger is usually something rooted in me. My own flaws, what’s wrong in me, reacting, just blindly reacting.

I have a lot of anger.

*Eph4:26