Everything I’ve Learned This Year

[On] Writing: shitty first drafts. Butt in chair. Just do it. You own everything that happened to you. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart–your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it’s why you were born. -Anne Lammott

For more than a year, I haven’t been able to write out my thoughts. It’s because I have been afraid – particularly afraid of this. For over a year, I’ve been afraid of shitty, shitty first drafts. I’m 28 now. Things shouldn’t be in “rough” form anymore. They should come out refined, carefully crafted and planned from 28 years experience.

I guess the wisdom of adulthood is learning that this never happens. We’re always going to have to sit in the chair and just do it! It’s going to come out crappy. Make it better! That’s the labor of life.

Anne Lammott helped me earlier this month with this quote as a part of an essay she wrote called, “Everything I Know at 61.” Anne has been so helpful to me in the past year because of her ability to weave together sacred and ordinary, holy and humorous. All of it matters and all of it connects. That’s been my journey for the past year. I’ve wanted to see the way God connects through all of life’s ins and outs. I’ve not wanted to box up God on Sundays, but let God out all over the world and see how it helps me keep in touch with who I am in the world.

So in Anne’s spirit, I want to share everything I’ve learned this year. The past year, more so than the year before, has been a big year of change. I moved to the Charlotte, the largest city I’ve ever lived in. I started work, full-time, at a church. I got health insurance. All my friends moved to other parts of the country.

These are the lessons I’ve learned. Many I knew to look out for, but ending up learning anyway. Some I didn’t want to learn, but learned the hard way. Here they are:

I’ve learned that you’re always starting over. No matter what you think you know. I always assumed I would gain more and more knowledge, wisdom and insight from each church as I went to, and that I’d land at a church and I would finally know how to do everything. Four churches later and I’ve finally learned that’s not the case. Everything is a starting over. Even when you think you should have the basic stuff down, new people, new contexts, new times will send you right back to the drawing board.

I’ve learned that happiness is not my job and my job is not my happiness. I know, I know, I know. I know. You told me so. Too many times agonizing over saying the wrong thing, or being too direct, or asking too much of other people. Too many times doing things all on my own to keep others happy. Too many days letting work eek into home and paralyze me with frustration. You have to get a life outside of work. It’s not easy, especially when it seems like friends are forever away. But it’s gotta happen.

I’ve learned to let things go. A lot of things. I’ve let go of the numbers game – who’s coming, how many are there, what size group do you have – all of it. I’ve let go of the why don’t they come to youth group game. I’ve let go of taking it personally.

I’ve let go so that I can hold on to what’s important. I’m holding on to the delight of getting to know my youth as people. I’m holding on to celebrating the simple miracles of them choosing to do what’s right, to work to make things better, of them being amazing people just as they are. One friend said it best: Ministry is helping extraordinary people feel normal and normal people feel extraordinary. So many of us are radiating God’s love and divine spark and we don’t even know it.

I’m holding on to Jesus. To me, Jesus is so much more radical, loving, prophetic, inclusive and grace-filled than we church folk have let on. Jesus is always loving me right where I am and always calling me forward and outward and beyond my comfort zone.

I’ve learned that metabolism catches up with you. Fast. Better adjust accordingly.

I’ve learned that duct tape really does fix everything. Especially car windows. Especially if the duct tape is hot pink.

I’ve learned that some of the most interesting friends you can make are people that are older than you. For my first few months in Charlotte, I joked that my closest friend was a 68 year old man named Kelly (who looked like Blue from Old School). Older folks have been the right dose of wisdom soaked in humor for me. At the same time they’re saying, “Yea you should’ve seen that mistake coming,” they’re helping me laugh my way through it.

I’ve learned that grace is everything, that early mornings aren’t as overrated as I once thought they were, that I still can’t seem to wake up for them and that dogs really can save your life. I’ve learned that growing up is hard but refusing to grow up is even harder. I’ve learned to say yes to what really matters and to say no to what doesn’t. I’ve learned to keep my yeses. I’ve learned that someone saying “I’m going through the same thing, it’ll be ok,” are the most powerful words ever strung together in the English language.

And I’ve learned, as I have many times before, that Mom is pretty much always right.