just write – Page 2

beautiful burning world

I was downtown working at a health clinic the morning of September 11th. Working full time and going to college in the evenings and weekends, I was responsible for opening the clinic, turning on all the lights, taking the phone off call forwarding, making sure the lobby was ready for patients.

I flipped the waiting room TV on and walked back to my desk behind the sliding glass window to get charts and intake forms ready when I heard the breaking news that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.

I laughed to myself thinking someone was gonna be in big trouble over that mistake.

I had no idea what I was watching.

A few minutes later, on live TV in a quiet, empty office with the smell of fresh brewed coffee hanging in the air, I watched the second plane hit the second tower.

The world and I were just beginning to understand what was happening.

Things were never, ever going to be the same, that morning was shifting our realities, our hearts, our brains.

September 11th altered the world we live in, the way we go about our day, the way we think about travel and planes and going to work.

Not that bad things hadn’t happened before. For many of us, especially my generation, this was our first taste of national tragedy. We didn’t understand wars on our land and people coming here to kill us like so many past generations, so many other places.

We had lived in a bubble that popped that Tuesday morning.

September 11th changed us, shifted our realities, gave us new perspectives on loving and hating.

I was 19 when the towers fell. In a lot of ways, it marked a growing up for me, a realization that unspeakable things happen and we have to figure out how to survive them, how to keep going in light of the new heartbreak.

I’ve been practicing that lesson a lot as an adult. You probably have too.
Someone betrays you: shock and change.
We lose someone too soon, too fast, too hard: mourn and shift.
A relationship ends: sadness and a different perspective.
The life we thought we were living was, in reality, a lie: shock and shift and shift and shift.

I didn’t understand that morning in the downtown clinic that this would happen again and again in my adult life: a calm morning and sudden afternoon heartbreak, an evening of quiet followed by a life-altering night.

I can still get mad about not seeing the hints or signs if I sit in that spot too long. Like I could have prevented death or heartache or ruined lives if I had just been paying closer attention.

We all tend to look back at the moment before the shift, before the betrayal or crash or devastation, pleading for it to be different. We feel sad for the person we were just before the moment happened. We feel envious of that time, that lightness we didn’t even know we were living in until it was taken away.

As the morning of September 11th progressed, people stayed out of downtown Indianapolis. The concept of flying planes into building was so unfathomable that the reaction to this was no one was safe in any tall building. So the nation shut down. Offices closed. People flocked to schools to get their kids. Airports emptied. The roads were clear and quiet by mid-afternoon.

When tragedy hits, we want our people and we want to be in a safe place. September 11th changed our definition of a safe place.

We closed the clinic early that afternoon; we were encouraged to get out of downtown as quickly as possible. My evening classes were cancelled. Everyone needed to be at home, everyone needed to be in front of their TVs hungry for information and hope.

A friend and I tried to go to three different blood banks to donate blood. What else could two Midwestern girls who feel helpless and shocked do? The news was calling for blood for NYC and we went. People were lined up out the doors, around the blocks of all the blood centers. They were turning people away.

I was relieved. I’ve never been able to have a blood draw without a few moments of is-she-going-to-pass-out-now? tension. But it felt selfish and greedy to not do it anyway; my fear of needles didn’t seem so important if there were people who jumped out of skyscrapers that morning to avoid being burned alive.

Even 18 years later, it seems confusing that it happened. I’m not sure if it will ever not be shocking to me that September 11th happened. It’s like my brain doesn’t have a clue what to do with that much pain and suffering.

Honestly, my brain doesn’t know what to do with a lot of the pain and suffering I’ve lived through: the sudden death of a friend, the betrayal in my marriage, the secrets people will hurt others to keep.

Internet memes and positive Instagram accounts want to tell you to let go and be free and stop letting the past hold you back, but those things are easier said than done. The idea that we can experience horror and heartbreak and death and not be forever changed by it is naive and wrong.

We keep going, yes. But we are different because of it.
Jesus can heal and redeem situations, yes. But we will continue to live in the aftermath of the hurt.

September 11th changed us, shifted our realities, gave us new perspectives on loving and hating.

I wish I could tell you that day was the only time I felt the ground move under my feet, the reality of the world too broken to handle. But it’s not. It’s happened again and again.

But we keep going.

We had to get up on September 12th and figure out how to keep living. We had to find the hurting people and support them. We had to clean up the mess others had created. We had to honor and love the people we lost. We couldn’t all stay home where it felt safer, we had to open our doors and walk tentatively back out them to see what was left.

If right now you’re living in the aftermath of death or destruction, that’s what you have to do too. You take your broken, shocked, shifted heart to the front door. You touch the cold metal door handle and you slowly open the door again. It’s heavier than you remember–everything is heavier than you remember–but you do it anyway. You can’t quit. You can’t stay inside even though you really want to. It hurts outside, but it hurts inside too.

Then you walk out into the beautiful burning world and you figure out how to live again.

It is going to be different, but it can still be good.

Let’s hang out

How’s your fall calendar shaping up?

If it’s anything like mine, it’s already full and a little intimidating. We’re going to ignore the impending doom you might feel as the days get shorter and busier, and I’m going to ask you to pencil in just a few more things.

*AHEM* That means grab your pencil. Don’t just sit there.

Thank you. Now we can begin.

Tuesday, September 24, 2019
It’s our monthly book club meeting! Since we closed the office, we moved our meeting to the local library. It’s at 6:30 at the New Palestine branch of the Hancock County Public Library. You can RSVP (it’s free!) or ask questions here. This month we’re reading Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeff by Rachel Jeffs. Jeffs’ story of growing up at the religious compound and then leaving her family behind is so good. Grab a copy and join us for the discussion.

Saturday, October 5, 2019
I’m hosting another writer’s workshop. If you’re near Indy, I’d love for you to join us! You can visit the link here for event details.

If you’re not near Indy or it doesn’t fit your schedule, there is an online course option also! On October 5th, I’ll send you the workshop (teaching, handouts, notes, resources, etc.) to your inbox where you can do it at your leisure. There are only 25 spots open for this so don’t wait too long. (Eventually, I will create an evergreen writing course you can buy anytime, but I’m limiting this as a small trial run.)

Sunday, October 20, 2019
I’m joining the Flourish Gathering for a panel discussion at their conference this year. My friend Shannan Martin (author of Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted and The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God’s Goodness Around You) is the keynote speaker, and it’s going to be a full day of being encouraged, challenged, and loved. The Flourish Gathering “exists to inspire women to live freely and love who God created them to be.” I’d love to see you there. Grab your ticket before they sell out!

