For the Weaklings Like Me

I'm once again inside my coffee shop, playing Ingrid Michaelson, trying not to be bogged by my instinct to jump into other people's business. I want to shine a big spotlight and say, "You are okay." To say, "Yes, I see that and that, those sickly sour scars and how far you've fallen. But who cares? Somehow you were woven; there's a strand that came winding up through all of those things, all of the rips and tears and sweet soft stretches of fabric, and they have made you. And wow, the totality, the complete project, the whole of you is worthy. It is good."

I know too many people who need to hear this. Every five seconds, they need to know this. And they need to know this in the real, in the deep, in the dirt and earthy guts of themselves. They need to know not that they are OH MY GOD SO AMAZING. They don't need worship. And that is what they will feel when they are complimented, and they will shrug it off, and it will be meaningless. But, what if it is real, and meant, and true, and leaves room for deep screwy faults?

I am pained by people who cannot accept love. Who prepare not to accept it. I'm one of them.

I'm reading this book my psychologist insisted I read for two years called, Surrender to Love. It seems incredibly cheesy, and it is incredibly cheesy. It is too nice. It is too sweet. But, sometimes I wonder if what we most deeply desire is easily discarded in our minds as, "too cheesy. Too nice." I wonder if it is our deep shame, our rich knowledge of our own shortcomings, that makes us discard these things; that makes us cringe and quit reading. We don't allow the words to burrow. We don't allow them to balloon into sizeable shapes in our lives, our souls.

And we do this with people. And we do this with God. We do this with anything that might get too close to the wound, and expose us for what we are: repulsive and marred, disgusting and torn and weak and cowardly.

It's amazing that some people do this. That they eventually lay open, and allow themselves to be seen. It's even more amazing to know that other people love us, that perhaps some kind of divinity is constantly and consistently reaching in, pressing on the walls of the wound, attempting entrance, despite the ugliness, despite what is. It's amazing that we can be loved for our wounds, not despite them. That what we have found repulsive for ages, is what intrigues another, draws another in.

I pray that all of us who ride in this boat develop a knowledge that we are accepted now, and that we can live in this: in this body, this screwed up mind, this low and sagging and broken heart. We can do things. We can go places. We can make mistakes, and take risks, and be, and live and live and live. We can live in our wounds, until they don't matter. Until they are a part of us, but do not inhibit us.

Maybe our strength does not come from ridding ourselves of weakness, but our strength is born in allowing our weakness to exist, and simply ridding ourselves of our incredible shame, that has so long kept us from jumping into our lives, singing loud, saying the words we have pressed so far down our throats.