If I keep on hiding, how will I be known?

I met God again yesterday.…on my knees, wracked with sobs and anger and smeared mascara and equal parts fuck you and thank you and I love you in the same flustered breath.

This is where I always meet him… at my edges, once I finally relinquish my death grip of control.  I forget God doesn’t want me pretty. He doesn’t want my polished prayers or my constant vibe high. He doesn’t care if my faith falters, I hate him, curse him, or ignore him.  He wants me whole. Alive. Fully whoever I am right now so he can find me and lead me forward.

I forget the more I prove I can do it alone, the more I will.

If I keep hiding my pain and hiding myself, how will I ever be known?

There are many people who claim to know God with a certainty and arrogance that tells me they actually don’t. Not yet anyways. Not fully. 

God can only be seen when you stop believing you “know” and admit you have no fucking clue.

“Alright. You win. You’re in charge. Have your way with me” 

“There you are” he says. “Now, we can really talk”

It’s not until I let go, fully, that I’m open to receive. 

I know how to surrender. This isn’t my first rodeo, it’s not the first time I found God on my knees, yet somehow I constantly forget this is where he hangs out…with the sinners, not the saints. God doesn’t live locked in the tabernacle, accessible only by those sacred and worthy enough to possess the key.

He lives in my broken heart.

He lives in grief and anger and sadness and fear.

He lives in the dark.

You can find God anywhere if you know how to look, but you feel him most on your knees. 

He meets me in the part of my soul I don’t want to enter, the part of myself I believe I should have outgrown, overcome, or transformed by now. It’s a room where I’ve buried the hurt and stuffed down the fears and properly polished up my rage in an attempt to just.keep.moving forward. I have goals to crush and money to make and kids to raise, a business to build. I don’t have time to revisit that room, bring up old pain and air past grievances, and yet, in my frantic search for the path towards all of my big, audacious dreams, I’m slowly learning every fucking thing I’m chasing is on the other side of that room.

My path is right through the pain I’ve spent my entire life trying to avoid. The pain I think success will protect me from is the very pain I’m required to feel to get the success I’m chasing.

Personal development, self help…all of it has made avoidance seem virtuous. That the best way to overcome our broken hearts is pretend they aren’t broken at all.  To straighten our spines and tighten our jaws and push ahead but what if we don’t need to be stronger, but softer?

Gentler. Kinder. More loving, forgiving, and honest about how we feel under the facade of “got my shit together badass”. Or maybe it’s holding the cognitive dissonance that we can be both a shit together badass AND a little girl who still feels unseen, unloved and unworthy of her big dreams.

I’m tired of pretending.

I’m tired of proving and earning and abandoning the parts of me that want to be held, not banished to the basement and locked away in a dark room. No wonder she’s still scared. 

We can’t expect the world to see us if WE refuse to see ourselves, which is the real reason I think God prefers us a snotty, angry, disheveled mess. 

Because what God is showing me here on my knees is that what I think I want is not what I crave after all. 

I don’t want more attention…I long to be seen, loved, and known.

I don’t want more money…I ache to feel safe and supported without working so fucking hard.

I don’t want adoring fans…I ache to feel truly loved 

And so here I find myself, with no more fucks to give and a willingness to actually give up.

Give up the belief that it’s all up to me.

Give up the idea I need to better before I’m worthy.

Give up the illusion of control. 

Because in giving up, I’m actually giving over…which is what I’ve been terrified to do all along as I cling to control as a false sense of security. On my knees I can find what I’ve been looking for in all the wrong places because it’s not until we acknowledge the disempowered parts of ourselves that we can know our full power.

Fall down.

Fall apart.

Feel the anger, sadness, and frustration that you’ve locked behind your pretty smile and perfect on paper life and acknowledge whatever pain is asking to be felt.

Your mind will say no but your soul demands it.

If you feel stuck, frustrated, in the same place today as you were last year or just generally weary…stop pretending and start praying…preferably on your knees.