Sometimes You Just Gotta Ask

About a year ago, a woman named Debbie from the church I used to attend passed away. If I remember correctly, she had died in her home and no one knew about it until a while later.

I learned something from this woman once. She was a peculiar character, this Debbie. She always wore a blue bandana around her head and a brown leather bomber jacket every Sunday I saw her. She had on this bulky leather coat all the time, even when the temperature rose to a muggy 95 degrees in August. Just looking at her made me sweat. Maybe she was cold-blooded. Or immune to sweating. I don’t know. Just thought it was weird.

I liked Debbie. I didn’t mind that she smelled like a used up carton of Marlboro Reds or she had a toothless grin. Her smile reminded me of a baby’s. Simple. Unfettered. I didn’t know her story. I didn’t think it was in my place to ask. I just knew she went to almost every service on the weekends (we had three). I think she fell asleep during some of the services. Oh well, neither here nor there.

Debbie always made an effort to say hi to me every weekend. I’d like to think it had to do with my charm and winning personality but, frankly, she had a particular penchant for expensive Italian handbags. And I do have quite a collection. So every time she flashed her cavernous grin, her eyes would immediately dart to the bag resting on my shoulder. And because I frequently switched bags, she paid extra attention to me.

There was a particular red bag I wore that I just know made her drool. I know because it made me drool and feel warm and fuzzy all over. I can’t remember what brand it was, but it was pricey. And one of my favorites. The leather was incredibly supple and butter-soft. You could have used it as a pillow. Or gone on a date with it, it was so stunning.

Debbie walked over to me the third Sunday I wore it. I was happy to see her and gave her a cheery smile. Of course, I admired her good taste. As she groped my fire engine red, fine leather specimen, she asked me a bold question. “If you are done wearing it, can I have it?” I didn’t hesitate, not even for a millisecond. Nothing crossed my mind—not even subconsciously—other than, “Sure.”

Let me be clear about something. Before I pride myself on being the most generous person in the world, I suppose that if I didn’t have a billion other bags, or if I had just bought it only hours earlier, or if Debbie was a snot-nosed, punk teenager who felt entitled to anything of quality, or if I was feeling particularly selfish or was sick or tired or had real bad cramps, I probably would have balked at her request or maybe even said no. But I swear to it, it didn’t cross my mind.

Anyway, a few weeks passed and I honestly forgot about her request until I saw her in church and she commented on the new mustard colored bag from Milan I sported. I felt like an idiot for forgetting to give her the red bag and made sure to bring it with me to church the following Sunday. And I did. I wrapped in a pretty pink bag with a bow, kissed her on the cheek, gave it to her, and told her I hoped she would enjoy it. Debbie beamed with joy. Her grateful attitude was unmistakable.

As I walked away, I saw two people volley gazes from me to Debbie to the bright red purse. One woman in particular glared at me like I had committed the unpardonable sin. Like I had just offered Debbie a bag of weed and a forty ounce. Honestly, I didn’t what they were thinking, but I know it wasn’t good. Nothing good can possibly come from a beady-eyed glare. Whatever.

Almost immediately, some words came to my mind which I believe was one of those God moments. The kind where he brushes your hair out of your eyes so you can see the twinkle in his. The kind where he cups his hands over your hard-of-hearing ears and whispers something brief but poignant. These are holy hushes of wisdom so quiet, you’ll likely miss them if you’re not paying careful attention.

In the depths of my heart I heard, "Sometimes you just have to ask."

I got the understanding that’s how our relationship is with God. That while the quality of our lives depends on the sometimes crazy combination of faith, decent living, prayer, meditation, happenstance, the influence of the spirit realm, we can’t forget that we are also a part of that equation. God can’t give us anything we don’t ask for.

Maybe you need healing. Or a restored relationship. Or some miraculous intervention. Or an answered prayer for a friend. Or for your teenager to find the right path again. Or for your cravings to stop. Whatever it is…however big or trivial. Sometimes there is just no space for the miraculous to take place if we don’t ask for them and create some wiggle room.

I think it's time for some of you out there to get ready to recieve whatever it is you've been asking for:)

Letting Go (again and again)

Bob Newhart appeared on the comedy show Mad TV years ago and performed a skit with the actress Mo Collins. Mo plays a woman who had a first time visit with a psychiatrist, played by Newhart. In this meeting, she gives him a litany of complaints about what is ailing her—her fear of being buried alive in a box, her regular panic attacks, her claustrophobia, her eating disorder, and her tendency to have self-destruction relationships with men. He responds the same way every time she pauses to let him drop in his two cents. He looks at her incredulously and barks, “Stop it! Just stop it!” She is, of course, taken back by his ridiculous and offensive advice, and retorts that she can’t just stop it. The doctor continues to respond by telling her she is silly and to “Just stop it!”

