Wrestling with Sadness: A Dance with 'Letters to a Young Poet'

Are you sad? Living in a season of sadness and melancholy?

Embrace it. Let it settle deep within you. Do not run from it, tempting as it may be. Invite it to stay a while as your guest.

Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divining, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent. Rilke, pg 64 

I was a cheerleader in junior high and high school. Mostly the same girls on the squad my whole life. There was one girl on the squad who just didn't like me. And whether she intentionally meant to or not, I will never know, but she did an unspeakable number of cruel things to me.

I remember inviting girls to come over to my house or to go to the movies after games (the mean girl included) and all of them would akwardly say that they were sorry, they already had plans. And then I remember what it felt like to hear her talking loudly, minutes later with her back to me, about how the girls were actually going over to hang out at her house and how much fun they were going to have. In front of me.

They all had plans because they were all going to her house and I was the only one not invited. And she made sure I knew that time and again. Countless Friday nights I would go home in tears, my dad saying "I'm so sorry sweetheart. Don't let her ruin your night. We're going to have a great night. Want to go to CiCi's Pizza?"

And while I love my dad and the precious offer, that just made it worse. I felt like the most lame person alive.

They were tiny moments. But there were lots of them. Enough to make me feel stupid and lonely. And even though I had amazing friends from church- and a social life through my youth group- I felt so alienated and excluded from the girls that I spent the most time with. I can't count how many Friday night games I left, holding back tears, feeling alone, embarrassed and unwanted.

But, please, consider whether these great sadnesses have not rather gone right through the center of yourself? Whether much in you has not altered, whether you have not somewhere, at some point of your being, undergone a change while you were sad? Rilke, pg 63

It caught up with me my senior year and I fell into a deep season of sadness.

I could not 'see further' and 'endure my sadness with greater confidence than my joy'. I could not see past the hurt- into college or into a career or into a time where I would not feel alone.

But more than that, I could not see that during the season of sadness, during those Friday nights of loneliness, something new was being introduced into my soul and ushered into my life. I did not know I was undergoing a change while I was sad. But I was.

During those nights I learned empathy and compassion. During those nights I learned to read scripture in my bedroom closet. During those nights I learned to sing harmony. And I sang for hours. During those nights I learned that kindness matters. People matter. During those nights I came to know the Holy Spirit as one of my most constant companions. During those nights I became an artist. A lover. A preacher. A thinker. An activist. A champion of the underdog.

I just did not know it.

I did not 'count it pure joy'  to be excluded; the constant target of a mean girl. Back then, I was angry and sad and embarrassed. I wish I could have seen during that season, during that stillness, that something new had entered my soul and taken up residency. But I did not have eyes to see.

And maybe you, in your sadness, do not have eyes to see yet either.

And this is why it is important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside. The more still, more patient and more open we are when we are sad, so much the deeper and so much the more unswervingly does the new go into us, so much the better do we make it ours, so much the more will it be our destiny, and when on some later day it happens (that is, steps forth out of us to others), we shall feel in our inmost selves akin and near to it. Rilke, pg 65

Years later, I signed a record deal and threw a party. I dreamed up songs and recorded them. I got on stage in front of thousands of teenagers and reminded them of God's love for them. Of their unique being and their importance in this world. I hugged and prayed with more broken people those first few years than I would have ever dreamed.

And I remember so clearly the moment in the midst of all of that, that I realized, where I was and what I was doing had entered into me a long time before that actual moment.

Infact, it came to me in the silence of my sadness. Feeling alone, excluded, angry and sorry for myself. The new had gone into me back then. While I kicked and screamed and fought against being alone; God was actually growing new things inside of me. The idea of settling into and welcoming a season of sadness was the last thing on my mind as a wounded 17 year old girl. And yet it was there, on those lonely Friday nights, that my future was born.

And years later, when it 'stepped forth out of me and onto others' I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that for me, I was exactly where I was because once there was a season of sadness that grew new, beautiful and mysterious things inside my soul. 

I only wish I would've known back then. Perhaps I would have shed less tears and found joy in the in-between place. Perhaps I would have done what the poet so beautifully tells the young man he is trying to counsel in this series of letters to do: 'be lonely and attentive when one is sad.'

I hate feeling lonely. I despise seasons of sadness for the immediate pain, shame and vitriol they seem to conjure up in me. But I am so, so grateful that I have endured them. I believe it has been in these seasons that God has prepared my heart and equipped me with every beautiful and good thing that has, at some point in the future, come to life.

