The Tangibility of Hope

Over the summer, I came to love the show Criminal Minds.  The main characters are all fascinating, and they work so well together; the storylines are always new and horrifying (in a good way; it's a show about serial killers...).  But one of the lines that they have repeated throughout the show's 6+ season run really struck me: "Hope can be paralyzing."  Now, I get where they are coming from.  For a parent of an abducted child to keep hoping, after years and years without a lead, that their child is still alive can have a paralyzing affect on that parent.  But I don't think that it's hope itself that is paralyzing.  It's letting yourself become obsessed with, and yes paralyzed by, the notion that what you want could come true.  And it's believing that, somehow, you standing still and just agonizing over this possibility is going to bring your desires to fruition.  If that is what you call hope, then, yes, hope is paralyzing.

But I'm coming to realize something entirely apart from that notion: hope isn't a feeling, it's not a thought or a want or a desire.  Instead, hope is tangible.  Hope springs from faith, from trust, and from a true knowledge and understanding of who Jesus Christ is and what that means for you.  This kind of hope could never be paralyzing. It can only be freeing.

I honestly believe this.  But that doesn't mean that I'm there yet.  I don't yet have this tangible thing called hope.  I'm not yet free.  On a daily basis, I'm struggling with depression and with feeling like there's no hope.  I want so badly to get there, to not just know but also feel this hope.

The Last Night

by Skillet

You come to me with scars on your wrist

You tell me this will be the last night 

Feeling like this

I just came to say goodbye

Didn't want you to see me cry

I'm fine but I know it's a lie

This is the last night you'll spend alone

Look me in the eyes so I know you know

I'm everything you need me to be

Your parents say everything is your fault

But they don't know you like I know you

They don't know you at all

I'm so sick of when they say

It's just a phase, you'll be okay, you're fine

But I know it's a lie

This is the last night you'll spend alone

Look me in the eyes so I know you know

I'm everywhere you want me to be

The last night you'll spend alone

I'll wrap you in my arms and I won't let you

I'm everything you need me to be

The last night away from me

The night is so long when everything's wrong

If you give me your hand, I will help you hold on

Tonight, tonight

This is the last night you'll spend alone

Look me in the eyes so I know you know

I'm everywhere you want me to be

The last night you'll spend alone

I'll wrap you in my arms and I won't let go

I'm everything you need me to be

I won't let you say goodbye

And I'll be your reason why

The last night away from me, away from me

"I'll never know till I try"

That was what the first man I ever kissed said to me after I had to tell him multiple times to stop as he tried to escalate our first kiss very quickly into areas that I was in no way ready for or comfortable with. I immediately wanted to retort: "No, actually, you'll never know until you ask!"

Achieving consent is not trying something and seeing if your partner protests.  It's asking.  It's communicating your desires and requesting permission to proceed.  And I have no problem sounding like a SlutWalk poster when I proclaim: "My dress is not a yes!" and "Consent is sexy!"

But here's the thing: as much as I may proudly proclaim these concepts at a rally or in my classes or on my blog, when it comes down to actually living it out, I failed.

As I listened to the multiple feminist badasses at the sexual assault meeting at AU tonight, I really have to wonder if the only reason why I'm not another statistic, another victim, another survivor, is simply because my college social life has never leaned towards the partying side of life.

I've been passionate about these issues of sexual and dating violence for over six years, and an activist for at least two years now.  I've even been "trained" to stop guys from going to far since junior high.  Yet at my first opportunity to assert my beliefs, my confidence, and my sense of personal control and safety, I chose to timidly say no a few times until finally just backing away and saying that it wasn't ok.  I never communicated though.  I never explained (at least not at the time).

This has got to change.  I can't go in to another situation like that without clearly explaining who I am, what I believe, and where my boundaries lie.

Where do I go from here?

I'm not sure how I got here. And I definitely don't know how to get out.  But I do know that I am here, back in this place, back in this darkness.

My depression from over three years ago is back.  And while I can't and won't hide from it, I don't know how to go through it.

