Simba????

So, today was a glorious blue-sky, 80 degrees, Phoenix Autumn day, and I couldn’t help myself. I just had to run. Now, here’s the deal: you CANNOT tell my mother. I’m not afraid anymore of much this world holds (Not afraid?,  you ask. Hold that thought.), but I still have a Southern girl’s healthy respect for her mama. Any girl who claims a Southern heritage but denies that her mama scares her just a bit is lying about one of those two things; don’t trust her as far as you can throw her.

Anyhow, moving along, this being my second run since falling so ill several months ago, it was slowwwww and not very far, but I did it. (Can you tell I’m quite pleased with myself? That’s what the bold type was for.) I wasn’t too far from home, when a flyer stapled to a telephone pole caught my eye, not because it was a bright color or fancy font but because it was about a lost puppy, and you know how I feel about dogs.   Then something else, something odd, made my eyes pop wide, and my feet almost jolted to a stop.

The puppy, a very sweet, fluffy little guy, was named “Simba.” Okay, now I’m all for people being allowed to name their animals (and children) pretty much anything they want, and having been a school nurse I have heard some super offbeat names. However, naming a dog the Swahili word for “Lion” just seemed ultra-strange to me. As I passed the pole, I pushed the image of little Simba and his really, really, uhm, odd name from my mind and concentrated on breathing, emptying my mind, and loving the sound of my feet hitting the pavement. But it wasn’t working. I kept seeing Simba, and the distraction prodded at my soul. By now, you also know what that means – God whispering that there was something more to this than an odd name for a dog.

I began to think of all the misnamed things that have passed through my life over the years, and as you might expect, there were quite a lot of them. Can you guess what the largest category was? Emotions followed by a very close second of relationships, and I considered that for quite some time.

Emotions, the negative ones: anger, pain, insecurity, bewilderment, betrayal, etc., mostly can be consolidated to an accurate single name – fear. Fear that I am lacking something – that I am not complete as God created me. And I have spent many, many years afraid.   I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t afraid of showing my true self and my true feelings to other people. Really the fear haunting my heart was that I would be rejected for who I was, what I felt. And I built walls, towers even, to protect my heart and soul from anyone who could possibly touch the places I was vulnerable. Then, I think it became a self-fulfilling prophesy – I didn’t let anyone in, so I was left alone. And alone was the one place I was truly terrified of being. So, then I would relent, let my hair down and someone climb to the tower window, let them in, let them close, but because I pushed everyone else away, I was often a terrible judge of who should be allowed access to my heart. See the spiral?

The relationship misnomers are interconnected with the emotions; interdependent if you will, and absolutely can’t be separated. So, someone who should never be called “friend” becomes such. A man who should never be allowed into my life, my home, certainly not my heart, becomes my “spouse” when the correct term should probably be “enemy combatant.”  If you think I jest or overstate that last, you didn’t know the man. (Insert shudder here.)

Now, I’m going to take a step aside here and say that God has placed some incredible people in my life who have stood beside me, behind me, and in some cases in front of me when my world crumbled, and we’ll not say how many times that has happened as you already know. So, if you’re reading this and feeling slightly (or largely) insulted, please know that I don’t mean you. I’ll say that again: I don’t mean you. You are amazing, and I love you. Back to my main point…

This all sounds like a very dispassionate analysis of the past, oh, 30 years of my life, and, to a degree, it was. But, honestly, I don’t think my experiences with misnaming emotions or mislabeling relationships is really completely different from everyone else’s. Maybe it’s just taken me longer to work them out.   I think most people are afraid to show the world their true face, and maybe a lot of people fall into the trap of wrong relationships. But here’s the beautiful thing about grace and mercy – we do not have to stay in those raw and painful places. God reaches out to us, and if we allow ourselves kindness, we can fall into those arms, and be pulled from the muck and mire we ourselves created and sustained.

I may not have learned terribly much over the last decades of my life, but I have learned this: I do not want to be afraid anymore. Life is a moment, and then it’s gone. I want to let go of fear and stand in the brilliant light of God’s sun (Son) and know that I have chosen to be the woman He created, the woman He meant me to be. The only way to do that is to consciously turn away from my carefully constructed walls and towers, let go of caring whether I am good enough, strong enough, smart or pretty enough, and just be His. He’ll take care of the rest.