Little Star

Once upon a time there was a star. He was just a little star, and he was surrounded by other stars that shone brighter than him and he didn't feel like he belonged. One day the little star decided he would travel to the darkest part of the sky so that he could shine the brightest. The little star began moving across the sky.  That same night two kids were wandering in the forest. It was getting late and dark and they needed to find their way home. "Let's follow that star," they decided. So they followed the little star and he guided them out of the forest. Even though he was surrounded by bigger and brighter stars it was his light that showed them the way out of the darkness. So little star stayed.

Every so often I ask him to tell me a story. Tonight he told me this one, and I loved it so much. I think I may not be the only storyteller in this relationship

The Creation of Space

I haven't been writing much lately. More savoring, more collecting. What I have been is personal, the delicate stories of others that I have been so honored to receive, and my own emotional stumbling as I begin to process what this last month has looked like for me. Then there are days when I feel like I need to write down the stories I'm collecting inside of me but they all feel so personal, so precious, so not mine and so mine but still needing the time to be rolled over inside of me and many times I end up sitting in front of a blank screen.
...
I'm sitting at my desk at 1pm, drinking peppermint tea out of my cup that proudly declares, "Good Morning, Gorgeous." It's not morning, but some days are like that. I'm bundled up in a big sweater belonging not to me, under a blanket and in front of the open window.
I'm in the process of reminding myself what matters. It seems selfish really, in a world full of people asking for my attention and homework that demands to be done and a life that demands to be lived to pull back, place my hand over my heart and whisper, "No, this is what matters."
I've been in a state of relative dis-ease health wise lately. Little blue pill bottles lined up on my shelf seem to stand in mockery, showing me again how I failed. I stare at them, willing them to work, willing my body to begin working on it's own and no longer need their assistance.
I read this week that it is foolish for someone to think that one sick body part will not effect all the others, but I kind of did think that. So this one nerve in my body isn't doing it's job, but I have been almost drill sergeant in my commands to my other body parts to do their job, and perhaps work overtime to compensate. Unfortunately that is not the case, and I'm feeling the fatigue in all parts of my body.
I routinely quote movies, and after watching Hotel Transylvania 2 my boyfriend and I regularly quote the line to each other, "I just need to feel loved." Last night, in all seriousness, I used that line.
I feel pulled by so many things, am working so hard to put up this façade and be the strong one and have it all together. Sometimes I don't even realize myself what I'm doing until it all comes crashing down around me and I'm left surrounded by the ruin of it all.
I've been working so hard and pushing myself that I don't acknowledge that I'm exhausted and frustrated and feeling empty.
My friend called last week, and challenged me to take care of myself. The goal was to practice yoga at least once that week, and to text her once I had completed my task.
I texted her yesterday morning, and in my text I included a simple line that I learned this summer, one I didn't realize the importance of until I said it.
Alisha has received medicine.
I have pill bottles lined up on the shelf, doctors working to treat my body, but I've been denying myself the medicine I really need. I slipped into my disguise of everything is alright and I just pushed on and did what needed to be done.
And I agree that there is a time for that.
But there is also a time for acknowledging the heaviness. The stories I've been hearing remind me of things in my own past, and I want to be there and help but I can't unless I take care of myself first. I need to acknowledge the ugly bits of my own story before I can help others with theirs. I am sick, and without acknowledging that ugly illness grief I can't begin healing.
I think there is great power in acknowledging our own stories, and sharing them.

We have to be able to name the chains, and then, I think, we have to be able to confess them. To openly admit, “This, right here, this pulls at me. This controls me. This makes me act a certain way. This distracts me from the Center, from the Core, from seeking first God.”

