Quo Vado?

So, I can’t sleep. I’ve been up since about three and given that I went to bed around midnight; I think it's safe to say that my brain just won’t shut up. Therapy sucked, big gigantic boulders. According to BA I’m on the edge of making this change, only I’ve been standing here a long time, too afraid or too willing to stay where I am to jump. We didn’t talk about it but I realized as I was walking out there are two big things that come to my head when I think about accepting all of me. The first is, and I don’t know how it relates, that I never got the amazing excited and ecstatic period when I first became a disciple. I was baptized and it felt like a burden. It felt as if I had taken on a whole new list of ‘shoulds’. I know in the climate of the church today, someone is likely to tell me that was just how things were, but they were, for the most part, my shoulds. I created them, I created the image to be lived up to and damn me to hell if that didn’t happen. I’ve never really gotten the connection to Jesus. Friend/mentor/example I don’t think I get him. I got baptized out of worldly sorrow, and where does that leave me today? I got baptized because people said I was ready, and I went along because I didn’t know that I would ever feel ready, I still don’t feel ready. But, isn’t my definition of ready, perfection, or being in a certain place spiritually, or doing all the right things, or not having questions about it. I don’t know if I was broken in my heart or in my head, and does it really matter? I’m here now, where I go from here is the only think I have control over. I keep coming back because the message of unconditional love, grace and mercy speak to my heart, which resides in the shadow. Here’s how it relates, I never had those joyous experiences/feelings because they are rooted in the heart and my heart is in the shadow, and until I connect it to my ego, I won’t get to feel any of those things. The second thought I had was that I am afraid that if I connect the two I will no longer need therapy, and in all reality that has been substituting for my relationship with God for more than a year. The effort is less than studying on my own and digging up what I need to dig up, and opening up my heart. Brett said something else that truly scared me, he said that this opportunity will eventually pass by, and I will loose whatever chance I had to be whole, because I didn’t take it. It will be gone because I am not leaping I choose to remain where I am forever. But I don’t know how to combine them. He and the book kept talking about acknowledging the shadow’s needs, and seeing that they get met. So, as a practical ask myself a couple of times a day, what I want and then see what need that I’m trying to meet, and then set out to meet the need. Practical.

My head’s a mess. I’ve been trying to avoid it all weekend, but it will not go away. There is this sense that all I’ve read, and all I’ve spoken about being a whole person, with two spheres that come together really does mean something. If I good get the fluid and the rigid into one picture, and see how it goes, and let the realities work together, instead of separately, what would really happen. How would life be different if that was what I did? I read the book that BA gave me, Owning Your Own Shadow, and it really blew my groove. The Latin breakdown of ‘religion’ (to re-bind), the combining of the rigid with the fluid, and acknowledging that if I am up I am also down, if I am right I am also wrong. If I’m a sinner, I am also a saint. The two opposite end of the spectrum ideas aren’t conflicting ideas, but rather both truths, because you can’t have one without the other. Last week I asked where was I going? But, isn’t the true question, who am I as a whole person.

I am Kelli Marie, a 28 year-old disciple and structural engineer. I don’t come with a How To manual. I’m intelligent, responsible, focused, funny, odd, mellow, feisty, dense, passionate, orderly, brittle, protective, arrogant, prideful, selfish, silent, silly, juvenile, independent, insecure, female, and afraid. I’m intelligent in that I can do math, and see how things stack, and pull puzzles apart and put them back together. I am responsible in that if I say I’m going to do something, most of the time it will get done, my word is very much my bond. I’m focused, in that once a target is lased, I’m going to get to the end, and not very much is going to dissuade me from my task. I am funny, really, I look at the world though a totally different set of glasses, and my observations often strike others as funny. I am odd; I don’t fit into too many molds, not because I work to stay out of them, but because I just don’t fit them. The molds are made as general starting places, but slowly over time, no one really fits them, because life has shaped us all to be different. Normal isn’t boring, it’s just the starting place; and I’m a long way from there. I’m mellow, Ayn calls me that, I think its her way of describing a certain steadiness I have that just keeps me from getting too excited. I’m feisty, mellow and feisty don’t at first look like they go together, but being feisty is about me getting the bit between my teeth and not letting go. Which I do, and sometimes there is nothing mellow about me. I’m dense in that there are so many things that I don’t see, that go so over my head. I am passionate, as much as I think of my self as not having a lot of passion, I do. Remember getting mad at Michael’s mom, remember Joan of Arc, remember impromptu, I am passionate, I feel things deeply. I am orderly, everything has a place and an order and a process and I like that even if the process is free flowing. I am brittle, I’m strong until you hit upon one of the chinks in my character and then I shatter like a house of cards. My heart isn’t very ductile. I’m protective, of myself and those around me. I use the public mask to hide my fear, or annoyance, or just general yech. I try to guard those around me from the angry part of me, and keep them safe and nurse them to health. I think that the rules/set-up is somehow different for me, that I can somehow be a perfect person without the cross and humbling out and since I really can’t be that person I deserve the blessings of God less than any one else, because I’m special that way. I am prideful, on both ends of the spectrum, see above for the top end, and just a lot of focus on the things I do wrong for the bottom end, I don’t see my worth outside the information I can impart, or the listener I can be. I see God’s creation of me as a mistake. I am selfish in that I don’t give from everything I have to give. I’m stingy with my time, energy and heart. I’m silly in that I do random things just because the mood comes over me I’m juvenile, because I don’t know how else to be. I’m childish because I think people find it attractive and it’s an easy way to interrupt a conversation. I’m independent because I hate asking for help, I don’t think that I need help, I don’t think to ask for help, I assume that I have to do it all by myself. I am insecure; I want to fit in, but not at the cost of who I am. I want to be liked for being me, not for being the brain or the person with all the answers, I don’t feel loved or wanted or considered a lot and it makes me feel really small. I am female, and all that comes with it. Most of all, I’m afraid that this whole me isn’t going to be enough to be loved, or wanted or cherished. But loving, wanting and cherishing have to start me, I need to stop fighting who I am, the completeness of the rigid and the fluid, and accept the shadow and cherish the whole of who I am. Just the way God made me.