And while it is hard to say whether Rainer Maria Rilke would ascribe anything to God, much less God's very existence, it is easy to say that he understood the depths we must travel, the depths that Jesus himself traveled (Think 40 days of isolation in the wilderness or the feeling of loneliness as Jesus asked God to take away the cup of suffering while his friends kept watch. Only they didn't keep watch, they fell asleep.)

... to arrive at that still place of sadness where something new comes to life.

So you must not be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Rilke, pg 69-70

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43: 19

*sadness: A season of sadness and a battle with a clinical diagnosis of depression are quite different. As a girl who has long struggled with mental illness (OCD/ADHD) and believes in proper therapy and medicine, I would never want my words to discourage someone from seeking the help they might need. Depression is real- and it steals from the fullness of life God created you to live in. For more information about the difference between a season of sadness and clinical depression, visit a trusted site like Dr. Les Carter's.

All quotes taken from: Rilke, Ranier Maria. Letters to a Young Poet: Revised Edition. New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 1954.

South Sudan: Part 3

It is a simple memory-

but one that haunts my mind.

The sound of rain coming for me.

Last week in Lietnhom, South Sudan I slept under a tin roof (one of the only tin roofs in the village; everything else is thatched) during one of the biggest thunderstorms I have ever heard in my life. The rain sounded like an army. Constant, steady, violent, encroaching. Angry. All night long it pounded away at the roof like artillery fire.

It is odd to sit in my living room today and watch the soundless rain roll off my shingled roof.

Like most of South Sudan, there is no electricity in the village of Lietnhom. So when it is dark, it is very dark. And when bolts of lightning strike, they pierce the sky with an unbelievably cruel, taunting brightness.

It must be scary as a small child to live in a hut with a thatched roof and no electricity during a thunderstorm.

It is utter darkness. No sound of cars in the distance. No highways. No stadium lights or street lights or sirens. Can you even imagine that kind of darkness? That kind of silence?

I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared.

I was.

In fact, the truth is, I was scared during much of my trip to South Sudan.

***

The people were kind beyond measure. They offered us the very best of every single thing they had. Their food. Their beds. Their friendship. Still, I found myself laying in bed each night praying several different prayers of desperation.

"Lord, please send a UN helicopter to come get me."

"God, if you're gonna end the world somehow, someway- tonight would be a perfect night for you to go ahead and do that."

"God I will do anything- I will serve you anywhere- if you will please, please just deliver me from this place."

It is with great shame that I confess: My solution, as I interacted with people living in extreme poverty, was to beg God to put an end to the world. Or at the very least, send in a special UN convoy to rescue me from latrines, mosquito nets, cold showers, no electricity and the really scary thunderstorm in the black of night that rattled the tin roof above my head like an army, coming to pillage.

***

Just because I spent a few days in the bush of South Sudan, Africa doesn't make me a saint or a hero or even a humanitarian. I'm not. I straight up spent most of my time praying for the apocalypse just so I would not have to pee in another bush on the side of a dirt road. Is that really end-of-the-world worthy? I think not.

If you make any conclusion about me based on my trip to South Sudan, conclude this: I am scared and selfish.

Scared to eat food that comes out of a tin shack with mud floors and barefoot women. Scared to eat the chicken on my plate (because I swear he was just roaming around my bedroom window a few minutes ago). Scared to use the latrines, convinced that the horrific smell has created some sort of critter that will come out and eat me. Scared to sleep in pitch black darkness. Scared to hold a baby that may not live to be a little girl. Scared to hug a momma who has to bury that little girl. Scared to look at both of them in the eyes and imagine it being me and my little girl. Scared to love them and see them as people...

because what if I go home and forget about their stories? Forget their cries for help?

"No milk. No milk," the momma shows me her breasts, drooping and empty, "You take her." And she tries to hand me her four-month-old baby.

Scared to look her in the eyes- scared that seeing her as human means I must act.

Scared that the problem is too big to be solved.

Scared that the only solution is death.

At the end of the day- I was just scared.

And selfish.

Though the country was beautiful and the people I met were amazing... the truth is, I couldn't get home fast enough. When I got to Washington, D.C. my dad picked me up from the airport. I asked if we could go straight to a restaurant for breakfast. I scarfed down croissants and muffins. A latte. In a pastry shop that serves the up and up of Washington, D.C. elites. From there I went straight to the store and bought a new outfit. A razor. Body scrub. Face wash. I showered for nearly an hour. An entire hour of wasted water and gas. And then, we went out to eat again for Mexican food. I ordered $10 tableside guacamole. By the time I caught my flight back to Nashville I had spent more money in half a day than the families I had just been with, spend in a year.

