Closer to Fine

I've written this post hundreds of times in my head. I've written and deleted thousands of words. Maybe I should have written it two or four or six months ago, but I didn't and I couldn't and now every week that passes it feels more challenging to explain. I thought it would get easier, that it would make better sense? And maybe it does? But I also care less about trying to explain myself. Sometimes life is cruel and dumb.

This post is going to be a hot mess. I'm not going to edit it to death, I'm not going to let it sit and come back to it ten zillion times. There will probably be typos and swinging wildly between conviction and rambling (partly because it's a jumble of six months of thoughts, mixed with bits of emails to my bishop, topped off with a spiked hot chocolate and some stress). I just know that I can't keep having it swirling in my head. So, relevant information: I am no longer a believing Mormon.

Six years ago I found myself angry and frustrated with God and with a lot of common rhetoric within the church. I started really examining my motivations in life and realized that God and I had some work to do. Ironically, my efforts to better know God and myself seemed to only create greater dissonance around many church teachings and practices. I set aside what I could and focused primarily on my relationship with God, but eventually the myriad issues I had "put on the shelf" demanded my honest attention.

At the beginning of 2016, I came to the uncomfortable realization that I didn't really know or trust God. I had spent most of my life trusting "the Church", but not really God's ability to uniquely answer ME. ... Actually, that's wrong. I didn't trust in my ability to receive honest answers from God. So I started really asking and really listening. Over the course of nearly two years, I have studied almost everything I can get my hands on in an effort to figure out what I truly believe. I have deliberately put almost every single one of my religious beliefs on the alter - holding nothing back with the justification of "Stupid, Rachel. You already got an answer to that one a long time ago, so you don't need to ask it again." My God doesn't hold back honest answers to my honest questions as any kind of Faith Test. We don't work like that. My faith is not in any man, woman, relationship, or institution. My faith lies in that Voice of Truth that lives inside my soul. It will forever be a work in progress, this Listening, but I'm not afraid anymore.

Some of the things I have learned FOR ME: I don't believe that the LDS church is the one true church on the earth. I don't believe that at all, actually. I don't believe in legalistic or bureaucratic gods. I don't really believe in "right" paths, I just believe in the path that is uniquely ours - which is definitely messy. The only god that I can honestly claim to know is the loving and true connection that flows between humans and the bounteous creativity of the earth and the soul. If I were pressed, I might identify as a humanist? I don't know, I kinda wish I could be all the things - Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Taoist, Pagan, atheist, Hindu, agnostic . . . I still don't know much about Islam or Shinto or Baha'i, but I bet I would love them, too. I like holding space for mysticism and mystery, for miracles and chaos. There are a lot of things that I don't understand and so many things that I want to explore. I reserve the right to continue to learn and grow. I deeply believe in unexplainable connection between normal, messy people and I think that religions and their histories are FASCINATING. (Seriously, if you want to talk religion, I would LOVE to talk religion.) I love God. I don't know what or how or if. . . but still, I really like the idea.

I love the LDS church for all it's given to me - the depth and the questions and the caring community. It's a complicated thing to walk away from an organization and not have members feel like it's a rejection of individuals. I know that I can't keep anyone else from feeling sad for our family. I know that it's a normal part of the culture and beliefs. I know that it comes from a place of love. I wish I could calm concerns. This decision has absolutely been the most difficult of my life, and still I choose it. I wish I could explain that we haven't been deceived or offended and that we aren't just too lazy to hold to the iron rod or that we haven't chosen this path because we really, really just wanted to sin. I wish there were a way to convey the joy and peace that I have personally found in this path and how it's opened up so much curiosity and love for all of humanity and the myriad paths we take through life. I wish I could explain that Faith and Grace mean something much deeper and more beautiful to me now than they ever have before and that they do so even if there were no God at all. But I know that I don't get to choose the way another person sees the world and I don't get to determine the way that other people view my journey.

I will forever honor my Mormon heritage and my family's and friends' beliefs - they are honest and true - but they are no longer mine.

Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable

And lightness has a call that's hard to hear

I wrapped my fear around me like a blanket

I sailed my ship of safety 'til I sank it

I'm crawling on your shores

And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains

There's more than one answer to these questions

Pointing me in a crooked line

And the less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine

~Indigo Girls

Recently, I've had a few different people hesitantly reach out to me with questions about my relationship with the church. Please know that I am always happy to answer questions or have a conversation about this (probably unexpected) transition in my life. I've turned off comments on this post, but if you'd like to send me a private message, email, text, or have a conversation, I'd love to chat.

A Fork in the Road and Cracks in the Walls

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

(Leonard Cohen passed away yesterday and these words seemed appropriate.)


Where does a story begin? I've felt stumped as to where to begin The Unraveling. It's like asking someone the question, "Who are you and how did you get here?" How do you answer? There's a lifetime of story behind Today. So we'll just start with the Move. There were years before that event that will be interwoven or just have to be told another time.

-------------------------

2011 started off shaky. Newly pregnant with four other little children - a 10 month old, a three year old, a five year old, and a seven year old. Nels was working all the time - between 50 and 90 hours a week. If we wanted to go on an outing or on a trip to visit the grandparents or even out to LUNCH (or sleep through the night), we could never be sure there wouldn't be a phone call with some dire emergency that only Nels could handle (apparently). He almost never came with us. "Never Not A Crisis" was our Melaleuca motto.  

Weirdly, though, as the year rolled along I became really content. I felt like I had learned how to manage our family and my emotions without Nels, I had four beautiful little girls and another one on the way, the house was too small but we'd figure that out later. I had a calling as a teacher that I loved. I'd spent hundreds of hours painting and decorating and digging and planting - I was at peace with our home. There were times that the frustration of the inevitable call from Nels at 4:55pm telling me that he wasn't sure when he'd be home (7:30? midnight? tomorrow evening?) would get to me, but most of the time I could roll with it.

There was one evening in June that I couldn't, though. I was folding laundry, I got the call. I crumbled. It all was just too much. I remember just laying down on the concrete laundry room floor and sobbing. Nels had been applying to different jobs for years and nothing had panned out. I'd encouraged him to just quit, to just tell them NO, to have ANY kind of boundary - but he couldn't even imagine what that meant and felt like I was invalidating how hard he was working when I'd suggest it. He was working to death, living on sugar and caffeine, and more often than not sick when he wasn't working. I knew he wasn't doing well, I was exhausted of either being disappointed or not caring, and . . . just too much. I prayed and bawled and told God that we'd do anything. Just please help something to change.

Then I stood up and got on with life - like I do.

One night Nels mentions in passing that he'd sent his resume to a company called Coldwater Creek in northern Idaho. I didn't think much of it. A few days later he tells me that they want to do a phone interview with him. I feel a little nervous, but brush it off. The interview went perfect and three weeks later they'd like him to fly up and meet them in person. I start into full-on panic mode. I'm 8 weeks from my due date and Nels is working a bajillion hours getting ready for Convention and where the hell is Sandpoint?

When Nels was offered the job, we had this enormous decision to make. We didn't know which was the right path to take. Stay or go? Sure, I'd told God that I'd do anything, but...right NOW?! A spontaneous trip to check out North Idaho, insomnia, interviewing, Nels never home, a trip to Utah, getting ready for school to start, anxiety, researching home prices, my feet swelling up like hot water bottles. Nels's job was awful, but it was also stable. We'd built a life and had good friends in Idaho Falls. It was affordable. Sandpoint is an expensive resort town far away from shopping, family, friends, and everything we'd ever known. Coldwater Creek was a company that was struggling. I was a month from having Clara and a hot mess. 

But finally we made the decision. We listed our house. We had a baby.

The plan was that Nels would go to Sandpoint and start working and the girls and I would stay in Idaho Falls and work on selling the house. It made sense. We absolutely could. not. afford two mortgages at the same time. Besides, I felt like I'd been doing the single-parent-hold-down-the-fort thing for years. I could handle a couple months. I DIDN'T need Nels. I could handle the new baby and two kids in school and keeping the house ready for showings... It would be fine. I can do it all. Above all else, I can TAKE CARE OF MYSELF.