It’s a hilarious skit that reminds me of the Christianese phrase I often hear. “Let go and let God.” As if it is so easy. Or as if it is a one-time deal. There are many things we need to let go of in life, and this advice relates mostly to worry and anxiety. We are supposed to stop worrying and let God worry for us. The reality, of course, is that it’s not so easy.

What does it feel like to let go? It’s usually not an altar experience, that’s for sure. Well, maybe it can start of with something like that. But the teary Sunday night church service comes and goes and Monday through Saturday tail right behind it. Typically by Tuesday (at best), whatever we have let go of is back and, perhaps it’s even worse. (If you know how to surrender your stuff to God without remembering or even reminding yourself of it the next day, perhaps you can show me how.)

The things I hold on to—my desperate need to know or to control, my worry, my fears—seem to be crazy glued in my clenched fists. What I’m realizing is that if I allow God the pleasure of intervening in this sometimes gut-wrenching journey, He begins to ever so slowly and gently (but sometimes painfully in my heart) pry my fingers off of the things I’m defensively holding onto.

Jesus once said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light (Matthew 11:28-30).”

Many of us are tired. Our burdens weigh more than we do. Our yokes are too oppressive to just shake off. So Jesus offers us an invitation to get rid of those things. To give Him our baggage and, in turn, receive His rest. For those of us who find this command, which is what I really think it is, hard to live out, let me remind you that you don’t just come to Jesus once or twice. It has to be a recurring event. Don’t feel bad if you can stop worrying after two or ten “Please, God, help me not to worry about this.” Keep praying. Our letting go of stuff, our surrendering, our giving up is required Sunday through Saturday; morning, noon, and night; sometimes even every hour or minute, especially for the worrywarts and control freaks (I speak for myself).

Remember, Jesus said He would teach us how to do this. He knows the majority of us aren’t spiritual rocket scientists, but human beings living in a fallen world. The great part of this Christly offering is that our reward is rest. Peace. A night of sleep without tossing and turning. A day without the falling of anxious tears. An afternoon without the restless double-time beating of an impatient heart.

We’ve all got better things to do than to worry, than to hold on to bothersome and weighty stuff, than to be chained by anxiety wondering how everything is going to turn out. Let go and let God? Sure...for some tonight. For others, eventually. In any case, better than never.

Update

Last night, I wrote the blog that I posted early this morning. It was so early, I was half asleep and didn’t put together the fact that I was posting on 9/11. When I realized what I did, I just about kicked myself in the arse and let out a Homer Simpson "Doi!" It's so petty to talk about remembering my life on a day we need to remember others who are not with us any longer and who are somehow connected to the tragic event. So just keep in mind, I didn’t mean to post my ramblings on such a day. It was a fluke. That being said, today is a very emotional day for many people and we should take some time to remember them and mourn for those we lost.

Detours

Nine years ago I left a cushy job at Accenture to pursue my dreams in the music business. I packed up everything I owned (thankfully not much) in my 1992 Mitsubishi Eclipse I called “Shabazz” (my beau’s name is Jabazz, isn’t that weird?), and drove down to Music City USA.

Hello Nashville, TN.

I didn’t have a plan, really. I had grown up with music—played the violin since I was four (it’s now huddled in the corner of my living room sadly collecting dust), took years of music lessons in a smorgasbord of instruments (mandolin included and no, I don’t do bluegrass), wrote lyrics to over 300 songs (way too wordy, I should have known I wasn’t cut out to be a songwriter), was on my church’s worship team as a peppy alto, blah-blah-blah.

My mindset was pretty simple. Optimistic. Naïve. Unstructured. Definitely simple. I was going to be a star. You know how embarrassing it is to admit that? Well, maybe it’s sorta funny, too. Armed with music in my blood and a dream embedded in my soul, I drove Shabazz into Nashville and expected an entourage of music biz folks to greet me, the “next big star,” at the border with champagne and a recording contract. Yeah. Not so much.

You know what happened? My dream didn’t work out. What a shocker. It took all of a few weeks for reality to punch me in the face. I didn’t have what it takes to make it in music. In hindsight, there were glimpses of that truth here and there. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. Maybe I had some talent, but I didn’t have the confidence, the know-how, the connections, and the list goes on and on. Kudos to me, I have to say, for actually trying. I jumped a fence mostly on chance. Over the years I’ve lost some of that edge and am praying to find at least a piece of that chutzpah to keep with me.

