5
Unhook from Heavy

I sensed that God did not judge my strong urge to fly.

—Barbara Brown Taylor

I mentioned to you that I’m writing this book at age thirty-nine, on the threshold of turning forty. As it turns out, forty is kind of a giant deal throughout the Hebrew Scripture, used to separate two distinct epochs or eras. I wonder if this is somehow prophetic in my own life. That, in fact, I’m on a threshold of sorts, a new beginning.

If you look in both the Old and New Testaments, you see forty everywhere, especially as it relates to God fulfilling a promise to his people (don’t forget that part).

Here are just a few highlights: the rains fell on Noah and his family for 40 days and 40 nights; Israel ate manna for 40 years; Moses was with God on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights; the Israelites roamed the desert for 40 years; Goliath egged on Israel for 40 days; David reigned for 40 years; Solomon reigned for 40 years; Jesus fasted and was tempted for 40 days; Jesus remained on earth 40 days after his resurrection.

I have a lot of feelings about turning forty. (Actually, I have a lot of feelings about everything.) Some days I feel clammy and gaggy about the whole thing. And then other days I feel this might just be my golden era, the time when I settle in to my skin in a way I have not done previously. And that feels thrilling.

Life did not move at all, crept entirely, through some of my thirties. When our babies were small and the days felt like a complete run-on sentence, lacking any punctuation, the weeks walked on by but the hours crawled. And I could not find a single shred of truth in the eyes of the woman at the grocery store who looked at me longingly and said, “Enjoy every minute. It all goes so fast.”

It did not.

Now, with my twins in first grade and the baby in preschool, time is picking up speed, clipping even. And I begin to feel this creeping suspicion that time is not infinite, not in this body anyway. The Soul Bullies tell me my best years are behind me now, and if I didn’t enjoy every minute of them—suck the marrow from every second—then I missed out. The bullies hook into my anxiety by telling me I will wake up tomorrow and be eighty and I will feel bereft because I did not prop my eyelids open with toothpicks; I did not take life in nearly enough.

The Soul Bullies are such killjoys, such hope slayers. They add an inordinate weight to our days, huge pressure, making the stakes feel so high all the time. If you aren’t happy, then you’re miserable. If you aren’t celebrating, then you’re ungrateful. If you aren’t hyper-present, then you’re missing it all. And the truth is, life is so much more nuanced than that, isn’t it. Some days I need to celebrate into the night. Some days just need to end. God has even given me the capacity to hold space for hope and disappointment in the very same square inch of my soul. But the Soul Bullies are out to eradicate this kind of mystery.

The antidote to the weight is a blessing from the Psalms I’ve been reciting on repeat lately. It goes like this: “Let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us, affirming the work that we do. Oh yes. Confirm the work that we do.”1

This may sound so unexamined, so shallow, but my greatest hope for my forties is lightness. The kind of lightness that comes from the Source. Not a lightness from denial or head-in-the-sand living. Quite the opposite. A lightness that is grace, gift, fruit, harvest that comes from sowing seeds of prayer, silence, stillness, rest.

At St. Gregory’s the Great Catholic Church of San Diego, a fountain flows from a cross at a high point on the property down to the entrance, six distinct step-downs of moving water, flowing down the hill. The water coming toward you from the cross symbolizes Christ coming to you, that you do not have to strive after him. He is always moving toward us; we do not have to rely on our attempts or efforts. This is what I want, as I stand on this side of a major life threshold. I want to experience more deeply and fully what Christ has already given me:

“I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.”2

In my ongoing twenty minutes of soul time, I begin asking God to heal me of my striving, my proving, my searching for significance, the white-knuckled try that is never enough, never enough. I don’t want to continue buying into the lies, grabbing, consuming, hiding. I want another path, a different trajectory, because I know the shame-based striver in me will never be satisfied.