And the spending and eating and gluttony on all levels was cathartic. A sort of cleansing of the poverty via a frenzy of money spending. It was like something in me needed to spend money. Needed to consume. Needed to re-ground myself in wealth and comfort as quickly as possible.

And that speaks to my own selfishness. My own poverty.

An unhealthy dependence on the things of this world to make me feel comfortable and happy.

***

So now you know the truth. I am just a girl. Mostly scared. Mostly selfish. Entirely out of her element in the small village of Lietnhom, South Sudan. Praying, begging for some end-of-the-world moment, simply so I could be delivered from my own discomfort.

Poverty does that to us. It makes us uncomfortable. And if we can just get to the center lane, so we don't have to pull up right next to the homeless person on the corner and look them in the eyes, we have saved ourselves the discomfort of having to know and having to act.

The truth is, my trip to South Sudan with World Concern was one of the hardest trips of my entire life. And I feel like a baby saying that- because my teammates joyously snapped pictures, conducted interviews, pooped in latrines without complaint and ate the poor little pet chickens without hesitation. But for me- it was hard. It was hard on my body and soul. It was an affront to every single way of life I have ever known.

South Sudan was hard for me.

***

I met a family on my way out of the country who were there with their four American teenagers. The family is thinking of starting an orphanage in Kuajok, South Sudan. They already have the land given to them by the government of South Sudan- now they just have to raise funds for the building. But the parents wanted the kids to come over first- to see the place they felt God was leading them to.

The mom told me about the oldest daughter, Jane, getting violently ill during one of the rainstorms I mentioned. They were staying in a tent near the Nile river, the rain was pounding down relentlessly, their oldest daughter was throwing up violently, face-first on the muddy earth. And as the mom knelt by her side to care for her- a giant, five-foot snake slithered past.

And the mother broke.

As she told her story over a cup of tea in the airport in Ethiopia, tears ran down my face.

No one in their right mind voluntarily goes to places totally off-grid, totally removed from the basic accommodations of modern society, totally removed from any level of comfort... no one goes there, but for the grace of God.

We are all a little scared to stare poverty in the face. And we should be.

Poverty displays the very essence of our brokenness as people. Those living in it and the rest of us... avoiding it. We both operate out of poverty.

Jesus came to alleviate poverty. He didn't avoid it. In fact, in the New Testament, many times Jesus went out of his way- literally, through different villages and cities IN order to stare the broken, hurting, poor, widowed, ostracized people in the eyes. He looked poverty in the face, in order to give hope. Other times, he went out of his way to teach those with wealth what it truly looked like to follow him. To give away possessions, and more importantly, to be willing to follow His lead even when it meant personal comfort would be diminished. He knew that people were either impoverished in their spirit or in their possessions. A lack of faith or a lack of bread were the same in His eyes-

and he sought to shine new life into both kinds of people.

***

Abby, the 15-year-old younger sister who held her big sister's hand while she threw-up all night next to the Nile river, wrote this about the experience in her blog:

Everyone was forced to face their biggest fear. For Jane it was throwing up, for mom it was seeing a snake head right toward them... 

I write this not to warn you of snakes or getting sick in the middle of the night in Africa but rather to say that God walks us through our greatest fears sometimes to show us that he is so much bigger, so much greater, than anything we could ever understand. Wow, what a comforting thought. What a loving God. What a great savior. To God alone be the glory! 

We go where God sends us. To the least of these. And the truth is: we're mostly too scared and too selfish to do this on our own. But God 'walks us through our greatest fears.'

So that at the end of the day, I do not stand here a proud girl, telling you of all the amazing things I did to serve the poor...

I stand here as a girl who prayed for a UN helicopter to come rescue me. And instead, found a Savior who gave me strength, comfort and overflowing power and love to stare poverty in the face and at the end of the day- to sleep through the storm.

there, but for the grace of God, go I

Be a part of ending poverty. Join me in seeing One Village Transformed.

South Sudan: Part 1

Please note: This is Part One of a three-part series on my experiences with World Concern in South Sudan. The people of South Sudan are stunning in their beauty, inspiring in their resiliency, delightful in their kindness and convicting in their abundant courage, strength and fight for their freedom and their future. South Sudan is the world's newest nation. Much of South Sudan has been isolated from the rest of the world and violently oppressed for many years by its own countrymen in the North. They have fought fiercely for their freedom and the hope that echoes and sings throughout the country today is a testament to the human spirit. Their story, like other developing nations, is complicated and should not be reduced to any other African nation's story, history or experience. For further thoughts on this, read Pastor Eugene Cho's blog (who also traveled with World Concern to Kenya and Somalia.)

