So this is new. The look I mean. I hope all four my readers like the new name and the kind of gold colour. I like it. How do I make a thumbs up emoji on this thing?
As you can see, the new name is For The Fearless. It just came to me in a split second, and I was tired of explaining that There’s Something About Jesus is a play on the movie title, There’s Something About Mary. Change is good, right?
With the external changes comes quite significant internal changes, which is also a good thing. I think once the external changes a lot has happened internally. It is like changing your eating habits – a shift happens in your mind and from there it affects your body and it starts showing on the outside by paying less for clothes because you have dropped six jean sizes. That would be great.
The last post I wrote I spoke about courage, which is ironic because I have been lacking that very thing. When I think of courage I think of Matt Damon in We Bought a Zoo and him having 20 seconds of insane courage and because he had that he started what people call: “A great adventure”. Just a side note: there is a reason comedies end with a wedding and dramas start with one. You do you.
When I was little, I would yearn for my dad’s attention, just like all little girls. I would do things and think, “Today he’s going to be proud of me, and he’ll verbalise it too” that did not happen very often. I remember one day - this was the day I stopped TRYING to earn his attention - and I went up to him and wanted to give him a hug. I was about six or seven. As I was closing in on him, he pushed me away. Now, at that moment my whole little world just shattered. This all sounds very dramatic, it kind of was. In the background, I heard my mom say, “She wants to give you a hug” and his response was, “I am watching television.” I went to my room and just sat on my bed, very confused, and this gaping hole where love should have been begun filling with this intense loneliness.
Most of what happens to us when we are little sets the tone for the rest of our lives. We live in response to that. Either we actively try to change and rise above, or we use all those things as an excuse to be a bad person. A lot of the time, we fear something or seek something because we were deprived of it as a youngin. For me, it is/was attention. One sunny day in Cape Town, I was standing in front of my sacred space – the fridge – and God spoke the words I did not know I was dreading. He said in His normal voice, “You suffer so deeply because you think attention is love.” I’ll give that a moment to sink in.
Okay. You good?
I do not know about you but it is one-liners like that that makes me want to drink, and I am not talking about water. I feel like when God explicitly points out something like that, He is tired of seeing me bump into the same wall repeatedly, like some idiot. Over and over in my life as an ‘adult’, I find myself thinking that my emotional age is like eight years old. Where I just want to sit with people I truly love and have their undivided attention. Ask them questions, have a cup of juice and talk to them about dogs, you know the normal things. As I grew up emotionally, I found that loneliness is a part of life. It is how we navigate the loneliness that matters. Trying to shove people into the lonely places that ache for attention is cruel and unfair because I am expecting them to fill a hole only God can. I have found that as I have shoved people into that gap inside my heart the hole just became bigger and bigger. It is like with drugs, the more you use the more you want and until you find a cure it is just going to get bigger and bigger.
Some time ago, a friend asked me what I expected of our friendship. Mind you, this was just after God had told me that I am suffering. I do not know if I should expect anything from any friendship. I do not know if I am allowed to. Am I? In my mind, I just want to enjoy my friends. Get to know them, get to know who they are, likes and dislikes. What makes them laugh with their mouths open? I want them to want the same for me. Is that an expectation? I know for sure that if they were to place an expectation on me I would most likely disappoint them at some point.
As I’ve navigated these past few months, being incredibly depressed, losing my way completely, questioning everything I knew, I still had God in my ear whispering profound messages that have been written on my heart. Things that I can never un-know, and things I hope I never unlearn. It is a constant reminder that even when I feel like the loneliest person on the planet I always have Him as company, and that whenever I want a hug He’ll give me one and what’s more, He’ll truly enjoy it.
Is it difficult hugging a person that is not physically there? Yup. Do I look insane doing it? Damn straight. Do I like looking insane? You betcha. I am just thinking that no matter our suffering, our questions, how far we have gone – and believe me, I am far-gone – He is right there to meet us.
Brennan Manning - probably one of my favourite alcoholic, ragamuffin authors ever - wrote the following: “Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.”
In some book of the Bible Paul wrote, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” He wrote that while he was in prison. Y’all know that? Maybe while we are imprisoned, by whatever it is that is keeping us in chains, we can write the same and see how free we become when we realise that attention is not love and that sometimes we are lonely and sometimes we suffer and are discouraged, but at some point, the chains will break.
Check out this tune by MercyMe yo: