Unpacking

Some truths about the way I feel would really confuse people. In so many ways I am transparent and open and vulnerable; in so many other ways I am closed off, guarded, and have no desire what-so-ever to talk about my feelings.

Feelings are difficult for me. Sometimes, it's hard for me to pinpoint a feeling as anything other than good or bad; but I also feel really big. I see myself in my 5-year-old on the daily. 'Wow, she has some big feelings' I hear myself say or think. 

She got those from me.

She just has the typical self-control of a 5-year-old so you hear, feel, and experience the flurry and fury of every one of her emotions at all times. Thankfully, I have the emotional self-control of at least a 15-year-old so you don't get the totally unfiltered dose of what is going on internally (unless you're my husband--he for sure gets the 5-yr-old version).

I am a 3 on the enneagram. I couldn't even unpack the enneagram AT ALL when I first started with it, because it relied upon identifying feelings. Ugh. I couldn't. I can't. I don't. WHAT AM I? It was maddening and overwhelming and disheartening. I was scared of being a 3... are threes fake? Do threes have any idea who they really are? Can a three be genuine? I've always thought of myself as someone who is authentic; I've shared publicly and vulnerably about my own battle with mental and emotional health. I've laid bare some of the details of my most difficult moments. But there is still so much more to me and I live in the dichotomy of wanting to be fully understood and wanting to guard every tender side as much as possible. But what if? What if I'm not authentic?

I'm opposed to 'over-sharing', though I've definitely been guilty of it. The times I have over-shared are the times I most want someone to understand something about me, something about my life--I want someone to be able to empathize with me, to 'get me', and to recognize both the hard things about my life and the good things about who I am.

I also really like to be perceived as successful; someone who has achieved things and gotten things done because she works hard. My three-ness made it a little hard to come back to this blog. At the urging of a friend and my husband to write more I forced myself back to this place, but it's hard for me to look at the gaps of space between blogs and not feel something bad--is it embarrassment? Shame? A hint of failure? I don't know what it is because, again, I don't know how to pinpoint it, but it aint a good feeling, folks. I know in my head that it doesn't matter. Who cares if I blog once a year? Who cares?          Well, obviously I do...

Writing must be therapeutic for me, because it is the low points of my journey that drive me to the life-line of laying it bare in written form. I don't always know how to let people in and I don't want to have very many deep two-sided conversations about what hurts me, burdens me, and confuses me. I feel like healthy people see the value of this over the difficulty of it so they choose to have these conversations and yet I'm like a kid dreading a shot: clinging to the stair rail at the doctor's office, screaming at my mother, "I've had enough of this! This is my body and you have to respect my body! I'm not going to do it! EVER! NEVER EVER NEVER!" Not that I've had this literal experience with my children or anything.

If I never had to interact with anyone in person about anything I wrote I would write a lot more. I'd rather put all my stuff out there and never have to talk to anyone about it, because for whatever strange reason I'd rather be vulnerable with strangers or the small number of people I really really like, than put my stuff out there knowing that the people I do know and don't like will get insight into all my personal heart-stuff. What happens if people don't understand me? What if they make false assumptions about me? What if they don't get my sense of humor? Oh and God forbid what if they publicly criticize me!? (I know... its got enneagram 3 all over it).

How's that for ugly and honest feelings?   Go ahead and pray for me... I know I need it, it's not a shocker. 

You know what else isn't a shocker? Unpacking takes time. Unpacking ANYTHING. It's the worst part of traveling and it's the worst part about hard things. When I get home from a trip I like to unpack right away and as quickly as possible. How fast can all this crap get put back where it belongs as if it never went anywhere?       Whatever the answer is, I wanna do it faster.  I am the same with negative emotions. How quickly can can all these crap feelings get put back in whatever file they belong in as if they never came out?

When approaching the aches of life, this isn't exactly the healthiest of questions to be asking. But I never said I was laying out the right way to do things. I'm trying to lay out the brutally honest reality of how I impulsively function when I've been wounded, when I've received disappointing news, and when I'm trying to keep my head above water when the huge waves of bad feelings threaten to drown me. 

The number one feeling I can identify when things are the hardest is what I don't feel: I don't feel like talking about it. It has taken me years to really admit this even to myself, even though I've been saying those exact words my entire marriage and that's the most intimate relationship I have. I don't want to talk about things because it's too hard to find all the words and for someone who prides themselves in always having the right words to say and for having "communication" as their #2 strength in the StrengthsQuest Finder, this feels like a failure. I do often tell people that I wish I could transfer everything that happened or everything that is in my head straight to their brain so that I didn't have to try and explain it all. I don't want to take the time and I don't want to exert the emotional energy it will undoubtedly require. I don't want to unpack. 

You might be thinking, 'But look at all these emotions you just unpacked?' And I'd say, 'Yes, I'm very good at talking in generalized terms that are still somehow deeply personal without ever exposing the details that exist behind these broader strokes.' It's not that I'm being unauthentic; everything I've said is true. But what I haven't done--and what I also can't do because of the nature of all of the struggle--is talk about the details of how terribly painful the past four months were, the betrayal I experienced, the isolation, and the anxiety, nor can I share about the heart-breaking new realities for our son that aren't mine to share with you because they are the intimately personal details of his life and his journey, but they are also my burdens because I love him so. Those are the things I need to unpack.

Don't try to fill in the blanks. I can guarantee you wouldn't be right if you tried to guess in your head what these struggles are. 

So I just keep going to Jesus and offering up some pathetic prayer, desperate for help without any clue how to navigate the waters. I've always been unsure where exactly to 'put' all the feelings. What do I do with the feeling of betrayal? How do I process feelings when the places I feel 'safe' are so few? How long will it take for a wound to not sting when the breeze of exposure brushes over it? How long will it be before I stop wincing when that wound gets dipped in the waters of remembering and the waves of moving forward?

The point is this: God sees us and the Holy Spirit unpacks for us if we will fix our eyes on The One who says his yoke is easy and his burden is light. I literally have no answers for anyone except that. I've got some heavy bags that for some undefinable reason keep ending up in my hands instead of at Jesus' feet. I've got weird broken places in me that don't know how to not be awkward and uncomfortable with talking about anything personal. I mean for real y'all, my husband just said, 'I see you've been working on a blog, how is that coming?' And inside I get all weird and passive, 'yeah yeah, it's fine.' Whatever I can do to downplay it. Why? Because I don't want to talk about it. And yet, I'm gonna hit publish at some point because I guess my belief that exposing truths about what is going on inside of us somehow connects us to one another and miraculously the Holy Spirit uses it to whisper a gentle reminder over other human beings that no one is alone, no one is an exception to the rule, no one and nothing in their life is unseen. We are seen and fully understood by The One who knit us together--every detail is in his knowing and every ounce of grace and love is available to us: even the gifted communicators who can't quite figure out how to talk about it yet.