People have been asking me, "why?", "what caused it?", and essentially, "why can't you just snap out of it?"  And while I usually retort with some variation of "I wish I knew," the truth is that I know all to well the truth.  It's just not an easy truth to comprehend or explain.

Depression (real, biological depression) isn't really caused by much of anything.  Don't get me wrong, it can be influenced and exacerbated by environmental causes, but it's not caused by them.  I could give out a laundry list of the things that exacerbate my depression, but what's the point?  Doing that just obscures the truth of the matter: depression is a disease, an illness that is caused by biology, not environment.

Over the past three years, I thought that, if I ever faced a serious case of depression again, I would see it coming and be able to do something to, essentially, "snap out of it."  But I was just kidding myself.

So here we go again.

You know, back in March, I wrote a blog post declaring to myself, to the world, and to God that I am, in fact, "All in."  I'm here with Him, not letting, not giving up, no matter what happens.  I wrote that post and made that decision in anticipation of a horrendous bout of medical uncertainties, tests, and procedures.  And I meant it.  I even meant it after my Grandfather died.  And I even mean it now, though I'm not sure what that means.

I don't know what it means to still know and feel that I love my Jesus and would do anything for him, but at the same time feeling the desire on nearly a daily basis to take the nearest knife and carve another round of scars on my arms, to jump in front of the nearest car or train, or to swallow the nearest bottle of pills.  Or maybe some combination of the above.

I once wrote on this blog that I would never fully give in to suicidal feelings again because I know, believe and claim that, while death is gain, I am still called by Christ to stay here, and to live for Him, to live in His place, and to do His work.  I still feel those same things.  I still desperately want the words, "To live is Christ" and "To die is gain" tattooed as mirror images on the insides of my ankles.  So how do I know and believe that same truth when something in the makeup of my brain is telling me to kill myself?  Because, as much as I would like to believe it, it's not nearly as simple as just clinging to what I know to be true and somehow finding victory over what the depression is telling me is true.  Because it's not like they are two easily separate-able parts of me.  They are intertwined and muddled and confused.  Because "death is gain."  I know that, and I believe that, and I cling to it.  And it gives my solace when I contemplate that knife, that train, or those pills.  Because I don't fear death.  I rejoice in the idea of spending an eternity with the one person who can give me true joy, true purpose, true passion, true love...  I want to be with my Jesus.

So where do I go from here?

So I've done the SlutWalk; now let's talk modesty

I always grew up hearing lecture upon lecture about the importance for young women to be 'modest.'  I will (somewhat shamefully) admit that I've even given a lecture or two on the topic myself.  Modesty was hashed and rehashed at home, at school, at youth group, during Bible studies, during worship sessions, during meals, during shopping trips, and during pretty much any and every other opportunity possible.  And even back in my semi-brainwashed-by-religion phase, I always knew that the arguments given were crap.  

Why on earthy would it be my job by nature of my being female to somehow control or even just affect how guys may or may not look at me?  

That was always the first question that popped into my head any time the topic of modesty was broached.  Why would the onus be on me to control how another autonomous human being thinks or acts?  I simply can't control another person’s thoughts or actions.

Now I guess I've always kind of known this, but it wasn't until this past weekend's SlutWalk that it dawned on me the reason why this logic is so very wrong.  It's because it is just another one of the many symptoms of this horrible rape culture that permeates our entire society.  I could never come anywhere close to explaining rape culture as well as Melissa McEwan at Shakesville does here:

Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you're alone, if you're with a stranger, if you're in a group, if you're in a group of strangers, if it's dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you're carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you're wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who's around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who's at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn't follow all the rules it's your fault.

Telling girls that they must dress (or not dress) a certain way to somehow try and control how someone else thinks or acts is a direct extension of this culture.

But even beyond the injustice of placing this burden, blame, and shame on women for when guys think or act a certain way, it dawned on me the other night that there’s a bigger (or at least equally big) problem with this lesson being taught to young girls: it places the entire focus of the discussion on how girl’s choices affect guys.  Instead of being an empowering discussion about how the way a young woman dresses and acts affects and reflects her self-confidence and self-worth, it does the exact opposite: it places the entire discussion in terms of boys.  And this all happens most frequently during a time when young women are trying desperately hard to figure themselves out.