And finally (you don’t have to write this on your calendar unless you really want to), the Not Terrible podcast is back on Monday, September 23rd. My friend Jess and I host a podcast about mental health, personal growth, and whatever else we feel like talking about. We laugh a lot and cry a little. We tell stories and share learning–if you enjoy my writing, I think you’ll like the podcast. If you can’t wait until the 23rd, there are 49 episodes you can listen to in the mean time.

It’s going to be a busy fall. I can’t wait.

DISCLOSURE: affiliate links used.

a letter about sex and virginity and forgiveness and redemption

I’m writing letters this week: to people who will never read them, to my younger self, to you. Because we all have things we wish we could say to someone.

I keep trying to narrow down this audience: my daughters? myself at 18? young girls learning how to navigate romantic relationships? my old youth group kids?

There are so many people I want to talk to that I don’t know where to focus, so I’ll start with a story and maybe you can find your place in it:

I met Scott a couple months shy of my 18th birthday. He was a few years older, in college, had freedoms I wasn’t yet familiar with as a high school senior.

We fell in love hard and fast. I’m not sure if it was his personality of all-or-nothing or mine, but that young, eager, everything-is-a-rush, lust for life and each other? We were that multiplied by 100.

Even now I smile at how fun and exciting it was. I wrote at the beginning of this week about how much I love young love, how much I love love, and I’m still a big fan here at the end of the week.

Scott and I were–of course–going to be together forever.

So I lost my virginity to him after about six months of dating. We had been pushing some limits and boundaries and when you do that enough, the next leap isn’t too far.

I grew up in church. I’d attended more than a few church camps where I pledged to save myself for my wedding night. I was friends with all the girls who got purity rings from their dads. I never got one. Maybe that’s why, one cold January afternoon in my boyfriend’s bedroom, I made the choice to not wait any longer.

(It wasn’t really the ring, just in case you didn’t get the sarcasm. Also, those rings are weird, let’s stop doing that.)

Anyway, it happened.

And because it happened and I had grown up loving Jesus and reading a Bible that told me this wasn’t good, I did lots of rationalizing: We’re going to get married eventually so it’s fine. We really love each other. No one else could possibly feel or understand what we feel. This is what real love does. We’re committed to each other. He’s my future husband so it’s not that big of a deal.

The sad reality was I was doing something a lot of my Christian friends were doing. We just weren’t talking about it. We were being sneaky about the sex and then showing up at church on Sunday giving a really good show about how holy and God-honoring our relationships were.

I’m sure you’re familiar with that story in some way.

Here’s the part I want my daughters to know, the part I wish I could have told my friends at the time, the thing I wish I had understood about God’s love and grace and forgiveness and punishment:

You can stop.

You haven’t ruined God’s plan for your life, you haven’t ruined future relationships and your future marriage and your whole being because you are no longer a virgin.

You and your vagina are not that powerful.

Our culture worships virginity. Our culture likes us to think that we lose value and importance once it is gone. We have been led to believe that everything hinges on what’s in between our legs and if we mess that up, we mess everything up.

But God doesn’t believe that.

I understand why it’s important to wait for marriage. Not because it’s your ticket to a wonderful, happy marriage. Not because your chastity earns you a free pass to relational bliss once you say I do. Not because God flips the sex switch once you have a ring on your finger and everything becomes glorious and romantic and enjoyable and easy. But because He wants our obedience.

We wait because He tells us His ways are best.
We wait because He knows what He created our hearts to do.
We wait because He wants to keep us from unnecessary pain.
We wait because He knows things we don’t know, things we might never know.

We wait because He asked. That’s it.

Sometimes people with good intentions tell us bad things. You are not saving yourself because God will pay you back later with sexual fulfillment and a stress-free marriage. We’ve allowed the Prosperity Gospel (if I do this, I will earn this material or dream thing later) into our bedrooms, and we’ve been told saving our virginity will unleash blessings later.

Again: You and your vagina are not that powerful. I appreciate the sentiment, but seriously, calm down.

God is not keeping score and only giving us good things when we do good things. He gives us good things because He’s a good Father. Then we respond to those good things with obedience. But we don’t have to earn His goodness with virginity. We can’t earn any of this, that’s the point. (Burn Ephesians 2:8-9 into your memory for when your brain wants to argue about this.)

I’ve been reading the Bible for years. I have yet to come across the part where it says my sex is more powerful than my God.

I have also been married for years. I know marriage is hard. Marriage is hard because two sinful, selfish people are trying to do life together. Marriage is not hard because I had sex with someone before marriage. Marriage is hard because MARRIAGE IS HARD.

(Could I have added a layer of unnecessary hard based on my choice twenty years ago? Maybe. But I’m not completely convinced.)

Here’s where we can mess things up though: if we allow people to tell us that we can’t come back from a mistake, that we can’t be forgiven, that we have to marry the person we had sex with outside of marriage.

I’m writing this on the internet so you know it’s true: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY PENANCE FOR YOUR MISTAKE BY MARRYING THIS PERSON. Where did this lesson come from? A misguided youth minister? A 90’s purity culture book? Our grandmas?

I’m worried about all the girls who started having sex before marriage, got too wrapped up in the guilt and shame of it, and decided the only way to reconcile the situation is to marry the person. Like a marriage certificate pays for the sin.

Jesus paid for that sin on the cross. You don’t have to sacrifice the rest of your life to a person you otherwise wouldn’t marry because of the pressure to absolve yourself.

I can hear the uproar about this right now. I’m well acquainted with the people who think you should absolutely marry the guy since you had sex with him. But as Christians, we either agree that Jesus paid for all our sins on the cross and forgiveness is an equal opportunity employer or His death was in vain because it doesn’t cover all of us.

We don’t get to split hairs if someone is asking for forgiveness of something you don’t think they should have done in the first place. Stay in your lane, Carol. And your lane would be your own sin, not someone else’s.

Maybe that’s why Christian divorce rates are just as high as non-Christians. We make mistakes before we’re married and somewhere along the line, we’ve picked up the idea that the only way to make it right is to marry the person and then we’re stuck in a marriage we probably wouldn’t have agreed to otherwise.

We disobeyed and instead of stopping the disobedience, asking for forgiveness, and changing our actions, we just double down with the bad choices to…what? Make ourselves feel better? Earn our way back into God’s good graces?

I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve had with woman who have said they just wish someone had told them they didn’t have to marry the guy they lost their virginity to. Yes, they wish they had made a different choice when it came to sex (that’s the first step in making this whole essay null and void), but they did. Then they took their guilt and shame and kept the relationship going as a way to pay for their sins.

