No one would write this article except a millennial, you’re thinking with a roll of your eyes, and you might be right. You’re correct in assuming my status as a millennial, about a childhood spent knowing I could’ve crushed “Legends of the Hidden Temple” and an early adulthood that started with MySpace and ended with Snapchat. So yeah, I’m a millennial, and while there are certainly traits of my generation that are not only embarrassing, but appalling, there’s a reason that 32 year old Damien Chazelle just became the youngest director ever to win an Academy Award, for directing “La La Land.”

You heard me right- 32. That means he wrote the script for “La La Land” in his twenties and won an Oscar for directing it a few years later. His composer, Justin Hurwitz, who won an Oscar for Best Score? Also 32 years old. Two millennial friends, making history.

I know why Damien Chazelle and Justin Hurwitz won those awards at such a young age, and how Damien made that movie happen. There’s a lot of talk about us millennials, a lot of well-deserved disdain towards our general attitude of entitlement, but let me tell you something- we are also poised to change the world. Here’s how:

We think we can.

Sounds assine. Let me explain.

Damien Chazelle won that Oscar because he wrote a movie and then believed he could make it. He shut down a freeway and directed a complicated musical number using an entire freeway on-ramp because he had vision. He won an award for a very millennial trait, which is that we are willing to try impossible feats because we tend to believe in ourselves… because you told us to. It was written on every pencil in our teacher’s prize box, on every cat poster in the counselor’s office; you said it when we were nervous to try out for a play, our coaches shouted it during our games; pop stars sang to us about it…. And we took you at your word. We think we can do anything, because that’s what you told us. So when you think we’re crazy for wanting fulfilling jobs with amazing paychecks, a happy family, and a successful side small business that we start in our garage: remember, you told us we could do it. We might sound crazy and yes, some of us are entitled pricks, but a lot of us simply took you at your word and decided to do what we set out to do.

Like win an Oscar for an old-school Hollywood musical that we wrote and directed with our friends.

This particular strand of chutzpah has an obvious parent: Google. YouTube. Reddit. Instagram. Facebook. We know that social networking, search engines, and community information canvassing aren’t simply recreational. These laptops and phones attached to our fingers are passports to a world of knowledge. Why argue a detail, like how far it is to the moon or how many people live in Somalia, when the answer is in your pocket? Why hire a plumber when you can just learn the basics on YouTube? Who needs a wedding DJ when your friend curated a killer Spotify list? You might say this means we don’t think for ourselves anymore, or that we are lazy learners, but we know that it just means we can do anything we want to try. There is a freedom that comes with access, and the motto of our entire age group might as well be: “Let’s try.”

Also- we live a life examined. Ok, yeah, selfies aren’t actual self- examination. But the truth is, even though a lot of us didn’t have social media until high school and college, we spent our formative young adult years in a fishbowl society, where The Real Word made us want to be watched and then the internet made it possible. Our lives are on display in a manner unknown to any previous groups of people, which makes us self-conscious, self-aware, self-centered and  self-deprecating. In light of all that self, we have another skill: when you ask us how we’re feeling, we know the answer. Thanks to you, of course.

You asked about our feelings a lot when we were kids, even developed curriculum around the idea of sharing our feelings, probably mostly in reaction to the fact that your parents did NOT ask you about feelings. Did this also create a group of kids who can’t believe when college professors and employers don’t care about their precious emotions? Well, yes. Does our generation put too much stock in an emotional currency that changes by the moment? Absolutely. But we are also connected to ourselves in a layered, nuanced manner, because we’ve been allowed to explore our psyches.

Encouraged our entire lives to look inward, some of that prompting produced selfish masses of navel-gazers, but it also produced an entire generation of feelers. And feelings are what draw us into the plight of others, because mature feelings develop into empathy, and in this age of technology and connection and GoFundMe accounts, we know how to create change that is powered by our empathy. Which is why we give our money away, and start non profits, why we take jobs for less pay because they mean something to us, and why we actually think we can change the world.

So please excuse our occasional selfies and our obsessive need to stay connected. Don’t worry when we change jobs with the wind and still live with our parents in between traveling gigs. It might not make sense, but trust me: we are working hard, and we want to leave this world better than we received it, just like every generation before us, and every generation after.

Speaking of which, I can only imagine the articles my children will write to convince all of us that they’re not really robots, and they care about the world too.

I probably won’t believe them, either.

