bethcarroll

Being a young woman is hard.  Friend drama is hard. School is hard. Learning to stand on your own more and on your parents less is hard. Managing the expectations of your peers, your teachers and your family is hard. And oh yes, let us not forget the biggest mystery of all, boys. Or maybe eye liner application.  But no, probably boys. All of this comes so fast and furious when you’re young. It amazes me that so many of you teens are as poised and successful as you are, with all of this change you are trying to manage.

Over the last year, I have had the pleasure of having my daughter turn 13, as well as getting to know some of the young people in my church youth group. I remember all too well the joy, tumult; the whiplash change of emotions girls experience all in a day, if not an hour.  It can all be so completely overwhelming that you wonder if life, and the feelings that go with it, ever settle down. Well girls, take it from me, the former queen of teenage drama, it does get better. In fact, I am going to take a few minutes and share with you a few of the tips I wish more adult women had shared with me at your age.

Reflect before you react. I know a lot of adults have probably given you plenty of advice.  Don’t drink. Don’t have sex yet. Be careful what you post on the internet.  I’m not going to give you more of that kind of direction.  What I will say is this.  You will never regret having taken the time to really learn about yourself. What do you value?  What makes you uncomfortable? What is that about which you are most passionate? If you’re not sure yet, learn.  Start journaling your thoughts; pick the brains of your peers.  Even better? Pick an adult you respect or a parent and start peppering them with questions. You are never too young to ask big questions and demand big answers; and this is why. Only when you have clear direction as to why you believe, will you be able to readily defend it and stick to it when those sticky situations arise. Because they will. Life happens quickly. The deeper your moral well is, the less apt you are to get thirsty for the water of peer pressure. Quench your own thirst.

Pace yourself. For whatever reason, so many well-meaning adults make statements to teens like “these are the best days of your life; make the most of them.” Or “seize the day.” Now don’t get me wrong, every day of our life is a precious gift and we want to honor them that way. But this doesn’t mean you should throw yourself into all of your life’s goals or search out all of life’s highs before the age of 18. Or that you should feel guilty if life simply doesn’t feel like they are the best days of your life.  In fact, in many cases they won’t.  I remember hearing those seize the day statements when I was younger and feeling so confused. What dominated my thoughts then was trying to figure out why my crush John Sherman wanted to take my best friend to the Homecoming Dance and not me.  I cared about why that group of tenth grade boys taunted me about my frizzy hair when I walked by them in between classes at school. I wanted the lead in the school play so badly I would lay in bed wide awake until 3 AM plotting the perfect outfit I would wear to auditions the next day, because heaven forbid I lose the part simply because I wore my black heels instead of my white flats.  These were supposed to be the best days of my life?

This, girls? Is NORMAL.  Your life probably feels dramatic.  One day you will feel like you rule the world; the next you will wonder why you are even here.  In fact, I would be willing to guess that some of you even struggle with feeling depressed. Sometimes your life will feel unmanageable. Don’t let those well-meaning statements muddy your “moral well” water for you.  Life gets better! As you make mistakes and live and question and laugh and cry and try and push and give up and try again, you will eventually begin to find your way. Keep going.  Focus on what is front of you for today and just make the most of that.  As you live forward, you and your life’s passions will eventually find each other, even if it doesn’t happen as a teen.

What is beauty?  On behalf of the women who speak into your life, I’d like to apologize to you.  As women we love to compliment each other. If we like your shoes, we will tell you. If your brown top really makes your blue eyes pop, you can be sure we will let you know.  Even if you walk out of a salon with a hair event so awful that you are driven to Britney Spears yourself bald, we will STILL tell you how amazing your au natural scalp looks when it shines in the sunlight. I believe this complimenting phenomenon is motivated by a true desire to lift each other up and there is nothing innately wrong with praising others over their appearance. But here is where the apology is needed.  Too often, we settle for offering only superficial praise.  We say that physical beauty is only skin deep, yet we spend too little effort in offering verbal means of support that could truly motivate and inspire you to become the best you can be.  We women might not be drinking from your moral well, but we’re not helping you dig it any deeper either. We will readily tell a little 5 year old girl how pretty her dress is, but unless we’re her parent, we might not be telling her how smart she is when she successfully sounds out the words of a street sign.  We will tell you, my fine teenaged friend, how adorable you look in those skinny jeans, but maybe what you need to hear is “You always articulate yourself so well, have you ever considered public speaking?” or “Thank you for sticking up for Sue. The world needs more friends like you.” I, for one, have challenged myself to encourage you all in a more meaningful way and I hope you have others speaking into your life more intentionally too.

