The Deepest Voice.

Reflections on speaking from the most vulnerable of places inside.

“I’d love to hear about the way your faith impacted this process.”

I was reading feedback for an article I had just submitted to a website, an article that was about all of the intangible things we left behind and took with us in the midst of our move to Scotland. Even though the website is faith based and I have written for them before, having included integration with my faith, for some reason, in this article, there was not a hint of spirituality woven in.

And it didn’t take me long to figure out why.

When I started to think about what it would look like to speak to how my faith impacted all of the messy grief and excitement of this move, I knew that in order to do that, I would have to write from an even more vulnerable place than I’m used to writing from—a vulnerable place that I’m realizing has pretty much been on lockdown since we’ve gotten here.

I knew in the months leading up to the move that there was a part of me that wouldn’t fully get excited until my feet were in the North Sea, a part of me that I honored by not forcing myself to just trust that everything would be fine — two of the most traumatic things that have happened in my adult life were tangled up with big moves that were supposed to happen and then didn’t. This part of me has every right to feel suspicious if a plan will really happen, or if something horrifically unexpected will happen instead.

What I didn’t anticipate was what would shift once we got here. In this month of settling into a new country, while waiting for school to start, it’s almost as though this protective part of me is on even more high alert, asking questions like, Is this real? Will this be taken away? Is this too good to be true?

And if I were to be really candid and translate those questions at a gut-level as they relate to my faith, I think what this part of me has really been wondering is, Is this God’s goodness or a fluke that I’m here? Will God take this away? Should I get comfortable here, or prepare for God to change the plan unexpectedly?

Now, I’m not saying this part of me has proper theology, and I’m also not going to try logic this part of me into a certain theology. That’s not the point here.

What I’m realizing in this odd liminal space of settling into a new life and home is that many parts of me have figured out how to make (enough) peace with grief-filled circumstances or ones that are less than ideal when it comes to my faith, but, alongside that, there is a part of me that has no idea how to make peace with circumstances that are meeting such a deep longing and joy inside when it comes to my faith.

There is a vulnerability in all of this that has no idea how to make sense of God’s involvement in the previous pain I’ve walked through, the unexpected surprises (read traumas) that nearly flattened me, and, a storyline I’m getting to live out that is sweeter than I could have written myself.

Sure, my thinking brain can look at the psalms and talk about how much both-and there is in life and the beauty and fullness of joy and sorrow. But this part of me, she is buried way too far beneath my prefrontal cortex to be moved by any of that. All she knows is that in the past, sweet things have come coupled with the most bitter wounds and losses, and she is unsure if God is holding all things together, or if she might somehow fall through the cracks.

And so now, I’m sitting here, wondering, how in the world will I write to this? I’m comfortable sharing the reality of where I am, I just have no idea how to put into words what is happening at such a deep place inside, something that is stirring so far beyond words, or maybe more accurately, so far before words…

And maybe in the same way that I honored not pushing this part of me that couldn’t get fully excited about the move, I can also honor letting her stirrings stay where they are right now, not forcing her to come up with a translation, not forcing that tender worry into words in the way I would want them to read. Maybe instead, I can be ok with the gap in language and write on her behalf in a way that gives her a voice, but doesn’t force her to speak just yet.

For those who like to reflect…

I’m curious, is there a tender space inside that resonates with feeling this deep beneath your thinking brain?

Is there a way you might want to give a voice to those stirrings?

What might that look like?

What do you think about the balance of giving vulnerable spaces inside a voice, speaking on behalf of them, without forcing them to speak in certain ways?