 

I learned how to lie when I needed to learn how to lie, which was early and often. In our family of seven children, of which I was fifth in line, I was small, often sick, and well-liked by my siblings and parents. And I developed a certain knack for getting what I wanted. Some of this was innocent, a girl discovering that being good at reading people and liking them without requiring much of them meant a world of friends and favors; some of it was less than innocent, a realization that people believe you when they like you. So if I needed to lie, I did. It seems strange, maybe, to say one might need to lie, but you know what I mean. When the truth was less convenient and potentially even hurtful to those involved, why not simply skip over it?

I lied to get out of trouble. I lied to avoid hurting people’s feelings. I lied to smooth over painful problems. It was easy. I was good at it. And it didn’t feel like lying. It felt like making a way to do what I wanted to do, which was usually even good stuff, a kind of lying that most people find completely acceptable. So I wove my reasons, my excuses, my schemes, and constructed a world for myself. An acceptable world to most.

But really, in the end: I was a liar.

Not a big liar, of course. I’m too good at lying to be a big liar. Every good liar knows that big lies don’t work- they just cause big trouble, and you will get caught. Liars live inside the protective hedge of many small lies, like organized rows of low foliage, so pretty that at first you might think it’s a garden. But it’s not. It’s a maze. It’s twisting rows of thick bushes, designed to keep you on a certain path but never letting you see the whole picture- there is no aerial view of the liar’s maze. That’s off limits, and even if it wasn’t, often the liars themselves don’t have the whole picture. It’s too hard to keep straight. The lies aren’t just for other people, they’re very much for the liar’s sake as well.

My lies evolved over the years into a complicated kind of information-keeping. I tell this much to this person, less to that person, nothing at all to the rest, and all of this information holding and distributing is based on one thing: control.

If you know me casually, you would not call me a controlling person. I’m easy-going. I make plans and cancel them in the same breath. I don’t hold grudges. But there is a tightened place inside me, so tight that all other parts of me twist around it. That’s my control valve. I clutched that valve all day long, the notches of the handle impressed in my sweaty hand, trying so hard to control people’s expectations and how they felt about me. Expectations crush me, and I cannot bear to disappoint, so I turn and turn and turn in order to avoid people expecting anything I can’t (don’t want to) produce and to avoid the pain of  your (even perceived) disappointment.

For 31 years, I lied in every small way necessary to protect myself. I didn’t tell anyone everything, so that I could control what people wanted from me, and how they felt about me.

Turn, turn, turn. So tight I could barely breathe some days.

This lifestyle is not without consequences, because you can’t keep everyone far enough away to keep up the facade. And if you can, you are probably very lonely. But I can’t. So my husband and I had the same fight for nine years: the one where I didn’t tell the whole truth and then he finds out and reacts about whatever particular truth it was, and he reacts just the way I imagined he would which is why I kept the information from him in the first place. Except I never even gave him the chance to process the whole truth, so I never really knew who him in the open, in the air. He looked different in the shadow of my hedges, just like everything else.

“But isn’t staying quiet (hiding the truth) (lying) better than having someone mad at you?’ I spent my days wondering. This is my pervasive darkness- that which says, “Preserve yourself. Find safety behind small walls. The truth hurts more than it helps.” Like a jar of vegetables in the pantry, pickled to the point of sour. Preserved, yes. But always hidden. Always altered.

Here’s the thing about loving Jesus, about being loved by Jesus. You can’t stay the same. You can’t. And if you are trying to, you are probably very lonely. Because to be loved by your Maker is to be continually made, and in the making you will be revealed again and again, unmasked and unraveled and then recreated, a new creation, fresh (and vulnerable) in the potter’s hand. This is incredible. This is painful. This is love.

And last year, I had to answer a serious question. On a day of suffering by my own doing, a day when small lies threatened to topple me, the Maker spoke into my hardened heart in the middle of my kitchen and asked with kindness:

Are you ready? 

I knew right away. I knew it was time. I fell on the floor, I did, I fell down in tears and called out my yes, called out that I was done living half a life. I wanted what God had for me, and I was ready to let Him unravel me for the sake of truth. For the sake of light. I’m done lying.

There is voice inside each of us that has been whispering some version of a certain story since the day we started looking for way to explain why the world hurts so much. It usually starts early. Childhood, probably. Once you feel the shame of being disregarded; after someone acts in a way that surprises and hurts you; when you realize the enormity of your own shortcomings and your own brand of selfishness, a frantic search begins for a protection mechanism. I don’t know yours, but I know mine well. I know this maze. I know these corners.

You might be reading this and shaking your head at how bad I am- if you’re not a liar, and I find that you either are or you aren’t, then this probably sounds like the machinations of a sick person. I mean honestly, isn’t it though? Don’t we all fight against the circuitry that we’ve allowed to flow for so long, those sparks of bad reasoning wired through our brains, the electric shocks that keep us from peace?