This first installment is markedly sad. However- please continue reading this week. I will highlight some beautiful stories, people and the incredible work World Concern is doing in the transformation of this new nation.

In the midst of the most extreme poverty the world has perhaps ever seen, hope is rising. Possibility is everywhere. And before our lifetime is over, I believe we will look at the country of South Sudan and marvel at where they have come from. 

Poverty

I was 15 years old when I first encountered true poverty.

It was on a trip to care for children with AIDS and work with immigrant families in Miami, Florida. It left an indelible impression on my soul. People starting over with nothing and children suffering the sins of their fathers and mothers. It pierced my soul and became the first of many encounters with "the least of these."

17 years later, I have seen suffering around the world. Inner-city kids in Houston and homeless men in Dallas, Texas. Isolated, malnourished children in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in Kentucky. Orphans in Bistrista, Romania. Street kids turned prostitutes in Budapest, Hungary. Families living on the side of trash heaps in Juarez, Mexico. Poverty stricken villages dotting the mountains of Slovakia.  I've seen a lot.

My frequent experiences with those suffering from profound physical poverty over the years has never mitigated the pain and shock I still experience each time I lock eyes with a fellow human being in pain.

South Sudan was no different.  Here are a few stories I will never forget:

A Give-Away

Three moms tried to give me their babies this week because they cannot feed them. One mom stood at the back of our vehicle, and in front of men, she pulled her shirt down to reveal her sagging, sickly breasts. "No milk. No milk," she said with pleading eyes as she tried to hold up the lifeless skin. Her sweet baby girl, only a few months old, smiled at me. "You. You. You" the mother motioned her head toward me and lifted her baby to my hands. She didn't speak any English. But I think the signal for giving your baby away because you cannot feed her is universal. I shook my head no. I can't. We closed the doors. And the tears that started in that moment broke something deep inside of me. When poverty is so intense that your only option is to give your child away to a complete stranger- or worse- leave your child for dead; you have truly reached rock bottom.

A Lost Boy

Through the work of World Concern, I am inviting my fans, friends and family to join me in helping transform the village of Lietnhom, South Sudan. It is a lovely village! Full of chickens and cows and kids with beautiful voices and hard-working families. While in Lietnhom, we were hosted by another Christian non-profit organization, ALARM. This was too much fun because my husband, Ryan, works for ALARM so I got to meet all the people on the ground that he works with. It was like one big family reunion! One night as we sat outside sipping coffee, one of Ryan's African co-workers, Peter began to tell his life story.

"There were so many times I wondered, as a little boy, if I would ever be free," he said with a sort of content remembrance, "I wondered if I would ever sit, like we do now, and sip coffee and talk with the men."

He was 11 years old when men kidnapped him and forced him to become a child-soldier. As the sun set, Peter very quietly unfolded the horrors of his childhood. Learning to kill at 11 years old, his job was to bury the other little boys who couldn't keep up. Tears streamed down my face as he described digging mass graves and throwing in four boys at a time. This, he said, was the hardest part. He recounted the last time he saw his dad before he was murdered and what it has been like to take in one of his brother's children as his own; his brother was also murdered.

He is the second "lost boy" I have personally had the honor to meet and spend time with. Talking to him, with every broken thing he has seen and every inhumane tragedy he has carried; yet radiating hope, peace, belief and deep love for God, made me think I might just be in the presence of God himself... who carries the broken.

"When I heard the sound of the helicopters, I wondered if it could be true. I wondered if I would really be free," Peter tells his story like it is common, "I laid my head down that night in a bed. The first bed I slept in since I was 11 years old. I went to sleep as a free man. I slept like I had eaten every good food- I slept full."

A Sister

Ellen works for World Concern in South Sudan. Ellen is not her real name and I won't tell you where she works because she has recently left her husband who beat her until she miscarried. After hours of translating for us as we met villagers in corn fields, Ellen opened up and began to tell me about her life. She has a 2-year-old little boy. Her legs are the victims of her husband's machete. She left him, with her little boy. "I could be killed. But it is better to face that fate than to be beat." She tells me that she believes one day women in the rural villages of South Sudan will have basic human rights, but right now, she says, they do not.

"Look at these women," she says as we sit next to a cluster of traditional tukils, "They are shared by one husband. They are not happy. They have no voice. They do not yet know that there is any other way." She confides in me that she might be "A century ahead of my own people," because she knows that being shared by a man, polygamy and the often ensuing abuse, is not acceptable human behavior. She has taken her chances and left- knowing he very well may kill her and her son.

