Today is my birthday, and I asked to have time alone. It’s been a hard year. It’s been an especially hard few months. I’m craving time by myself because I’m rarely solo, and the daily noise that’s hard to hush lends little space for breathing deep or simply being, for processing or healing. I feel selfish saying it, though I know it’s self-preserving to admit—I need all of the space and healing I can get right now.

There’s no clear cut path to healing, I’m pretty sure of it in my old age. I’ve convinced myself a lot of days that I’m fine, but I can feel the not-fine sitting just below the surface.

I ran into a friend yesterday who I haven’t seen in a long time. She asked how I was doing and I was honest. We talked for a few minutes about life and what’s moving and happening for both of us, and then she offered me grace. She said, “You don’t have to be fine because it’s not fine. Permission to not be OK.” She’s right, and I’ve missed her, and our intersection was timely.

It’s OK to not be OK.

I don’t know why our culture makes it so not OK to not be OK. I really don’t. The truth is, we’re a bunch of people all moving through life with our own stuff. And sometimes we’re OK. Better, even. But when we’re not OK, we tend to walk around feeling like we ought to be, and instead of granting ourselves the permission to be hurting, we heap guilt on ourselves instead. The voices get loud.

We’re not ______ enough. We’re too _______.

In this “not OK” space, we’re vulnerable, so we’re more easily convinced to buy into the lie that we’re burdensome, weak, alone. I’m writing this and being reminded at the same time that God promises to carry our burdens, to be strong when we’re weak, to be our ever-present help in times of trouble. Sometimes when I’m not OK, It’s harder to dig down and remember who God is and what he says, too.

So, there’s this. Here’s what I can offer in my not-OK birthday ramblings as I set sights on a new year and aim to project hope into my own circumstances, just as I desire to infuse it into yours:

We have permission to not be OK. It’s not a “get out of jail free” card on life, but it is a pass to downshift for a time while we practice holding grief and joy in the same space…while we pursue help and healing. It’s an acknowledgement that we live in a broken world, and that we might feel broken in it.

We’re not alone, but our space can be lonely.

We may be surrounded, when all we crave is space.

We might find space and feel uncomfortable and messy in it while we scramble to get a better sense of what’s next.

As I type, I’m sitting in the car down the street from the chapel where Jason and I were married. I left the house unsure of where I was headed this morning, but as I drove, I felt drawn to go and sit in a space where God has done a lot of work in my heart. I walked up to the chapel doors to find them locked. Someone came and opened the door, but only to tell me that the chapel was closed and I couldn’t come in.

Burdened. Weak. Alone. I’d thought I was onto something by coming here, and then one more “no” closed in on me when I needed it least. I walked back to the car and ugly cried in the front seat. Not getting inside the chapel felt personal. It yelled all of the things at me that I’ve heard on repeat lately, “You’re not worthy. You’re not wanted. You don’t belong.” “Shouldn’t a chapel be a place you can go freely and enter in with God?” I started thinking. Sure, maybe. I had to be careful not to place my own sense of rejection onto my belief about God and who he is for me, right now.

I rarely attempt to go to a church space (outside of Sundays) to find God there. He shows up most to me in nature, in the mundane, in my children, in the everyday. I know better than to think he’s off limits just because the chapel doors are locked, but man, it would be so easy to buy into that lie and stay there if I wanted to.

I’m 36 this morning and I’m not entering it with ease. If I dig deep down, I know that this will change—I just have to allow myself the space to heal, and to let pain be pain, when it comes.

It feels good to write something down…to pound it out. I knew, at least, that I needed that today. Like anything worth fighting for, this being real with these feelings and sitting in the yuck feels uphill to me. As I’m climbing, I know God is building muscles I’ve not developed just yet. I hope that as he strengthens me, I can put my strengths to good use.

How does a date on the calendar make us stop and think harder, or feel gratitude or ineptitude or cause so much self-reflection? Since we all do it, I’m thinking God built that into us as humans. Maybe it’s a birthday, or an anniversary, or the remembrance of a hard loss or a really great victory, but whatever the case, we feel because we were meant to feel, and we attach meaning to dates and take them to heart because our past and our present both shape us for what is to come.

God has graced me with 36 years on this planet thus far, and I have a lot of figuring out to do yet. If I measure where I am by the worldly things, I’m not quite sure where I stand. What I do know is that God is stirring up some things in me that I didn’t know were possible ten years ago, or even five. I stopped growing taller a very long time ago, but the growth happening where I can’t see it is still coming along. I hope I’m granted many more years to become more and more like the person God designed me to be—the one who grows through what’s hard and what’s not OK, and someone who offers grace and permission to others where they need it, when they need it, too.

it’s good to be back here.

love and grace,

mm

birthday beauties.