Author: kaitpack

I turn sideways to get a good look in the mirror. It’s an involuntary reaction, the way I grab my tummy and try to pull it tighter.

I hate it.

That’s when I think about what I’m thinking. I pull on my favourite pants, the ones that always make me feel proud of my legs.

My reflection stares back, unimpressed.

Maybe it’s being in her house for two days, the 48-hour reminder that I’ll never look the same as her.

Yet, when another friend fiddles with her chopsticks over a platter of sushi and says that body image is maybe one of the biggest struggles women face, I want to say no.

I don’t struggle with that.

The next day, I catch my disapproving look in the mirror. It’s so common, I never even noticed it before.

“The thing I’ve realized,” she says, “is that you never actually get where you want to be with your body.” We used to exercise together.

I always think my inner monologue will change once I look a certain way.

And yet, when I first met her, I awkwardly stared. I thought she might be a model. Later, she told me she struggled with body image.

Because body image is not based on the reflection, but the reflector in the mirror.

Ugliness?

That’s in my heart as I scroll through their Instagram selfies, discontentment growing.

Take every thought captive.

Or the unbelief that my image was defined from the beginning of time–cellulite or not.

In the image of God, He created them.

Or the forgetfulness that skin particles become dust particles, but the soul lives in the end. Faith lives in the end. Contentment lives in the end. Joy lives in the end. Love lives in the end.

It’s a Friday when I look in the mirror and decide to make a change.

A permanent diet, of sorts.

A restricted consumption of discontented thoughts.

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

 

My finger hovers over the mouse. To post or not to post? I’m not worried about what my friends think or my co-workers or my grandmother. I’m worried about my friend’s mother’s friend–some woman I hardly know.

For a moment, some woman I hardly know has the power over my decision.

It’s the same after the party I attend. I fall on my bed without taking off my coat. Did I come off too strong or too quiet? Were my jokes funny? Did they even know they were jokes?

“You think too much about the details,” she tells me.

It’s paralyzing. People.

All the things I can’t control in my relationships.

She tells me she’s been studying this book lately, studying what she says.

“I know people who do that,” I tell her.

There’s the girl who has never shared someone else’s secrets with me and has barely breathed a bad word about anyone since I’ve known her.

There’s the woman whose words are like mortar. Every word she tells me about myself has built me brick by brick.

And there’s the man who listened to me for fifteen years before I started asking him for his opinion and advice.

Because they already knew there are so many things we can’t control about people.

They knew.

The girl with a harsh mentor.

The woman with an abusive husband.

The man with a depressed wife.

They knew.

We can control our words. We should.

How they bruise.

How they build.

“There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” Proverbs 12:18

 

It’s a Wednesday morning when I realize that I can’t just run 10 km one night and not wake up in pain the next day. It’s a small thing compared to the way she can’t bathe herself anymore.

But now it’s not the responsibility of growing older that scares me, it’s the loss of abilities. And the fact that I’m only getting less attractive by the minute.

“I’m not going to be one of those women who is constantly worried about getting older,” she tells me when we’re both 21.

How should it be then?

I wish I had known then what I know now. Ageing is not simply a process, it’s progress.

There’s one man who has always seemed old to me. For the last twenty years, he has seemed old. Ageless, almost.

I envy him, watching his joy grow with every passing year.

The more life throws at him, the more he smiles quietly at the front of the church. The closer he gets to the gates of heaven, the less he cares about self-preservation–and his tearful vulnerability shows up boldly on a Sunday morning. The less able, the more he prays.

The start of the race is hard, the middle is brutal. But the end? It’s pure adrenaline.

Because it’s a race to the prize. To the Life we’ve always wanted.

Because Christ is risen.

Because this isn’t it. It’s the warm up.

It was the same with her, the way her peace grew in palliative care. “This was the best year of my life, Kate,” she tells me.

Even still, the best is yet to come.

The bloom of spring, the prime of life, the strength unfailing, the glimpse of God.

I know she’s going to ask me how she can pray for me.

“Pray that I would manage my time.”

That I’ll run hard until I catch my second wind.

I wander down the all-too-familiar halls of the hospice until I find her room. He’s there too, sitting near the hospital bed. Close enough to touch her hand. He offers her another muffin from Tim Hortons.

He’s there every day.

She’s been here for months and he’s there every day with his cane and a bag from Tim Hortons.

It’s a different love than the kind I saw during the summer of twelve weddings. It’s different than the vows they read fervently to each other from the front of the church.

Not any less solemn. But quieter, somehow.

I come across it in a folder Mom had asked me to sort. A mission statement, signed and dated by a passionate young girl.

A mission statement to serve Christ to the death, with abandon, and other 17th-century-type words.

For years, I wondered where that girl went? Who was she? Was that ever really me?

