Just show up

In her book, Carry on Warrior, Glennon tried telling me that showing up is enough.

Ha! So funny. She's talking to the girl who intended to write her senior thesis on Post-modern Catholic Social Ethics and ended up discovering a social-ill, a struggle with "enoughness." She's talking to the girl who has grown up in a world where "enough" is about as real as pixie-dust yet something that must still be strived for...because that makes soooo much sense. Let's just say, her words did not meet willing eyes.

Well, time went on, as it always does, and some people and some situations pounded my heart with a tenderizer--yeah, that shit hurts just like it sounds--and compassion has skillfully climbed its way to the top of my value list. It happened through a lot of scowling through therapy and softening sarcasm and conversations with myself about being a friend to myself. 

The process has just begun. A journey of self-reflection leading to self-actualization. Yum. It's so good. I'm dreaming of going off the high dive someday and also being content with splashing my feet with wild abandon for now.

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These days, it feels like almost every day is like starting over.

It feels like I need a whole new toolbox of knowledge and skills to get through my life.

Perhaps it is because I'm in "therapist-training-school" and go to class where we use our real-life problems as case examples and do homework assignments that dig up all sorts of raw gunk, but it feels like my life is a series of identity-crises that do not get resolved before another pops up. 
Sometimes, I leave class thinking "what the heck just happened?!" and I've learned not to think about the future because the uncertainty will only create an unrelenting pathological crisis.

During one of these class conversations about real-life problems this week, a classmate mentioned that she was wondering though the conversation about asking me what it is about competence that is important to me. That's how she stated it. She didn't ask but my mind immediately jolted to "oh, my God! that's too personal!" 

The answer? Competence is important because I've learned it has a connection to integrity and independence and purpose and usefulness--all things that are also important to me. I struggle to have patience in the learning stage when I feel as though I should already be fully competent (even when this is not the case). For example, the thought that I will be doing therapy in just two months is terrifying to me because I don't know what I am doing! 

The antidote here, is compassion. Compassion involves determining that your best is enough and accepting that it is unreasonable to ask for anything more than that. In this case, compassion is telling myself 'just show up.' Every day I have to lie in my bed for a moment and remind myself to just show up that day.  

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To balance my life, I coach a swim team. I work primarily with kids 9-13. These kids are learning long division and what the state capitols are and reading their first novels. These kids are in a stressful life stage. For many of them, swim practice is their "happy place" where the only expectation is that they do what we (their coaches) say.

Whenever I think about compassion, my mind pulls me to think of my swimmers, specifically how I talk to them--instilling motivation and confidence, requiring accountability and responsibility, etc. One of the coaches is known for his lack of compassion. According to him, you don't miss practice unless you are dying or unable to breathe. When a girl missed practice for her 8th grade graduation, he told her that walking across a stage wasn't going to make her a better swimmer and she needed to get her priorities straight. According to him, if you're late, it's always your fault--even if you're 11 and have no control over your parents leaving the house on time. According to him, if you don't swim well at a meet, you failed.

I want to be different.

I want these kids to grow up knowing there is something that is enough, that their best is enough.

One girl was freaking out in February right after she turned 13--that's the age when your events get dramatically longer distances. Hyperventilating, in tears over an hour before her first race, she told me she couldn't do it. She swims over 5000 yards in a practice so I know she is capable. I've witnessed this scene with other swimmers and other coaches before. It's a conversation about "man up! stop being a baby! stop crying and get your crap together!"

I wasn't interested in creating a hardened heart from such invalidation. I know what that's like.

We sat on a bench and I told her to just show up and get wet. She immediately stopped crying and looked at me blankly. Apparently, she had never been coached to just do her best and not strive for something higher than her grasp.

She didn't do awesome. This was no miracle. But she swam. She showed up behind the block for every race and she got wet.

Sometimes showing up is most of the battle.

Even now, as I write, I notice myself feeling some strain in communicating exactly what I want to say...and I tell myself it's okay, just show up. Just write. Words written a little awkwardly are better than words unwritten.

JUST SHOW UP.

The Habit of Being

The letters of Flannery O'Connor compiled into the 600+ page book entitled The Habit of Being allow Flannery to be understood in a way no biography could replicate. She has been one of my favorite authors (William Faulkner also fills this role) for about five years in which time I have read all her short stories and her first novel. I loved her for her writing then and now I love her for the woman she was never ashamed to be.

A former professor lent me The Habit of Being two and a half weeks ago and as I finished the last pages at the end of last week, my gratitude for that random question ["have you ever read anything by Flannery O'Connor?"] multiplied. I'll admit that I have purchased my own copy of this book on amazon and look forward to rereading it after I reread Flannery's work.