Four days after Clara was born Nels and I took a drive up to Sandpoint to look at houses for sale and to find him a studio apartment to rent until we'd be able to join him. Both apartments and houses turned out to be much more expensive and much less impressive in person than they'd been online. I honestly remember nothing about that trip except crying nearly the entire eight hours home. I could feel in my heart that I'd been lying to myself. I'd built these walls that said "I'm fine, I can do it all on my own, I don't need Nels to feel happy." And some of that was true. Years of learning how to clean and cook and travel and parent without being able to plan on Nels being around had taught me some beautiful independence, but I DID need him - and even more than that, I wanted Nels - and that realization terrified me. It seems so crazy when I write it out, but if I needed him, if I wanted him . . . I could also be hurt. I couldn't really look at it, but the last four years of him working late, constantly calling and saying he wouldn't be able to be home for dinner or bedtime or that trip we were planning or even just because I MISSED HIM - it hurt. It hurt when he'd take on jobs and projects and interests and service outside our family - not because I didn't want him to do anything but be at home, but because I always felt like we were last on his priorities. He was my best friend, but I couldn't count on him to be there for me. And over the course of those five hundred miles from Sandpoint to Idaho Falls, all the walls I'd built around my heart were cracking, falling down brick by brick. I hated myself for building them between me and my best friend and I was scared to death of taking them down.

It sounds so melodramatic, but it's true. I'd had a baby five days earlier - my body, my emotions, and my spirit were exhausted and I didn't have it in me to keep lying to myself. I really liked and missed my husband.

Imagine that. 

The End of the Runway

"What you've been doing for the last six years, is that you've been increasing and picking up speed, you're still a little bit on the runway. You're accelerating toward something. But now, that gnawing feeling that you have, that feeling of 'being stuck', is telling you that you're done with the runway. You're done. You needed it. It's beautiful. Thank it. It got you moving. And now you're racing down the runway and if you don't do the lift-off right now, you're going to crash your plane into a bunch of houses on the other side of the highway. . . . And you couldn't have done it if you didn't have those six years of build up." -- Elizabeth Gilbert in an episode of her "Magic Lessons" podcast

(August 2011) "I feel like I've been smashing down all relevant feelings because they do THIS to me. I've been avoiding the questions - and to some extent productive actions - because when I don't, I can't sleep and I feel really overwhelmed. It's so much easier to not think about."

(November 2011) "Sometimes I feel like I don't even recognize my life."

(January 2012) "I read through my words from yesteryear and can remember who I was then. I am amazed at how it feels so effortless. Who is that girl? Where did she go? Will I ever see her again? I miss Home."

(May 2012) "I've had this crazy underlying tension, always lying in wait for when I get too tired or too hormonal or . . . something. My problem is that, like a chemical reaction or a math equation, I seem to think that I'm going to figure it out some day. I can't to do it and it's making me crazy."

(January 2013) "...more than any one of those things, I want to feel happy. I want to feel peace in my own skin and in my own life. And it's difficult for me to figure out how to reconcile failed desires and how to feel happy with ME."

(July 2013) "I've always written pretty honestly on my blog, but even with my openness there are still parts of myself that I guard pretty fiercely and whose existence I don't always like to admit to, even with myself. It's been scary for me to explore these areas, but I've come to see that they are the answer to my question. I feel as though the past two years have been filled with pruning. When contemplating our move to Sandpoint two years ago, I imagined the future and myself to be different than they are today. At times I have felt a mourning cry from within. 'How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth and now you've cut me down.' I have mourned for that feeling of home and stability. I have mourned for the relationship that I once had with the Lord. I have mourned for the vision that I had of me."

(November 2013) "As I sat down just now, the Post Screen felt foreign to me --- wondering what it is that is inside. What is it I want to share? I don't even know."

