Happy birthday a day late! And let me just say right now that you completely and totally ROCK that hair cut. Seriously. Enjoy it. Don’t listen to people who tell you that they’re afraid that it makes your face look fat. It doesn’t. You look amazing. You won’t have hair that short again for a really long time, and you won’t find a style you like as much as this one for even longer, so savor it (even though you’ll get convicted in a few months that you’re disrupting God’s order by having short hair. I wish I could say don’t do that, but we both know that time travel doesn’t really exist).

This picture, ten years later, embodies for 26-year-old-you all of the sheer awesomeness that you possessed at that time in your life. Sophomore year of high school was your year, though you probably don’t realize it. You have a group of friends with whom you hang out regularly. You’re almost popular — at least, the popular kids no longer make fun of you. You are at your musical height — I wish I had your vocal range, and man do I ever wish I was as fantastic of a pianist as you are. Your biggest regret is not-quite dating that loser who swore to you that his girlfriend wasn’t actually his girlfriend and you believed him. You’re doing pretty great. You will look back on this year of your life with tremendous fondness and longing.

There’s so much I want to tell you. Like your current crush really isn’t worth it. (Really. I promise.) And homeschooling is not going to be a good experience for you. Even little things, like don’t get your cartilage pierced at Claire’s…twice. Seriously. Don’t do it.

But if there’s one thing and one thing only that I could impart to you right now, it would be this:

choose love.

Always. Choose love.

Things are going to get really rough for you, just like they do for everyone your age who is trying to Figure It All Out and Make Sense of the World (yes, all teenagers do this — and you in particular, you never really stop). You’re going to learn that things aren’t always the way you were taught they were. And that sometimes things just really, really suck. You’ll be hurt badly and often, sometimes unintentionally. You’ll probably hurt others, badly and often and unintentionally.

But stop and evaluate — and choose love.

You’ll meet atheists who aren’t evil anarchists desiring nothing more than the flesh of a new-born baby, people who are actually warm-hearted humanitarians who want nothing more than to leave the world (and everyone in it) better off. These people will respect you, even though you were taught that they wouldn’t and even though they don’t agree with you.

You’ll meet people who take advantage (in so many ways) of your innocence and kindness, and that will scar you so deeply that you’ll never be the same.

You’ll meet Christians who aren’t from the assemblies who love Jesus every bit as much as you do.

You’ll meet people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, who aren’t obsessed with sex or the next conquest, people who share many of your likes and dislikes and personality traits. To your shock, some of these people will love Jesus as much as you do.

You’ll meet Christians who say they love you and forgive you and want God’s best in your life, but they actually cut you down and demean you and treat you as if you are less than human.

You’ll meet people of different faiths and (including those aforementioned people of no faith whatsoever), and you will share a deep common ground with them that rocks you to your core.

You’ll be so confused by all of these things. You’ll rethink your beliefs and agonize over the rethinking because you want so desperately to be right, to be accepted, to be loved.

Let it all go, dear girl. You don’t have to be right all the time. The world is not black and white. You cannot change people, to make them love or accept you, no matter how desperately you want to.

But each and every time, choose love.

Sometimes choosing love will look like putting aside your preconceptions and learning afresh. I know how much you hate that, feeling out of your depth and new at something. But it’s worth it.

Sometimes choosing love will look like laying down arms in the middle of a fight in order to love the other person the way they need to be loved at that moment, the way that they will feel your love the best (even if you think they should feel it already).

Sometimes choosing love will look like removing yourself completely from toxic situations and loving yourself even when everyone around you is telling you that you don’t deserve love. I know you too well to think I have to tell you to love those people, because I know you will anyway. And I know that it’s a struggle to love yourself — it’s a struggle that never really goes away.

Sometimes choosing love will look like choking back words of anger, dissent, or even just innocuously offering a different opinion from someone because you realize that they are not yet ready to hear what you have to say (or you realize that your words aren’t nearly as important as you want to think that they are).

Sometimes choosing love will look like abandoning the faith to other people, when really you’re testing the spirits, putting on the faith and living the love and freedom you believe in while wrestling with the things that ring hollow.

And sometimes you’ll mess up. Sometimes you won’t mess up, but the situation will suck anyway. Sometimes there is no right answer, no resolution, no peace, and you have to come to terms with that somehow in a way that will allow you to keep living, to keep loving anyway.

