Ernest Hemingway once said "write hard and clear about what hurts"
now for the Hemingway reader this quote comes as no surprise, Hemingway did this often, maybe always. He was a messed up guy, broken(i'm just as broken), and wrote about the things that hurt. I personally think that Hemingway had a unique way of twisting everything into something painful. I mean it worked for him, the beauty of his writing comes through the honesty with which he communicated pain. now i wouldn't say that i'm the biggest Hemingway fan, I'm more of a Fitzgerald girl...i mean yes i was an english major and yes i've read loads of his writings and own loads of his work, but i also am in the camp that thinks he was a misogynist. i mean, you're probably lying to yourself, or have poor reading comprehension, if you try and disagree with me. the facts are there. the man hated women.
anyway, that's not the point of this post. really i just wanted to quote him and say that for the last 9 months that quote has been like a scratched record, going over and over itself.
there's this episode of Dexter's Laboratory that i used to watch when i was a kid in which Dexter has a french test and doesn't want to waste his time studying. instead he buys a "learn french fast" record, dons headphones and attempts to master the french language while he sleeps. the only problem is that the record gets stuck and repeats to him the same phrase all night long. "omelette du fromage". if you're no linguist...or a bad guesser, that means cheese omelette. he learns one phrase for his test. cheese omelette. he walks around the whole day, making the girls swoon by saying cheese omelette. cheese. omelette.
that's what this Hemingway quote has been like in my head.
write about what hurst. write about what hurts. write hard and clear about what hurts.
hurt.
hurt.
hurt.
and so i did. i swore to myself that when i felt the weight of all that had transpired in the past 9 months. the past 11 years. i would write about it. and it would be hard and raw and clear and painful.
i promised myself that if i cried i would make myself feel the fullness of my tears. that i would give them their space. that i would allow them to dig in their heels and make tracks down my face, until they one by one dropped off my chin and reached their final destination on the neck of my shirts. if i needed to be mad, i would be. if i needed to be yell and punch pillows with imaginary faces, i would. if i needed to be hopeless and helpless and desolate, i would.
i hadn't ever let myself feel real, raw pain. and all of a sudden i had a lot. i had a storage unit full of boxes packed tight with new and different and unique pain. and i was going to open each box, one by one and feel the contents individually. i was going to allow the pain to become my own.
and i did it.
but there comes a point where what was once productive and filled with purpose, turns into obsession.
it's just like Dexter. not the pseudo vigilante, serial killer. the short, red-headed, genius cartoon character. sure there was purpose in the whole french phrase thing, and he passed his french exam and the girls swooned, but suddenly all he could say was "omelette du fromage". he could remember no other words, no other phrase, only "omelette du fromage". and all i knew was pain.
Hemingway is not my idol. not my role model. in fact if a genie said "you can stay anonymous and poor for the rest of your life, or you can receive all the fame, money, talent, etc you could ever desire if you will just be the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway" i would probably stay me.
but when all i let myself feel "clear and hard" was pain, i started to turn into a ghost of Hemingway. obsessed with pain and the vanity of entertaining my pain. the glorification of pain. and the subsequent anger, bitterness and fear that accompanies the over-indulgence of pain.
there is pain in the night, but joy comes in the morning. the over-indulgence of pain is like living in endless night. don't stunt the light because you are obsessed with the new found darkness.
xx.
Monday, August 11, 2014
Monday, June 23, 2014
super man
when you're a child it's easy to look at your dad and think that he is definitively the coolest, strongest, bravest, most successful man alive. you watch him as he fixes the car, builds tree houses, mows the lawn, coaches everything from baseball to soccer and you pretend that he is super. your imagination equates him with the likes of superman, batman, the flash and thor, capable to do all things with the greatest of ease.
as humans we are born to worship. we have the innate desire to idolize something. we find that which is good and make it into something great. this is why we have superheroes and demigods. they have the appearance of regular people, but beneath it all they are different, set apart, super. as children we put our fathers up there with these fictional characters, because these men in our lives are the closest thing we have to "super".
but as we grow up we learn that our dads are flawed, they become less and less super and more and more ordinary. we see that life isn't a sequence of glorified successes, but a journey of daily failures and little victories. we watch them work and hurt and grow and toil and be frustrated and make mistakes; we pull the pedestal out from under them and they fall down to our level. they lose their shine and become just another man, getting by as best as they can in this mixed up world.
