For the young women seekers & sojourners I know
A blessing for the winding path ahead, 05.06.24
If you don’t have all the wisdom needed for this journey, then all you have to do is ask God for it; and God will grant all that you need. God gives lavishly and never scolds you for asking. (James 1:5)
[Jesus said], “Don’t be nitpickers; use your head — and heart! — to discern what is right, to test what is authentically right.” — John 7:24
This has been on my heart for weeks: I keep thinking about young women I know who’ve been raised in high-authority, low-self-trust/low-questioning environments, and they’re about to embark on some major life transition.
To a one, they are lovely, kind, giving, thoughtful, smart, hardworking, heartfelt, like almost painfully good people. They care so much, and they offer so much of themselves to the aching world.
Almost always, they’re people-pleasing and anxious, too. How could they not be? They often either starve (control) or feed (smother) their emotions. They can’t figure out why they’re so vaguely unhappy and restless, why their earnest faith, memorized platitudes, and begging prayers haven’t fixed all of it yet. (High-authority/low-questioning environments do this to people, even when they’re genuinely not trying to, because they make happily-ever-after promises that they just can’t reasonably deliver on, given the non-formulaic complexity of the human experience. Isn’t is interesting that the relentless pursuit of certainty always just leads to more anxiety?)
I watch all of this from these decades on, and I just think, Oh honey. I feel it in my chest.
There isn’t any preparation for meeting a world that is absolutely nothing like you were told it was. The people you were told were monsters in disguise turn out to be the purest souls, closer to God than anyone you’ve ever met, because they’ve stopped pretending they don’t need help and solidarity. The people with the platforms, power, pulpits — the ones who promised they had the answers, who seemed like they had it all together —they turn out to be not quite the sages they made themselves out to be. You discover they’re messes just like the rest of us, and then you’re left wondering if the bow-on-top belief systems they offer can really deliver when it comes to finding healing, deep-down peace, connection, a joy that can meet our anxiety with a kind of tender, muscular hope, and real-life transformation.
What’s a girl to do? Break down, most likely. And that’s actually okay, in the long run.
There also isn’t any preparation for having to wrestle with that cognitive and soul dissonance. The stuff you were raised to see as hilarious starts to appear as it really is, more mean and small-spirited than actually funny (like, is making fun of vulnerable people really WJWD?). The stuff you were raised to see as unequivocally threatening starts to appear as it really is, much more gray than just always black-and-white. The stuff you were raised to believe was certain and safe starts to appear as it really is, more self-soothing than honest or helpful. You just have to walk through that wilderness of not-knowing, try on what it feels like to be radically uncertain and still okay, still held, still loved.
I want to hug these young women and tell them the truth: it gets worse, for a bit, because so much has to get loosed and let go.
You’re out there in the world, and nothing makes a damn bit of sense, and you will maybe feel like you’re dying, and in some real ways, you are: many of the things that you thought were you — ideologies that have been handed to you, assumptions about yourself and other people, fears, ego-attachments, those sugar-sweet easy answers (so addictive!) — you realize at some point that they can’t hold the vastness of what you’re made for, what you long to surrender to.
It should be said, because it does happen: You can go back to status-quo safety. You can go back to the familiar, where no one will think you’re weird or getting off track, where you’ll be constantly affirmed for toeing the line. You can go back to the pretty boxes that always left you a bit unsatisfied, because none of your good questions could fit inside of them. Women have been doing that for ages.
But there’s this beautiful, difficult choice, because true intimacy requires trust. You can’t have trust if the Love you want to experience has human limitations. If you want to grow and experience the connection with God that you’ve been craving, maybe for as long as you can remember, these old identities are going to have to be gently left behind — not without gratitude for getting you this far (resentment and bitterness are heavy things to carry, too), but with the solid recognition that they can’t help you on the road ahead.
So you peel it all back, layer by layer by layer, until there’s just this tiny, luminous kernel, the essence of one unconditionally Beloved. (And I mean truly unconditionally, not “unconditional* *conditions apply.”)
This process is by turns exhilarating and utterly terrifying, and to be honest, it’s neither linear nor finite. It just keeps going like that, and at some point, you get (almost?) kind of used to it. You start to notice the pattern: you fall apart and you’re made whole again, and each time offers some subtle shimmering gift that you never could have received had you not chosen to let go.
So yes, it gets worse, for a bit. Growth can be quite lonely at times.
But the blessing I have for you is this: after that, it gets so, so much better. You were designed for the better part. Because you’re made to be so much more than “right” — you’re made to be free.