I'm on this journey of the heart, one that was made clear to me when I started this school year but I still resist so much. It's not easy naming your chains, and the process of becoming free is hard. I didn't know that when I started. But claiming that freedom, and taking back my ground is hard.
Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve to walk there, on that ground of freedom. Sometimes I feel like I'm swinging an ax at a big old tree and barely even making a dent. The negative tapes I hear in my head are too loud, there's too much pain, I can't even begin to tackle these things and have it really make a difference.
Right now, much of this practice is about creating space. I'm creating space for these stories, to tell the truth, to get brave again, to love myself, to be loved by others. Space to fight, to take back my heart and mind and soul and body and voice.
This practice, this daily creation of space, however that looks, is medicine. It's healing, and uncurling the ache and it's beautiful.
Dear you, whoever you are, however you got here, this is exactly where you're supposed to be

I was talking to my friend earlier tonight and she said something along the lines of, "I feel like I'm carrying too many stories inside of me."
I could only nod, because I'm feeling the same way right now. Too many stories, both mine and others, all loud and frantic inside my brain but unable to be written out in a coherent manner. They attach themselves to the curtains, swing from the chandeliers, misbehave like hooligans. These stories sit inside of me, like murky water, stagnant and unmoving.
...
As I was walking up the stairs of a tall office building earlier today, picking up a child welfare check for a new volunteer position that I'm really excited about, my friend called me. She asked how I was doing and I sighed, "It's been a hard last couple of days."
I went away over the weekend and the whole time I was there I felt guilty for not being here. Now I'm here, surrounded by the 'normalcy' of school and I can only wish for the freedom of there. I'm never quite feeling settled within myself.
In the last couple of days, the automatic negative thoughts I have are louder. Sometimes they roar and my voice shakes as I howl back, "You're not true!"
I'm more emotional than normal, stumbling around. I apologize for needing constant reassurance, for a sharp tongue that sometimes gets the better of me, for the burden I think I am on those I love, for needing grace and grace and grace.
I'm tired. I have this desire to give and give and give, to pour myself out into things and people that I love - after all, isn't servant hood the reoccurring theme in my classes lately? - and I always forget the little bean dangling from my wrist, the one that tells me I need to take care of myself too.
Tiny things trigger this cascade of emotion. Moments when I'm touched the wrong way, when someone says the wrong thing, when another beautiful girl in the dorm shares her heart with me, a comment said by a well meaning friend. None of these bad things, and certainly not the source of the emotional responses I've been having, and yet when stacked on top of one another, they feel like too much.
I berate myself for not being better at juggling. Then I remember that clowns juggle, and clowns are creepy, and I am grateful I'm not a clown.
...
I sat in chapel this morning, remembering the yoga challenge I did back in August. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that this is a good body. Not only this literal, physical body, though I'm still learning to redeem that too, but the body of Christ.
I was sitting in class recently and I realized that so much of what I hear and take in, I'm taking in through that 13 year old girl filter. The strongly stubborn Jesus doesn't love me and There is no such thing as a good God. And I'm afraid to say it, because I'm at Bible school after all. Aren't I supposed to be among the super spiritual, the ones that trust God in every trial and never waver? Those are my people, right?
I want those to be my people.
But my faith wavers. Some days I'm not even sure what I believe, or if I believe at all. I don't want to be here, and I don't know why I'm here. I want to pack up everything into my car and drive somewhere far away.
Family issues, struggles in my relationship, health concerns, my past, they come up and I fight the urge to say Consider this trial a pure joy? are you kidding me?
I'm not sure where I stand right now, and that feels like a very powerful thing to say. The movement I can feel happening in this body is exhausting, and strong, and often leaves me breathless. And I'm not sure yet where it will go, or what will happen.
...
Maybe some day I will have it in me to write all these stories. That was my goal with this blog, the last school year and this one. Instead I'm finding some stories you have to carry with you a good long while before they even make sense, before you can write them out and begin to make peace with them. That's kind of what my stories are like right now.
I'm practicing the giving of grace. I'll carry these stories until they release me. It's all in the process of redeeming. It's exhausting, and uncomfortable, but I whispered the words a long time ago when I decided to become a writer over my stories and I whisper it again over my heart now:
I will carry you