Years of stale faith, of doubts and of sin that came back again and again to the point where I wondered if I ever really knew Him.

But also years of loss.

Of prayers to help me pray.

Of desperate dives into the deep context of His Word.

On a Tuesday night, I tell her all of this. How I used to envy 15-year-old Kate’s confidence in how life and faith are supposed to work.

“Now I better understand what I’m giving up to love Christ, but I also better understand what I’m gaining.”

She agrees.

A quieter, deeper love.

A love that shows up in the hospice and sits there quietly day after day.

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39

“I’m lonely,” she says. She had just started dating at the time.

Doesn’t Buzzfeed say romance is the cure to feeling alone?

Or friendship?

I remember curling up in my bed in the house I shared with four other girls on Adelaide. Hearing them laugh together, I turned my face to the wall, feeling claustrophobic. Why did the weight of loneliness press against me even when I lived with my best friends?

No one understands me.

It’s the reigning lie of isolation.

I am lonely one night when I stay up too late to scroll through the stages of his happiness. I can’t will myself to double tap on his success, so I remain an anonymous on-looker.

They have it better.

That is what the world shows us and that is what I show the world. We all chip in tools to build the wall.

I’m lonely one night when I call her, seeking connection. She’s busy and distracted–maybe lonely too.

The pursuit of connection is not worth the risk of rejection.

So, I turn to myself for support, to all the things I can do to be self-sustainable. I sign up for races, for retreats, for courses. I make travel plans.

But even I am a lousy cure for loneliness.

It’s when I step outside in the evening and my running shoes find a rhythm against the sidewalk that I feel loneliness evaporate in the evening light.

The victory is yours.

You alone are worthy.

The worship songs come full blast through my earbuds and I want to lift my hands right there in the middle of the sidewalk.

Because loneliness is not broken by a change in situation, but with the choice to worship.

With the simple choice to step outside and say the truth out loud.

You are greater.

 

 

 

“Sometimes, I’m scared that God doesn’t love me because I’m a woman.”

As soon as I say it, I want to cry. Maybe because I really do feel it sometimes. Maybe because I know it’s a lie. But I still struggle with doubts that the sum and the total of all God’s promises are for me directly–for me, a woman.

She voices the same fear to me one day. It’s almost harder to know I’m not alone.

Suddenly, I’m waking up at 6 AM every morning, devouring the pages of the Bible like I haven’t seen food in years. “Please Lord, show me your love for women.”

What I find is that the sum and total of all God’s promises are not only for women, but often delivered through women.

Like Rahab whose faith grips me, the way she waited hopefully for an enemy nation to rescue her from her own people, they way her faith delivered her family from death. And how God brings the Messiah through her line.

Or Esther, a woman who dared to challenge the powerful, evil men of her time, who God used to save her people from genocide so His promises to Israel could be fulfilled.

And Abigail, a powerful, smart woman who stood before King David and negotiated for her husband’s life.

To say nothing of Sarah, the birth mother of a nation; Deborah, the prophetess of Israel; Abigail, Hannah, Elizabeth, Mary, Anna and Lydia.

Even the R-rated passages that show the mistreatment of women, the one in Judges that makes me nauseous. Doesn’t it show that the mistreatment and oppression of women is a sign of the darkest times in a nation’s history?

And then there’s Jesus. Our example. A man who treated women as equals. A man who defied cultural expectations, who talked theology with the Samaritan woman at the well and broke the taboos. A man who befriended women. Who revealed his risen self to women first.

In a world that has crushed women, the cross has made them whole.

Has freed them from sin, has empowered them to defy shame. Women are called to come boldly before the throne of God.

To live whole, fulfilled lives, despite our relationship status or our job title.

All because God loves women and gave Himself up for them.

“It’s been a week of vulnerability,” I tell her as we walk beside the frozen river.

We’re the same. Me and her. We struggle to be honest with the people we love–and even with ourselves.

Like how I struggled to tell him how I really felt about those things he said, those subtle comments that sink deep in the soul. Two hours of back-and-forth at the kitchen island in my parent’s farmhouse, where we’d talked about my frenemies during high school and my professors during university. “I think we’re on the same page, Kate.”

Why do I wait so long to tell the truth?

Or with the three of us. It had always been us three. Until they got married the same year, and then the baby showers and the journey of motherhood. And it only took a year to tell them that, hey, sometimes it’s hard not sharing the journey. “It’s not the same without you, Kate.”

Oversharing is my greatest fear.

But undersharing is my biggest loss.

“You’re even keel, aren’t you Kate. Things don’t seem to faze you,” she said to me often. And at first, I took pride in that.

Until my Dad tells me he has to read my blog to know what I’m thinking.

And my Mom tells me she can’t tell where I’m at.

Sometimes it’s worth doing the work to dig out your own true thoughts.