then something truly magical happens. we realize that our dads really are super, they have been all along, not in the way we imagined as children, but in a way that makes them worthy of truly being a hero. a real dad is the one who sits in an office for 8+ hours every single day, working for the same companies for decades at a time, who goes through promotions and firings and budget cuts and bonuses, all for the security of his family, of the ones he loves most. a real dad comes home after a long day of work only to mow the lawn and clean the pool and help with homework and answer emails and discipline his kids and fix the sink and pay the bills, and none of that is for him, but all for his wife, for his kids. what makes dads super is not that they are extraordinary but because they are ordinary. they are men who sacrifice their own glory and become selfless for the sake of their families. in one fell swoop dad goes from superman to a super man because of love, the greatest power of all; the selfless kind of love that puts others before self, that sets aside desires and lofty dreams and personal glory in order to be the best father and provider for his family.
instead of worshipping these fathers as if they are super heroes, we aspire to be them because they are normal, they are real.
so, thank you fathers for setting aside your capes everyday and working long and hard for the sake of those you love, rather than yourselves. thank you for teaching us how to love in the ordinary.
xoxo,
abbie.
as humans we are born to worship. we have the innate desire to idolize something. we find that which is good and make it into something great. this is why we have superheroes and demigods. they have the appearance of regular people, but beneath it all they are different, set apart, super. as children we put our fathers up there with these fictional characters, because these men in our lives are the closest thing we have to "super".
but as we grow up we learn that our dads are flawed, they become less and less super and more and more ordinary. we see that life isn't a sequence of glorified successes, but a journey of daily failures and little victories. we watch them work and hurt and grow and toil and be frustrated and make mistakes; we pull the pedestal out from under them and they fall down to our level. they lose their shine and become just another man, getting by as best as they can in this mixed up world.
then something truly magical happens. we realize that our dads really are super, they have been all along, not in the way we imagined as children, but in a way that makes them worthy of truly being a hero. a real dad is the one who sits in an office for 8+ hours every single day, working for the same companies for decades at a time, who goes through promotions and firings and budget cuts and bonuses, all for the security of his family, of the ones he loves most. a real dad comes home after a long day of work only to mow the lawn and clean the pool and help with homework and answer emails and discipline his kids and fix the sink and pay the bills, and none of that is for him, but all for his wife, for his kids. what makes dads super is not that they are extraordinary but because they are ordinary. they are men who sacrifice their own glory and become selfless for the sake of their families. in one fell swoop dad goes from superman to a super man because of love, the greatest power of all; the selfless kind of love that puts others before self, that sets aside desires and lofty dreams and personal glory in order to be the best father and provider for his family.
instead of worshipping these fathers as if they are super heroes, we aspire to be them because they are normal, they are real.
so, thank you fathers for setting aside your capes everyday and working long and hard for the sake of those you love, rather than yourselves. thank you for teaching us how to love in the ordinary.
xoxo,
abbie.
Monday, March 31, 2014
eleven.
last week i went on a spring break trip to Memphis, Tennessee to hang out with a bunch of sweet kids at an after school program. this is where i met a second grader named Paris Romero. Paris was a little fireball, one of the few people whom i consider more sassy than myself. outgoing, bold, honest and strong-willed are a few of the words that i would use to describe her. as the week went on though it becoming strikingly clear that Paris was also wounded, jaded and afraid. clearly this young girl had seen more hurt and injustice than most 2nd graders and she broke my heart. she didn't just desire attention and affection, she needed it. we were buddies for the first few days of being at the gym, but on wednesday, something changed. the two of us had been playing, when i (as the leader of the group) had to step away and check on one of our students; as i walked away i promised Paris that i would be right back. well apparently i was taking too long, because she came looking for me and what she found shook our new found friendship to its core. when she found me she saw me talking to one boy, with a different little boy on my back, and this simply pushed her over the edge. after yelling at me for not coming back to play with her, she ran away with tears in her eyes.
Eventually i found her under the bleachers and, surprise, she wouldn't talk to me. when i tried to explain to her what had happened, she got up and ran away again, and i, unwilling to let wounds fester, followed. she locked herself in a bathroom stall, so i stood outside and refused to leave until she explained to me why she was angry with me.
i has recently heard a pastor talk about how anytime he met with someone who was angry, he would always ask them what they were fearing, because the root of anger is often fear. with that in mind i deduced that Paris, a sweet, impressionable, wounded, distrusting 8 year old, was afraid that i had moved on from her, that i had left her and that i wasn't going to come back. so as she stood, locked in her stall, paralyzed by her fear and anger and hurt, explained to her the situation and that i loved her and that i hadn't left her and that if i had promised to come back to her, then i would. i tried to affirm her trust in me and promise her that no matter how mad she was at me, that i would be there for her, waiting, ready to be her friend, forsaking all others, i would wait patiently until she was ready, because i wanted her, i wanted to be her friend. and then i waited.