Enough

As I packed loaded boxes into the waiting vehicle, I felt it. Not stronger than a twinge but there none the less, a feeling of I don't have this together. And for a moment it was paralyzing. I felt defensive of my mess, ready to curl my body around the dirty dishes, too many clothes and dead flowers as a means of protection.
It's welcome week, my second year at PRBI, and in many ways I can feel this year will be as hard as my first. I'm not a rookie at the moving in, and I already know some of the faces, but my heart still stirs in discomfort and discontent and I can't help but wonder (again) if this is truly where I'm supposed to be.
My heart is rubbed raw from a summer full of putting fists into old wounds and I haven't yet developed the thicker skin it takes to walk into a room with near 100 strangers and not feel like all their judgments and fears aren't directed at you.
I'm craving still quietness, closeness and distance in the same breath, which isn't conducive to welcome week, where the expectations are set for being welcoming and inviting, cultivating community.
The desire rises up in me to turn back to old habits, to cover up the pain instead of finding a way to sit with it, and I have to remind myself that recovery happens every moment, that with every breath I must make the choice to stay present and open instead of returning to those behaviors that no longer serve me.
In these early days, my heart isn't in it. I see the excitement around me, this energy floating around for new experiences and friends and learning that is vibrating with positivity, but I'm not there. I spend time doubting whether or not I should really be here, and then wonder whether or not this doubt is a sign I should walk away. Old memories seem to be lurking on every corner, standing with hats and trench coats inviting me back to their old ways and the strength to refuse is dwindling. I cry, and yell at the people I love the most. And it's hard.
My heart is stretched from the surgical art of opening wounds and I don't see it stopping any time soon and I can barely catch my breath as I wheeze "Can it be over now? I can't take anymore. Let's take a break. We can keep healing and recovering later."
They say if you're not working towards recovery you're working towards staying stuck in addiction, that not moving isn't really keeping you the same but contributing to the going back. 
I'm trying. This welcome week I'm welcoming more than just the freshmen. I'm welcoming pain, welcoming anger, welcoming sadness, welcoming tears and frustration and the unknown and the doubt and depression and addiction and fear. I'm learning to sit with the darkness instead of trying to run from it, even if it's just for twenty seconds at a time.
For these twenty seconds I will just focus on my breath. And then the next twenty, and the next twenty.
I breathe and I picture the light inside my body expanding and contracting, and for that moment I feel alright. I am enough. I have enough. I do enough. It is enough.

"Everything in me is tightening, curling in around this ache. I will lay my heart wide open, like the surface of a lake. Wide open like a lake."

