My heart aches for all of the girls, all over the world, who cry silently, who cannot speak the things that they want to say, who believe that they will never have the opportunity to be who they long to be. I pray that each will be convinced–at an age much younger than mine–that her unique beauty is needed in this world. That she has the opportunity to amplify her voice, no matter how desperately others might try to diminish it.
For me, answering this question will take the form of a multi-post essay. (Apparently I have much to say to myself.)
But for today this is what I would say to my younger self:
“Rachel, there are many ways for things to work out. The world will not end if you make the wrong decision, if you turn the opposite way on the path, if you try something and fail. If necessary, you can make a U-turn down the road. You can start over. You can find a way to do it differently. You can forgive yourself. Every single day, you can choose to change your mind. This is not a life or death decision.”
In essence–quoting C. Joybell C.–I’d say: “Rachel, you can always take a cab.” I didn’t know about cabs at 15. I thought that being in the wrong place at the wrong time meant that I would miss my one and only ride. Nearly every day, every hour, I was terrified of making a fatal mistake. I’m so grateful, at 44, to see options abounding and surrounding me!
It’s a perfectly calm day on the ocean. There’s not even the tiniest whisper of a wind. You’re in a sailboat, and there’s not a ripple on the water. You’ve been out in the open for hours, floating peacefully without any other people or boats or shoreline in sight.
Suddenly you perceive something coming your direction. It’s a massive wave, and it’s coming out of nowhere. In less than a minute, it’s going to capsize your boat.
You’re wondering where it came from.How is it possible for a wave of this magnitude to instantaneously appear when the weather has been so calm and there’s not another soul on the horizon?
What the…?
Apparently this can happen.
It’s called a rogue wave and it defies the human drive for predictability.
Jeremy and I decided to spend most of our first year as a married couple living on a 30-foot sailboat. From September through December 1990, we overcame significant odds by making our way down the East Coast, arriving safely in the Bahamas. Given our level of experience (i.e. virtually none), it was truly astounding to me that we made it.
We made our way slowly–from our departure point on Lake Champlain near Burlington, Vermont–following the Intracoastal Waterway guidebooks written by Walter Cronkite (yes, that Walter Cronkite!) religiously.
We survived a number of challenges along the way to our destination: Hitting a rocky shoal our second day out on the water, navigating locks and bridges on the Hudson River, experiencing an engine failure in darkening skies through New York City harbor, calling for a humiliating tow into Mannesquan Inlet, New Jersey, sitting out a tornado warning in Annapolis, rocking and rolling through a two-day storm in St. Augustine Florida, and enduring an overnight crossing from Miami to Little Turtle Cay, Bahamas.
And in between? Many golden days and silent nights.
While still not over-confident, I did feel that we two firstborns had a winning survival strategy: Uncover all of the potential hazards, be vigilant and responsible. Above all, remain cautious. Hopefully–I thought--if we avoided going out at night, stayed put in harbor when the weather was bad, and monitored our marine charts and weather reports carefully, we could avoid nearly everything truly hazardous.
We had avoided watching Dead Calm and tried not to think about pirates. But we didn’t know about rogue waves.
After our arrival in the Bahamas, someone enlightened me on this unknown subject.
I was incredulous.
I thought I had the scary aspects of this adventure figured out. I thought I understood all of the dangers and had reconciled myself to mitigating them in the ways I could.
Now this? How dare there be something so terrifying out there that I knew absolutely nothing about? How could I make sure it didn’t hurt me if I didn’t even know it was out there?
What good preparation for the rest of my life.
Thankfully, no rogue wave appeared while we sailed.
But there have been rogue waves in the 20+ years since.
Unexpected illnesses, devastating losses, surprising and scary situations.
And there will certainly be more in future. This I know.
This is life.
What else do I know?
Rogue waves no longer frighten me.
No matter what comes.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—Romans 8:38
Approximately 16 years ago, one of my closest friends–
Well actually she turned out to not be one of my closest friends. Rather, she had come to view me as an obstacle to her desired “friendship” with my husband, who thankfully was not interested in trading me for her–
Anyway this “friend” looked at me and said the following:
You will never be well, because you want to be sick.
At the time I was living with a myriad of symptoms for which there seemed to be no clear diagnosis, though the word “lupus” was being bandied about confidently by my rheumatologist, who also assured me that I only had further physical deterioration to look forward to in the years to come. I was 25.