"I will go to university," she says with quiet dignity, "I have planted a crop of sorghum and in two years time, I will raise and sell enough crop to send myself to school. To have education is the only way out. I will go, but I do not have a proper outfit to wear when the time comes."

"Sister," she grabs my hand as we walk through cornfields with little children following in front of us and behind us, "Sister, would you offer me an outfit of clothes so that I might properly attend university in two years?"

In a place where the problems seemed so big and my answers seemed so few- I came home with only the clothes on my back. You would have done the same too.

You can join Christians all over the world who are investing in the lives of our brothers and sisters in South Sudan by donating generously to the work World Concern is doing on the ground. Please join me and Witness the Transformation. 

Give generously here: http://www.worldconcern.org/onevillage/jenny/ 

The Longest Distance Between Two Places

I am coming up for air on the back half of the most strange season of my life. 

So many things have happened in such a short time. A short time that feels like an eternity.

365 days.

How can they feel so torturously long and so incredibly fleeting in the same breath?

At the end of The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' character, Tom, says that, "time is the longest distance between two places."

Oh how I have lived that. The longest, most foreign distances I have ever known were traveled by my shoeless, uncalloused feet this year. I can assure you (though if you have lived long enough, you can assure yourself) that leaving one place and going to the next- unprepared and without a map- becomes a showdown between yourself and the clock; time ticking torturously slow, hour after inconsolable hour, taunting you with its impeccable attention to punctuality.

Time is the longest distance between two places.

But eventually you arrive. Mangledy-bangledy. With calloused feet, some sort of shoes you created along the way, a weary body and pride. The pride that comes from navigating without a map, without a GPS, without a tangible guide. Just you. The frigging wilderness. And a determination to not turn around or quit... to not sit down by a tree and hope that a family of benevolent squirrels will befriend you, to not camp by a cave and hope to be eaten by a bear or accepted as a man-cub, to not carve your name into the bark and eat the kind of magic berries they ate at Woodstock. (Though let's be honest, when you're in-between, all kinds of options are on the table...)

But to keep moving. To endure. To hope for what cannot be seen. And maybe even learn a thing or two about wilderness survival along the way. About what to do with your soul when the space between point A and point B seems like the space between the gravel trails by the riverbed and the summit, 15,000 feet above you.

The in-between always feels interminable when you are in between. 

But eventually you arrive. You really do. You reach the outskirts of the other side, you see the outline of a place you have never known but have fought to see. And it all begins to happen very quickly. The quickness in your step. The trees moving out of your way. The clarity of the path in front of you. The sense of purpose. The dreams surfacing in your soul- as if you never stopped believing. The pride of not being eaten by a bear or joining a family of squirrels or eating the magic-cure-all-berries. The desire to walk faster, to run on calloused feet, to smile and scream and laugh and arrive joyfully broken causes time to change its course.

Now, time flies.

The beat of your own heart flies. You breath in a new way. Deep and with purpose. You know you walked through a wilderness where each moment seemed unbearably slow; but now there are not enough minutes in the day. It all happens so fast, so unexpectedly fast.

When we are again, fully alive, there are never enough moments to be had.

How can one thing that is so scientifically constant, be so inconsistent? How can one year feel like an eternity and the blink of an eye? It's as if time speeds itself up and slows itself down based on the seasons of our souls.

In the season of becoming, time is unforgiving. Lingering on every last second so that we might truly experience the anguish of becoming. And when the soul re-enters a season of purpose and joy, time rushes about, forcing us to choose over and over again what we will wholly give ourselves to.

This long journey of the becoming is finally transforming in front of my eyes into a journey so brimming with new life, that I hardly have enough hours in the day to take it all in. To breathe it deeply enough. Or to sit and dwell on the fact that this exact week, one year ago, my world was turned upside down and I found myself shoeless, with uncalloused feet, dropped at the base of a wilderness I had never known.

I look forward to being able to tell the whole story very soon. But until then- thank you for the many prayers offered on my behalf while I journeyed through the unknown. Through the becoming. 

And to the ones who are still in between- I wish I could rush the process along for you. I wish time wasn't the longest distance between two places. But it is. So beware of bears, man-cubs, benevolent squirrels and magic berries (though Lord knows those berries are tempting in the in-between). Don't listen to the ticking of the clock. Take hope. From one mangledy-bangledy person to another...

there is another side.

It might take a year- or two- or five- to get there, but soon enough you will arrive, and time will no longer be the litmus for what is not.

Time will be the great gift for what IS.