Thanks so much for those of you who joined me on Tuesday for the discussion on the Prelude. If you didn’t catch it, no worries, you can go back and watch my video Intro as well as some musings on the Prelude here.

Now, on to Chapter 1, “Confessing to the Trees” . . .

If I were to add a subtitle to the first chapter of Breathing Room, I might call it something like: “What’s Not Working?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately: the things in our lives — large or small — that just aren’t working. For example, a couple of weeks ago I posted about cleaning out the art drawers in our kitchen because they WERE. NOT. WORKING. Broken and melted crayons, markers with no lids, coloring books that hadn’t been used in two years . . . all jammed into drawers that would barely open and close because of their overabundance.

Daily interactions with this kind of insanity takes me down.

I had been carefully salvaging the contents of these drawers, organizing and reorganizing, and somehow I just kind of woke up and realized none of it was really working and I needed to start over with way less stuff and some freshened up supplies. I assumed this would cost $1700. Turns out, it only cost $30 (and the time it took to dump 3 full bags of literal trash).

And wouldn’t you know it was the most cathartic thing that has happened to me in a long time. So it got me thinking about other things in my life that “aren’t working” and I began to see that I’ve got slews of places in my life where I kinda need to face facts and lean in somehow or someway.

I have a lot of things in my life that look like this:

Darling little girl shoes that have a flower missing. Despite numerous attempts to repair, the flower just won’t stay on. I can’t bring myself to throw out the $8 jelly shoes, and yet there it is, staring me in the face everyday, a “what’s not working” moment I just can’t seem to deal with once and for all.

I read a post earlier this week about a woman who never really liked this big area rug she put in her master bedroom. Something about the bed and the rug wasn’t working for her, but she refused to admit to herself that she had made such an expensive mistake — buying a large, pricey rug that wasn’t actually working. Until . . . she had to move the rug out of her room for some painting and she walked back into her room and felt like she could breathe in there for the first time.

What does all this have to do with Breathing Room? Well, I guess I’m realizing — over and over and over again in life — that the breath, the space, comes when we lean into the truth instead of when we avoid it. Oh, how I hate this. And oh how true it is. Whether it’s an overcrowded garage or a marital dilemma, I don’t think much gets solved through denial.

This is the moral of Chapter 1.

The beginning of my journey to find breathing room happened when I faced the thing I didn’t want to face, kinda like the art drawer, only painfully more consequential. Instead of pretending on the outside and harboring very deep difficulty on the inside, I decided to stand toe-to-toe with the truth, which meant debunking a lot of myths I had about vulnerability and authenticity.

First, I think I subtly believed that my pain was an inconvenience to others and likely to God, too (myth #1). I think I also subtly believed that faithful people are incredibly stable, and it’s a sign of weakness to be in need (myth #2). And then, somewhere along the way I began to believe that I was the only person who was heartbroken about a couple things in life and that most everyone else was pretty much sailing through (myth #3) — until I heard Parker Palmer say those crazy words, “We’re all heartbroken.” (Whoa.) And I began to wonder if that were, perhaps, really true . . . because, the more I thought about it, it really actually seemed true.

It’s incredibly scary to let our worst fears in — to crash, to be in need, to entertain our heartbrokenness. It feels as though it will swallow us whole (I think I said that pretty much exactly in the chapter). I guess I see that those “worst fears” are with us anyway, playing out, oozing out in all these sideways ways, so even though we think we’re staying ahead of whatever it is that’s at our heels, chances are, we’re not entirely.

So, I did the most obvious thing to do, I went to the trees on the Northern California beach (where my soul resides, incidentally) and I confessed that I wished everyone would just leave me alone, because something in my life just wasn’t working. And I thought I might get struck by lightening right there on the beach for saying all that, for admitting how I was actually feeling.

It’s like I thought I would shock God or something. Like I thought he’d be immediately crazed with anxious worry over me or shaking his head in total disapproval. Why do we wait so long to tell the truth? Especially to God?

Being resilient isn’t ignoring reality. Being resilient is walking into reality and getting the support we need to navigate it. Not living in despair. Not living in denial. But living with the slightest desire to get well.

Some of you have sizable, un-solvable things going on in your drawers, closets, homes. There is no elixir. There is not magic. There is no read-a-blog-post-and-everything-changes. I know that. Believe me, I understand. I understand what it’s like to wake up every morning and be in the same battle. To learn and grow and become and breathe . . . and still have to battle.

I still believe in the power of the truth. I still believe the truth is some kind of serum to our souls. I still believe the truth has the power to set us free.

What’s not working, dear friend?

Your mental health, your schedule, your makeup drawer, your discipline strategy, your marriage, your backsplash, your too-tight pants, the way you’re treating your body, the way you’re allowing someone else to treat your body, your self-talk, your meal planning, your exercise routine, your life values, your career, your relationship with a friend that’s gone septic, your people pleasing, your hair products . . . ?

What’s not working? Some of these things you just need to throw out (likely, I’m not talking about your husband). Some things can’t be salvaged. But some things can be and need to be fought for, rebirthed. This is why we need friends and God. Our friends and God help us know how to take a tiny step toward the what’s-not-working thing and begin to deal with it, head on.

I’ve also found that as I take on the small, less consequential “what’s not working” areas of my home and heart — like an art drawer — I begin to build the muscles of confronting and resolving. For me anyway, this starts to spill over into bigger areas, and I begin to see that I have more and more capacity for that which had previously been unattended. I begin to be able to lean into the harder places, the more complicated and challenging “what’s not workings.”

Ignoring what’s not working isn’t working. At least not at my house. So I guess, if anything, this Chapter 1 is a call to go to a safe place, in the confessional of Carmel if you’re very lucky, and say what you’ve been afraid to say.

This is how we treat ourselves like we would a dear friend. This is how we find breathing room, ultimately. This is the brave fight of letting go. This is how we reach out for life. Validation instead of void.

And now a few questions for discussion . . .

What does it mean to treat yourself like you would a friend? Why is it so hard for us to validate our own struggles? Do you agree or disagree with what Parker Palmer said, that “we are all heartbroken”? And/or share anything else from this chapter that stands out to you.

Thanks for reading along, precious ones. I’ll be back next week with chapters 2 and 3.

Love and truth,

Leeana

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