The Squooshy

Hey Friend.

How are you? You look a little lonely over there. Are you?  You ever have moments where you think: How did I get here?  

In the US, we have been fighting each other for a long time.  We fight for what is right. We are sure that this is what we are called to do. We tell ourselves we must. If we do not fight, then who will? 

And yet…

There is a knot in your stomach that is growing into panic.  A voice underneath it asks: 

• “Why am I so angry?” 
• “Why am I always so anxious?”   
• “When do I get to feel hope again?  Didn’t I used to?”   
• “What happened?”

You pat yourself down.  You look in every pocket, both real and imagined. Where did it go? You remember having it, reveling in it.  You remember thinking it was all going to be “great”…again.  Or that someone  would… “restore the soul of the nation.”  But.  What you used to see so clearly is now blurry or dark.  And lonely. It is so crushingly lonely. 

Wait.  Is this a political post?

Nope. This is a post about you and me: the people impacted by the politics.  It’s about community.   

When we withdraw to our respective sides of righteousness, we essentially lose the benefits of community; our “village”.  We self-segregate. We stop looking for nuance. We stop being curious. What started out as discernment becomes reaction.  And when we react alone, our reactions get bigger. More entrenched. Maybe a bit distorted.

When does it feel good again?  When do you get to stop fighting and feeling indignant?  When do you get a chance to not feel robbed of something?  Was joy ever a part of this plan?  

Do you ever just want to……rest?  Take a break?  Wave a flag of amnesty and say:

“I need just a minute to gather my thoughts here and understand what it is that I am actually feeling.  I don’t have words for it yet.  I do have…rage. I also have a desire to both fight and flee. But I do not have words for how I actually feel inside.”

What would it be like to sit still long enough to find those words?  To call a temporary cease fire and listen?

“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

—Exodus 14:14

Take your time, friend. This is important. That pause may be more than anxiety; it may be discernment. That knot in your stomach may be the nudging of your conscience. I call it the Holy Spirit—and it’s nudging you to think again. It whispers to you: “Do you think you missed  something? Would retracing your steps help?”  

But here’s the thing we tend to overlook: that nudge can be pretty difficult to sort out in solitude. The nudge may happen in the quiet places inside of us; for certain we must be still to hear the whisper.  Clarity, however, often comes through communing with each other.

Community: Why For?

We were never meant to travel this road alone; we were designed for relationship.  As image-bearers, each of us was built with an inherent longing to belong:

• to see and be seen
• to understand and be understood
• to know and be known

And the community, our village, forms us. 

Community is a place of spiritual belonging.  It happens in families, friendships, churches, parishes, 12-step programs, and prayer groups.  Community does not require an organization or institution.  Community is a way of living and relating.  You gather around people with whom you want to proclaim the truth that we are the beloved sons and daughters of God.

—Henry Nouwen

They say it ‘takes a village’ to raise a child.  What if the child is you?   What if the fractured young part of you still needs a village to finish growing and healing? Isolation doesn’t just leave us alone—it leaves us unchecked.  

Is Solitude Bad?

Jesus often withdrew to pray. He would go off by himself to “deserted places” to seek His father. But isolation was not the destination. 

There was a process:  

• Step 1: Withdraw (to be able to) 
• Step 2: Listen (then), 
• Step 3: Return (to the community)

It is “both/and.”  We need time in solitude to hear God and let the Holy Spirit nudge us.  But prolonged isolation does something else to us.  

Isolation increases our susceptibility to distorted thoughts. It weakens our accountability. And, perhaps most profoundly, prolonged isolation does not allow us to experience the fullness of love. Left to ponder in isolation long enough, our smallest discomforts can become very toothy monsters.

Band Mom Boos

I had a girls’ weekend at the beach a little while back with my homies; I call these friends my ‘band mom boos’.  We formed a friendship when my (now) 25 year old was in high school in the marching band and now we’re velcroed together for life.  But I digress.