August has always held me gently. Soft and strong, it once was a month that held so much pain but now every August quiet reflection and contemplation rises up and washes over me like the gentle breeze. If I could hold on to these sacred days, to the gentleness August brings, I would.
I feel like if August was a person she would be dripping in beads, wearing flowing fabrics and dancing with the puffs of air. Her laugh would sound like wind chimes clinking against one another on the porch long after dark when the air is only slightly rustled.
August, for me, has always felt like coming home, like peeling back the layers and peering into myself and finding things I never really knew I'd left there.
...
He stood with his guitar, singing in such a way that the air hung off the breath of magic and I knew I wanted to write like that. I wanted my not so elegant prose and poetry to drip off the branches of trees like dew drops, to mesmerize and simultaneously awe those around me. I feel the words inside me, and I want to one day reach that glistening shining spot of successful. I wish I knew what that looked like. But as I watched him play, choking on my words, my fingers aching for a pen, I knew I wanted this. Being an artist suddenly sounded like the most magical thing in the world.
I think as an artist there's always that someone better. There's that someone with a publishing deal, a fully completed manuscript that doesn't suck, with a concert venue or a next show or more followers. I call myself an artist but a lot of the time that feels like me out here, just doing my own thing, sometimes writing good things but a lot of the time writing bad things but always creating. And when there's someone else, someone else on this journey of artistry who is further along up the path than you are, who understands the solitary quest of creating, it's an inspiring and terrifying feeling.
As I watched him play, I also watched his girlfriend. My best friend when I was 4 years old, she reminds me of pieces of the past I almost forgot. She's grown now, and beautiful, and it's easier to think she has this life thing more figured out than I do. Maybe somewhere along the line we grew apart and she got the magical answer key and I got a series of questions. And I'm watching her and remembering when we were young, and how it was supposed to be different but she's here in this life I don't fit into effortlessly anymore. Sometimes I wish I did.
I wish my life was beautiful and grandeur instead of this clunky imitation I'm still learning how to stand inside and come home to at night.
There they are, these two, in the life I thought I was supposed to be living, the one I dreamed about. And he's singing about love and apologies, and I look across at the boy holding my hands. He looks up at me and smiles, and I smile, and I feel so in love in this moment I think my heart will burst out of my chest, will finally break free of the cage it's been contained in for so long and exist as its own vessel of love and light. This life, this love, it's not what I had imagined back when I was a little girl. It's messy, and loud, and not very elegant or graceful. But as I look at it, at him, I know it is the best poetry I have ever written to date. It is my proudest creation, what I never knew I needed. This wild and reckless love is more than enough.
"Love was just an empty room until I felt His heart in you."
...
The air smelled like coming home. The mountains stood tall to greet me, ready to breathe life into my lungs once again. As we hiked over rocky trails in sandals, unprepared but not unwilling visitors, my heart beat rapidly inside of my chest in a way that made me realize that these hills could do anything to me and it would not be unwelcomed. I think perhaps its genetic, this deep and true love for the wild unknown.
We ate lunch on the patio of this little vegan restaurant, which I loved and he didn't. The waitress had an Australian accent, and the people who passed by on the street were all kinds of foreign and familiar. When he stayed and ate I knew he loved me.
We walked the streets and I drank rich, strong black coffee. Musicians played on street corners. I was enchanted by this city, the way it extended rivers like veins, the way mountain peaks rose like the confidant gaze of the sure and steady. Even in the face of the unknown, it beckoned me to trust. It tickled the delicate underside of my heart, whispering courage into my bones, giving me strength for the journey.
...
I'm still marveling at how it feels to be accepted into a family not your own. As the girl who grew up with a disjointed illustration of family, the tender process of finding my own is not something I take lightly. The arms outstretched to welcome me, the goodbye hugs that speak of always being welcome here, the opening up of more than a home but a heart, it does not go unnoticed.
And in the final moments when the bags were all packed in the car and hugs were being given, his mother said to me, "You're our girl now too." and I realized what it's like to have homes scattered all around the country. And my heart swells.
...
The car ride home is long, filled with more undistinguishable moans, sighs and laughs than actual words. We listen to others talk and don't talk to each other. I feel the weight as I try to sort out the big topics in my mind, as I work through the matters of faith I began to give some attention to when August's #thisisagoodbody challenge was taking place, as I think about the huge and important blog post I'm writing. We spend the last hour laughing about nothing. We pull into the driveway exhausted and I'm not sure of the long days before me. I wish to hold on to these final, fleeting moments of summer.

Hello my name is...

