Always. Choose love.

Dear 16-year-old Dani,

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.

The ever changing faces of God.

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.

We don’t have to be okay.

I have this constant internal monologue that critiques every decision I make throughout every day.

Maybe it’s part of being an INFJ. Maybe it’s a by-product of growing up in a sub-culture that teaches that you cannot trust yourself. Maybe it’s part of being a perfectionist and an idealist. I don’t know.

But this internal monologue is exhausting. Sometimes it’s my voice. Sometimes it’s the voice of a mostly-forgotten teacher or mentor or elementary school friend or preacher or person on the street even. But it’s rarely actually their voices so much as a twisted version of them.

I have this idea that I have to be okay all the time.

I have to smile, even when I’m trying not to cry.

I have to socialize, even when I need solitude.

I have to only talk about positive things, never the things that hurt.

I have to pretend that I’m not depressed or panicked or triggered.

And you know, I used to be really, really good at it.

Okay, probably not really good at it. People have always sensed that I’m an old soul, that there is a well of sadness within me. But they’re usually blind-sided the first time I decide to be honest about it.

Now, I’m tired. I’m so tired. Fighting the sadness is a daily struggle for me, and sometimes the sadness just wins no matter what I do to fight it. And the internal monologue I have just drones on about how weak I am, how selfish I am, how inconsiderate I am, how stupid and heartless and childish and petty I am. My internal monologue is basically a never-ending stream of verbal abuse.

So sometimes, like today, I have to take a step outside of myself. I pretend that I am someone else, that I am a friend. A friend who is emotionally worn down and weary and weepy and going through a really intense cycle of self-loathing.

And while I’m pretending this, I realize that I’m sure there are friends of mine going through similar battles who, like me, are trying to hide it so desperately.

So here I am, talking to you, too.

I speak softly, but make sure that I’m heard over all the voices that are raging in my head about my worthlessness.

I say,

“You don’t have to be okay.

You’re allowed to be sad.

You’re allowed to cry.

You’re allowed to be overwhelmed.

It’s okay. Really.

Not being okay is okay sometimes.

You don’t owe happiness to people when you don’t feel it.

You don’t owe happiness to people at the expense of your emotional and mental and spiritual health.

It’s okay to take care of you, and sometimes that looks like not being okay.”

And I wrap myself up in a robe, then swath myself in a blanket, then wrap my cold fingers around a hot mug of coffee, and I breathe. I just breathe.

Because I’m not okay today.

And I don’t have to be.

The body I have.

That leopard print thing in the bottom left corner is one of Sherlock’s fabulous coats.

I am fat.

And for the first time in my young life…

I am okay with that.

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As I write this, I am sitting in my size 20 dark-wash skinny jeans.

You read that right. Skinny jeans — that somehow miraculously hug my butt, hips, thighs, and calves without making my stomach protrude unnaturally. Skinny jeans that make me look, well, really good.

On top of these magical jeans, I am wearing a size XL faded teal 3-quarter-sleeve fitted shirt with buttons halfway down the front, mostly unbuttoned so I feel neither choked nor awkward. It hangs just at my hips, which is remarkable considering my tall torso.

I am happy with how I look, even though I still have bulges I’d rather not have.

But it most certainly has not always been the case.

My lifelong ongoing tumultuous love affair with music (specifically the piano).

Our love was prophesied at my birth.

In the delivery room mere moments after I made my entrance into the world, a nurse reached out and splayed apart my long, slender fingers, exclaiming in a southern drawl, “She’s gonna be a piano player!”

For as long as I can remember, I have been aware of music. My mom likes to say that I sang before I could talk. If I heard music as a baby or toddler, I would immediately begin bobbing my head with the rhythm and doing my utmost to imitate the beautiful noise I was hearing.

I remember little things from pre-piano lesson days. Like sitting in church with my parents while we were singing hymns, and thinking about how with some music I’d heard there’d be a choir (or sometimes one person) singing different words and different melody on top of the main song itself. I thought I’d try it, much to my parents’ consternation. Or one time in first grade, standing to sing “The Star-Bangled Banner” and I thought about how sometimes people would sing different notes that weren’t the melody but it was so beautiful, so I tried to do that, much to the consternation of my fellow classmates.

But then one day, my parents bought a piano.