(July 2014) "I think my brain got jammed up with "heavy" the last few years and before I can open it back up, I'm going to have to unload some of my weightier thoughts in written form. These bigger, denser thoughts all kind of string together and don't allow me to package them into the neat little parcels that I've enjoyed in the past. I have to find a new way of writing."

(January 2015) "I haven't written much in the last few years: it's really hard to sift out what's relevant and true while so much change is taking place."

I'm so thankful for this little blog; for this place where I can revisit and remember nearly ten years of Rachel. A place where I can see growth. A place where I can see the happy and hopeful and peaceful and joy-filled Rachel. A place where I can also see (between the lines) the depressed and anxious and angry and exhausted Rachel. I wish I could have written that girl better. As I revisit the years, I see her in glimpses, like the ones above, but the truth is I didn't know her. I've only more recently come to accept her and begin to understand her. "You can't give people what you don't have."

If I had to give a title to the last five+ years it would be, Part 1: The Slow and Steady Unraveling of Rachel. It's been a hugely painful and annoying story for me, but I'm finding that what I'm left with is just Me. I don't fully know this Rachel, but I'm not scared of what I'm going to discover either. I feel like "Part 1" is closing and it's time for me to understand it and share it, because "Part 2" is beginning. I'm at the end of the runway and part of Lift I need (so that all of this work doesn't leave me smashed into the houses) is to own this story and write it down.

"We can't chart a new course until we find out where we are, how we came to that point and where we want to go." ~ Brene Brown

Growing and Cutting

Look at this little ol' blog! IT'S OCTOBER, for goodness sake!

So my last post, in JANUARY I talked about it being a good year. Now that the year is winding down and nearly over, I can return and report that it has, indeed, been a good year.

First, we finally made it out of the Hobbit Hole. We're so happy. What was supposed to be six months turned into six months plus a year. :) I feel like we are living and breathing again and connected to the sunshine, weepy branches filled with leaves, warm October breezes, and growing things. It has truly been a blessed relief. We have a pretty little yard with happy little gardens.

Second, I cut my hair off for my 33rd birthday! Scary and super fun. I love it, and I miss it (when I look at pictures of it long), and I love it. Everyone should have boy-hair at least once in their life. It's awesome.

Third, the girls are back in school. Another blessed relief. I loved our year of homeschooling. It was absolutely one of the best decisions I've ever made. It reconnected me to my children and taught me so many things about them and myself. We were able to travel and immerse ourselves in the world around us. When we went on trips, we didn't have to be back in three days and we spent days at the lake, the river, the dam, the park, the ghost town, the beach, the woods, the mountains. I LOVED IT. But as the school year wound down and I started to look forward, I just didn't feel the same as I had twelve months before. Where I'd felt invited to take the road less traveled the year before, I just didn't feel it anymore. I felt like it was time for new adventures - so we headed over to the District Offices and signed them back up for public school.

Lastly, I no longer have cancer! So now all is right in the world. The end.

...

Joking, not joking. Jokes: not going to leave it at that. Not joking: was diagnosed with rectal cancer this summer.

After months of gastrointestinal issues that I thought were screwy gut flora + possible hemorrhoids, I finally went to the doctor in May and got scheduled for a colonoscopy on July 1st. What we thought would be a quick procedure followed by some temporary meds turned into "you have a large tumor" and "it's cancer" followed by appointments with the oncologist and surgeon and colorectal resection surgery all within a week and a half. The tumor was biopsied and classified as Stage I / early Stage II rectal cancer - with everything contained to that one area = lucky me = no chemo or radiation, just a lifetime of regular colonoscopies (lucky me).

I'll probably write more about it another time, but I am doing well and my family is doing well.

It was a hard summer and a scary summer, but at this point, I feel nothing but overwhelming gratitude. I feel so thankful that it was manageable. I feel so thankful for the experiences that the Lord has given me over the past few years that have helped me to know that even if the tumor had been worse, even if it had spread, it would still be okay. I feel so grateful for the gift of trials and a loving Father who knows how to give his children good gifts.