And putting them out there to be challenged by that person who’s loved you since you were an idea.

Joy springs from the discomfort of letting yourself be heard and listening to the things you hate to hear about yourself from the people you love.

Strength is built with vulnerability.

Like He put Himself in the position of the condemned and took the full force of rejection.

Exposed. Naked. Rejected.

All my greatest fears.

Because He faced them, I can have the strength to be vulnerable, the audacity to claim purity before the throne of God. To stand before Holiness and know I am accepted.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

I lie there, paralyzed with fear. He’s there in front of me, in the corner by the closet. Smiling.

My pajamas stick to my shoulder blades. The darkness is so thick, it’s hard to breathe.

Slowly, I start to notice the glow of the streetlight coming through the slats in my blind.

Breathe.

There is a choice I can make.

Breathe.

I jump out of bed and flick on the light switch. Fear dissipates as I pray and pace in the light.

It’s been five years since terror ruled my dreams.

But fear still rules my thoughts.

Like when I leave the grocery store and walk toward my car, gripping my keys between my knuckles in case I need to throw a punch. Isn’t this where girls get pushed into vans?

Or when I wake up on a Tuesday with a heaviness in my stomach because I know he’s read my text by now.

She leans forward on the couch to look me in the eye. “Someone once told me, when you have a terrible dream, to go through it again but with Jesus there.”

I think of the endless nights when darkness lived by my closet. And how, if He was there, He’d make the darkness tremble.

I think of the feeling of dread when he still hasn’t responded to my heart laid bare. And how, if He was there, He’d rest in the confidence of Himself.

Like I rest in the confidence of Him.

Because He is there.

I tell her over the phone how I’ve realized that I don’t have to be afraid. The disturber of my peace is not the creep in the parking lot or the dread in my gut, it’s fear itself.

And I can’t control the creep in the parking lot or the bad response to a text, but I can say no to fear.

Because He is there.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8

“To write is to die to self,” I tell her over the phone.

She knows what I mean; she’s done it too, only her cross is the keys of the piano.

I still remember the feeling of passing around 30 copies of the story I’d written, how the room went silent as they looked down to read it.

Die to self, Kate.

That is the gospel–the guidebook for creativity.

Christ demonstrated His love, exposed and rejected by humans.

Christ humbled himself.

That is the path of a Christian creative.

To put aside your fears and desires, to step aside and let God shine through.

I read and re-read the email he sent me on my 25th birthday. “I’m thankful for you today that God put you in His world and made you to be exactly you so that the light of His Spirit can shine through you as it can through no one else in exactly the same way.”

And how, when she plays the Chopin, you forget about her entirely because she is not playing for her or you or Chopin or the audience. She is letting the light of His Spirit shine through her prayerful, humble performance as it can in no one else in exactly the same way.

She is putting it in the hands of the Great Composer, who gives the loon its song on quiet misty mornings.

The Artist, who filled out the canvas of the skies at night.

The Author of human history, written before the world began.

Creativity is an expression of the Creator.

Like it’s an expression from the created soul. And when the soul knows its Creator, it is not tied to the narrow channels of the human mind.

It is anchored to the source of Truth.

And there is limitless inspiration.

“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band.” Job 38:8

My white-haired professor sets up a meeting with me. “Why don’t you talk more?” he asks.

My response is to go home to my roommates and complain about the guy at the front of my English class who puts his hand up to ask a question every five to seven minutes.

At least I’m not like him.

At least I’m not like the fool in Proverbs who has no control of his tongue.

Or am I the same kind of different?

I know my criticism is a mask for my fear when my professor assigns me to give a presentation. I’m quiet because I’m afraid. Afraid to be exposed. The more you talk, the more you set yourself up for error.

I was six years old when I dropped a note in her mailbox. She must have wondered why a little kid bothered to write. It’s because I was intrigued by the way she paused when she talked. Before giving advice, asking a question, she paused.

I’m sure people thought she was too quiet. I thought she was wise.

It’s where I learned quietness is a crutch unless you let the Lord control the pauses.

I remember the night she told me what meekness means. Strength controlled.

I find myself praying to live up to the definition.

Is strength really strong if it’s clumsy?

Is quietness really wisdom if it’s just a fearful reaction?

Moses, whose faltering speech was the excuse he brought before God, was later called the meekest man on earth.

When his siblings spoke against him, God defended him. “With [Moses] I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord” (Number 12:8).

So, I surrender silence. Sign up for Toastmasters. Speak up in small group.

And sometimes I don’t.

Mostly, I read what He Says. I find out what matters to say and what doesn’t. Like Moses, I speak to the One who can show me.

Lord of personality.

Lord of speech and the spaces between.

“Then the LORD said to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?’” (Exodus 4:11)