God said to me, “I am making you a Brazen Promise. If you will return to me with your heavy, I will give you my light. Put your Striving Self on the couch. Welcome the Striving Leeana. She’s tired. She needs compassion and care. Give her a soft place to land. Cover her in the faux fur throw and bring her coffee in the pink Amore mug and some ice water, too, in the hobnail glass. Rub her arm and tell her, ‘It’s OK. You can rest now. You don’t have to try anymore. You’re off the clock.’ Welcome her with love and acceptance and grace. But whatever you do, Leeana, do not let her get up from the couch. She doesn’t get to be in charge anymore.”

I am practically desperate at times to secure solutions for myself. Especially when I feel the mind plagues coming for me. My desire for expression and my salvation become interlinked so inextricably that I cannot discern my next step. As gently as is possible, God reminds me to return. He reminds me that nothing, apart from him, is a solution. Nothing. Even the good thing. Even the best thing. Nothing is a solution except him.

If the solution has been provided, then what are we to make of these other pursuits and passions: work, art, marriage, motherhood, community? What are these, then, if they are no solution whatsoever? These pursuits, these passions, are our garden—the place where we have been given exceptional freedom, dominion. The only thing God warned us about was the forbidden, the false solution.

It’s excessively painful when we are revealed. When our hiding is revealed. I don’t think many of us hide on purpose. I don’t think we realize we’re doing it at all. We’re broken, we’re searching, we’re tired, and so in our hiding we also grab. We grab at highly destructive things, and we grab at socially acceptable things, and we grab at superspiritual things, all of which result in the same thing: shame. Because we’re grabbing at everything else, but we’re not returning to God. This grabbing gets weighty.

When we’re familiar with lugging our life around—à la living as a Soul Sherpa—it’s hard to trust in a lighter way. It’s hard to trust God’s promises to us that things might be able to change if we do the disciplines of listening and letting go, which is why it’s truly tender that God has begun this dialogue with me on the threshold of my fortieth birthday. Perhaps this is his gracious way of affirming the work he is leading me into, a promise that is to come.

As I have put the striving Leeana on the couch, God has reminded me over and over again that as I bring him my heavy, he will return to me his light. The burden will lift incrementally as I continue coming home. Effort will be met with ease. For me, this has meant that all my energy isn’t going toward dragging around shame and fear. Instead, my energy is reserved for much more productive matters. Like eating artichokes and giggling with friends.

The minute life starts to feel heavy and breathless again, I stop and ask God, “What do you want to say to me today?” We talk for a bit—usually about unhooking from whatever lie I am buying hook, line, and sinker that day—and my energy level returns. And then, a few days pass, and I have to begin again because I forget.

Jesus already told us about this energy exchange in the Gospel of John, where he says, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Abide in me” (John 15:5, paraphrase mine). Live in me. Make your home in me just as I have made my home in you. Separated, you cannot produce a thing.3

The word abide literally means “onward wait.” Absolute poetry. Abiding is an active stillness. It’s unhooking from the strain of striving for significance and, instead, returning to the garden where our significance and our Source are waiting for us.

We don’t work or will our way back to the garden. We return to God, hands open wide, and we let him fill them. We hide in him, not from him.4 And the promises—of rescue, of rest, of production, of crop, of shelter, of hope, of wisdom, of forgiveness, of company, of truth—are realized.

Last weekend we went out to Julian, a mountain town about an hour or so outside of San Diego. We walked through grass up to our hips, wind sweeping down the meadow we were tromping through. In one direction you could see cows grazing at the horizon. In the other direction you could see rolling hills covered in trees. The landscape in between was dotted here and there with farmhouses and old barns, a unique scene for us city dwellers. The kids were at least a hundred feet away from me, and the only noises I could hear were their faint laughs and the rustle of the grass in the breeze. A rickety fence was propped up by lichened rocks. Gray greens, sea foam greens, against granite boulders. Wispy white clouds moved overhead like breath. I could see the color. I could hear the world. I could feel life. I was there, in that moment, inside my own body. For that minute or two the loveliness rested on me, like gossamer. I promise you when I tell you that this is a certifiable death-to-life miracle.

Reflection & Expression

Write about an area of your life where you need to “onward wait.”

For Your Brazen Board

Add an image of lightness.

Add an image of unhooking.