when she finally came out of the bathroom i found her on the bleachers, with a damp paper towel, trying to clean the white rubber bottoms of her shoes. for the next 35 minutes we sat in near silence, scrubbing her shoes. it was then and there that her trust in me and my love was restored and from that point on our friendship strengthened. she trusted me again. and that was enough.
as we were sitting there cleaning her shoes all i could think about was the fact that I am Paris.
i have had a rough year. probably the worst year of my life to date. you see, 2 1/2 years ago i got really sick and never really stopped being sick. because i was sick, i then got depressed. and then i was broken up with and then i graduated from college and my cell group girls whom i had poured 7 years of my life and heart into graduated high school and moved on and i moved out of fayetteville and back to rogers and i got more sick and i was tired and scared and sad. really sad. major parts of my identity ended all at the same time and i couldn't cope. so i got more depressed. and when i say i depressed i mean, never want to get out of bed, "what's the point?" depressed. and then in the depth of my depression i had a flashback to a traumatic event that i had so skillfully suppressed, that i didn't even know had happened. on a random night in October, as i was trying to hold myself and my life together, to no avail, i remembered that when i was 11 years old i was sexually abused by my neighbor. the memory of that event shook me to my core. i had been so scared and confused and ashamed that i had hidden it not only from the world, my family and my friends, but from myself. for the next 5 months, that memory ruined me. i was angry. angry at the guy who did that to me, angry at the world, angry that it made me believe that i was dirty, that i was unworthy of love, that i wasn't valuable, that i had no worth to men aside from my physical being. i was angry that this abuse was now part of my story, part of making me into the person that i am today. i was angry that i now had a laundry list of issues and insecurities and baggage that i had never asked for. i was angry because of the injustice that was inflicted upon me when i was a helpless, innocent child. i was angry at God. and i was scared that i was too dirty and broken for Him to love me anymore. i was scared and i realized that i had spent my life from that moment when i was 11 trying make myself worthy of His love. it was never really about what had happened to me, but it was all about the lies that event had made me believe about myself, and the fact that i felt powerless to fight back against them, because i had believed them as truth for over a decade of my life. i was mad. more mad than i have ever been and ever hope to be again.
i went through a phase where i was so wounded and broken that i no longer trusted God, no longer trusted that He loved me or wanted me or cared for me. i thought he had left me and wasn't interested in coming back. i was angry. i was scared that He didn't love me anymore, that He had never really loved me. i know it all sounds ridiculous, but it's true, i lost my trust in Jesus' love and didn't know if it would ever return. but over time, as i kept myself locked in that bathroom stall, Jesus stood outside and whispered to me over and over again, that forsaking all others, He would wait for me. that He wanted me. that He would never leave me or forsake me. He wasn't giving up on me or walking away from me, even though at the time i didn't want Him at all, even though i wanted to be mad at Him and blame all of it on Him. He wanted to be my friend. He wanted to love me. and then the unimaginable happened. he sat there with me on those bleachers, in silence as i contemplated my willingness to trust again, and washed my dirty, gross shoes. He wasn't sitting there waiting for me to apologize for not trusting Him or do something to regain His love. He simply sat down and served me. even after i had yelled at Him and walked away and hid and tried to resist His attempts to communicate His love. No, He showed His love by serving me. like when He washed the disciples feet. He humbled me and loved me and showed His heart, by humbling Himself. and it was those moments that restored my trust. restored my certainty. restored my ability to see through the hurt that He loved me, that He was true and that He loved me no matter how wounded and dirty and broken i was. He reminded me that after the pain, He was there, waiting to sit down and help me clean myself back up again. sure there were marks that could never be removed, but He made them shine again. He made me shine again, when shining was something i never thought would be possible. "i can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" means that i can shine even when the world has done all it can to make me dull. He restores.
so, thank you paris for letting me wash your shoes.
xoxo. abbie.