But here’s the thing: for girls who have somehow managed to grow into women with at least some degree of self-worth, self-confidence, and self-respect, the way they dress (most of the time) has very little to do with how it is perceived by the rest of the world.  Instead, confident and empowered women wear clothing that expresses who they are, what they are comfortable in, and what makes them feel beautiful and strong.

A woman who is assured of her own worth doesn’t wear a low-cut top or a short skirt to try and attract a guy’s attention.  If she chooses to wear these things, it is because she feels comfortable and empowered in these clothes.  It will have nothing to do with the reactions she receives from others.

When I was growing up and trying to develop my own sense of style and fashion (and self-worth), I was never told to look for clothing that makes me feel beautiful and confident and powerful and loved and respected.  I was simply told that certain clothes were too tight or too short or too low-cut or too little or too much or too…  I was lectured about how to pick clothing that wouldn’t “force” guy’s minds to wander or lust or desire or even simply to guess.

Now, quick disclaimer here: I’m not writing this as (another) angry rant against how I was raised.  Really, I’m over it.  And I really don’t blame any of the many people who lectured me about modesty.  How girl’s clothing affects a guy’s mind has been the only way that the issue has been framed for so long that’s it’s in no way surprising that the people I grew up with didn’t know any better.  So, no, that's not the point.

I’m writing this because there has got to be a shift in focus.  The only way to change the rape culture is to continually combat it, and so this is one thing that has to change.  The discussion needs to be shifted off of the term “modesty” (because, really, it’s such a fucking ambiguous term anyways that’s it’s already pretty much useless), and instead focus on fostering confidence, self-worth, and self-respect in young women.  And then let them make their own choices about what types of clothing they are truly comfortable wearing.  And even if their motives have nothing to do with their own confidence and empowerment, we must always remember that, no matter what a girl/woman wears, it is never her fault if a guy chooses to think or act improperly.

UPDATED: Feminist Icons: Past, Present, and Future

UPDATED: This blog post of mine was edited and reworked to be posted on the EMILY's List blog here. Below remains the original version posted on my blog last week.

This week The Daily Beast and Newsweek published a profile of one of the greatest icons in feminist history, Gloria Steinem.

Mention the name Gloria Steinem to many women under 30, and if there is a flash of recognition at all, they put her in Florence Nightingale’s league—an admirable figure from the history books. To them, feminism was a war won before they were born, the miniskirted 1970s revolution that freed their mothers and grandmothers from drudgery and discrimination, paving the way for their own generation’s unfettered freedom. But in the living room of the funky Upper East Side duplex where she has lived for more than 35 years, Steinem, 77, is still on the front lines of a fight she considers barely half finished.

Now, on my college campus, the name Gloria Steinem holds incredible weight and even a measure of awe.  For weeks after her visit to American University last year, dozens of friend’s maintained FB profile pictures with Steinem.  But my world is an anomaly in which feminists and progressives abound and feminist icons are not only known but regularly sought out.   So I guess the question remains, does Gloria Steinem sill matter?  Or, perhaps the far more important inquiry is, who’s the next Steinem, Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, or Alice Paul?

When it comes to feminist heroes, there seems to be this problem of giant gaps in time where no one takes the lead. 

But is that entirely true?  I know that throughout my time in highschool, whenever we got around to talking about anything related to feminism, the only people mentioned were Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and maybe Betty Friedan. 

Once I got to college, I discovered the remarkable stories of Alice Paul and Carrie Chapmann Catt and how it was them, not Anthony or Stanton, that actually got the 19^th Amendment passed through Congress and finally ratified by the states in 1929. And then came the 70s and the likes of Shirley Chisholm, Sarah Weddington, and Gloria Steinem.  But these names were never mentioned outside my feminist world.

And while Gloria Steinem still has a voice, and is still fighting hard, I have to wonder, who’s next?  And why are there massive gaps between feminist icons?  Or at least between women whom the history books recognize as icons.

