My New Glasses

2014 is the year I mark as the beginning of a different Kirstie, one of the most important years of my life. For those new to my writing: 2014 is the year I had a massive breakdown in body and mind and checked myself into a psychiatric hospital in a dreadful state of darkness and horror and terror and sleep deprivation. I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and OCD and given mind-saving meds and started off onto an intensive therapy program. It was the hardest year and the best year, a new beginning of a quality of life I didn't know was possible. While I was totally wrecked, the clarity I began into gain in my mind, free of the bullhorn of constant, disturbing intrusive thoughts (well, not totally free, but toned down to a much much quieter level) gave me hope. With an excellent therapist and finding a church that accepted my broken self without fear or disgust or judgement, I began to heal.

Eleven years. Eleven years of the Lord's gentle, patient, loving work in leading me out of the darkness of twisted messages both received from the outside and generated from the inside, grown into dominating monsters of living fearfully, terrified of doing things wrong, not doing enough, and imagining that I could have prevented bad things happening to myself and loved ones if I just had more faith or done more or stopped being so selfish and rescued more. I was wearing the glasses of fear.

Looking out through glasses of fear on the world is, obviously, just going to take you from one terror to the next. It's nearly impossible to read the Bible with these glasses on and not have a panic attack. You take everything as literally as possible, and somehow that feels like the safest path, but not really because it requires things like chopping your hands off and pulling your eyes out and selling all your possessions and not owning anything. Reading through fear means you are constantly condemned, over and over and over again. You lose the ability to perceive nuance and metaphor. Every sermon or well-meaning thing someone says is dissected under the microscope and leaves you worse off than ever.

Underneath it all, there was a persistent glimmer of refusal to believe all that fear was saying to me. I knew I was loved. I knew God would rescue me from this hell that I suspected was not what he wanted for me. That glimmer never left me even though it was tiny and faint and overwhelmed constantly by the intrusive visions in my brain that left me reeling and unable to sleep and heart pounding.

The past eleven years have not been easy in terms of things happening to my life and family. But how I receive these hard things into my life has changed dramatically because slowly but surely, my internal outlook on the world has changed from fear to love. 

I started writing this post this morning after writing this in my journal:

"The Lord always shepherds us toward greater freedom, peace, wholeness and rest, away from anxiety and fear and heavy loads that we drag along *because* of anxiety and fear. He accomplishes his work of healing us via love we can settle into and trust, instead of the fear that makes us sit up suddenly and race off with heart pounding to try to accomplish something for him that we think he wants so we can be safe, but that we hate doing and desperately wish we didn't have to do because deep down it doesn't feel good at all."

That excerpt is the distillation of how I function now inside. This truth is what helps me decide what I will take in to be part of myself and what I will reject. It is what helps me discern my own thoughts as trustworthy or trashcan-worthy. Not always. I am still certainly prone to the occasional embracing of fear-based thinking, but not for long. I begin to see it clearly what it is for what it is sooner. 

As you probably know, we here in the United States are in the middle of a cultural and political upheaval. The status quo has been turned upside down, to the rejoicing of some and the despair of others. As a nation we have made major shifts in deciding how we are going to respond to the hardness and despair in the world. We have determined to put on a new pair of glasses to chart the course ahead for our country. What sort of glasses those are could be described many ways depending on who is doing the describing. What is clear is that we are not all wearing the same glasses — what one side is seeing for us as a glowing golden future is being viewed as the burning darkness of hell by the other. 

There are many, many Jesuses on display at the store of America right now, and each one comes with its own pair of glasses and irrefutable instruction booklet supposedly lifted from the pages of Holy Scripture. The problem is, most of these Jesuses make me sick (especially the ones on display sold by some prominent political figures and organizations who shall not be named). They are so far removed from the Jesus I know, who attracted me to himself with his revelation of profound love filling up my soul to the brim and overflowing. A love that wants to make me whole, and more me, not less, by snipping off all the things that hold me back and restrict me and bind me in fear and anxiety. The Jesus I know is constantly taking weights off my back that I didn't even realize were there so I can leap higher for joy. The Jesus I know has given me a new pair of glasses: The glasses of love. It is these glasses that he has slowly been helping me to wear more these past eleven years more than the glasses of fear. 

Instead of being scared of people- because I might have to try to rescue them/convert them/change their minds- I see someone to love and come alongside. I want to know them, listen to them, see them, understand what makes them tick, enjoy them. I want to be a trustworthy friend that they can explore their thoughts and struggles with, without me jumping in awkwardly to make sure they know what I think God does and doesn't approve of (according to whatever my interpretation of the God of the Bible is). I want to trust that God has them in His sights and loves them profoundly and cares far more about them than I do, and hope that He uses me in some way to make his gentle, kind love more real to them. And the more I participate in this kind of relationship with others I find that they- whether they know it or not- are being used by God in *my* life. I am seeing God's love poured out on me and blessing me through people that would probably laugh at such an idea. But God speaks through them all the time! He is so kind to me, leading me to love people who turn out to have hearts secretly aligned with his ways. I find Jesus looking out all the time through the eyes of people who have supposedly rejected him and want nothing to do with him (I suspect perhaps because the most of the Jesuses they have been offered are the ones that all of us should heartily reject). 

I don't know where my winding rocky path through the wilderness of my faith will go next. Surely through more hard places, but also surely through astounding beauty and love that makes me sing, because my own dear Shepherd is the one leading me, giving me new eyes to see every day.

(Picture description at header: Silly picture of me and my black dog licking me, hand-drawn square glasses on my face with hearts on the lenses and lightening bolts coming out the sides of the frames.)