I’ve been up four about fourteen hours now. I slept late this morning, spent almost two hours online not really doing anything, reading commentary and conversation on television. I watched some television - part of Inside the Actors Studio with Gene Hackman, the end of Save the Last Dance, and a whole episode of This Old House. Then I went and did some shopping. Came home and got upset about doing the dishes that I didn’t make. Watched What a Girl Wants, twice, the father thing touched my heart as it did during my first viewing, but it didn’t hurt so much this time. Then I watched Say Anything, twice. I love listening to the commentary that comes with most films. In some crazy way, that is almost as impactful to me as the film itself. The over-riding theme of both films was to be yourself. To have courage that who you are is loveable, without changing. In a really weird kind of way, it plays into the conversations I keep having with BA about how I see myself, about why I’m so neglectful of the full picture, why I’m afraid that being completely honest with who I am is going to some how make me boring and just like everyone else. As if letting the other half have its voice I’d stop being me. I’m afraid that if I become like everyone else I’ll be less remembered, and therefore less important, and therefore more unlovable than I already feel. Because if I’m like everyone else, what would make me special, or memorable, or loveable enough that some man would want to claim me as his, just his. I’m afraid that in time someone more memorable will come along and steal him. And I act as if never having someone to love me is better than having and loosing.

I want to be loved in an awesome way, a way that totally embraces all of who I am. I want to be loved for me, for just being me. To be loved for being me, is to be loved for both who I am and the shadow I carry with me. This shadow that I ignore, don’t feed, want to go away, or at least only come around on my terms. I am going to be such a big pain in the butt to date. I was talking to Lisa at church on Thursday, and I spoke to her about the big whole inside of her that only God could fill. The aching hole, that clouds my motivation, that makes having my shadow around so painful, the need to feel a part of something bigger than I am, that’s the whole in me that God made so that I would turn to him. Feed myself with a relationship with God. Let him fulfill my need to be a piece of the body, and fill the whole in where I am. A man will not complete me, God will. One of the lines in Say Anything was Lloyd saying to a group of guys sitting outside a gas station “She made me believe in myself.” I may find someone one day who does that for me, but he won’t be able to do it everyday. God can do it everyday. He believes that I can complete the path set before me, he wouldn’t have given it to me if he thought that I couldn’t complete it. He wants a relationship with me; he believes that I can have one with him. These are movies about fathers and daughters, about love, about the power of believing, and the power of being. The people, who touch our lives, change our lives. The people who’s lives we touch, have their lives changed by us. Maybe not in a big, noticeable way, but they are changed.

I ignore the shadow so much, because there is such pain there. It feels like it never is going to end, it is so big, and so loud, and so persistent, that I cannot let it all out, or even look at it for too long. Looking makes me feel like a little girl who just wanted to belong, and play on the swings/monkey bars without worrying that the face I see when I get there is different than the one shown to me in private, because on the playground I’m defiantly not cool. I was me, and I never really belonged, and I rarely felt loved or wanted, so if I change to normal and I get what I want, is it because of who I am, or who I appear to be? If I acknowledge the shadow, I give the hopes and dreams and wishes, and needs a voice, and they get fulfilled, have I sold out? Which is me and which is not? BA would say that they are both me, just different versions of the same person and if we can get them to join and I become more whole life would be good, and it wouldn’t be a sellout. But what if he is wrong? But, how could being a rounder, more whole me be a sellout? And would being well rounded make me normal? The big fight here is not being like everyone else, it’s a fight to face the pain, fear, anguish, and torture I’ve been through head on, and give those feelings voice, and give them voice in a way that allows me to acknowledge that the feelings aren’t bad, or wrong, they are just real, and valid, and healthy.

My shadow and I have choices. Quo vado?