On Tenderizing Meat

It's been about a month since my last post (this sounds like some kind of warped confession), but my lack of activity in the blogosphere isn't due to a lack of activity in my world. In fact, too much has been going on and I've been unable to grasp or place any of it well enough to squeeze it into a blog entry that anyone might ever attempt to read. But yesterday I played hooky: After an overly intense weekend and a few days of scraping by on scraps of sanity, I decided to bite the bullet and call in "sick". (Well, I actually called in "overwhelmed". Smooth, right?) I spent the day being still - being present - and some far-fetched pieces fell into place at least enough for me to write about it.

So it's like this...

Remember those e-mail surveys that used to get forwarded and filled out and forwarded again? You know, the ones that are all, "What's your deepest regret? Sunrise or sunset? Where do you see yourself in five years?" Yeah, you know. Well some of them used to have a question like, "What are three words your friends would use to describe you?" Okay, well even if you gave my friends twenty words, one that would never come up is "tender". Neither would "soft". Or "gentle". Not so much.

I never even thought I wanted to be identified that way, but I think I just didn't believe it was possible. I was too busy building an identity on "brutally honest" and "witty" and "feisty" to consider that there was a part of me being ignored (at best) and squelched (at worst). But there was. And it appears that God, in his precise timing and perfect wisdom, has decided to recover the parts of me I spent years trying to push down.

He's softening me.

As lame of an analogy as this is, the process reminds me of tenderizing meat. Either you can soak it in vinegar or you can bash it with metal. If you're the meat, I'm imagining that neither of these is much fun. And the thing is, I've been the meat. (Okay, the analogy is worse than I feared, but I'm forging on anyway...) The past few months I've been bouncing back and forth between soaking in unpleasantness or feeling bashed around by it. Ew.

But God's also been speaking to me. Simultaneously, he's whispering love-words into my heart, providing clarity that's always been out of reach, and breathing courage into me that enables me to take steps into my true identity. He's softening me. Yes, it's happening through a process that makes me feel slightly pulverized, entirely undone, and a tad bit terrified. But he's oh so faithful - hand in mine, speaking truth - through it all.

The hard shell is cracking and falling apart. The wax mask is melting off. I'm facing emotions full-on these days, without the buffer of the collection of coping mechanisms I'd become so adept at using. I could mix and match those tools into a killer cocktail of denial and escapism that would dissolve my anger and dull my grief. But no more. I'm being a little braver these days, accepting the presence of those emotions in all their intensity, trusting in the Father who brought me this far to lead me into a restoration I've never known before. And into the tenderness, softness, and gentleness that he created me to be in the first place.

Here's a song I wrote this week: Tell Me