As this year is winding down and turning cool once again, I feel overwhelmed with joy for the life that I live. It's been another year filled with lots of growth.

Life is hard and life is so, so good.

January 2

Hmmmm. I don't know how I feel about all that 2015 holds.

FIFTEEN? years since I graduated high school? thirteen years since I met Nels? Hazel will turn 12? Lilie 10? Elsie will be 8 and baptized? Violet will start Kindergarten and my baby is going to turn FOUR?

I don't know how I feel about 2015...

One year ago exactly, we moved to Pullman. So while I've been looking ahead at this new year, I've spent even more time looking backward - sifting through to figure out what I've learned and what I'd like this new year to be. This post reminds me of why I haven't written much in the last few years: it's really hard to sift out what's relevant and true while so much change is taking place. It feels messy. This post is messy, but I'll try my best to write some things that are real.

New Year's Eve 2013 I spent the day alone. Nels and the girls had left two days earlier - his first day at the new job had been the 30th. Movers in and out all day and our things getting wrapped into random boxes. I was so exhausted physically and emotionally that I fell asleep repeatedly as I sat watching them, pretending to read a book and trying to stay out of the way. Afterward, I quickly finished cleaning our empty home and deposited our remaining keys in the rental office drop-box so that I could make the 3 hour drive down to Colfax to ring in the new year with my family.

I cried and cried as I crossed the Long Bridge. As our Sandpoint chapter closed.

Throughout the three hour, tear-filled, foggy drive from Sandpoint, I prayed. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for a new job, but I didn't like Pullman. It was hard for me to again leave years of social investment. We were going to be downgrading our living space again. And we were leaving beautiful Sandpoint for a windy, rolling, brown place. The year-round beauty of Sandpoint had carried me through the hardest years of my life. To leave was pain.

Just before dropping into the hollow where Tom and Tracy live, I turned off my car on the top of an impossibly quiet hill, far from city lights, surrounded by frozen fields, and just above the fog that had enveloped me the entire drive and I pleaded.

Please . . .

And the Lord answered. I cried and I know I was heard. I didn't get the feeling that this year would be simple or that all my worries would just fall away, but I knew that I had a Father that heard me and understood. And really, that's what I needed.

With my hand on the key and ready to cover the last mile of transition to our new lives, I looked up and saw the brightest falling star and I made a wish that this move would be good for us.

Has it been good? Yes, but - good does not always equal rainbows and butterflies. In fact, good usually equals Hard Work. Also, I don't think that one year is enough time to put into perspective all that's come with this move.

If I were to describe 2014 in a word, it would probably be: Disconnected.    

An uncomfortable feeling, but probably better than INSANE or CHAOTIC or FRUSTRATED which could have been used to describe previous years, so . . . there's that. :)

Two things I've learned and am going to be working on this coming year:

1. Being connected to the physical world around me is vitally important to my emotional health. In Sandpoint, this was SO EASY. Every season was beautiful and there was always something to explore. I long for it and feeling this disconnect has really made me question whether or not Pullman can be our home forever. It's time for me to fall in love again. This year I plan to spend more time experiencing the area and finding us a place to live where we feel connected to the earth. No more Hobbit House in the ground - it's sucking the life out me.

2. Being connected to the people around me and finding ways to serve is vitally important to my emotional health. I would say that as an adult woman the single hardest thing about moving is losing a sense of place, of community - of someone knowing me and needing me. I don't want to be busy just for the sake of being involved. I don't want to be busy at all. No, I just want to feel needed - not to be a body filling a role, but to be Rachel doing what I do best (whatever that is). This is something that takes TIME and EFFORT and then more TIME. This year, I'm going to pray and then look for opportunities to serve and be connected. I need physical friends.


I don't exactly know how to wrap up this messy/weird post, but it's going to be a GOOD year. I can feel it.

I'm thankful for another year to grow and to watch my children grow. I'm looking forward to feeling more connected to the world and people around me, to my Nels and my kids, to my Heavenly Father and to myself.