Ladies, we don’t have to do that.
Jesus was the Sacrificial Lamb for this very reason. Not just for some of the sins–the ones that don’t have to do with sex–but all of them. You don’t have to punish yourself with continuing a relationship, entering into a marriage, or even having kids with someone because you made a bad choice and you don’t know how to recover from it.

I’m not sure how I avoided this trap with Scott. Maybe because I was the Christian in the relationship and he wasn’t, so the pressure to absolve our sins was only coming from me. (Side note: that unequally yoked thing is legit, but we’ll save that lesson for another time.) Maybe it is because I’m an Enneagram Eight who doesn’t feel shame or guilt even when I should (see: I used “vagina” with no reservation in a blog post about Jesus.).

I’ve run into Scott a few times in the past year. We live near each other and shop at the same stores. He’s married with a few kids. We chat for a few minutes in the aisle of Home Depot or Wal-Mart as our kids fidget around us. We talk about work or family stuff, there is no awkwardness or embarrassment when we run into each other. We wrap up our conversation after a few minutes, and we move on with our days.

When I was growing up, I was led to believe I’d carry the weight of that sin, the weight of my choice to have sex before I was married forever. That it would haunt all future relationships, that I would bring Scott to bed with me wherever I was for the rest of my life.

It seems crazy to tell you I was taught that, that I was taught that God couldn’t forgive my sin or redeem my choice.

Somewhere things got off-track when we started teaching girls about their bodies and choices. We want our kids to know grace and compassion and forgiveness, but when it comes to their bodies, those are powerful and sinful and you might not be able to recover from the choices you make with them. I was taught to feel such shame for being a girl and told how dangerous my body was for myself and others.

Yes, there are consequences for sex before marriage. You can learn about those in health class or from the pregnant girl sitting next to you at McDonald’s. There are many, many reasons it’s best to not have sex outside of marriage, both from a worldly point of view and a Biblical one. But the extra level of shame and guilt we’ve assigned this choice while also trying to make girls understand grace and forgiveness confuses more than helps.

A bad choice doesn’t mean a bad life.
A bad choice doesn’t mean endless punishment and shame.
God’s forgiveness of sin is the same no matter what.
God is more powerful than our mistakes and weaknesses, He can redeem us and our bad choices and our lives without exception.

I understand enough about writing on the internet that this will be misunderstood by some people. That probably means this letter and story wasn’t for you, but just in case it was and you just need a little more help, let me repeat:

Sex inside of marriage is best because it’s what God tells us.
Sex outside of marriage doesn’t sentence you to a life of punishment and shame.
The world (and in some ways, the church) worships virginity in an unhealthy, un-Godly way.
You can stop having sex outside of marriage. Just because you started doesn’t mean you have to continue.
You do not have to marry the person who took your virginity as a way to pay for your sin. That’s not your job.

Scott and I dated on and off for five years. Our relationship probably carried on longer than it should have because I was operating under the lie that I had to make it work because of my choice to have sex with him. We were not good for each other. He was made for someone else and so was I. Also, he had twins later and dodging that bullet just feels good.

I learned a lot from trying to have a sexual relationship outside of marriage. I took what I learned (ironically, things God had written in the Bible…who knew?) with me to future relationships. I took those lessons into a new relationship a few years later with Chris Graham whom I’d eventually marry.

We had sex for the first time on our wedding night.
And spoiler alert: I didn’t ruin anything. It was pretty awesome. Thanks God.

To the best friend who left

I’m writing letters this week: to people who will never read them, to my younger self, to you. Because we all have things we wish we could say to someone.

To the best friend who left:

My thirties have been a decade of letting go.

A resigned opening of clinched fists, realizing I can’t keep things together, can’t keep things from hurting, can’t keep things from going away.

Yet you accused me of trying to control things which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Telling the truth isn’t controlling people. Telling the truth is loss of control and acceptance and free falling.

It’s been one year since you texted me to tell me we were no longer friends. It’s been thirteen months since you stopped talking to me, and here’s what I finally figured out: It’s you, you who has to control. You who controls people by only telling parts of stories, only parts of the truth. You who control how other people think, what other people know, how other people see you.

You are the ultimate puppet master, stringing people along as you need them, using them, and then discarding them when they don’t follow your will or plan.

You texted me that awful night and said I was dangerous for you–toxic is what you said. But the truth is I’m only dangerous because I stopped believing your lies, started seeing the parts you didn’t want me to see.

(I’m sure in your head you convinced yourself that I was un-accepting or judging. You know that’s not true. Do we need to go back through the last few decades and list out all the things I wasn’t necessarily a fan of but kept loving you through anyway? Your rationalization skills are above average, I’ll give you that. We rarely agreed on things, but it didn’t stop us from finding value in each other.)

When people stop believing your lies, they are not worth keeping around. They are no longer useful to you, they don’t fit into your plan. I didn’t realize me getting healthy and recognizing red flags would end our friendship, but it did.

You saw it coming. You knew the jig was up and there was no where left to go. I had stopped believing your lies, your half-truths, your manipulated version of reality.

One day your husband will stop believing your lies. When he does, he will leave you.

One day, when your children are older and get the help they need to recover from being mothered by you, they will see your lies too. And they will leave you.

You could stop all of this but you won’t.

You can save yourself by telling the truth. The whole truth, every last part of it.

You are a coward who pretends to be free and uninhibited and living your best life, but if you were, you wouldn’t have to lie to everyone, control everything.

Mostly you lie to yourself.

When I realized that, it made letting you go easier. It seems almost comical now that I got upset with you for lying to me when you don’t tell yourself the truth. How in the world could you tell it to anyone else? Suddenly this whole thing has become sad instead of infuriating.

You talk bad about all your friends to your other friends to create division; it is easy to shape and manipulate stories when none of your people talk to the others because you make them all hate each other. For you, it is scary for your friends to be friends with each other because we all know different versions of you, different versions of your life, and it would all blow up in your face if we all realized it.

You saw that coming too.

I understood that pretty quickly when your little friend commented on my Instagram post last summer defending you for something that didn’t make sense, something that wasn’t the reason we weren’t getting along, or the reason you said we couldn’t be friends anymore.

It was the perfect example of how you tell everyone different stories.

I’m so glad I don’t have to listen to your stories anymore.

Last summer I had asked you to dinner, I missed seeing you and thought we could have chips and salsa and margaritas and hang out. My girls were with me, because Chris had been working second shift for a few months.

