Through the Red Door

Six months ago, I was hurting. 

I was in the midst of a recovery program offered through my church. I was healing in some ways - letting go of little offenses that I had hung on to for far too long and giving grace where it was needed, things like that, but it turned out that the things I thought I was going there for did not end up being the things that the Lord wanted me to deal with.

Instead, I was digging up things I didn't want to find and not knowing what to do with them. Things like, why my life ended up where it did, all the things I felt like I was missing out on, and all the hurts of the past tangled up in one big mess. Long and complicated story short, I ended up feeling worse towards the end of the program then I did when I entered it. 

*This is not a negative assessment of the program; I think it does a lot of good. This is just to say that I lacked the appropriate coping skills at the time.

On top of all of that, I was in a great deal of physical pain. 

Most of you know that I deal with chronic nerve pain related to my disability, but back in October I injured my back even further. I did this by simply sitting on a bar stool, hanging out with my friends for too long. This simple act inflamed the nerves in my lower back and put me in excruciating pain that I can't even describe. I've never felt pain like that. It hindered my movement and absolutely affected my mood. 

With all of these things piling up, I did what I was used to doing in hard times. I got mad. I started down a dark spiral of depression and anger. I felt like I was being targeted somehow, like this was just one more thing that I might have to deal with forever that would limit me and hurt me. I would look at other people’s success and the perceived ease with which they succeeded and think, “Why not me?” To be very very blunt, it got to the point where I wholeheartedly believed that God was screwing with me, dangling good things and then yanking them away repeatedly. 

By the time I voiced my hurt to my recovery leader and was sent to meet with a pastor, I was battling all-too-familiar demons of self-harm, intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideation. 

In that first meeting, my pastor was very real with me. He told me that I had a faulty theology of suffering and that I would have to fight like mad in order to learn to believe true things about God, myself, and my suffering. He asked me if I was ready to fight. 

I told him no. 

I was tired. I was devastated. I was mad and I wanted to stay mad. I wanted to walk away because that felt easier. 

But something kept me there, hanging on to the tiny shred of faith I had left. By the end of the week, I was tired again; tired of fighting in my own strength. I decided to fight back. 

Over the past four months, we have been going through a book called Hope When it Hurts by Kristin Wetherell and Sarah Walton. It was a book that was not unfamiliar to me, but as I would learn, sometimes the familiar can appear in new ways when your heart is ready for it. Previously, I was gifted a copy during my darkest period, when my dad left. I actually began to go through it with some friends, but at the time, I was not ready or willing to hear what it had to say, so it sat on my shelf with all my other “someday” books. 

Now that I’ve read it and am continuing to absorb its contents, I wish I had read it sooner. I wish I had learned how to suffer well sooner. 

This book, which is written by women very familiar with suffering, is a commentary on 2 Corinthians 4 and 5. Each chapter focuses on a different portion of these verses, while pulling in other scriptures on suffering. One of those scriptures is another example of familiar-but-new. 

Growing up, my mom’s favorite verses were Romans 5:1-5. I’ve heard it a million times and I’m very familiar with what it says, but reading through it this time, I began to see it differently. I began to finally take it to heart. 

Now, I know that suffering does produce endurace (which He has absolutely done in me. If I have one thing in abundance, it’s perseverance), endurance produces character and character produces hope (which He is currently doing) and hope does not disappoint. 

I know that the Lord uses my suffering for my good, to shape me into His image, and for the ministry of those around me. 

I know that I need to have an eternal perspective in my suffering and that, whatever that suffering is, is a light and momentary affliction compared to the eternal weight of glory.

I know that He is not out to get me, but instead loves me more than I can imagine. 

This quote sums up how I wanted to walk away from reading this book: “I do not know how God will carry me through and what the outcome of the days to come will be. I do not know what tomorrow will bring or exactly how I’ll walk through it. But I will fix my eyes with confidence on my eternal hope and faithful Savior.” 

My word for 2021 was hope.

And yet, I cannot think of a year where I have felt more hopeless.

There were hopes that were absolutely crushed, obliterated to the point of disrepair. Grief and anger and hurt beyond any I had previously experienced. There were some hopes renewed, but none that were unmarred by at least a hint of grief.

And then there were hopes deferred.

Again.

I feel like the last decade of my life, the entirety of my adulthood, has been a series of deferred hopes. And this year, I realized just how sick my heart has become.

Some of it I brought on myself. By retreating in an effort to protect myself, by continuing bad habits and reverting to unhealthy, and often sinful, patterns. By giving in to bitterness and despair. There are many ways in which I have poisoned my own heart.

But let me tell you - hopes deferred hurt like a you-know-what all on their own.

To long for something - something good, something worthwhile, something that doesn't feel like too much to ask...to ache for love, family, stability, purpose and just...any forward movement in life and feel like it's always denied. Or to feel like it's dangled in front of you, always out of reach. It's enough to make a person feel like it's just not worth the fight anymore.

(And before anyone tells me I have these things, even if they don't look the way I want, don't. I know this. This is not a dismissal of those things and those people. But there is chasm between the life I have and the life I once imagined and that is, at times, unbearably painful.)

I realized this year that I've come to feel like God is screwing with me. I don't know how else to put it. I know He isn't. My head remembers that He loves me and His plans are good. That Hope still exists. My heart is just too sick to believe it right now.