The letters contained in this book are to her publisher, agent, various editors and contacts at universities, her fans and even Flannery's closest friends. As such, the reader gains unparalleled insight into Flannery's personal habit of being.

She was hilarious.
She was scarcastic.
She was Catholic.
She was honest.
She was humble.
She was a perfectionist.
She was hopeful.
She was afflicted.
She knew her strengths.
She appreciated her friends.


Normally when I read a book or watch a movie that contains a character I appreciate this much, I end up subconsciously attempting to emulate the person. For some odd reason, though, this is not the case with Flannery. Perhaps it is because I'm subconsciously aware that I'm already very similar to this woman or I suppose it could also be the result of appreciating her for who she was as well as what she produced and knowing that my talents lie elsewhere.

Flannery had an uncanny understanding of grace and on many occasions tried to explain it to her contacts. Being that grace is one of the theological concepts I have yet to understand, I found the passages dealing with the topic to be quite insightful and theologically astute.

By living in a way that necessitated growth in virtue as well as a deep understanding of humanity, Flannery acquired "the habit of being": an excellence not only of action but of interior disposition and activity that increasingly reflected the object, the being, which specified it, and was itself reflected in what she did and said.

All I can really say is that I have been changed by reading this book. As is my hope with all entertainment I seek, I have been changed for the better--in many ways I am yet unaware of.

Reading for fun...I have time for that now!

This morning, I went over to the beehive (building of offices for humanities faculty) to pick up a paper. When the paper wasn't in my professor's mailbox I had to go up to the third floor to get it directly from her. I knocked on the door and she ushered me in. Long story short, we talked for an hour...and only about my paper for about 4 minutes.

Out of the blue, she asked me what I was currently reading. I pulled my book out from my bag sitting at my feet and let her take a look--Death By Love by Mark Driscoll...not really light reading. Laughing, she said "and some fiction on the side?" She asked if I'd ever read anything by Flannery O'Connor. Not only have I read most of her work (all her short stories and one of her novels), she just happens to be my favorite author. No big deal. She grinned, impressed? surprised? Whatever the case, she lent me her copy (every time I go to Dr. Rubio's office, I leave with at least one book) of Flannery O'Connor's letters--letters to everyone...her publishers, her friends, her family, everyone. 


As I've been working my way through the introduction, I was struck by some of her words:

"There are some of us who have to pay for our faith 
every step of the way 

and who have to work out dramatically what it would be like without it 

and if being without it would ultimately be possible or not."

I sat on my bed, intellect seized by introspection. 

American culture often treats religion as some kind of fad--in one day and out the next. But Flan is suggesting otherwise. She motions that being might not be possible without faith. Granted, religion and faith are different. Lots of people might say they have faith but not unite themselves with a certain religious community. It's like "I'm spiritual not religious." What's with that? When did all these sub categories become so common place? When did religion come to be seen as a negative thing? 

Faith is believing in things unseen, or so I've heard. 

So is faith innately irrational?

I don't like the thought of that. 

I like things to be black and white. Unfortunately, the world doesn't come nicely split like that. There's a lot of black and a lot of white, they just happen to be mixed together forming innumerable shades of gray, that's why relativism is becoming such a popular thought process. 

There are times when I'm not so sure what exactly I have faith in, but I know, without a doubt that there has to be something bigger than me, something beyond this Earthly existence, or else none of this matters. If this is all there is and I'm going to get dropped eight feet in the ground and piled with dirt after I die and that's it, what's the point? I need there to be a God. I need there to be an afterlife. Without those, living seems irrational. Because there is so much pain and suffering (often seen as useless) I cannot begin to understand why we would continue if there was no purpose to the pain, nothing better to come. 

All I know is that despite my rationality, I'm often wrong. I can explain things until my heart stops beating but it is ever so easy to undo all that explanation. Even when I think I am most right, there always exists another person who feels s/he is just as right. There is only one truth.

I suppose I revert back to what this professor spoke about at the end of our last class a few weeks ago. She said, "knowing how wrong I've been and how many mistakes I've made forces me to see and acknowledge that I want something other than me leading my life." Looking back on our lives, even in reviewing the past week, we can probably all see how our plans didn't turn out the way we expected. We put so much time and energy into planning and organizing but it's gonna happen His way no matter what. We can take the long road or the short road, or better yet, His road. No matter what, all roads lead back to Him. We have faith because we're not good enough--or at least that's why Dr. Rubio and I do.

I'm still just in the introduction. I haven't even really had a chance to dissolve myself to become one with the words of the book. I have over 600 pages of pure entertainment reading and I couldn't be more excited. There is nothing I am supposed to learn from this. There no notes to take, no questions to answer, and no deadline to meet. 

Pleasure reading, a fantastic concept.