You came to dinner 45 minutes late, told me you couldn’t stay long because you had a last-minute concert you wanted to go to, and spent the majority of our short time together on your phone.

When we ordered, you said you were starving and all you’d had to eat that day was some veggie straws. I commented that didn’t sound very healthy and you should eat more food.

Shut the fuck up, you told me, barely looking up from your phone.

I glanced over at my daughters—my daughters who loved you, who always thought you were fun and kind—and they both looked away, confused and embarrassed.

The rest of the dinner went about the same. At one point, you told my girls to put earmuffs on, but for the most part, you spoke like they weren’t sitting at the same table with us, like they enjoyed hearing the f-word every sentence or two. It was a horrible dinner; thinking about it now and how I let my daughters sit through it makes my stomach hurt.

You ate half your meal and left. I felt relief when you were gone.

On the way home, Ellie asked what was wrong with you. I said I didn’t know. Maybe you were just having a bad day.

The truth is, I did know. I was beginning to understand some heavy things that weren’t worth sharing with my nine year old. They’re not worth sharing on the internet either.

But I hope you get help. I hope you get the professional help you need. I hope you stop running away and looking for quick fixes. I hope you stop finding new things to consume your time and energy, things to obsess over so you can avoid the actual hard, healing work you need to do. I hope you stop the cycle of chaos and calm you’re addicted to. Fixing it will involve mental health professionals, medication, and lots of therapy. Anything else you try to do instead of that will always lead back to the madness and violence simmering just below your surface.

A year ago, I was so, so sad. You knew me well enough to say all the right things to cause the most pain and heartache in a text message. Nice work. You were always good at that; that’s why it always felt so unsafe to tell you things, because there was no doubt it would later be used as a weapon.

But now? Now there is just relief. To be out of your tornado, to understand why there was so much drama, so many people always out to get you. I had no idea the vacuum you created until you left and things settled down. Like when you don’t hear the air conditioning running until it turns off and then you realize how quiet your house is.

Things are quiet and good now.

I didn’t realize how much noise and destruction you carried with you all the time. That must be exhausting. I am so sorry.

In sixth grade, we became friends as I wrote a fictional story in homeroom about you and the older boy you had a crush on. We’d stumble into the lab at 7:30 each morning, open my yellow binder, and read what I had dreamed up for the two of you the night before.

All these years later, I would not have written this ending for us. I would not have dreamed it this way, wanted it this way. We could have done this better for all the people we love who you hurt by just running away.

But that’s not your style. You chose to write harder, more damaging stories for your people. A story I no longer want to be a character in.

Take care.
-Mary

I deleted Instagram for a month, here’s what I learned

As I climbed into bed on July 31st, I held down the little Instagram icon on my phone until it went shaky and then I hit the X to delete it.

It felt exciting and thrilling.

I woke up the next morning to start my August without my favorite social media app.

I did it because I needed to get some stuff done I’d been putting off with excuses of never enough time and I’m so busy. I did it because I could feel myself having a free second and immediately grabbing my phone. I did it because I wanted to see what living my every day life without telling anyone about it felt like.

I loved every second of August without Instagram.

The first few days didn’t feel as bad as I thought they would. I figured it would take a little bit of time to remind myself to not see what strangers were doing on the internet and to tell strangers what I was doing. But instead it just felt like relief. I felt free in a surprising and light way.

We bought a new camper and I didn’t announce it on the world wide web.

We went camping and on road trips no one knew about.

I buried a friend and processed my grief with friends and family members, not by a short blip matched to a cute picture.

I had dinner with friends, read influential books, attended events, and dealt with a sick puppy with the full attention of someone with nowhere to zone out on the internet.

I didn’t delete Twitter or sign off Facebook, but those are places I don’t spend much time anyway. My usage didn’t go up in August, didn’t take the place of Instagram’s absence. I didn’t find a new place or way to waste time, I just stopped wasting time.

It was really nice.

In August, I was a whole lot less likely to know where my phone was or care about it being near me when I couldn’t use it to address boredom or to avoid something. My phone was left upstairs on the nightstand a lot more than normal; a morning or whole afternoon would pass before I realized I hadn’t checked my phone. I was slower to respond to text messages or phone calls and no one seemed to care.

I noticed a lot of us (me included) have an exaggerated sense of self and our own importance when we explain how we have to have our phone with us—accessible at all times—so others can reach us. Unless you’re on the donor transplant list or in the Secret Service, you probably don’t need to be as easy to get a hold of as you think you should.

This break didn’t help me establish better sharing boundaries; I did that years ago after a bad experience on a blog post I wrote. I learned hard and fast what I should write about on the internet and what I should not. I’m sure there are some people who say are you sure? about my proclamation of boundaries and limits, but I can assure you, I share maybe 1% of my life and stories and moments on the internet. I rarely share things in real time and there are very large parts of my life I won’t be writing about here or anywhere else.

That shouldn’t feel shocking or disappointing; the best parts are always better in real life, in real relationship, in real moments on our living room couches or at a friend’s kitchen table.

Last year we participated in a group at church with some people who knew me only from the internet. At the end of the experience, one of the people commented to me that he didn’t realize I held all my cards so close to my chest. He assumed he knew me from this little space and then suddenly here I was being vulnerable in a group about things he hadn’t picked up from Facebook.

As creators of content on the internet (if you share things on Facebook or post on Instagram, you’re a creator of content), we know we don’t share all parts of ourselves on there. But somehow when our roles are switched to consumers of content, we forget that part.

I have strong boundaries about the stories I share on the internet. It’s hard for some people to believe that when I share some hard stories here, but the reality is I share very specific parts of my life here. And other parts I don’t. August reminded me about where I want to focus and what I want to keep for myself.

One thing I did learn while away from Instagram is there are some people I need to unfollow. If Instagram is not real life (and it’s not), I don’t have to keep following people I don’t want to follow because it might hurt their feelings. There are a few people I mute because I can’t stand how whiny or negative they are, can’t stomach how much they claim to be victims of their own lives. I follow a few people who are so unhealthy and unaware of themselves that it’s shocking.

Hey, Mary, you actually don’t have to follow them at all!

What a relief and joy. When I sign back on to Instagram, I’ll be unfollowing the obligation follow. Thanks, August, for that lesson.

Tomorrow is September 1st. I won’t be running back to Instagram the minute my eyes open in the morning. It’s Labor Day weekend and we’ll be camping with friends, celebrating the long weekend and my husband’s birthday. Maybe I won’t load the app back to my phone until we get home, who knows.