So, I apologize for not offering more eyeliner tips (less is more unless you’re Adam Lambert or dressing up as Cleopatra for a school project).  But if these few simple nuggets of perspective help you accept yourself one iota more, then maybe my own drama from my youth wasn’t completely in vain.  If these years aren’t the best of your life, they can certainly be years that carve you into becoming the best woman you were designed to be. Here’s to you and your future. 

How well do you know the person you’re following?

I’ve been a Christian my entire life. I am the product of several generations of pastors and missionaries; issues of faith being something discussed and celebrated very openly at my home, growing up. While some kids were out playing catch or getting ice cream with their parents, the Carrolls’ sat at home on Saturday nights playing Bible Trivial Pursuit.  Now that I have you all lathered up in vehement envy, let me add to it by telling you those intense, competitive games have served me well.  Pastor asks a rhetorical question during a Sunday morning sermon asking which Biblical figures were involved in the Transfiguration?  I don’t even bother raising my hand.  It is my knee jerk reaction to just yell out “Jesus, Moses and Elijah!” as if I was winning final Jeopardy. I also take vain pride in being able to find any scripture passage in the Bible in 10 seconds or less.  Habakkuk 2:16?  Boom.  There.  No Bible index needed.  1^st Peter 6:3?  Ohhhh.  Don’t mess with the Bible Trivial Pursuit master.  There IS no 1^st Peter chapter 6.  It ends at chapter 5.

On an intellectual level, I know my faith well.  Apostles Creed memorized? Check.  Nicene Creed?  Yep; memorized too.  Lord’s Prayer, regardless of the version, I could say in my sleep and probably have.  Since my dad was also my Catechism teacher (catechism is a summary of denominational beliefs, posed in question and answer form), I have many of those questions and answers tattooed into my psyche too.  Suffice to say, if Bible knowledge could cure cancer, I could put Johns Hopkins out of business. But the problem is Bible and doctrinal knowledge are not even in the same solar system with what true Christian faith even is.

Christianity is not a board game.  It is a friendship.

If I took the time to memorize your height, weight, your address, talked about you and your friends as if I knew you all when in fact we had never met, showed up at your home to look for your diary and then memorized and recited portions of it in public, you would not call me a friend.  You would call me a sociopath and probably take legal steps to ban me from being within a ½ mile radius of you.  Yet, this is what many of us do with our own faith.  God tried sending us the whole law engraved on a stone tablet thing to get our attention once, but humanity didn’t grasp it. He sent us the most specific, personal, human metaphor he could to get our attention, a man.

Slowly and steadily since childhood, I have let go of my stone tablets and learned to hang out with the man.  This is what I have learned about him so far. He’s kind of an introvert, which is good because I am pretty much all out there on the personality spectrum, so I’ve got that whole public spectacle thing covered. His calmness balances me. He speaks in a soft voice and chooses his words pretty carefully.  In fact, sometimes he’s SO quiet that he chooses other people, events or nature to do his talking for him.  He loves metaphors and art which is a language I love and speak fluently myself, so I dig this about the man.  I have never seen him get pissed at me, although I wonder if he does.  He does get concerned for me.  If I am choosing to do something that will probably hurt me, he gently warns me, but still lets me make my own choice; just like any other loving friend. The best part about my friend though? Once I screw up, he not only bends over backwards to comfort me, he even acts like nothing negative happened in our relationship.  He’s just happy to have my company again. He’s the least passive aggressive, least manipulative person I have ever known.

I’ve been hanging out with the man long enough now that I’ve even learned to recognize his voice in the middle of the most insane chaos. There have been countless times when I have been in the middle of the most confusing scenarios, some of them life altering, when nothing in front of me makes the slightest bit of sense.  I can be grieving a loss.  I can be stressed beyond imagination. I can be facing a decision where everyone wants me to act one way, but I feel like I am supposed to be doing something completely different.  He gets that and gives me clarity. Or like now.  I finally realize just how little control I have in my now and in my future.  My friend has this supernatural ability to give me that one word; that one reassurance I need to endure one more hurdle in front of me.  He helps me chill out when I am stressed, even if it is meted out for only hours or moments.  If I ask for more, it is never withheld.