And so.

When it came to the point of the year that I would usually start thinking of my word/theme for next year, I rejected the idea. Too many years of pasting the same goals and dreams to a poster board that only later serves as a collage of personal failures, I couldn't do that again.

Until, long story short, my sister invited me to do just that and I found myself in a pile of magazines at 10pm. (Which is apparently late for me now? I think I'm old.)

I don't know if I'll get around to putting it together and I don't know that it matters.

Because having a visual reminder of things I hope for but cannot bring about may still be harmful.

Because tomorrow isn't a magic day in which I will suddenly get it together and do the right things and believe the right things.

And because my goal for 2022 is not exact.

It's not as rigid or specific as years past, because I don't know what the plan is and there is so much more out of my control than in it. I don't know if my hopes, the specific, long-held, deeply rooted ones will be deferred again. I don't know if they'll be crushed.

I just know I want to recover. I want to get better and not be so sick.

I want health. I don't want to tell myself, "You must reach this ideal." I want to ask myself, "Is this choice healthy? Will it lead in a healthy direction or to more destruction?" and go there onto the next choice, hoping that they add up to something good. I don't want to be perfect, I want to be well. Physically, emotionally and spiritually, I want my heart to be rid of some of its sickness.

I have been struggling to write this post-camp reflection for nearly a week now. 

Even more than usual, I’m finding that nothing I could say would ever capture all that I’m feeling. 

I don’t know how to turn warm fuzzies into words. 

I don’t know how to describe what a heart feels like when it’s near-bursting with love and hope and joy. It’s like butterflies and rainbows and flying, but it’s also safety and affection and home.

The Joneses were certainly on to something when they named this place “Carefree” because that truly captures it all. It’s a challenge and an honor to try to elaborate on that year after year.

~

This year’s alumni weekend was absolutely spectacular, and I’m not just saying that because there were puppies. 

But also, THERE. WERE. PUPPIES. 

Best camp activity ever. 

~

Even before camp started, Dara and I were talking about our hopes and expectations. She shared that she was feeling a bit insecure about seeing everyone when she felt like she was in the same place that she had been last year. 

I told her that I can absolutely relate to that feeling.

So much of the past decade has felt like I am living in a loop, replaying the same mundane 12 months over and over again. It was frustrating, discouraging and, at times, terrifying. 

I am so grateful that God has now led me into a season of growth and change (not without a lot of heartache first), and I can see Him beginning the same in Dara. But I wanted to reassure her that the feeling was very normal, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that many of us, if not all of us, who call Camp Carefree our home have gone through similar trying times. 

Times when our health was not what it could be. When moving forward felt like moving through quicksand. Times when we fell “behind” the societally and self-imposed timelines for our lives and took that burden upon our own shoulders, as if there was something wrong with walking our own path. Times when we focused on what we haven’t accomplished and forgot that our value is in Jesus and who He created us to be.

(Maybe I should tattoo that one on my forehead for good measure. :P) 

In all seriousness, I know it hurts and I know it feels endless. But I promise you there is still a light shining somewhere.

Camp is proof of that. 

~

It’s all too easy to believe the lies of inadequacy when you’re surrounded by them in the “real world”, which just makes the oasis that is camp that much more beautiful. As I told Dara, alumni weekend is not a high school reunion. We are not in competition with one another and I hope that none of us feel for one second that we are less than enough, exactly as we are.

At camp, WE matter, not what we accomplish. 

Not once was I asked what I “did” this year. No one asked when I would finally graduate. No one asked how I "managed” to get an apartment or when I’d start driving or when I’d get a boyfriend. 

They asked me how I am. They told me that I looked happier and brighter and less worn down than last year. They told me that my smile looked wider, more genuine. One person told me that I looked like I have lost weight. I have not, but may God richly bless her for saying so. 😂

~ 

Camp is not what we have done.

Camp is about the way I feel when I see you for the first time after a year apart. It’s about the way we pick up exactly where we left off, trading old memories and making new ones. It’s puppy kisses and dances with way too many able-bodied moves and glow-stick bracelets. It’s starry nights and precarious canoes and holding hands in a makeshift campfire circle. It’s the laughter and the in-between moments where you stop and think, “these are my people”. 

And they are. You are. My best friends, my cheerleaders and many of you, my brothers and sisters in Christ. There is nowhere I’d rather be than huddled around a fire or in a tiny cabin, singing praises and sharing life. It’s the beautiful, brilliant highlight of my year and I pray that we get a thousand more nights just like it.

~ 

This year, the Carefree spirit has finally found its way home with me. 

Another reason this particular reflection has taken so long is that I have been busy talking to the very people in it! Since Sunday, I have been in near-constant contact with at least one person from camp, often more than one at a time. Messages, pictures and video chats have kept the Carefree spirit alive and, finally, I’ve been able to hold onto it. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m in such a good place right now or if there is something extra special about this year, but this is the first time I have ever left camp without feeling the “crash” of reality at the end of it. It’s a beautiful feeling and it’s because of all of you, because of your presence in my life.

To say thank you and I love you isn’t enough, but I pray that you feel how much you mean to me. You are lovely and special and enough, exactly as you are.