The reality of my work and income means I can’t be completely absent from Instagram. Instagram drives traffic to my blog, creates income for our family, and helps me share events and experiences of people I partner with. For me, Instagram is a business strategy. It’s not my only business strategy–that would be a horrible way to run a business, to rely solely on a free service that could go away at any time–but it is one of them.

But the break was good.

I think I’ll purposefully schedule more of them, be more intentional about stepping away from it to make sure I’m not using it in an unhealthy or damaging way. To clear my head, my heart, and my purpose.

I love Instagram. I loved it when I left, and I love it right now even as I’m not using it. There are lots of great things going on there. But there are also lots of great things going on outside of the app, and I don’t want that small screen to get in the way of the bigger, more beautiful and real picture.

God thinks about you.

God thinks about you, Ellie said as we hiked through the woods.

She was talking to her dad; I was up ahead with Harper and one of our dogs.

God thinks about you so you’re important so the end, she said with the confidence and finality of a ten year old.

I turned back to look at Chris. Who is this child, my face said. How did she get to be ours?

Her words echoed in my mind all weekend and have come back in whispered reminders almost every day since.

God thinks about you.

I don’t know if I just needed the reminder or the words lined up just the right way, but “God thinks about you” has changed my posture.

Tonight I’m going to a showing for a friend. A friend who died too soon, who left her kids too soon, who fought really hard the past fifteen years to survive things too hard for her young body.

God thinks about you.
God thinks about you as you mourn and grieve and ask why.

June and July were hard on Chris and I. I don’t know where to start or how to begin a decades-long story about how growing up in a house full of secrets and shame changes every single fiber of your being. I don’t know what stories are ready for public consumption and which ones aren’t. But we struggled through this summer, more and more old wounds coming up and demanding attention.

The truth is the longer Chris is clear-headed, the more broken parts are exposed. The more he views his childhood through the lens of his own children’s experiences, the harder and more painful it becomes. You know the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know”? Seeing what a safe, healthy childhood looks like shines a light on all the things he didn’t get from his parents. The more he tries to heal, the harder it is to stomach what he and his siblings were made to endure.

I keep thinking it will get easier soon.
I’m not sure when that will be.
God thinks about you.

I’ve sat with friends recently who’ve shared hard realities and struggles about children and spouses. About sin that keeps hunting down new victims and families so trapped by addiction it would break your heart to hear.

God thinks about you.
When nothing makes sense and you cannot see a way out of the pain or hurt or mess, God thinks about you.

I don’t know if that brings you comfort like it does me, but I hope it does.

On Wednesday our small group sat around our family room bellies full of chocolate zucchini bread and fresh salsa from the garden. We talked about kids in cages and unwanted babies and what the Bible says about the way we treat people. We wrestled with our witness and our memories, the way we have been and the way we’re trying to be now.

God thinks about you.
When the news overwhelms and everything seems so dark, He thinks about you.

I don’t know if Ellie picked up this truth at Sunday school or church camp or in a book she read. I don’t know if she heard it in a song or in a devotion.

I take no credit for her wisdom, because a lot of the time, she teaches me as opposed to the other way around.

God thinks about you.
God thinks about you.

As you walk into the meeting you are dreading; as you make the move into the new city or house. God thinks about you as you laugh and dance, ask for help and hurt. God thinks about you when things don’t go as planned and things go better than planned.

God thinks about you.

Remembering that truth changes my attitude, my spirit, my goals. It alters where I go and how I behave, when I speak up and when I am quiet.

“God thinks about you” warms my belly, makes my feet feel solid beneath me, and keeps my shoulders light.

Not because everything becomes easy and carefree, but because I am not alone, I am remembered, I am cared for.

God thinks about you.

I don’t know if that sentence shifts something in your soul the way it does mine. Maybe you already knew. Maybe you remember that every day already. Somehow I missed it. Somehow I forgot that God is with me. How did I lose focus of this part?

God thinks about you.
Right now, last night, tomorrow.
God thinks about you.

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in–behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.
-Psalm 139: 1-18, NIV version

I don’t know what you’re dealing with right now; what you’re walking into today or what you’ll have to survive this weekend. It might be hard or wonderful, destructive or joyful, but remember always: God thinks about you.

There are no heroes here.

We pulled up to the accident as 911 was being called, as people were stepping out of cars.

I could see two teenagers near the ditch and my brother-in-law’s parents next to their wrecked truck. I parked in the grass and rushed over.

Are you okay? Is everyone okay?

Fine. Everyone was fine.

She tried to get on the exit ramp, they said. We were just sitting here and there was nothing we could do but let her hit us.

The two teenagers, a boy and a girl, were pacing the gravel edge of the ramp as cars tried to maneuver around the accident. The girl was yelling things back at the car, at the woman she had been riding with.

Can you handle them? Pam asked. You’re a teacher, can you make her calm down?

It looked like the girl was throwing a fit. I really didn’t want to get involved in that part; I had just stopped to make sure they were okay, to see if they needed a ride to the birthday party we were both on our way to.

I took a deep breath and walked over.

Hey guys, you want to come and stand out of the way of cars with me? I know you’re upset, but let’s not get near the traffic. You can sit in my air-conditioned car if you want.

We crossed the ramp together, and I opened the trunk of my SUV for shade and a place to sit. They were too upset to stop moving, to stop calling parents and siblings for rides.

It seemed to be taking the police forever to arrive.Maybe you could call too, Pam said.

I called 911, giving them directions and answering questions.
Is it on the county road or the exit ramp?
Can you see the mile marker?
Is anyone hurt?

As I spoke to the operator, the driver of the other car–the one that had held the teenagers–climbed back in her car, buckled her seat belt, and put the car in gear.

She was leaving the scene, and she was leaving the kids.

I think she’s drunk, I whispered into the phone. She’s trying to leave.

Another passerby had stopped as I was on the phone, a retired sheriff. He had unintentionally blocked her car when he pulled up, but she didn’t seem concerned about what was in her way. She was going to leave. He reached into her car, threw it in park, and ripped the keys out of the ignition.

What I did is illegal, I can’t take her keys, but I did it anyway, he told us as we stood there shocked and reframing the story we just got pulled into.

I went back over to the kids; my girls were hanging out the backseat, bored and only mildly interested in the drama unfolding. Chris sat slumped in the front seat, never turning around, never moving to get out or join the conversation.

Is she drunk, I asked the kids.

Yes, they said. She was drinking before we got in the car.

Then the girl started crying.

