It's fine

I learned a million things as a high school athlete. Honestly I probably wouldn't be the person I am if I didn't play sports as a kid. But the biggest lesson I ever learned was that when you were hurt you just needed to suck it up.

Broken nose? Play through it.
Sprained ankle? Run it off.
Dislocated joint? Ski until it's back in.
Bleeding? Just don't get it on your uniform.

It seemed that no matter how serious the injury, if there was any chance to play through it (even the absolute slimmest chance) you HAD to go on. So usually we did. You can throw a band-aid on a paper cut and continue reading for days. You can stretch your calf until the pain subsides. Sometimes we really could suffer through the pain.

But not always.

There was always that one injury that everyone assumed was nothing. But it wasn't. The sprain that was really a break. The sore muscle that was really pulled. The bump that was really a concussion. The cut that got severely infected. Sometimes sucking it up doesn't help at all. Sometimes sucking it up just makes it worse. Sometimes if we would have properly taken care of the issue from the beginning we wouldn't have had any complications later on. 

But it starts with acknowledging that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. And that's true for all areas of life. Physical and emotional.

It starts with a question: "How are you today?"
It ends with a lie: "Okay"

The dictionary defines okay as "satisfactory, all right, correct" yet anytime I hear someone use it, I know that none of that is true. It's funny how sometimes we use positive adjectives to describe absolute turmoil. It's the emotional equivalent of "sucking it up" for an injury. But like trying to place a bandaid on a bullet wound, the injury is still visible, and no healing is being done. 

We don't want to say we are not okay because we hope that our shoddy attempts to fix our problems will work. Maybe if I throw myself into my classes the break up won't be so terrible. Maybe if I pick up some extra hours at work I won't have as much time to think about the pain. Maybe if I avoid that part of town I won't miss them so much. We try to fix the problem, but like homeowner that uses a picture to hide a hole in the wall, the problem is still there. It will have to be dealt with eventually. The picture will have to come down one day, and the hole will not fix itself. Fix it now or in 30 years when we sell the house. It might be too late.

When we tell someone we are okay, we are trying to convince someone else that we are doing "satisfactory", "all right" and that our life is "correct". Yet we don't believe it ourselves. We say the words with as much conviction as the playground bully being forced to apologize for his rein of terror.

When we say "I'm okay." we don't mean it. 

Usually we mean the opposite. We mean that we are tired. Stressed. Hurt. Insulted. Confused. Lost. In over our heads. We mean that it was hard to get out of the bed that morning. We mean that our eyes are stinging from holding back tears. We mean that we are in pain. And when we say we are okay we really mean we are not okay.
And that's okay.

It's okay to not be okay. 

Actually it's better to be not okay. Because if you are admitting that, you are already on your way to healing. We need to start treating our emotional more like our physical health. We need to take the time to deal with our minor issues before they become major problems.

So what exactly am I telling you? I'm not saying you have to tell every person that asks how you are all about your emotional well being. But there is one person you have to ALWAYS be honest with, and that person is:

Yourself. 

So if I asked you today how you are doing, and you said to yourself I'm okay, please don't stop reading now.
Take time to take care of whatever is bothering you. Take a nap. Take a bath. Go for a run. Go shopping. Go sit in a tree. Talk to God. Talk to a friend. Talk to yourself. Breathe. Sob. Yell. Scream. Kick.

Do whatever you have to do to tear down the picture that you tried to hang over your emotional hole. Take the time to fix it now. 
Be honest.
Be real.
Be not okay.

Asked and Answered

Today it happened. It's been a long few months and at times I wondered when it would finally give way. Today it did.

My writer's block cleared. It was not unprompted though. Something much bigger happened first:

My bracelet finally fell off. 

My worn and tattered "red rope" bracelet finally slipped off of my wrist. It happened simply enough. I sat down on the couch after supper, and when I got up to go to the gym I noticed that my wrist weighed a fraction less. Crumbled beside me was a faded twist of string. My heart sank. I had been dreading the day.

It was more than red cord.
It was so much more than frayed strings.
It was more than tight knots.
It was a reminder.
It was a symbol.
It was an idea.

The bracelet was neatly braided during my missions trip to the Bahamas. It plunged into the Atlantic with me. It snorkeled through the Caribbean with me. It talked to kids, hugged strangers, and ran through airports. And that was just on the trip. It then traveled to 20 states. It presented at regional and local conferences. Clicked through more grad schools than I can count. It had tough conversations. Shook the hand of my future supervisor. It waved to kind passerbys. Greeted countless of Cedarville guests. It held crying friends. Rocked out at my dream concert. It biked hundreds of miles. Drove across the country in the ultimate best friend road trip. It moved into my very first apartment. The bracelet was with me through one of the most eventful 3 months of my life.

The bracelet represented the incredible friendships that I formed on my trip (It was a friendship bracelet after all). But there was something bigger than just friendship that was embodied by the cord. It was about Trust. It was about true, untouched, incredibly powerful, trust in God. It was about telling God that while I love to plan, I would learn to rely wholly on His plan. The bracelet wasn't just a fashion statement, it was an outward expression of the attitude of my heart.

That bracelet changed my life. 

Not the actual fibers. It wasn't the dye. It was the idea.

On my misson's trip I vowed to keep giving God my future plans. I vowed to give God my heart, so that He could give me the desires of my heart. A heart chasing after Him. A heart in full allegiance to His will for my life. And it started with planning less and giving more. I gave my plans to God before I even allowed myself to mess them up with my mere human scribbles. I lifted up my burdens before my muscles grew weary from trying to carry them on my own.

This semester I hit my knees more times than I can count.
I hit them for research opportunities.
I hit them for wisdom in friendships.
I hit them for internship possibilities.
I hit them for sick loved ones.
I hit them for struggling strangers.
I hit them for myself.
I hit them for a million more reasons than I could ever explain.
And if I had to summarize my semester in one word, I would say quite simply:
Answered.

There is an old children's song that talks about how sometimes God answers "Yes" when we pray, and sometimes He says "No." In either circumstance, God answers according to His love for us. I know that is quite the concept to wrap our heads around: love might say no. But any loving parent, God doesn't give us EVERYTHING that we want (because even though we really want the dog, we probably won't actually care for it, and even though we really want the ipod we probably will lose it [sorry mom and dad]). Luckily God actually knows what's best for us.

So this semester God answered some prayers with a heartbreaking "NO." And there were tears over what I thought were missed opportunities. There were tears over lost loved ones. And you can bet there were tears over poor grades (*** disclaimer you CANNOT pray your way to an "A"... even especially on a Bible exam). There were tears of exhaustion. Tears of confusion.

But there were also tears of joy. There was dancing. Jumping. Leaping. And hugs.
All because sometimes God doesn't just say "Yes." Sometimes He looks a the tiny broken toy that you ask Him to fix, and He answers with a totally new one.
There were unexpected research opportunities.
There was an unexpected meeting.
There were unexpected academic honors.
There were unexpected friends.
There was an unexpected guy (seriously, I had NO idea that was even a request).

They were all answers to prayers I didn't even utter. But my heart knew. And God knew. Fortunately for us God hears the prayer of our heart when our lungs are deflated and our lips are silent. Somehow God continually surpassed my expectations. It's like He knows the actual BEST things for me. But it didn't mean that I always came to Him first. Sometimes the tears came from pride. From trying to do it on my own. Like a child running to their mother for a band-aid, I sometimes fell before God pleading for Him to take over the situation. And rather than ignore me, He'd gently lift me up and set me on a path that I could have never imagined.

So yes today marks the end of a constant physical reminder of God's answers this past semester. But I pray that my heart will forever remember what it represents. It represents giving to God, so He can far surpass our measly expectations. It's about giving it all, and somehow getting more back.
It's about friendship. 
But more importantly, it's about trust.