this is a place of remembrance

"I AM DONE WITH THIS!" I scream it over and over, part hysterically crying, part hyperventilating, the oxygen fighting to enter my body. "I am done. I am done. I am. DONE." Who am I talking to, on the drive back to campus to charge my now-dead phone? What am I talking about?Is it the ever present shadow of bride to be workouts, the ticker of the treadmill and the stairmaster, the well meaning tight lipped smiles of the people in the gym all out to prove we love our bodies, love ourselves, have the balance, have the motivation, the stamina?And the way that I tell myself that 382 calories is insufficient for an afternoon, add up the numbers, spend them again and again, streams of numbers divided and earned, calculated on the drive from Starbucks to work and home again, and so I climb stairs for an extra ten minutes because you must, you must, be above 400 every time. You must or else what is the point and do you know what will happen, the wild collapse?"I am done with this" - with what?With the endless looping ribbons of thought about whether it is worth writing a blog post about something as small as climbing stairs at the gym on a Wednesday, that who needs or wants to read such a thing, with the frustration that even when I start to write it I want to tell it better, that there is some other voice asking if this is the right word choice, if I would get more traffic by using some other words, if I got to the Jesus part of this quicker then I would be a better blogger, a better writer, a better Hilary.With the frustration that there is no clean telling of a story that I live in my skin and bones with oxygen that still fights to enter my body and leave it, the most common of journeys, the most transforming of journeys. With how much I have paused and deleted and revisited, thinking I will find a new ending if I hit "save" enough times.There is a Jesus part to this. There is a part about God. But I can't run there because when I run there I get pushed back into the hurricane. We have arenas of salvation, arenas of sanctification, Julie told me once. This is mine: that I am not allowed to run from the fact that I struggle, wonder, worry, count and obsess and overplan how to keep my body in the form I have chosen as right enough (but always, the enough, because there must be room for improvement, there must be more zumba classes and more pilates and more of everything else that might make me better). This is the arena of sanctification, me and God in the ring, wrestling as much with each other as with the bystanders, the voices offering those classes and the quick fixes.Didn't Jacob call the place Peniel, where he encountered God and yet his life was delivered? And wasn't it there a striving with God? And wasn't there the fierceness of blessing, the ache for it, every muscle overworked with the longing?And I build a place of remembrance between my dashboard and my heart, a remembering that somehow my life is preserved. That's the Jesus part to this story. That when I drive away from the overcounting and the oxygen fights with my body for permission to breathe again is that this whole post is a wrestling. This whole story is a wrestling.A day after I scream there is a cancelled appointment, an idea in my head that I'll go to an extra class, fit in one more day at the gym, an email to my father to ask if he can bring the gym bag I left behind with him, and not five minutes later his head pokes around the door to say he is already here, he can't go back for it.Who will say this is not all a wrestling?Nor this writing my own place of remembering that my life is being delivered?

to save you

It is too dark for me when I walk inside. I immediately regret that I have come into this stillness, my skirt with its ripped silk lining announcing my arrival with a soft rustle. I can't see who is in front or behind me. The twelve candles, the twelve flickering, bright disciple-symbols dance and snap to my right. I sink into the hard wood of the pew and wish I was driving home singing to country music.It is too quiet for me. I can hear every distracting thought rumbling towards my mind - that there is so much work to do when I get home, not enough time, that I've eaten not enough or too much, that this or that difficult question has been raised in a conversation with a friend. I shuffle my feet, feel my fingers clutching at the rim of the pew in front of me. The wood is worn smooth from the sweat of prayer and impatience; and I wonder how many hands before me have regretted coming heree, this place where a Spirit hovers over us, protecting, keeping watch.Tenebrae means darkening shadows, I read, and this service is about the disappearance of the light.I'm more afraid than I have been in a long time. We stand, think the Lord's Prayer in silence. I can feel myself close my ribcage, catching my breath over, and over. Tonight, One who was obedient goes up to be offered for me, the disobedient, and I am afraid. I am afraid of Him.The cantors begin. The notes are not sweet but searing. They land, each one, it seems, closer and closer to my pew. Their voices lament with Jeremiah and I try not to listen, but in the silence nothing else can be heard except these words - O Lord, nothing but these words -"You will flee, and I will go to be offered up for you."Candle after candle is snuffed out. Light after light disappears from the altar, and still it is darker, and still, my soul clings to the idea that perhaps I am not one of these twelve bright, brief flames. Perhaps I am faithful to Him, perhaps I know better, perhaps, perhaps..."You will flee, Hilary."The Spirit whispers. A rib seems to snap, a fleeting, sharp pain in the middle of my chest. No, Lord. It couldn't be. More candles go out.And Jesus says again: "You will flee, and I will go to be offered up for you."We stand. My heart pounds in my chest, and I am on the run from that voice - I am fleeing from the truth that I have been the first to flee from Him - but there is nowhere to go. Where can I go?They hide the Christ candle. The sanctuary is finally, utterly dark. Tenebrae means darkening shadows.A gun sounds behind the altar. A symbol, I know, of earth and heaven torn apart by this death, but I stop breathing and begin to cry.I sob through the silence. I sob through the slow return of the One candle. I sob and sob, tears in my hair and fogging up my glasses and I am breaking apart, because the same voice that said, "You will flee, Hilary," has just whispered,"And so, Hilary, I will tear earth and heaven apart to save you."A gun sounds, the Christ candle returns. A gun sounds, I sob and sob and sob, for my flight, for His salvation. I whisper back to Him - O Lord, I need saving. He tears heaven and earth apart to save us.To save me.I leave the church still in tears.Love,hilary

dear hilary: gripped by fear

Yesterday, this kind of amazing and crazy thing happened. I got to share over at Lisa-Jo's space, and I would love it if you'd visit me over that way? Just click here. And if you have a question for me to ponder with you? Just email me: letterstohilary@gmail.com

Dear Hilary,

I don't think of myself as a pessimist (and I don't think others do either) but I'm noticing my tendency to expect the worst. The phone rings and I think tragedy has struck. Someone pulls me aside and I instantly assume I'm in trouble. Sometimes the fear makes me sick to my stomach.  I know worrying isn't productive and most of the things I fear never come to fruition but logic isn't loosening fear's grip on me. How can I shake it?