Eventually i found her under the bleachers and, surprise, she wouldn't talk to me. when i tried to explain to her what had happened, she got up and ran away again, and i, unwilling to let wounds fester, followed. she locked herself in a bathroom stall, so i stood outside and refused to leave until she explained to me why she was angry with me.
i has recently heard a pastor talk about how anytime he met with someone who was angry, he would always ask them what they were fearing, because the root of anger is often fear. with that in mind i deduced that Paris, a sweet, impressionable, wounded, distrusting 8 year old, was afraid that i had moved on from her, that i had left her and that i wasn't going to come back. so as she stood, locked in her stall, paralyzed by her fear and anger and hurt, explained to her the situation and that i loved her and that i hadn't left her and that if i had promised to come back to her, then i would. i tried to affirm her trust in me and promise her that no matter how mad she was at me, that i would be there for her, waiting, ready to be her friend, forsaking all others, i would wait patiently until she was ready, because i wanted her, i wanted to be her friend. and then i waited.
when she finally came out of the bathroom i found her on the bleachers, with a damp paper towel, trying to clean the white rubber bottoms of her shoes. for the next 35 minutes we sat in near silence, scrubbing her shoes. it was then and there that her trust in me and my love was restored and from that point on our friendship strengthened. she trusted me again. and that was enough.
as we were sitting there cleaning her shoes all i could think about was the fact that I am Paris.
i have had a rough year. probably the worst year of my life to date. you see, 2 1/2 years ago i got really sick and never really stopped being sick. because i was sick, i then got depressed. and then i was broken up with and then i graduated from college and my cell group girls whom i had poured 7 years of my life and heart into graduated high school and moved on and i moved out of fayetteville and back to rogers and i got more sick and i was tired and scared and sad. really sad. major parts of my identity ended all at the same time and i couldn't cope. so i got more depressed. and when i say i depressed i mean, never want to get out of bed, "what's the point?" depressed. and then in the depth of my depression i had a flashback to a traumatic event that i had so skillfully suppressed, that i didn't even know had happened. on a random night in October, as i was trying to hold myself and my life together, to no avail, i remembered that when i was 11 years old i was sexually abused by my neighbor. the memory of that event shook me to my core. i had been so scared and confused and ashamed that i had hidden it not only from the world, my family and my friends, but from myself. for the next 5 months, that memory ruined me. i was angry. angry at the guy who did that to me, angry at the world, angry that it made me believe that i was dirty, that i was unworthy of love, that i wasn't valuable, that i had no worth to men aside from my physical being. i was angry that this abuse was now part of my story, part of making me into the person that i am today. i was angry that i now had a laundry list of issues and insecurities and baggage that i had never asked for. i was angry because of the injustice that was inflicted upon me when i was a helpless, innocent child. i was angry at God. and i was scared that i was too dirty and broken for Him to love me anymore. i was scared and i realized that i had spent my life from that moment when i was 11 trying make myself worthy of His love. it was never really about what had happened to me, but it was all about the lies that event had made me believe about myself, and the fact that i felt powerless to fight back against them, because i had believed them as truth for over a decade of my life. i was mad. more mad than i have ever been and ever hope to be again.
i went through a phase where i was so wounded and broken that i no longer trusted God, no longer trusted that He loved me or wanted me or cared for me. i thought he had left me and wasn't interested in coming back. i was angry. i was scared that He didn't love me anymore, that He had never really loved me. i know it all sounds ridiculous, but it's true, i lost my trust in Jesus' love and didn't know if it would ever return. but over time, as i kept myself locked in that bathroom stall, Jesus stood outside and whispered to me over and over again, that forsaking all others, He would wait for me. that He wanted me. that He would never leave me or forsake me. He wasn't giving up on me or walking away from me, even though at the time i didn't want Him at all, even though i wanted to be mad at Him and blame all of it on Him. He wanted to be my friend. He wanted to love me. and then the unimaginable happened. he sat there with me on those bleachers, in silence as i contemplated my willingness to trust again, and washed my dirty, gross shoes. He wasn't sitting there waiting for me to apologize for not trusting Him or do something to regain His love. He simply sat down and served me. even after i had yelled at Him and walked away and hid and tried to resist His attempts to communicate His love. No, He showed His love by serving me. like when He washed the disciples feet. He humbled me and loved me and showed His heart, by humbling Himself. and it was those moments that restored my trust. restored my certainty. restored my ability to see through the hurt that He loved me, that He was true and that He loved me no matter how wounded and dirty and broken i was. He reminded me that after the pain, He was there, waiting to sit down and help me clean myself back up again. sure there were marks that could never be removed, but He made them shine again. He made me shine again, when shining was something i never thought would be possible. "i can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" means that i can shine even when the world has done all it can to make me dull. He restores.
so, thank you paris for letting me wash your shoes.
xoxo. abbie.
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