You are so young. I am so young. We have much to learn, you and I, ten years apart and still growing.

But in the face of all of the unknowable, unsearchable future, let’s you and I promise to always choose love — for ourselves, for others. We’ll find our way from there.

I don’t have the words at the moment to explain why this speaks so deeply to me.

But part of that is because I’ve sort of started a project semi-similar to this, inspired by a chapter of bell hooks’ “Feminism is For Everybody” in which she talks about the importance of changing the depiction of women in media.

I’ve decided to illustrate the women in my life that I greatly admire.

Mostly because I don’t know a single one of my friends who hasn’t struggled enormously with body image. And I want to capture them, their beauty, in artwork that they can look at on those days when they feel like they’d rather just disappear for good, to remind them that they’re their own worst critic.

But…I’m starting with me.

Because even though I was able to embrace myself for a few short days back in January, by and large I still hate myself. I’m still cruel to myself. I think of myself as monstrous, hideous to behold, an ugly eyesore to all who know me.

I feel very much like the Beast, when perhaps if I were to step back and be honest, perhaps I have more Beauty in me than I thought.

So here’s the beginning, trying to set a style of illustration to follow through my project with. If you like, I can update here as I go.

Initial illustrative style exploration. More to come until I settle on a technique I like.

*While the video meant a lot to me, that doesn’t mean that it and other marketing campaigns of Dove are free from reinforcing the very narrow beauty definitions they decry. Read this article for a very balanced explanation of the more problematic aspects of this video in particular.

Then again, maybe there’s not really a timeline for such things at all.

There is so much I want to say. So much I want to talk about, share, unload from the heaviness of my heart and dredge up from the murkiness of the swirling waters of thoughts in my head. There are people who have contacted me that I want to respond to.

But all I can really muster is silence.

Silence, because I’m so wearied by the demands, assumptions, and judgment of people who think that acquaintanceship gives them the right to speak ignorance into my life.

Silence, because I’m so overwhelmed by the people who have offered their stories in solidarity with mine, who have in essence lain down in this ditch with me and said, “I may not understand, but let me encourage you,” because I don’t know how to say thank you when saying “thank you” isn’t nearly enough to express what’s in my heart.

Silence, because I’m trying to focus on the good until I’m strong enough to face the not good again.

So I have nothing really profound to say. I continue to read, listen, analyze, and work out things in my life. But right now, that mostly looks like taking Sherlock to the dog park. Or wearing a skirt in public for a few hours. Or holing up in my basement playing Twilight Princess or marathoning Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I’m deep in self-care mode, trying to keep my head above water, so deeply lost inside my own head that I’m not comfortable coming out of it right now.

But I will. Soon. I can feel the thoughts organizing themselves into words. I can feel the words forming, the desire to write and interact and socialize is coming.

But for now, I have silence. And it is good.

Today I’m guest posting over on Dianna Anderson’s blog, Faith & Feminism, in her “Account and Countenance” series.

This was a very difficult post to write. It is “Of church, feminism, and safety” in story form. It’s my experiences, the way they shaped my understanding of God, and where that’s left me now. I crave your gentleness and understanding — and if you cannot offer that, then I crave your silence.

After years of squelching doubts and emotions and fears, I finally began talking.

I began to tentatively share my questions, my problems, my fears with a small but growing group of people. They told me about a God who really doesn’t hold past sins over our heads to beat us with. They told me about a God who understands fear, anger, pain, and doesn’t shame or punish for those feelings but instead listens, loves, cherishes, and comforts. They told me about a God who isn’t abusive, who isn’t capricious, who isn’t cruel. I hardly dared to believe them.

But there it was, that seed of hope.

And God became someone I really felt I could wrestle with, because He might really want to engage my heart and mind, no matter what that meant. Even if it meant waiting until I was ready.

Read the rest of this post at Dianna’s.

Learn more about the Account and Countenance series, or read the other posts.

This week is Spiritual Abuse Awareness Week, a synchroblog hosted by Hännah, Joy, and Shaney (along with Rachel and Elora). Today we’re all linking up with Hännah, and I’m so thrilled that this is happening. And yet…

And yet.

I am so hesitant to add my voice here. Surely abuse is too strong a word for the things that have happened in my life, I think to myself. No one meant any harm. Everything was done in love, everything was said in love. They didn’t know that they hurt me.