"Alisha, what's wrong?"
It happens every time he says my name. I pause for a minute, as if I need a moment to recognize who he's talking to. He calls me all these other things, and I answer to them without a second thought, but when he says my name...
I'm writing my way through this month's #thisisagoodbody challenge over on instagram. I'm getting real and honest about the things that hurt, and by holding space for them I am, hopefully, eliminating their power.
And it's hard work. The work that was supposed to be just about eliminating shame from my body has leaked over into other areas of my life, and this little project I joined just for fun and the desire to join one of the monthly yoga challenges has turned into this thing that's changing me.
Opening up the can of lies I believed about my body means opening up and digging into the past. I thought the shame would be localized to one area but instead it spread. The shame I held in my body was the shame I felt about abuse, addiction, death and every other trauma. The feelings I had about my body weren't just specific to my body but also the body of Christ.
I've written and cried and practiced and danced and groaned my way through this month, reclaiming freedom. My heart, finally open, has begun to feel and I find often I am weeping for reasons I don't fully understand.
Jodi Picoult says in one of her books that you can tell when a person loves you because your name sounds different on their tongue.
Years ago, my name was spoken in a way that wasn't loving. That sound, the way my name was said, what follows, it rings in my head. And I never really noticed it. I would complain about not having a nickname, lay in bed at night and dream about trying on new names: something exotic and fun and different, a new girl without a story.
I'm in the process of reclaiming a lot of things in the name of freedom, but one thing I'm just realizing I need to reclaim is my name.
My name comes from the name Alice, meaning noble. That's what I've always been told, but I always kind of squirmed inside the meaning of my name. Noble felt too big, too clunky a meaning to pull around with me anywhere.
So, like I always tend to do, I did some research.
Alisha is also a Sanskrit name, meaning 'Protected by God.'
I saw this meaning and tears filled my eyes. I could blame it on my overactive tear ducts lately but I'm not totally sure that's it. Something about this meaning hit me in the heart.
Protected by God.
Even then, in the dark days haunted by abuse and addiction.
Then, in the moments when I forgot how to cry and even my name sounded like a threat.
Then, when I stood over a grave and wept for the forgiveness that felt stuck inside of me.
Protected by God, even when I lay prostrate on the floor, crying to a God I wasn't sure I believed in anymore, so severely wounded by His body, ready to give up all hope and end it all.
Even then, even now, protected by God.
When the man I love says my name, beautiful and safe in his mouth, it takes some getting used to. It reminds me of all the hurt and pain that for so long was and still is attached to that name. But in the process of reclaiming it, claiming my identity, when he says my name I reach for his hand. I am safe. I am loved. I am protected by God.
Then, now, and always.
Amen

"even my skin held memory"
For the past few years, August has felt like a cool breeze. It's a moment of breath, of reprieve. I live quieter in August, pondering in my heart everything I've stored up in the months past, and this August is no exception.
This August, I'm participating in a project hosted by Morgan Day Cecil called #justbeherewithme. The intention is to be more present in our lives by logging off social media for a day, a week or the whole month of August. I've dedicated my Sunday's to being social media free, and while my fingers crave the familiar scroll of the smart phone, I'm finding much more room to be present.
I'm learning to be present with my story. Continuing the work I started at the end of July, I'm taking a break from the public sector of blogging and documenting my personal story in my journal. Some days its hard to even scratch the words out, despite knowing I'll be the only one to read them. Some days writing them feels like a cathartic release.
"I think you need to speak it. I think you need to be as specific as possible and allow the space to empty on its own"
Writing these words, adventuring through my past, it feels like building monuments. "Thank you," I whisper to each segment as I finish with it, "But I no longer need you anymore." And by doing so I'm slowly undressing the layers of shame and guilt I've worn for so many years.
I'm finding the memories of the past are so deeply a part of me that even my skin holds the memory. My body remembers, even when my mind forgets. Which means this month has also meant hours laboring in pain as I ache to give birth to this story, practicing yoga, having honest conversations with the people I love and letting them help to begin building something anew in me. Every positive touch, is wiping over the old pathways where love = pain and rewriting it with the message love = love. The brave act of letting others hold me in my story is turning out to be one of the most beautiful things I've ever done, and the giving and receiving of this love, this medicine, is an honor. I'm also learning to keep some of this love, this medicine, for myself, as I'm finally in a place of speaking words of love over myself.
In August, I'm participating in a yoga challenge called #thisisagoodbody over on instagram (with the exception of Sundays, of course, which we're all taking off to find a few sacred moments). We're getting honest about things like shame, and this vulnerability is changing me. By combining honesty with movement, my heart is transforming. I'm discovering just how much negativity and shame I held around my body that I didn't even realize was there, and I'm beginning to work through that.
This season, which technically began in late July, is so healing and powerful. I've been hesitant to write about it, not only because it is so achingly personal but because finding the right words to convey the tender places of my heart lately is a seemingly impossible task. I'm finding freedom in places I never expected to find it. I'm stretching my heart wide open, going back into the past so I can move forward into my future. I'm speaking up and saying what for years I kept silent, using the voice that for so long I let others take from me.
I'm being present and honest with this moment, with the people I love, with myself and my story. And I proclaim over all of it goodness.