It’s okay, I said.
You’re safe now.
We won’t leave until someone is here for you.
We’ll stay.
You’re okay.
You’re okay.
You’re okay.

It all just became too heavy, too real, too close.

Neither car had much damage. The lady wasn’t going fast as she tried to get on the exit ramp during rush hour on a Friday afternoon. But she would have gained speed. She would have gone faster as she traveled up the exit ramp to face 70 mile-an-hour traffic head on. Semis and work trucks, minivans and buses.

What at first felt like a silly fender bender became more serious when we realized what could have happened.

You’re okay.
You’re okay.
You were stopped at just the right time.

The police showed up. The passerby handed off the keys and drove away. Reports were started. Kids were assured none of this was their fault. An open container was found in her car, and she was read her rights.

I prayed the kids’ parents would arrive before they cuffed her, but it happened too fast and they got to witness their great aunt be led to a police cruiser. She could barely walk.

Hey, I said, as the drama started to wind down. I know you don’t know me and you’ll probably roll your eyes, but I have to say this: you don’t ever have to get in the car with an adult you think has been drinking. You get to say no. You call someone–I’ll give you my number and you can call me–but you don’t ever get in the car with someone who’s been drinking, okay?

The girl nodded through tears.
The boy listened as he looked at the ground.
My kids peeked over the backseat of the car and observed.
My husband sat in the front seat and stared out the window.

There was a time I would have felt smug and satisfied by this ending. Drinking and driving is a dumb, selfish choice and you get what you deserve when you decide to do it.

But that was my surface level view. That was my safe, tidy, that-doesn’t-happen-here mentality. I still know drinking and driving is dumb and selfish; I still think consequences are warranted. But there is no smugness or satisfaction anymore.

Mostly, there’s just heartache.

She was going to jail and would probably be there for a while. This wasn’t her first time. This wasn’t her first bad choice.

Addiction is a horrible disease.

It made an aunt try to drive two kids onto the interstate heading the wrong way. It broke my marriage and my heart and my family, affects we’re still feeling and dealing with years later. It’s taken away kids I went to high school with and innocent drivers heading home from work.

It is never just the drinking though. It is what’s under the drinking: the wounds and trauma, the abuse and fear, the mental health issues and the broken people who bring more broken people into the world without trying to heal themselves first. It’s about family legacy and generational sin; it’s about co-dependency and enabling, hiding and checking out.

It’s about a million other things rooted in sin and the fall and the devil too.

The kids’ parents arrived. There was sobbing and death-grip hugs that required eyes to be diverted. Their mom hugged me, hiccuped into my arm as I reassured her they are okay, they are okay, they are okay.

It could have been worse, she said. And I could feel the shame and guilt and fear wrapped up in the implication.

I knew she was asking why she let this happen, why she didn’t think about it, what could she have stopped, why she didn’t see it.

Because those were my questions, things still rolling around in my head and, when I think too much about it, rolling around in my belly and my bones and my speech too. I wanted to tell her we are not in control of other people’s choices and trusting people isn’t wrong. But she learned and I learned and we do things differently now.

The cars were driveable.

My brother-in-law’s parents arrived at the party an hour late, with a busted headlight and crunched bumper. The other family refused to drive the lady’s car home, letting it be towed and handled later. I felt a glimmer of hope that getting the full weight of her consequences would push her to seek the help she needs when she gets out of jail. The boy let me know her mom would handle all of this, telling me in his own words she was enabling the aunt to survive in this living death.

We all have our own demons; sometimes they lead to addiction and sometimes they lead us to help others become addicted.

I prayed detox in jail went okay. For addicts, going cold turkey could be enough to send you to the hospital. I prayed anyone giving her the space and excuse and allowance to continue to live like this would stop. I prayed that when she came home, she woke up.

When I turned the car off in my sister’s driveway, the girls ran inside to change into bathing suits. There was a sprinkler and trampoline calling their names and their cousins were waiting for them.

Are you okay, I asked as we sat in the car, listening to the pop and hiss of the cooling engine.

I’m just sad, Chris said. It’s just sad.

We didn’t say what it meant for him or me. We didn’t say what could have happened if she had not been stopped at the entrance to the ramp. We didn’t say what timing and a perfectly-placed truck meant for the kids in that car or the ones in ours. How there was a chance we would have met her on the interstate that afternoon.

We didn’t say much. We just sat in the heaviness, the what ifs, the grace and favor we were covered in yet again for reasons I don’t understand and we don’t deserve.

I’m just sad, Chris said. It’s just sad.

I hope you’re not reading this story and looking for a hero. There is no hero here. No one to save the day or make the right call or keep everybody safe. And if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I would have stopped if I had known what I was walking into. So don’t find any noble action in any part of this retelling.

Addiction doesn’t allow much room for heroes; it makes sure to bruise, scar, or destroy every single thing it comes in contact with.

All we can do is what Chris Graham did as we exited the car and walked into the birthday party that night: be honest about the hurt, acknowledge there is a better way, and ask for help.

Be honest about the hurt.
Acknowledge there is a better way.
Ask for help.

We do it for ourselves, for the bystanders in our lives, and for the people we will meet on the road ahead.

You should go camping

We camp because we want to.
We camp because we have to.

“You like to camp because it’s good for your mental health,” my counselor said this winter as we discussed my weather-related sadness in full effect.

Huh, I thought. I never made that connection before.

This is why I pay for counseling, so someone smarter than me, someone with a better view of my life can help me make sense of it.

As we rolled into the state park a few weeks ago, I watched the bars on my cell phone signal slowly go down. I’d been working on the two-hour drive in, but as we made our way back to the campground, my connection to the internet, my work, and my stress slowly lessened its hold on me.

I could feel the untangling as we drove.

I could feel the deeper breaths I was finally able to take, the tension in my shoulders releasing, the endless to-do list in my head quieting.

I am made to go, strive, make lists, check off tasks, do things efficiently, think about what’s next, what we should be doing instead of stopping. This helped me balance a full-time job with grad school and a newborn. It helped me survive teaching and coaching and two small kids. It allowed me to work 50+ hours a week in the classroom, take on freelance writing jobs, and still find time to sleep enough.

But it does not make turning my brain or my hands off easy.

Stopping only happens when I have no other option. Stopping only happens when I cannot work around my exhaustion, my family, or my lack of internet.

And so we camp.
We camp to rest.
We camp to stop running.
We camp to slow down.

At 37, I understand the only way I stop is when I can’t figure out a way to keep working. It is what it is.