There is so much to my story — my life — that I feel unable to share. Or perhaps simply unable to share at this time. So instead, I’d like to share the bits of my story that I’ve already shared, until I can find my voice to describe the rest.

Please understand that in each and every one of these instances, I believe with all my heart that the people involved intended good for me. But as I am learning, good intentions don’t always mean good actions. And in fact, sometimes the people who mean the most good do the most damage.

All I can do is keep breathing:

For the past six years, I have mostly lived in silence about this aspect of my life. Several well-meaning mentors and friends told me to get on with my life, to get over it, that it wasn’t a big deal (incidentally, after hearing so many friends recount similar reactions to their abuse, I wrote “the proper response”). So I swallowed the pain and hid the repercussions as deeply as I could. I have been able to hide the panic attacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress from just about everyone. I have lived with the nightmares, the flashbacks, the pain — silently for six long, difficult years.

The body I have:

I stopped eating in the eighth grade.

People complimented me on how much weight I was losing, how much prettier I looked, how much better I was.

They didn’t know something was wrong until I started passing out. And when my eating disorder finally came to light, it was largely seen as me going through a phase to be popular or noticed, much like with my cutting and suicide attempts.

Because, you know, depression and suicide and self-harm and eating disorders are only a phase.

It didn’t matter that I hated my body. It didn’t matter why I hated my body. And sometimes, I was encouraged to hate my body, because fat people absolutely cannot have a relationship with their body that doesn’t involve self-loathing and the perpetual impetus to hide as much of their body as possible.

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“You shouldn’t go out in public with wet hair,” he told us. “It makes guys think of you…” He paused, clearly uncomfortable, then said in a quieter voice, “in the shower.”

We were at a Bible conference, staying in the college & career cabins, standing outside and talking. He and his friend were somber-faced, and me and my friends were uncomfortable yet eager. We were talking about relationships, and how guys and girls (why not men and women?) could “help each other stay pure.” We learned that having wet hair was a stumbling block, along with ever allowing any male to see us wearing pajamas. Apparently that makes men think of us in bed.

Why a shower or a bed are inherently sexual places for a woman to be, I don’t know. Frankly, I think it’s quite telling about our culture that those assumptions could be considered “logical” in the first place.

But I do know that during this hours-long conversation, I kept adding things to my mental of list of Things To Do To Be A Good Christian Girl — a list that was comprised almost entirely of Things To Do To Be Pure, which looked a lot like Things To Do To Be Silent And Invisible.

And my quiet panic kept growing and growing, because I wanted so desperately to not be a stumbling block, but it was starting to sound like having long hair, breasts, and hips was stumbling block enough. I thought of my outrageously curly hair that I kept long out of personal religious duty. I thought of my large and endowed body. And my heart sank.

*I* was a stumbling block. *I* was impure — by simple inescapable virtue of being unable to hide the body I had.

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“What were you wearing? Did you do anything…inviting?”

I’m never certain what people are saying when they ask me these two questions about being sexually assaulted at the age of 18. Because it sounds like they’re asking me if my assault is actually my fault.

For the record, I was wearing a lime green high-necked T-shirt, a pair of men’s jeans that were baggy and shapeless, and a large trench coat that was equally baggy and shapeless. Along with a pair of Vans. I was literally covered from collar bone to wrists to toes.

And no. I didn’t do anything inviting.

And it’s insulting that people think that sexual assault is something that can be invited.

For years, those questions have hurt. To be honest, they still hurt.

Because they seem to say, “Your body is temptation that makes assault okay. Your body makes men do evil things. Your body is toxic. Your body is sinful.”

And for years, I believed it.

Existential perfection, problematic cultural systems, and being okay:

A sub-culture in which I spent most of my life that believes itself to elevate women to a higher level of respect and honor, but still teaches that women “belong” to their husbands, are more easily deceived, are weaker, are unfit for leadership, are expected to obey like children or servants. If unmarried, these women must answer to their fathers, until they are “given” to their husbands. To remain unmarried is seen as a sign of an unsubmissive rebellious spirit. They must be pure, they must be silent, they must be sweet, they must be kind, they must endure abuse without a word, they must never “allow” themselves to be in “compromising” situations, they must shoulder the blame for the lust and desire and sexual sins and even sexual crimes of their brothers in the faith. None of this may be intended, but too many of us have felt this weight, and it cannot be the yoke that is easy to bear, the burden that is light.