So when this friend–who obviously was not my friend–to whom I had freely given my heart and with whom I had opened up my life, said those words to me, it devastated me. It was like a punch in the stomach. A gunshot through my heart. A poisonous dart in my mind.
My deepest fear–which had surfaced and been pushed back down and surfaced again over the years–was that she was right.
One of my most entrenched beliefs was that everyone else knew better. That everyone else was better.
I, on the other hand, was:
Fundamentally flawed.
Always wrong.
Hopeless.
Powerless.
Destined to be sick.
Because the cause of all of my failures and shortcomings was undoubtedly my inherent worthlessness.
And this fear clung on deep, deep down for dear life until I yanked and clawed it out and spoke it out loud in a safe space. A safe place where someone honest and loving and Godly could repeat the actual truth to me. She repeated it over and over, until finally I began to believe her.
It dawned on me: Perhaps I had been living with a lie.
The friend–who was not a friend–was very wrong.
She had told ugly, ugly lies.
And I was vulnerable. So I took the ugly, ugly lies in and gave them a swanky place to live. I let them spread out and make themselves at home and they even invited more lying, cheating friends in.
I didn’t know how to distinguish truth from a lie.
And I did not set out to prove her wrong, but my life today declares loudly the truth about me:
I am more whole than I ever imagined I could be.
I am beautiful.
I am loved.
I am filled to the brim with potential.
I am at my best when I am sharing my authentic self to the fullest extent.
I am joyful and well and strong and courageous.
And you are all of those things too.
So hold your head high.
No matter what anyone else says or thinks.
Believe me.
I have lived with lies too and I am telling you the truth.
The power of vulnerability is precisely what this blog celebrates.
My commitment to share my authentic self is often challenged by the extent to which I am willing to be vulnerable in these blog posts. It is, however, a useful exercise. Even a spiritual one. Being continuously tested in this way causes me to reexamine my commitment to the “undivided life.”
Several of you recommended that I watch Brene Brown’s TED talk on the Power of Vulnerability, thinking that I would appreciate it. And you were obviously right.
Brene Brown studies human connection — our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity.
If you take the time to watch these incredibly insightful 20 minutes, you will understand what I mean when I declare that the more vulnerable I allow myself to be, the stronger I become. The truth is that presenting my authentic self to the world inevitably leads to deeper, more authentic connections with others. And these connections are absolutely, indisputably soul-nourishing and life-giving.
If I could share just one crucial contributor to the vast improvement I have experienced in my emotional, spiritual and physical well-being over the last few years, the power of vulnerability would be the essence of it. The more I embrace the fact that I am worthy of love, the more that I choose to risk myself with others, the more freedom I embody. I have experienced this paradox: Taking risks eradicates fear.
I still throw up walls, particularly with the one I love the most. Clearly, there are yet some difficult roads to climb. But by placing my intentions in full view here, I commit willingly to more exposure. Because surely he will read this and know.Know that I am admitting that I have more work to do. So the blog helps me to face my truth and to bring my misgivings and desires out into the open. And take the first step by saying, ” I’m sorry for my insecurities and fears and walls. I have hidden myself from you. I no longer want to hide.”
So hard. But even harder is the next step: To summon the courage to go and say these words face-to-face, looking into the eyes of the beloved.
Yet, this is something I am very willing to do. Because I know firsthand the power of vulnerability.
Here’s just a snippet of the talk’s transcript. Go ahead, watch the video.
Rachel xo
I said, “Well, I have a vulnerability issue. And I know that vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it’s also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love. And I think I have a problem, and I need some help.”
But there’s another way, and I leave you with this. This is what I have found: to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee — and that’s really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that’s excruciatingly difficult — to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we’re wondering, “Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?” just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, “I’m just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive.” And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we’re enough. Because when we work from a place I believe that says, “I’m enough,” then we stop screaming and start listening, we’re kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we’re kinder and gentler to ourselves.
“And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together…” Isaiah 12.6
Bruce Cockburn asked me to sing “Wondering Where the Lions Are” along with him Monday night (OK maybe he didn’t ask only me, but still…)
My Baby and I were at the Cedar, about 15 rows behind the Barnhills, because our tickets told us we couldn’t sit in the privilege-laden white chairs. We were ok with this though, because–if seating assignments should correspond to the level of a fan’s adoration–Jimmy and Carla were absolutely in their rightful place, sitting smack dab in the middle of the front row.
But back to the song.
Many years ago, this song granted me one of my very first experiences of pure joy. And for this girl who felt like she was in the shadows a lot of time, that was a memorable feeling.