So here we are, spending our summer camping as much as possible. Camping so I can take a break. Camping so Chris doesn’t have to do more projects. Camping so I’ll have nothing to do but read a book or take a walk with my kids as they race around the campground on their bikes.

I do this on purpose as a way to survive.

Lessons come slow sometimes. I wish I had understood this sooner, understood that I have to trick myself into not working. It might have made my twenties easier. It might have made the last few years less stressful.

But I’m thankful for the lesson now. For the camper we can tow to a campsite in the middle of a no-cell-phone-reception forest. For a bed with no plug nearby so I can’t look at my phone before I drift off to sleep.

We’re heading out again soon. Heading to another place to rest. The moments before we pull out of the driveway are busy–is everyone packed? Can I get one more hour of work done really quick? Please pick up this mess. Let’s just make one stop on the way out of town. Wait, I need to grab one more thing.

I literally can’t stop wanting to cram one more thing, idea, or task into my day. I’m annoying even to myself.

I camp to get away from my own brain.

I don’t know if it’s like this for you too. Maybe you’re better at turning the world and lists and things off? Maybe not. Maybe camping sounds like the opposite of enjoyable and relaxing. But what are you doing to rest? Where do you go to stop your brain and your schedule?

I didn’t know I needed to be asking these questions. I’m glad my counselor pushed me to.

I camp because I want to.
I camp because I have to.

(Pictures from a weekend at Clifty Falls State Park in Madison, Indiana.)

He is gracious even in our suffering.

It’s just more layers, I said as I stood against the wall watching the kids play. The more I learn and heal, the more things I see to address.

Yep, my friend agreed. We just keep finding more junk the longer we pay attention.

At some point, I stopped thinking one day I’d just get to healthy; I’ve resigned myself to the fact there is always more work to do. What’s good about this realization is God is patient and kind about it.

A few months ago, I was driving my car and out of nowhere, two things that had been floating in my head forever came crashing together and made total sense. A shockingly easy connection I had never had until that moment.

Before I would have told myself I was dumb and naïve to not see the answer to something really obvious, but I’ve been blindsided and shocked enough to learn God doesn’t always let us know everything at the same time out of mercy and love, not control and pain.

He is gracious even in our suffering.

When Chris told me he had been secretly drinking for years, it took months to process and see the extent of what was happening, what I needed to do in response, and how to survive. If I had known the full story sitting in that counselor’s office on a rainy Wednesday evening in the spring of 2017, I would have called my divorce attorney that night and not looked back. God knew what I could handle in that moment, what He wanted to wait on, and what I would do with the knowledge when the time was right.

He allowed things to happen at a slower pace than I would have liked, but I can see now, from my view in the spring of 2019, He was doling out only what I could survive, only what was necessary for that moment, and nothing more.

He is gracious even in our suffering.

I don’t think any wife has emergency plans ready for when her husband surprises her with a hidden addiction. I know I didn’t. So God gave me the summer of 2017, new eyes, and a healthy dose of counseling and learning, to understand when I needed to take action. He gave me tools and people and told me when I needed to move.

He is gracious even in our suffering.

God was gracious in my suffering, but He was also gracious in Chris’. I think it is easy to see how God is good afterwards for ourselves, but less easy to see how He cared for those who were hurting us too. I don’t have time to get into that thought completely right now, but let’s just say, God timed my realizations well enough so I didn’t murder my husband. God kept Chris just safe enough to not be murdered in his sleep by his enraged wife.

God is good, friends.

It’s the same way with healing and relationships and growth—God doesn’t sit us down and make a list of all the ways we’re messing up. He gives us a little guidance, leads us to some truth and healing, and then reveals another area we can pay attention to.

The fight to get healthy always causes ripples. But He doesn’t let the ripples drown us, He lets us pay attention to one at a time so we don’t give up. (This is not the same as saying “He never gives us more than we can handle.” That is complete BS. He gives us more than we can handle all the time. That’s the point. None of us feel like we can handle what we’re going through; it’s why He wants us to rely on Him first. Then He’ll lead us home.)

When my marriage fell apart, God placed people and situations and places in my path to aid in the healing of my heart and my relationship. Once it was on a steadier ground, He said let’s use these lessons in other areas too. So He started changing my friendships, got rid of the ones that were hurting me more than helping me, and realigned the ones He kept for me.

When those things settled, He brought my attention to some other family dynamics that were needing attention. Then He gave me the patience and energy to see some things clearer.

Growing is just ripples; you take care of one small wave and then it gives you the endurance and wisdom to tackle the next one. As someone who wants to get as much done as quickly as possible (efficiency is my love language), this is a hard lesson I like to learn again and again.

His time, not mine.

Sometimes we need the healing and the wisdom from one healed area of our lives to be able to turn our attention to another. Sometimes we need the endurance and peace we gathered in one relationship struggle to move away from something else.

It’s not possible to work on better boundaries in your marriage without it spilling out into other relationships. It’s not possible to work toward healthy reactions without it impacting all the people you react to.

A somewhat vague story: My ultimate fear is betrayal. I trust people just enough to be in relationship with them, but not enough to feel safe. I was burned often and early so my defense mechanism is to keep my cards close to my heart and only give you what won’t hurt me. The reality is, I married someone who has betrayed me many, many times. Weeding through those wounds and scars, some of them present long before I met Chris Graham has been a large part of the last few years of my counseling. When I became aware—when I could truly see with fresh eyes—the way most of my close relationships were with people who often lied to me, it changed everything. At first it changed my marriage. Then in changed my family relationships. And then it came for my friendships.

I said no more lying in my marriage, and Chris said he needs help to be better.

I said no more lying in my family and lots of conversations stopped because people didn’t know what to talk about.

I said no more lying to my best friend and she said you’re not worth telling the truth to and she left.

He is gracious even in our suffering.

I’ve lost a lot in the past two years. Things that hurt. Things I didn’t expect. Things that felt like more betrayal and lies.

But when I say He is gracious even in our suffering, I am adamant He is still kind and loving and merciful. Pain doesn’t last forever. He can heal your broken heart. He can make new relationships and conversations and marriages. I only write about things I know and this, this I know in my bones.

If right now, it feels like too much.

If right now, you can see no end.

If right now, you’ve forgotten His promises.

If right now, you feel like you’re drowning.

Keep going.

He is gracious even in our suffering.

I’m tired of talking about the Enneagram.

In 2017, I read The Road Back to You and suddenly I had language to communicate with my husband and understanding to see why so often we missed each other even though we were living in the same house.

The Enneagram began a lot of healing and growing for me and my marriage.

