If you are just joining our Breathing Room Book Club, you can catch the previous posts here: Prelude, Chapter 1, Chapter 2. Also, if you want the posts delivered right to your email when I put them up, you can subscribe to my blog on the righthand sidebar. And, finally, thank you SO much to those of you who took the time to write comments on the previous posts. I love reading them and have gone back and responded to all those I hadn’t yet read. So, keep commenting! It makes for a great discussion and adds to the book club experience! Not to mention the fact that I love hearing from all you precious souls.
Today, we’re talking about Chapter 3, “Eating Your Shadow,” which was a totally new concept for me when I wrote the book. In this chapter, I mention two women: Beth and Elaine. These two women were guides to me when we returned from Bahrain back to San Diego in 2013. Right about that time was when I began to realize I was carrying more than I could handle. I couldn’t just muster and push past my own fatigue and anxiety any more. In other words, I was a little bit of a mess. And these two women, here in San Diego, helped me navigate the gauntlet of re-entry, the trauma of living hyper-vigilant overseas, and the general tangle that was bound up in my body and soul when we returned.
This all probably sounds kind of over-dramatic. I don’t know. I think back on that time as being a time when I have never felt more bone tired. Soul tired. And I was afraid . . . because I had strung together a few years where I just didn’t have the energy to push anymore. And that’s when Elaine (who is one of life’s rare souls) said something like, “what if you just let yourself crash?” and “what if you just disappointed some people?” . . . and I basically got hives on the spot when she said those things because no one wants to be lame. No one wants to be the person who is affected.
In the end, though, that’s what I needed to “eat.” I was talking with Beth, who is my spiritual director and also (I swear) some sort of angel with dreads, and she echoed Elaine’s words. She basically said, yeah, you have to stop running away from all these things you’re afraid of being and instead heap them into your mouth. Ingest everything about yourself you’ve rejected. Ugggghhhhhhhhh.
It’s hard for me to articulate how entirely uncomfortable all this talk made me. How I still believed, deep down, that I could handle everything, that I didn’t need to crash (even as I was), that weakness was unacceptable, that I would never really have to disappoint anyone. I still buy into the lie that I can keep ahead of these things about myself I don’t love. And it’s a ruse.
I guess that’s why we landed on “letting go” in the subtitle of Breathing Room. You know, we went round and round and round on the subtitle, trying to find the exact right words to articulate what was really going on in this book. And I think we got it right, because this book is mostly about all the things I had to let go of if I wanted to be alive and awake in my own life. All the things I still have to let go of every day. And one of the biggest things I’m constantly having to release and surrender is this aspirational version of myself and my life that is a total fantasy. I think the fantasy will lead me to the breathing room, but it never does, ironically.
The breathing room is found when I stop and turn around and face those parts of me I don’t want to accept and ingest them, with compassion, back into my being. I. Hate. This. I hate accepting the fact that I am a person who has mental health challenges. I hate accepting the fact that I am a person who needs help. I hate accepting the fact that I am a person who gets mad, sad, frustrated, listless, tired. I hate accepting the fact that I am a person who can’t keep up sometimes, who gets frantic, who gets manic.
Just because I wrote a book about doing all this does not mean it comes easily or naturally to me. In fact, I often say that I wrote this book because I needed to read it. And I still need to read it. Every day. I need to be reminded that crashes are OK, disappointing people is OK, imperfections are interesting, anxiety can actually serve as the friction that creates art. I need to stop and turn toward all the things about me that are inconvenient, all the ways in which I’m intolerant of myself, and put my arms around those limping parts of me.
“The pressure’s off when we can ingest — with compassion and acceptance — our God-image and our dirt-self, our brilliance and our brokenness. I am both exceptional and unexceptional, common and uncommon, remarkable and unremarkable” (page 44).
I end this chapter by saying it’s one of life’s biggest reliefs when we can actually calm down enough to just let go of these aspirational, perfected versions of ourselves and embrace what is. Of course we want to grow, become, transform . . . but perhaps those things can’t happen until we stand still and face whatever we’re afraid of. In other words, we’ve got to be willing to venture into the Meat Market of our own souls with all it’s discomfort, entrails, and weird smells.
What does that mean for me today, you ask? (Because, after all, this book is not just a series of concepts. It’s a series of practices.)
Well, I think about that gorgeous line from The Nester (aka Myquillyn Smith), who I adore. She says it like this, “It doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.” She’s talking about home, specifically, but I think she’s probably not-so-secretly talking about life too. I thinks she’s talking about me, too. I don’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. Neither do you.
I think about that great directive from the prophet Jeremiah that I included in this chapter: “Stop wearing out your shoes.” Today, practicing Chapter 3 looks like standing still and repeating this centering Scripture I’ve been thinking about for some time now:
“And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us, confirming the work that we do. Oh yes. Affirm the work that we do!” (Psalm 90:17, MSG)
It’s easy for me to get frantic. Today, I’m turning toward that wired-up, over-caffinated part of myself and saying, You’re OK. Shhhh. It’s OK. Sit down and take a rest. You’re so pretty. I’ll bring you a faux fur blanket and some duct tape for your mouth, precious love. You’re so darling. And you’re not in charge.
Standing still, ingesting all that we are with the compassion, living from trust instead of try, as we let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest upon us.
What stands out to you in this chapter? What do you need to practice today?