When I first heard these lyrics–in spite of the overwhelming sense of responsibility that I tended to carry around as a child–I nonetheless understood instinctively the phrase “some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me.” I–for just a moment or two–also found myself wondering where the lions were.
With all of the talk this weekend of rapture and the world coming to an end, I was reminded of a time when I was literally terrified of being “left behind” while others–obviously more deserving than me–were carried off to the peace of a guaranteed place in heaven.
Now, as then, the world survived to another day. And all of the chatter and speculation and negativity and condemnation didn’t even enter my atmosphere.
It’s not that I don’t believe that the world could cease to exist one day–after all, anything’s possible. Plus, we are not doing a great job of taking care of this earth that sustains us.
And it’s not that I am unaware of the myriad scary things we face every day in this life–war, cancer, loss, hostility, tornadoes, murder and madness. All could be described as lions, creeping stealthily in the alleyways and lurking in the brush along the lakeshore.
But when I stop to consider God’s relentless love for us, when I notice that I am surrounded by glimpses of ecstasy and eternity, the lions are as if tranquilized. Big cats might still be hanging out in the neighborhood, but they are peace-seeking, even going so far as to lie down with much gentler creatures.
There is beauty to be seen, peace to be had, eternity to be experienced, even now. At this stage in my life, I gratefully acknowledge that the lions simply aren’t as frightening as they were before. You could even say that some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me.
While living in Victoria, British Columbia in 1992, I remember being awakened one morning by a news story about a cougar that had made its way down from the mountains through the city in the dark of the night. The big cat had gotten lost and eventually ended up in the parking garage below the Empress Hotel. Imagine the shock of the parking attendant who came across it early in the morning! Actually, this was a fairly young male cougar and he was pretty frightened by the whole experience himself. He was tranquilized and safely returned to the mountains.
Just thinking about this powerful creature making its way through the city streets unseen by human eyes–perhaps crouched in the very bushes we had driven past on our way home from a movie–filled me with a sense of intense mystery and awe. But not of fear. This is the stuff of dreams and visions, just as my Canadian compatriot describes below in his quote about the song’s origins. There were lions at the door…
The verdict? The song is every bit as powerful and inspired as it was in 1976. In fact, if Bruce would have been willing to hang out, I could have sung about lions and their hiding places for hours.
You can listen while watching the “two lion” mountain formations of British Columbia on video below. It was very moving listening to Bruce sing it in person of course. Still: Close your eyes, ponder eternity for a moment, and think about how you see evidence of forever, everyday, all around you.
See if you can let that feeling of ecstasy get ahold of you too.
Wondering where the lions are
Sun’s up, uh huh, looks okay The world survives into another day And I’m thinking about eternity Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me
I had another dream about lions at the door They weren’t half as frightening as they were before But I’m thinking about eternity Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me
Walls windows trees, waves coming through You be in me and I’ll be in you Together in eternity Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me
Up among the firs where it smells so sweet Or down in the valley where the river used to be I got my mind on eternity Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me
And I’m wondering where the lions are… I’m wondering where the lions are…
Huge orange flying boat rises off a lake Thousand-year-old petroglyphs doing a double take Pointing a finger at eternity I’m sitting in the middle of this ecstasy
Young men marching, helmets shining in the sun, Polished as precise like the brain behind the gun (Should be!) they got me thinking about eternity Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me
And I’m wondering where the lions are… I’m wondering where the lions are…
Freighters on the nod on the surface of the bay One of these days we’re going to sail away, going to sail into eternity some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me
And I’m wondering where the lions are… I’m wondering where the lions are…
Bruce Cockburn
“I have a relative who is involved in one of those kinds of government jobs where they can’t say what they do. The part you can say involves monitoring other people’s radio transmissions and breaking codes. At that time China and the Soviet Union were almost at war on their mutual border. And both of them had nuclear capabilities. I had dinner with this relative of mine and he said, “We could wake up tomorrow to a nuclear war.” Coming from him, it was a serious statement. So I woke up the next morning and it wasn’t a nuclear war. [Laughs] It was a real nice day and there was all this good stuff going on and I had a dream that night which is the dream that is referred to in the first verse of the song, where there were lions at the door, but they weren’t threatening, it was kind of a peaceful thing. And it reflected a previous dream that was a real nightmare where the lions were threatening.”– from “Closer to the Light with Bruce Cockburn” by Paul Zollo, SongTalk, vol. 4, issue 2, 1994. Submitted by Rob Caldwell.