Full disclosure: Chris did not and still does not care about the Enneagram at all. We didn’t suddenly get on the same page and everything was fine. I learned, I changed, I questioned, I listened, I used the Enneagram to fill some holes. Chris Graham decided it was not for him.

That’s what is so great about the Enneagram: no one else has to know anything about it, it’s for you and only you. You can grow and heal and be better toward people without them being involved at all.

The Enneagram has been around for hundreds of years. Originally when people started learning and studying it, they worked hard to keep it out of the general public’s hands, because they knew it would turn into a parlor game, just another fun social quiz taken at surface level.

Now here we are in 2019 living in the reality so many Enneagram teachers feared. We share Enneagram quizzes on Facebook and talk about our numbers with only some basic knowledge. We use our numbers to excuse behavior and explain why we’re just not good at some things. We’ve decided the Enneagram number summary is who we are, who we will always be, and we get to live proudly out of that summary because the Enneagram says so.

And that, friends, is why I hate talking to people about the Enneagram.

We took this powerful tool, condensed the knowledge to a tweet-length blip, and decided we just get to sit in that summary for the rest of our lives.

It’s who God made us to be!

There’s nothing wrong with me!

I can’t learn or grow or change, because the Enneagram says this is who I am!

Why did you do that hurtful thing to someone you love? Because I’m a One.

Why didn’t you follow through with your commitment? Because I’m a Seven.

Why didn’t you stand up for yourself when someone was taking advantage of you? Because I’m a Nine.

We are living out all the worst fears of the original Enneagram scholars and it makes me so embarrassed and grouchy.

In education, we teach kids how powerful their mindset is to their learning. Learners (of all ages) come to learning one of two ways: with a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. A fixed mindset means you believe your talents and intelligence are fixed traits.

I’m bad at math.

I can’t be patient.

I’ve never been good at relationships.

Talent is something you’re born with and you cannot learn new skills or knowledge, success is a trait you have or a trait you do not have and effort is not required.

Students who come into our classrooms with this mindset (something they often learn from their home and parents) struggle more in school, often say they can’t learn something when a challenge arises, and take on a victim mentality when they interact with the world.

The opposite of this is the growth mindset. A growth mindset, according to Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck who coined the terms, is when a learner accepts that knowledge and intelligence is not fixed, that we can always learn new things, and to grow in our skill set we just need time and experience. People (kids and adults) who believe they can get smarter or better at things, invest the time and energy into doing them.

I don’t have the attention span to read a book so I’m going to try to read 20 minutes a day to change that.

I’ve never been a good cook, but I’m going to make dinner from scratch once a week to start learning new recipes and how to not burn things.

I’m not a good friend, but I want to be so I’m going to be intentional about checking in with people I love.

This carries over to the Enneagram well. The point of the Enneagram is to give you a glimpse into your strengths and weaknesses so you can be more aware of them. Learning about your number should be uncomfortable because it points out your tender spots, but then it gives you the guidance to make them assets instead of wounds. It helps you show up better in the world, it allows you to become a healthier version of yourself so you can love people better, and it lets you address the parts in your heart that are hurting you instead of helping you.

But what many of us have done is we came at the Enneagram with a fixed mindset, learned new language to describe why we are what we are, and then just used it as a weapon or an excuse to keep being the exact same person.

And that, friends, is why I hate talking to people about the Enneagram.

We found the Enneagram to be a fun personality quiz, and we put it in our back pocket to pull out when we needed to justify shitty behavior, victim mentality, and refusals to grow or change.

We also decided that God wasn’t in control.

Instead we decided that the Enneagram was.

In the Bible we read that Jesus healed the blind, made the lame walk, and raised people from the dead, but the Enneagram says we can’t change and many people have come to believe that more than Jesus.

Somewhere along the line, we’ve started worshiping and believing fully in a creation of God instead of the Creator.

Somewhere along the line, we accepted what an online quiz or a few books told us we were instead of what the Good Book says we are.

And that, friends, is why I hate talking to people about the Enneagram.

Our cult following of the Enneagram has stripped God of His healing, His transforming power, His redeeming, and His mercy. God can’t change minds, soften hearts, or heal pain because of our Enneagram number profiles. Because if the Enneagram says we can’t change, what can God do about that?

Here’s an important detail though: the Enneagram doesn’t say we can’t change. The Enneagram is all about growth and change and reflecting more of God’s characteristics and less of ours. The Enneagram, if we study it and use it the way it was intended, will draw us closer to God, His heart, His mission, and His people.

But that sounds like too much work and too much energy and too much dying to self, so the majority of us will stay stuck in our fixed mindset knowledge of the Enneagram:

This is who I am.

This is why I do what I do.

This is why I’m a victim of my life.

This is why I can’t learn new things.

This is why I am stuck.

This is why everyone is always out to get me.

This is why I’m not good at this or that.

This is why jealousy rules my life.

This is why I’m constantly unsatisfied.

This is why what I have will never be good enough.

The Enneagram will always have a sweet spot in my heart. God used it to begin some really powerful shifts in my marriage and in my relationships at just the right time. He used it to point out some sin and strongholds that were trapping me and making me miserable. He gave me some really wise friends who helped me learn and grow with the Enneagram.

But I’m done talking about the Enneagram with people who only use it as a weapon against themselves and against me.

Start a conversation about why you can’t do something because your Enneagram number says you can’t? We’re done here.

Tell me something about myself you know because you know my Enneagram number but not one single thing God is currently doing in my life? We’re done here.

Excuse bad behavior or sin with a reminder about your Enneagram number? We’re done here.

Pretend to know why I’m doing something solely based on my Enneagram number without a conversation with me? We’re done here.

Enneagram teacher Ian Morgan Cron said once that we should learn about the Enneagram and our number and then stop talking about it. True growth and healing is done inside ourselves with God, not in making sure everyone knows our number and we know everyone else’s. We don’t need to know anyone else’s Enneagram number to be better to them. We don’t need to know anyone else’s number to make sure we’re showing them our healthiest and safest self.

If we’re growth mindset-ing the Enneagram, we’ll be talking about how God is using the knowledge to make us better in relationship; we’ll be talking about how He’s healing our wounds and scars to use it for His glory. We’ll be talking about how He’s teaching us new ways to see the world, His people, and His creation. If we’re coming at the Enneagram with a growth mindset and Jesus, we see ourselves as constant works-in-progress, children of a King who can make us into anything He wants, and people who are better when we ask for help.

And if you’re not ready to talk about how God is using knowledge of the Enneagram to make you more like Him, I’m out.

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