Guitars, Nakedness, and Sacred Ground

In my younger years, I played guitar in various worship bands.  I was never much of a singer as I cannot carry a tune in a bucket, but strumming and chords I can manage.  My first guitar made it through my college years where I would throw a journal and the guitar in my car and find a quiet spot in the mountains to think, write, and sing my heart out in these secret singing sessions from the soul.  Not the smartest thing in the world driving into the backwoods mountains alone, but to quote John Muir, “The mountains are calling and I must go.”  These times alone in the mountains were the spots where my soul found voice.  Where I could sing off key with no judgment and let the poetry flow from my pen and guitar.  From this vantage point, those times look like hippie loving freedom and glory days.  In all honesty, these were times of wrestling with God, faith, rage, and grief.  And it occurred in isolation outside of community.  

My guitar moved on with me for a summer living in a Mexican tent city and participated in “jam” sessions with my fellow college interns around ginormous bonfires.  Guitar playing was communal, almost tribal.  We were banging on upside down 5-gallon buckets as drums and using other tools to contribute to the rhythm section.  And it was here, in the Mexican tent city that the cries of my soul moved from wrestling to questioning.  And it was here I met Karen who offered to step into the wrestling ring with me; who took the time to whisper love into my ears and turn my song from despair to hope (though she did not tell me hope and healing would be a rough journey!  She at least offered to walk alongside me.)

My guitar travelled halfway around the world to Vietnam.  Like in college, my guitar was my friend as I wrote and strummed the rhythms of my soul, often minor chords.  Unlike college, I did not drift far from my rooftop balcony, but this space became no less sacred as the mountains of Tennessee.  I was naked before God. But like college, I reverted back to isolation and privacy.  I was not to be seen or heard by my fellow human beings.       

This guitar stayed in Vietnam and continued making music at the hands of other musicians and upon returning to the States, I bought a new, beautiful guitar. I played some, but the hustle of life took front seat.  I continued to write and find hidden spots in nature to process emotions, but the guitar eventually moved to the closet.  Then kids . . . it stayed in the closet with very rare moments of coming out and playing several verses of “Wheels on the Bus.”  Once the kids moved past preschool years, the guitar only collected dust.

Saturday night, my now upper elementary children resurrected the guitar from the closet.  There was an old friend, my companion who had once accompanied me as I wrestled with life’s deepest questions.   Three sets of eyes looked at me and asked how to strum and make chords.  Muscle memory kicked in and I started plucking my way through fingering without the benefit of callouses.  Then my oldest asked if I could play an old Taylor Swift country song.  After several minutes, I had the chord progression and the rhythm started coming together.  She grabbed her iPod and started recording.  I realized for a moment I was “cool” in her eyes at which she quickly noted that I should enjoy being “cool” because it probably will not happen again for a long time. I could not help but smile – and I am still smiling two days later.

These last several weeks I have thought and meditated on authenticity, vulnerability, and connecting with others.  The dark side of me says I am can only be vulnerable alone in a controlled environment.  But in this isolation, I have no connection.  Vulnerability is about authenticity and sharing our WHOLE self with others.  I may have felt naked before God in my mountain hollers and roof top guitar playing, but it was private and isolated.  No one knew this was happening.  Saturday night, strumming (or more accurately fumbling) through guitar chords, I was naked again.  I had no idea if I could figure the song out, or if I did, would it sound like it was supposed to.  And I was figuring this out in front of an audience of people whose opinions I cared about.  But I took the risk.  My old friend, guitar, helped me connect with my family in a new way.  I wasn’t “expert” mom, but rather playful and honest mom willing to screw up my daughters’ favorite song and make a fool of myself.  I felt my body loosen and I moved into the rhythms.  A part of my started opening up in a new way. Authentic connection made.  The risk was small but still there.  The reward was definitely worth it.      

Beaches and Swimsuits.

I just got back from a beach vacation.  Translation, the nightmare swimsuits!  Open up the inner dialogue of comparing my body to everyone around me and criticizing my own imperfections.

I am chubby.  I told my husband before we married that I would always be a little bit fat and if was not able to accept my fluffy body he probably should not marry me.  While I joked about my fluff, my internal voice was downright hateful.  I hated my rolls, muffin top, and cottage cheese thighs.  The dialogue in my head was verbally and emotionally abusive.  I punished my body with diets, starvation, and restrictions only to begin a cycle of binging, stuffing, and carb frenzies.  I punished myself by refusing to buy new clothes until I lost that 20 pounds and could buy the size I thought I should be.     