These cultures, these systems of thought, are pervasive. Good people with good intentions perpetuate these systems unknowingly without understanding the consequences.

On stunting emotions:

I wasn’t supposed to be hurt.

I keep coming back to that phrase when I engage my emotions. Supposed to.

I’m not supposed to hurt. I’m not supposed to cry. I’m not supposed to be angry. I’m not supposed to be afraid.
I’m supposed to be joyful. I’m supposed to smile. I’m supposed to be gentle and submissive. I’m supposed to endure the race set before me.

It’s thinking of phrases like these that makes me see how conservative Christianity can be used to strip us of emotions, strip us of humanity, particularly women. There are Bible verses to this day that I cannot hear without breaking into a cold sweat and tremors and tears because of the way they were used against me, against my heart, against my soul. But just thinking that makes me afraid.

Maybe the fear comes from the supposed tos. From the expectation of perfection. From the belief that I have to do my best at all times, or else I am a moral failure, ethically destitute, unworthy of the emotional support of anyone, untrustworthy and unfaithful.

When something’s not okay: pondering reconciliation & relationship:

When an apology is uttered, it’s my instinct to reply, “Oh, it’s okay,” with a dismissive wave of my hand and smile on my face to prove Just How Okay it is, all the while my inner monologue mutters, “No, it’s not okay, but I don’t know what else to say here and I don’t want to make it even more awkward and it shouldn’t matter so much anyway.” Then, of course, there’s the bigger and harder times that it comes up, like when shortly after my assault I was challenged that I hadn’t forgiven my attacker yet.

You know, the word “forgiveness” gets thrown around a lot in Christian circles.Particularly at women. Particularly at women when they notice injustice and dare to speak up about it (or even, like in my case, just confiding hurt in a friend). Ephesians 4:32 or the Lord’s Prayer is whipped out before anyone can do any critical thinking, and the mantra “forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you” is recited as a tool to silence, to shame, to force those with no power into submission.

There’s quite a lot problematic with that approach, and I’m a bit hesitant to get into the problems here. Suffice it to say that this definition of forgiveness that I was taught implicitly and explicitly over the years told me that forgiveness meant that I had to act like the offending party hadn’t offended, that I had to be willing to reconcile with them, just as Christ reconciled us to God. It taught me that my emotional, mental, and sometimes even physical well-being were disposable for the sake of keeping the peace, keeping appearances.

Of church, feminism, and safety:

Church as I know it, as I have experienced it — whether in a Plymouth Brethren chapel, independent fundamental Baptist church, Presbyterian gathering, or non-denominational contemporary service — is not a safe place for me.

It is the church that told me that my intellect, writing, teaching, and leading abilities are not welcome within its walls unless I am teaching those they consider less than men (i.e., other women or children).

It is the church that told me that I had to remain silent, covered and hidden both in body and in spirit.

It is the church that told me that my body is toxic poison to any and all men, to the point that I’ve heard it hinted that perhaps breast reduction surgery could be in order for women endowed the way I am, to help brothers in Christ not stumble.

It is the church that told me to forgive my attacker, use my sexual assault as an opportunity to witness to him, even rejoice in my assault because there are many who would give anything to suffer for the Lord the way I did.

It is the church that told me that perfect love casts out fear, so if I am afraid then I am in sin for not accepting God’s perfect love.

It is the church that told me that because I was not a virgin on my wedding night, that I am ruined forever, that my relationship with my husband and even my relationship with Christ will never be whole or healthy.

It is the church that told me that my depression is a sin against God, and that if I just trusted Him enough — put my hope in God — all of my anxiety and depression would disappear.

Is it any wonder the church is not a safe place for me?

Safety is a big thing for survivors of all kinds of abuse. It’s a big deal when someone confides their pain in another individual. And when that individual turns around time after time and clings to rules and regulations, idioms and cliches, proverbs and parables, it invalidates the experience and pain of the person who trusted them. It is a deep betrayal of trust. And when the Bible is used as a tool to shame people for their emotions, silence their pain, and brow-beat them back into line, all in the name of God…if that is not taking His name in vain to hurt the least of these, I don’t know what it is.

I hope to be back on Wednesday to discuss things further, perhaps tie them together a little better so that they’re easier to understand — for me and for you.