It hasn't always been that way for us. We've spent years working on our friendship. Tonight we spent much of the time laughing together about all our misadventures and the passive aggressive moments we've shared. We also talked about the old secrets we used to keep tucked away and hidden from each other and hinted at the secrets still buried deep inside. I've often wondered if even I know what all my secrets are. If you've worked for years to squirrel something away, "out of sight, out of mind," how do you know where to look when it's time to blow off the dust, let in the sunshine and work through your past? How do you know when it's time? If you don't trust yourself to handle the secret effectively, how do you trust it to someone else? If you KNOW you can't handle the secret effectively, how do you NOT seek someone else's guidance and trust?
I wrestled with these questions a lot throughout my freshman year at AU. I was in a new school in a new city, surrounded by new faces and being challenged to look at life through a new and different lens. I was left with starting my life over from scratch, but this time without the comfort of safety nets. I kept wondering, "How much of myself do I divulge now? How much do I hold back?" It was almost November before I began to feel like I belonged. By May I felt like I had fully committed myself to the "AU Bubble." I went home feeling like I'd made life long friends, excited to return in August, and chalk full of goals and expectations for myself to achieve during that summer break. When I returned in the Fall, feeling (again) like I was inadequate and a failure because I hadn't even looked at my 'Holy and God-Inspired AU worthy' to-do list I composed this (I like to think it was one of my more insightful moments :)...
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Do you ever feel like you’re dressed for the beach, chair in hand, but when you open the door and walk outside, you step into a barren, isolated, snow-covered landscape? And you without so much as a sock or a scarf to keep warm…
Lately my soul feels like the snow-covered field. Empty, frozen, and lifeless. I had had all these ambitions at the beginning of the summer to grow in my spiritual life and my relationship with Jesus, but I feel like, if anything, I have backpedaled. I haven’t read all the Christian books on my summer reading list, I haven’t volunteered, I haven’t single handedly converted any of my friends to Christ. In fact, they are just as much unbelieving heathens as I am a believing sinner. We just self title ourselves differently. I feel as if I have spent my life with these people: talking to them, growing with them, loving them, sharing my faith with them, and one by one they have all turned around and said “Oh, were you talking to me?”
It is frustrating. I feel as if I have hit a wall I can’t break through. To them I will always be the poster child for the “Good Christian Girl” and they will always be the unsaveable. But it’s like what Mike Yaconelli says in his book Messy Spirituality (a must read) my friends are taking what THEY KNOW ABOUT THEMSELVES and comparing it with what THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT ME. I’m not going to lie though, part of me is afraid of what they would think of me if they knew EVERYTHING. If they knew I felt this, or thought this, or had experienced this… would they still think I was a “Good Christian Girl?” Would they still believe me when I talked about my faith and Redeemer? Or would they believe me more knowing now what they knew…?
Your secret life and your public life is a fine line, imaginary really, because for those of us who believe, we know there is no line. There are no secrets between you and Jesus; and the fewer secrets you have between you and everyone else, the better candidate you become to spread the gospel. I don’t know about you, but I firmly believe that no matter your baggage, your past sins, or the guilt you carry from these, if you give it all to God, he can take your pain and suffering and use it to His glory. That’s what he does. There are examples scattered throughout the Bible of people who were prostitutes, doubters, lazy, and selfish. Jesus surrounded himself with the worse riffraff imaginable; he made being imperfect the ‘cool thing to be’. Looks like I am really cool!
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In the interest of continuing the discussion Yackers and I started earlier I thought I would share these thoughts and feelings. I know I wrote it then, but I continue to struggle with them today as I start over yet again in California. It feels at times like I am trapped on a merry-go-round, unable to get off, and nauseous. I hate being dizzy. I hate feeling out of control. I don't know how much of this (if any of it) I have ever told her, so now she knows something about me she may not have known before, and so do you. Baby steps....
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