In a healing session, I was asked to breathe in compassion.  I felt my body tense completely up and fight with all its might to keep said compassion far away.  I did not, do not deserve compassion.  I sat with this over the next few weeks.  Why was I pushing out goodness from my life?  Why had I become my own worst abuser?  As a therapist, I used to use humor with people who said they could not be loved, "Oh, so you are that special?  You are the exception to God's love for the entire world?  The whole world means everyone BUT you?"  And now, here I was making myself the one exception to the rule. 

As I sat with this, something started moving.  Compassion started moving in despite my best efforts to push it far away.  I questioned my negative thinking and then refused to abuse myself.  I was going to wear a bathing suit on the beach and not be embarrassed or hide behind people.  I was going to love my body.

I started thinking more about my body – this house that carried my core being.  My body has been through a lot.  It took abuse from others.  It took abuse from me.  I ate to manage anger, rage, grief, sadness.  I ate to cope with deep emotions.  As a result, I carried extra fluff.  I had to choose to accept that I used food to cope because that is what was available to me.  I had to accept that I continued to fall back to old habits of carb frenzies to manage my emotions, and while this was not the best option, it was what it was.  There are times when I use all my appropriate and healthy coping skills and times when I am too tired or foggy to access what is best.  The question became, can I forgive my body, forgive myself when my coping is not what it should be?  I decided, yes I would forgive.  I would love.  I would let compassion enter and heal.

This body of mine, with all its imperfections has been through a lot. It housed and birthed three children.  It has changed diapers, washed bottles, cooked meals, washed clothes.  It has played football with my son.  It has lied next to my children as I tuck them in at night.  It has done chest compressions and brought back the dead.  It has held the hand of a frightened cancer patient and hugged.  It has hiked mountains and climbed waterfalls.  This body of mine has done great things, is doing great things despite its fluffy imperfections.  It is time to honor and treat it with the tenderness I can so readily give to others. 

I will report I walked the beach with pride and no shame.  This was the freedom I had longed for!  Now it is time to go shopping.

Shifts.

A Lexicon of Healing.  A journey towards home.

Shifts.

Back in another life when I was learning to be a therapist, we talked about 1^st and 2^nd orders of change.  The 2^nd order being those seismic shifts that rock the core of our being.  I am in the middle of one of those great shifts right now. 

This second order change started innocent.  I turned 40 and with it came a natural progression of mid-life questions and reflection.  Each decade has had a theme.  The first, trapped.  The second, escape into Jesus Freakdom.  My twenties were marked by rebellion and wild adventures.  Thirties were about ch-ch-ch-changes and a numbing business.  This decade was filled with tasks, small children, a religious conversion, and major career change.  And now here I am fresh into a new decade wondering how I got here, what wisdom do I wish to carry forth from the previous decades and what can be left behind as scrap book photos. 

Reflection led to depression .  A layer of self-preservation peeled back uncovering an “it” of dread that was begging to be heard.  I had spent enough years in both the client’s chair and the therapist’s chair to know I was at a crossroads.  I could continue to avoid and numb the negative feelings or I could slow down, get quiet, and listen. 

The rebellion of my twenties and the habits of my thirties kicked in.  Numbing seemed like a better option.  I drank more than I should have when I was not at work.  At work, I hid behind humor, sarcasm, and the hustle of working in a large trauma center.  At home, I did what I needed to get through life -- cook, clean, run kids to all their activities . . . stay busy and avoid the “it.”  

It took a drunkard’s remorse to slap me in the face.  In one day, I consumed several drinks and never had a buzz.  I was on a journey toward the drastic numbing of alcoholism.  Sliding down a slippery slope of booze and overeating.  I had tried fasts, health challenges, and self-discipline, but I continued to run into the same pattern of a few days, maybe even two weeks of staying on track, but then off the wagon I would fall.  I was working to fix the outside of my “house” and all the while ignoring the unnamed and undefined “it.”  Ignoring what the core of my being was needing most: to be heard, nurtured, and tended to with compassion.  I was tired of fighting and pretending to be the strong one.  Unresolved wounds were oozing and it was time to open the bandages and allow then to properly heal.

The shift.  I started talking to my small tribe -- I confessed my life was spinning fast and I was close to losing control.  I took that first step of admitted there was a problem.  Once the routine of the school year settled into place, I made a second step and made an appointment to have someone help me hold enough safe space to allow the “it” to make itself known. 

A few weeks ago, “it” started to whisper an old belief from the “Trapped” decade.  It groaned out, “I cannot be loved.”  My rational self knew this to be a belief wrapped in old garbage with no validity.  Allowing the core of my being to undo this belief is another story and requires another shift. This shift, while seismic, is happening slower.  It is not a slap across the face, but rather paying attention to the gentleness of a healing process.        

More to come.