I don’t know your darkness. I don’t sit there with you. I don’t hold your hand through the night; I’m too busy hiding in my own tight spots. But I’m here to tell you this:

Someone has conquered your darkness. Someone has come to set you free from the destructive short-circuiting that you cannot seem to escape.

Either Jesus is everything, or He is nothing. The gospel, the good news that I have been saved from myself, is enough to shatter all of my lies. The ones I tell you, and the ones I tell myself. In the warm light of Jesus’ love, information remains simply that: information. It does not bear the weight of all my fears and old patterns. It does not hinge on your reactions. In the blinding light of the King, the truth isn’t subjective. The truth isn’t controllable. The truth will set me free. 

I want to be free.

Break me out of this pickle jar, Lord. Burn down my hedges. Let me breathe again. I don’t want to be kept, to be altered, to be suffocated: I want to live at ease with myself, because I have found an ease in your presence. If I am approved, accepted, beloved: There is no need to try and prove otherwise.To me or to anyone else. There is no greater relief in my life than this new wild open air, the pure oxygen of absolutes.

The year God healed me was a year draped under a banner of the word “Claim.” I kept a growing list of all the things I claimed, or took rightful possession of: Peace. A sound mind. A place at the table. Healing. The grace of God that brings new life. And most of all, in a stunning, decades old plot twist, I claimed the truth. I claim it. I proclaim it. May I never, ever, give it back in exchange for some cheap version of life alone in the darkness. May my face be a reflection of the one true light. And most of all,

“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

In my journey away from lying, this book changed my life, my marriage, and my patterns, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It gave language to what I knew was true about myself, and helped me find healing. It’s a lot of work, but it’s so worth it. Let me know if you have questions about it or are interested in reading it. It’s better done in a group of trusted friends, which is where I found tremendous change and healing this past year.

There is no darkness too terrible for the light. You are worth more than whatever is threatening to choke you, and there is a way to change. And take it from me- the air tastes so much better out here in the open.

 

 

 

 

Greetings from February 23, from overcast skies and wind whipping the neighborhood American flags, from a dishwasher whirring though a wash cycle, from the muffled clatter of jeans in the dryer, from a baby crying half-heartedly during nap time, from the squalls of two kids playing together after many days of doting grandparents and holiday weekends; greetings from a Thursday in this little life of ours.

Hello from coffee on it’s third reheat. Hello from three kids still in pajamas (a rarity at 10am these days, for better or worse). Hello to a “normal” I appreciate more than ever, when we are healthy and have jobs and happiness; when I don’t have a lot of emotional energy to write but I do have a lot of people I love; when being a grown up means a lot of things, but mostly it means figuring out the Tetris of needs and responsibilities that surround us, letting the false pressures fall away and the true pursuits build up.

I’m jotting off a postcard from this second, from right now, because if we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that nothing is certain.

So I sit here in this hour and consider the absolutes: Bodies fail. Kids get sick. Marriages implode. Friendships are hard. Church stuff sucks. Faith is less an absolute and more a moving target, in which we are the ones who keep moving, and then expect God to look the same from every angle.

I can’t say I wish you were here, because I don’t. I’m happy to be in these walls with these people, my four year old and my three year old and my baby who will be one year old this weekend. I’m glad for the quiet, for scattered story books, for a pretend camping site, for the birthday decorations slung cheerful and bright over walls and doors, for the smell of this morning’s waffles, for Sammy’s laugh and Clara’s ever-so-accurate impression of me as she plays house, for Audrey’s screech as she toddles to and fro on those tiny legs of hers, for the faint wind chimes across the street and the way winter stomps out like a tantrum as spring pokes in like a nervous new friend. I’m glad for today. I’m glad for a normal hour. I’m glad for a reprieve.

Tomorrow is coming. I know. This February wind is blowing in a change of seasons, in every sense, and normal won’t keep. It is also a moving target. But, like our faith, we don’t chase old normals. We don’t look for God in old ways, because as we evolve, so does the way we know Him. Today is today is today. It cannot ever be again. I am learning to be content in all situations; to appreciate when a day is kind to us; to let normal move and shift like the weather, so that when this quiet dissolves and new worries rise up, and new concerns overcome: I have stored up past hours of goodness and peace from which to draw deep breaths. Waffles for breakfast. Babies learning to walk. Coffee in my own home. Kids happy. Spring coming.

Hi, from today, from this morning, from the only moment I am promised, which is right now.

Greetings. And blessings.

-Jessie