During this beach weekend, I began to wrestle with something that was upsetting me.  Since I didn’t yet have words for it—couldn’t articulate what I felt or why—I withdrew.  I was at the beach for a long weekend of relaxation and silliness and talking (and 🥂).  But there I was; turning basically inside-out.  The longer I kept it inside, the larger it grew; my molehill became a mountain.

The ladies were worried for me and offered to help me talk it through, but I did not accept the invitation. In retrospect, that’s not a great gift to give your friends. I baited them with have-fun-Rhonda and swapped her for sullen-processing-Rhonda. 

Sorry ladies.   

Later that week, now back at home, my friend S., invited me to breakfast. S. is one of the members of my spiritual-friendship-group; two men I have adopted to be my spiritual big-brothers. I use initials here because these men didn’t sign up to be characters on the internet

In actuality, this breakfast is a standing weekly breakfast that I have with this group.  So, S.’s “invitation” was more like:

“we still on?”

(With brothers, the words are often few)

Frankly, I did not want to go to breakfast that week.  I was still chewing on my discomfort and did not want to be social or vulnerable.  But, S. opened-wide his arms (at least, that is what I pictured in my head) and said “I am here if you want to talk it through.  It is up to you.” 

So.  I went.  Not because I felt ready, but because something inside of me felt upside down.  What I now see is that the Spirit had nudged me at the beach and that nudge started a discomfort. To develop that nudge from discomfort to growth, I needed community.

Tears: The Salt for your Eggs

As it turned out, that week’s breakfast included a few tears (mine, not S.’s).  Not to worry, though.  I cry about every third breakfast with these two.  I’m the eggs-and-bacon-and-breakdown lady.  It’s what I do; I traumatize my ‘brothers’ with my abundance of feelings. To be clear, my crying is not because they are bullies (though, I do sometimes refer to them as “the buttholes”. Once even in prayer—God knew who I meant. But, for those of you who have brothers, you probably know that this is a title of high praise).

I cry because it’s a season for me where tears happen.  But. This weekly breakfast has been where a lot of spiritual processing also happens (whether we invite it or not).  And it is a gift.  A gift that comes with my salty salty tears. 

Wow. That was some tangent…what was I saying? Ah. Yes. Breakfast.

At breakfast, I fumbled through the pieces of what was taking my brain hostage.  I spilled it out and S., to his credit, spoke them back to me and helped me process.  You may be asking: Is S. a licensed counselor? 

No. 

No, he is not a licensed counselor. He does not traffic in a lot of emotional language. “He is brother (grunt).”  BUT.  God used him during that breakfast in the way that he often does; to help me see with new eyes;  new, less-reactive, less-wounded, grounded eyes.  S., thankfully, is much less emotionally reactive than I. 

Had I not gone to breakfast, I may have chewed on that same discomfort for weeks.   The knot in my stomach was real. The anger was real. The confusion was real.  But I needed a village to help me process. The stinky part is that I could have saved myself some heartache and some wasted-beach-time by letting my band-mom-boos be my village that weekend.  But.  Mistakes were made.

Deep and Wide

It has taken me some time to understand how to appreciate the differences we all bring to our community and how those differences benefit us. I only recently understood how real my blind spots are.  I very much need the perspectives from those that don’t share those blind spots—and, likewise, my community also benefits from my perspective. 

It took a very, very long time to build a new muscle to stop comparing myself to others as if in deficit and to start appreciating the differences that we all bring. That muscle is still not performing at peak efficiency. But it’s there now.  

It has also taken some humility and openness to be part of community. I have gone through some tough rupture and repair cycles. 

“Home is not always comfortable and community is not easy.  In every community, the healing of acceptance happens and deep betrayals take place.  Our humanity, with all of its splendor and the hurt of pain, emerges.”

—Henry Nouwen

But man.  How “wide and long and high and deep” is the love that that I get to experience through my community.

So. Go forth. Be Villaged.