Today, we have Carolyn Maloney, who, every single year, largely unnoticed by everyone but the most dedicated feminists, reintroduces the Equal Rights Amendment.  We have Kirsten Gillibrand who is taking a stand and gaining national recognition for her “Off the Sidelines” campaign which urges more women to get involved in the political process.  And we have women like Nancy Pelosi, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Hillary Clinton who have broken through more ceilings and down more doors than perhaps anyone else in feminist history.

But will these women be viewed as iconic figures in the harsh light of history?  So many of them are still villianized by half of society and the rest are just plain ignored.

Who will stand up?  Who will stand out?  And who will lead the way to finish the race that all of these iconic figures and those running along side of them started so long ago?

Show Your Mercy New

I have been so incredibly ungrateful.  Over the past several months, God has proven himself more faithful than I could ever hope to imagine.  And yet...it's like once He's done what I need Him to do, I practically just forget that He ever existed.  So now there's only one thing that I can do: simply ask, knowing what His answer has been and will always be, "Lord, have mercy."

From this past March till the beginning of June, I was suffering from debilitating and seemingly inexplicable pain.  Most of the time I could barely walk, and when I could it was only with the aid of huge amounts of narcotics and nerve relaxants.  An entire neuro-surgical team at Johns Hopkins Hospital couldn't find anything wrong with me, and I was trying to mentally prepare myself for the possibility that I may be searching for the rest of my life for answers and never find them, and that I may have to remain in a constant mental and emotional flux due to the extreme amounts of medications needed to simply hold my pain to a manageable level.

And then my old doctor from back in Chicago had an idea: he thought that maybe my spinal fluid level was elevated and that with a lumbar puncture this level could be tested and then reduced.  In theory, this could completely alleviate my pain.

You'd think that this potential solution would excite me and give me hope.  Instead, it filled me with a dread and fear worse than anything I can remember.  You see, having to have a spinal tap again was one of my greatest fears in life.  When I was eleven and initially going through the ringer of medical tests before my doctors discovered that I have Chiari Malformation, I had several MRIs, and on one of them the doctors saw a blurry spot.  This could simply mean that I moved ever so slightly during the taking of that image or it could mean something much worse (i.e. a tumor or some other irregularity in my spinal column).  My doctor recommended a spinal tap, and my parents consented.

The actual procedure itself, while uncomfortable and quite annoying, wasn't that bad (probably mostly due to the fact that I had no real clue what they were doing, and thus my nerves couldn't set in).  The worst part was afterwards.  First, I had to lay flat on my back for upwards of six hours.  For an eleven year old kid, this seemed like torture.  I couldn't get up to eat or go to the bathroom or even just to stretch.  I had to remain relatively still and could only switch positions from my back to my side (or vise versa) every so often.  The reason for all of this was to make sure that my spine had time to form a clot over the hole which the spinal tap put in it.

While I vaguely remember this six plus hour process as being beyond annoying, that's not really what sticks out in my mind.  What I remember most vividly, what still makes me cringe at the very thought was the one thing that laying on my back for over six hours was supposed to prevent: spinal headaches (and all the wonderful things that come with it).

At some point while lying on my back in the hospital room, the doctors came back in with the results of the spinal tap: everything was fine and the initial assumption was assumed correct (I probably moved ever so slightly during the MRI process).  After about five and a half hours of lying flat on my back, I actually ended up falling asleep for about an hour and a half and was thus flat on my back for at least seven hours.  After I woke up, the doctors sent me home essentially because they had run out of ideas to explain my pain and I was reasonably well medicated.

The next couple days were filled with a pain that I can just barely begin to explain.  My head literally felt like it was going to explode.  My room had to be blackened as much as possible and my family could only speak to me in whispers.  Every time I had to raise my head above my heart, these symptoms multiplied tenfold and I would begin to throw up violently and uncontrollably.  I barely let myself eat or drink.  This lasted for about a day and a half when my parents knew that I simply couldn't go on like this.  They took me back to the hospital where the doctors drew some blood out of my arm to essentially force a clot to form over the hole in my spinal cord where my spinal fluid was leaking.