Gripped

Dear Gripped,

I read your question and thought about it as I drove home from sign language class. I drove in silence, asking myself occasionally what fear is, where it comes from - what might we possibly do to shake ourselves free from it?

The words that came to me as I swung my car into the driveway, and trudged up the steps to my house through the slush and rain, through the night that always feels impossibly dark, were not my own words. They were Rilke's. I wonder if you know them, from his Letters to a Young Poet?

“Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”

I don't pretend to really know what's going on in these words, because I'm far from having sounded the depths of much of anything. But, Gripped, I think Rilke's bigger point is that the opposite of fear is not only courage. It is also trust. 

We are all convinced that the things we do not know - the phone calls we haven't picked up, the being pulled aside by the teacher, the long silence from a friend, the unreturned email - they must be a monster. They must mean that terrible thing that we have always secretly wondered about, but never really tried to understand or imagine. Fear thrives on the things we don't want to know - thrives in darkness, in vague worry, in the unexamined and unaccepted. We too often keep ourselves from knowing the things we are afraid of. And so we do not trust them. And so the fear lives long.

To shake fear, I don't know that you always need to be brave as we typically define it. It doesn't mean being angry with yourself for your fear or trying to "outreason" or "outlogic" yourself or demanding that you suddenly be fearless.

Instead, perhaps we can shake fear by widening ourselves to receive all that the world holds for us. What might the experiences that have you shivering with fear hold for you that is rich and beautiful and good? What might they grow inside you? What might they help you become? What might the phone call bring you - can you imagine in the thirty seconds before you answer it being something marvelous? Can you widen, even if you just say it inside your head, your heart to accept this new thing?

Fear keeps you from being that fully alive self Rilke talks about: one who is open to even the most incomprehensible experiences, one who trusts that even those things which are strange and terrifying hold something good. Fear feeds on our uncertainties, but most of all, fear thrives on our lack of trust.

I think we shake it by repeating the gestures of trust over and over, in our head and in our life, until they are as natural as breathing: arms open, eyes wide, running toward the world.

It will undoubtedly disappoint us sometimes. It will be less than what we want. It will be too much. It will bring crappy phone calls and teachers yelling and family fights and silence and shouting. But all of this makes us more alive, Gripped. All of this, even the things you fear most this moment, can be the very things that are the making of you.

Trust me.

Love,hilary

dear hilary: monsters in the closet

Dear Hilary,Have you ever been afraid of something? Afraid to ask yourself something honestly, for fear of what it would look like? Afraid to ask yourself "why" this was happening, because of what you thought you might say in response?What did you do?Love,AfraidDear Afraid,My closest friend and I, we have a saying: brave new shit. BNS. It stands for all the things we do that defy our fear. It stands for all the things we originally said were completely impossible, the conversations, confrontations, internal moments of honesty, risks. It stands for the believing work we do: believing in being beautiful in defiance of magazines or mirrors, believing we are capable in spite of the mountain of work, believing in descending into that murky pit of ourselves because we know that there is something good there.We are all afraid of the monsters in our closet. In polite conversations at dinner parties, they're not invited. They don't stand with us in our shiniest, brightest moments - they don't live in the open sipping a mint julep with you and your best friends on a sticky Southern afternoon. They live in the shadowier parts of us, and so we don't know them as well.You're afraid of what you think lurks behind your sadness or your frustration or your stories. You're afraid that it might be much bigger than it seems. You're afraid it might be much smaller. I wish I could tell you that it is one thing or another - but the truth is, I don't know. No one does. The closet belongs to you, so we can't peek inside for you and tell you that there's nothing to be afraid of.But you can tell yourself that. You can put on "It's Time" by Imagine Dragons and start journaling. Crack the door of that closet open, and yell - "Come out, come out, whoever you are!" And you can sit with yourself on a couch somewhere, alone or with people, and fling the door open, crying and smiling and laughing, and say, "Who are you, monsters in my closet?" You can do some brave new shit and offer yourself some time to ask nothing but, "why?" - no judgment. No self-condemnation. No guilt. Just curiosity. "Come out, come out, whoever you are."I can't tell you what those monsters are. But I can tell you that your monsters, big or small, are always welcome on the front porch of the people who love you. Those people who love you will love those monsters, love them fiercely and do battle with them next to you and hold you when you discover that they are not so fierce or frightening.I bet you all the monsters in your closet plus mine plus the thousands of people who stand alongside us, all the young and old, all the fearful and brave, all the wild and all the free: you will be loved even more deeply for opening that closet door. Not just by all of us in this big world. But by you, too. You will know yourself better, love yourself better, give yourself a bit more grace if you look at them honestly, lovingly, with grace. BNS isn't just about confronting the things you don't know, Afraid. It's about bringing grace to those confrontations, especially when they are inside you. It's about being careful with yourself, not harsh. Fling that door open, and look at everything inside you gently. It deserves your attention. It deserves your time.That's the real secret of meeting the monsters in your closet: you will grow in love.Love,hilary