My Irritating Self

"My heart was broken and my head was just barely inhabitable." (Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies).  

Yes. This. My head feels barely inhabitable. I find my thoughts and impulses and self to be especially irritating and obnoxious at the moment. An example of my irritating self:

I was driving to work this morning, praying along with Aaron Niequist's latest liturgy (do yourself a favor and discover him). I had no sooner gotten the line confessing the "pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of my life" out of my mouth before I was flashing my lights and grumbling at the driver in front of me who kept braking for indiscernible reasons. Lord, have mercy indeed.

Last night I was feeling especially irreverent. So I turned to my old friend Anne Lamott, who, while being wildly irreverent herself, ends up pointing me back to Jesus (and whose words don't irritate me as much as my own). She writes:

“But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.” 

She also writes, "Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us."

And, "I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore."

"Sometimes this human stuff is slimy and pathetic...but better to feel it and talk about it and walk through it than to spend a lifetime being silently poisoned."

Anger, damage, and grief. Grim, bleak shit. Slimy, pathetic mud. Yep. I told you I was irritating.

But there's one more:


"You were loved because God loves, period. God loved you, and everyone, not because you believed in certain things, but because you were a mess, and lonely, and His or Her child. God loved you no matter how crazy you felt on the inside, no matter what a fake you were; always, even in your current condition, even before coffee. God loves you crazily...like a slightly overweight auntie, who sees only your marvelousness and need."


Amen.