These memories are some of the worst in my life.  On a scale of one to ten, the pain that I felt was easily skyrocketing past a twelve.  So knowing that I might have to go through it again terrified me.  But at the same, I knew that I couldn't keep living like that.  I couldn't spend the rest of my life feeling high out of my mind on narcotics while still only barely able to walk.

So when I went home in June, I scheduled an appointment with my old doctor in Chicago.  We scheduled the lumbar puncture for the day after my LSAT, which actually meant that I couldn't focus on my potentially paralyzing fear, so that was good (although the stress of studying for the LSAT wasn't necessarily a fun alternative).

The actual procedure turned out to be not that bad.  They put me under anesthesia, so I remember very little. After I had been in recovery for about an hour, the nurse started talking to me about sitting up.  This is when my fear really set in.  It took me probably another hour or so to get up the courage to just tilt the bed forward a little.  Over the next several hours and even days, I was incredibly anxious at even the slightest pressure or pain in my head.

But the headaches never came.

I have yet to really sit down and process what all this means.  Since I had that lumbar puncture and they drained a huge portion of my spinal fluid, I have yet to feel like I cannot walk down the hall.  To be perfectly honest, the hardest thing since then has been both getting off of my narcotics and building back up my endurance after having been forced to remain relatively sedentary for several months.  For the past week or so, I have been pretty much off of my narcotics (for the first time in months) and my endurance is coming back.

You'd think that I'd be shouting about the amazing provision of God from every rooftop I can.  And yet...

And then at the end of last month, it became quite evident that my maternal grandfather's leukemia had progressed rapidly and he would only have a couple more days to live.  I've only begun to process everything that happened in the days before and after my grandpa's death, but there's one thing that I know for sure: the one thing that I asked God for was some form of reassurance that my Grandpa was truly a man of faith.  You see, everyone had been saying that we knew he was going to a better place and that he was just "graduating" into heaven and other such platitudes.  But the thing is that for my entire life my grandfather has always just been a man that I see at most a few times a year.  I loved him dearly and will always remember his love and sense of humour incredibly fondly.  But unlike my paternal grandfather of whom practically my every memory is of him telling stories about how God has worked in his life or professing his incredible faith, my memories of my maternal grandfather are all about him playing games and telling jokes to me and and my brothers.  The day that my grandfather died, when I knew that he only had a few hours left, I lay on a park bench just crying because while every one else had such confidence about where my Grandpa was going, I felt like I couldn't know.  While I know that no one but God can ever know for sure, there can at least be a reasonable degree of confidence if you know the person's heart.  I cried because I never really knew my Grandpa, at least not on a spiritual level.

A few hours later I got the call from my Dad that my grandpa had passed and the story that he told me took my breath away:  throughout that whole day, my grandfather had been almost entirely out of it, never fully having a lucid moment.  Furthermore, he rarely had his eyes opened, and when he did they were foggy and unfocused.  But in the moments before his death, my grandfather opened his eyes, clear as ever, tried his hardest to sit up, hum, and sing along to his favourite hymn: "How Great Thou Art".  After he sang through the whole song once, my mother and aunt told their daddy to go home.  And he breathed his last.

My grandfather died with a song in his heart and worship on his lips.  And I know that, at least in part, my grandfather died in that incredible, God-filled way in answer to my prayer.  My grandfather's death was God's amazing way of giving me peace.

Yet I haven't admitted that to anyone.  Until now that is.  And I really can't seem to figure out why.  I don't know why I feel like I can't admit how much God has done for me.  I'm still in this place where, if my Christian friends are talking on the metro about how God is working in their lives, I still look around, worried that some people within earshot might hear what we're talking about and think that we're crazy.  I don't entirely know why I'm like this, but I do know that it needs to change.  I need to be bolder and I need to be so much more willing to just be honest about who I am and what I believe.

So I claim God's mercy, because I know that it truly is new every morning.  So tomorrow I will begin a new day, and maybe tomorrow I will be just a little bit bolder and I little bit less shy about everything that I am and everything that God is, and how incredibly amazing He has been in my life.  Maybe I'll actually be able to use this testimony and this voice and these words to impact someone's life, someone else who is desperately crying out for some reassure, crying out for answers, crying out for some peace.