In the two or three years I spent in Music City, my inner life shifted. In slow motion. I got real depressed, my eating disorder spun disastrously out of control, and though I was seeking God with a reckless abandon to help me find my purpose and live my dream (whatever he wanted it to be), I was met not with answers, but with the blasts of wind from slammed doors.

All my life I asked God to lead me wherever he wanted. I prayed I would do anything, if he could only just tell me what he wanted me to do. Didn’t hear a peep from him. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. I was disappointed, felt let down, and didn’t have much to believe in. And out of this void, I began writing bits and pieces of a book, Silent Savior, which has now made its way in publication.

Nine years ago I traded comfort for the unknown. I believed in a fairytale with an envious confidence. Nine years ago the haze of wishful thinking dissipated to expose my empty life. And nine years ago, the genesis of a book that would take almost a decade to complete and get published was birthed. Silent Savior is the dream I never knew I had. I really believe those are the best kinds. Sweet surprises that bear the handprint of the divine. My desires got rerouted in a better direction and I’m doing something today I never imagined I could do.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a look-at-me-I’m-so-great-my-dream-came-true self aggrandizing moment. I am just amazed that God’s orchestration of our lives includes different paths, detours, intersecting highways, and even closed roads. Yes, all of the above. But all of it takes you where you need to go.

There are desire we have and choices we make and the divine is at work in the midst of these things. Sometimes things work out. Sometimes they don’t. But all along the roads we walk or stumble on, littered with stone or smooth as silk, we just need to trust that Someone up there is holding on to our hand and leading us in a connect-the-dots way. I mean, come on, I wanted a stage with lights and a microphone. I got a world of books and solitude instead. Guess what? I couldn’t be happier or more grateful.

Nine years from today? Who knows? I can say I kinda like the feeling I have now—the marriage of mild fear and excited jitters. So much can happen. To me. To you. Let’s just trust that God knows what He’s doing and may we learn to live to enjoy the ride.

Vroom, vroom, baby, vroom, vroom.

Fix Me. I’m Broken.

The thing with having a healthy love relationship with someone that you hope to spend the rest of your life with is in having to reveal the bad and the ugly. What sucks is that it’s usually not a one-time deal either. Lately I’ve been feeling like the Awesome Blossom Chili’s used to have on their menu. There are like a hundred layers of fried crap and fat sticking out of a vegetable that slightly resembles a flower. If you pluck off and eat one layer of this fried beauty, guess what? There are 99 more layers you can pluck off and eat.

It seems every now and then (or a lot in the past few weeks) I have to talk with my beau about something from my past that affects me in some way still today. (One layer of the Awesome Blossom is ripped off, only for him to see more layers of crunchy-bad-for-you-friedness right below and around it). Sometimes the conversations revolve around things that I’m dealing with today that, though will make a better and healthier person, are just embarrassing to admit. Or things I have to apologize for. Or things that put my emotional scars on display. Or things that make me look like I don’t have it all together all the time (which I don’t, but still…)

This type of vulnerable sharing makes me feel tired. Frustrated. Used up and washed out. It makes me feel broken, like I need to be bubble-wrapped, duct-taped, packaged, and UPSd to a remote factory where they fix people. Hmmm, what does this broken instrument need? How about we wind AJ up top, take the bottom screw out of her right ventricle, insert a metal pin in the left side of her brain, throw her in the wash, let her air dry, and give her an apple. Except that’s not gonna happen.

When I expose my inner issues and struggles and fears and doubts and subsequently feel like a stopwatch that’s been mauled by a Rottweiler, I have to remember it’s just feelings of inadequacy that make me feel broken, the razor sharp lies from the ghosts of yesterday and today that can make my self-worth crumble like a Graham cracker. But that insecurity doesn’t dictate the beauty and juicy goodness that embodies who I truly am, nor the beauty and juicy goodness of G-d, who has so lovingly and carefully designed me from even before I was born.

And you know what else? The truth is, sometimes digging deep into those dark places of confession, the breeding ground for secrets and things that have the power to control us, is the best way to bring them into the light and maybe take some of that destructive power away. Maybe the bad and ugly stuff is like vampires. Maybe, like those creatures of the night, my sharings go nuts when they see sunlight and are rendered useless. I hope so.

For now, I’ll keep on being open and honest and willing to walk into the fissures of my being that I so desperately protect and keep roped off. Though certain things are uncomfortable and annoying to share or discuss, I think they’re necessary. Exposing your true self (to the right people, of course, and in a healthy way) is probably one of the most empowering things you can do. It takes chutzpah. It takes courage. And there’s a certain element in freedom when you take the stuff you’ve been carrying around on your back for a long time and chuck it on the ground. But it shouldn’t stay there. I need to remember to kick that baggage toward G-d instead of allowing it to make me feel broken. He may not be a fix-it repair guy, but I hear he’s a pretty good recycler.

Wahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I miss my sister and she hasn’t even left yet.

I live on the East Coast. She is smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, only a few days away from trekking her way to Oregon. There she will be in a different time zone, in a different environment, with different people. And though we are now in different time zones, in different environments, and with different people, we are still connected. Very much so. And I’m scared that her move will abort that connection. And that fear is making me burst out in tears at random moments in the day. Which is very inconvenient. Especially if I am wearing mascara.

My sister is awesome. I admire her, in one way, because her being is embodied by adventure. Whether it was deciding at 17 to join the Army against my parent’s strong protests, or running for a student body position at college where she virtually knew no one, or giving up a cushy job to work for a dot com for peanuts, or living in Thailand in a hut and taking up Muay Thai, or constantly working against the grain of societal norms, assumptions, and rules, I am in awe of the things she does. My sister is the queen undertaker of the unconventional. Her bravery challenges me.

She is also intuitive and smart. When I am running the gamut of bubbling emotions, my sister is my calming equilibrium. She is refreshingly adept at guiding me toward a change of perspective, a new way of thinking, to get me through whatever I need getting through.

And even though we have lived in different states for the last three years and have been distanced by countries at times, I feel her move to Oregon means she is pulling herself further away from me. Though, deep down, I know this is not true. I believe in my sister and want the best for her. But the selfish part of me is screaming out for her to move to NJ and stay with me. I want to put her in my pocket and keep her with me forever. But that is just dumb.

You know what? I’m just gonna miss her. And deep down inside, all this fear and missing and thinking and sadness is just fluff on top of the real issue. I just don’t want Viv to forget me. Ever.

An Accusation. A Truth.

My sister-in-law’s ice-blue eyes sparkled in the silhouette of the aquarium behind us as she turned to my boyfriend and said, “You know, AJ has low self-esteem.” I was mortified. I know she spoke other words that dangled in and around that sentence, but all I heard was: AJ. Has. Low self-esteem. She might as well have jumped up from the table, belted out “Yepa-yepa-yeap” like a Mariachi performer, and then shrieked for all to hear, “Hey, let’s cheer to the loser at table six. Give it up to the bottle-blonde failure.”

I thought of only one thing while my face turned Jersey tomato red and smoke poured out of my ears.

Bitch.

Then I lashed out in defense. I don’t remember what I said. Something along the lines of “No I’m not,” but in a very defensive tone and with more and big words so I sounded smart. The truth was, I was embarrassed. Humiliated. I felt I had to do damage control and quickly salvage this broken, ugly, and messy portrait of me. I didn’t want my beau to even slightly entertain the notion that I questioned my self-worth. Honestly, I didn’t want to hear it myself. It made me cringe and took me on a supersonic trip down memory lane…reminding me of things I did to myself that I’d rather since forget.

I continued to defend myself with much passion, even taking verbal jabs at my sister-in-law here and there out of spite. I was on a roll. My boyfriend tried to step in. From the corner of my right eye, I saw him try to aim a forkful of cheddar cheese-topped crabmeat toward my mouth. I was actually offended. Did he think I was a pig? That I was so pathetic that I’d trade my defensive monologue for a bite of greasy goodness? For Pete’s sake, nobody else was stepping in, lifting up sword and shield, to fight for my worth.

A few minutes later, it was over. My sister-in-law and I ironed out that accusatory wrinkle. Only it happened after I was able to crawl out of my foxhole of self-protection to actually hear the point she was trying to make. Do you know what this woman—who has known me since I was thirteen—was really saying?

That it was a shame that I wasn’t able to see how creative and smart and beautiful and talented and dedicated and hard-working she thought I was. That I didn’t give myself enough credit for my accomplishments. That she admired me. That she thought I was an amazing woman. And that she wished I would stop questioning myself and simply enjoy me. That I needed to be reminded of how important it was to keep believing in myself.

I was touched. I shed some salty discharge. And though it happened in December of last year, I’ve not been able to get that conversation out of my mind.

Sure. Self- image and esteem have been things I’ve struggled with for many years. It’s a thorn in my side. But I’ve come a long way, baby, and I’m continuing to dare to believe in myself. My sister-in-law, in her inimitable way, reminded me that I still have to beware the demons and ghosts on my shoulder that hiss terrible things in my sometimes sensitive ear. It’s something I need never to forget.

It’s an interesting road, this thing called believing in yourself. I’m quickly realizing that it is, at least for me, a battle for my life…and my future.