 He is the most patient, loving, gracious, gentle friend I have ever known and I am indescribably gratified to have stuck it out long enough to get to know the man, instead of settling for his biography. It’s just as well, since I think he’s the one person who could kick my ass at Bible Trivial Pursuit.

Two Years.

It is long enough to build a carefully designed home. In that span you can meet someone special and marry, or support a friend who beats cancer into submissive remission. In two years you can raise a baby from infant to toddler, evolve from couch potato into a marathoner, or pick the first fruits from a planted tree. Transformation can be yours in two years.

I began my journey towards a life beyond codependency two years ago this month. The woman who sat down on the olive green velour couch at her therapist Deborah’s office in March of 2010 was stressed to the point of losing clumps of her hair. She was obsessive, angry, empty, confused, physically and emotionally exhausted; a train wreck. She didn’t understand how a lifestyle of pouring herself into the lives of others could leave her in complete misery. After all, this is what good Christian women do, right?

For years I covered up my pain and ugliness by focusing on others instead of myself. I was fearful that if I actually gave voice to my emptiness and depression, it would take control. It would rule me. I would hate its voice. I would hate me. Once I began stripping off all the layers of emotional wallpaper, I was surprised to meet the woman underneath.  I actually liked her. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I was depressed.  These emotions needed their turn to tell their story, because the funny thing about strong negative emotions is they come standard with the human existence package.  You don’t get to experience the exhilarating ones, without also going through the dregs with the sucky ones.  In order for your heart to become stronger than you could ever imagine, you must be willing to let it be destroyed.

I could spend a lot of time bemoaning how messed up I was then. How I had squandered so many years manipulating to get what I was starving for from others ill-equipped to give it to me. Today is not that day.  I want to celebrate my transformation.

I now know I have a future. I have finally found my voice as an artist and writer and work every day towards making these passions a part of my career, instead of cute little hobbies I hide from everyone. I live more honestly and vulnerably.  One of the bigger surprises of the last two years has been learning that the more I let people see my “works in progress” the more they are drawn to me.  In the letting down of my defenses, I have finally found the depth of relationship that has eluded me my entire adult life. I have learned that God is glorified in my weaknesses, just as He is in my strengths. I even let my kids in on my weaknesses and I am a better Mom for it. I apologize frequently to myself and others and then move on without bullying my soul over it. I cry now. This is huge. I hug more. This is even bigger. I like my body, which I used to loathe. I love its abilities, how strong it is, even its quirks.  I judge others less, while encouraging myself and loved ones to be better. That’s the funny thing about healing; once you have a taste for it you want it all the more. Life is so damn short, why settle for anything but to be your very best? I have peace.  I am passionate. I am fearless. I take risks. I love more. I matter.

I have been redeemed.

Some well-meaning folks (OK, maybe they don’t mean well, I just thought I’d give them the benefit of the doubt) will tell you that we are hardwired to be who we are. Despite our desire to change for the better, we will always reboot back to being the same person with the same values destined to go down the same path. I think it is these people who develop personality tests and come up with floor plans for prisons. This is bull shit. There may be some validity in their thought, but I find it fatalistic and lacking in any room for hope and redemption.  You can’t always completely eliminate your weaknesses, just like you can’t eliminate your strengths, but you can improve on your inadequacies and rely on God and others to help you along.

To those looking to get out of your emotional pit, I want to throw you a rope.  Take personal and gentle care of yourself.  We are taught, especially as women, that our identity and worth comes from caring for others. On a certain level, this is beautiful, but there is no way in hell you can love another if you are living a lifestyle of feeling unloved yourself.  You want to feel full of worth? Treat yourself like someone who is priceless.  Go on walks by yourself.  Talk to God by yourself. Treat yourself to concerts or dinner or shopping.  Journal frequently.  Vent consistently to a couple of friends, even if you feel guilty doing it. Do all of this when it seems you have no time.  Make time for yourself and the priorities naturally figure themselves out.  If you aren’t caring for yourself already, it will feel unnatural and counterintuitive. Your mind will be filled with all of the other tasks you should be doing and all the people for whom you should be caring.  You will feel like you’re letting someone else down. This is good news; it means you are loving yourself, all the while giving someone else permission to do the same. In two years, you too can have an entirely brand new life. It will be worth it.

Keep moving. Keep failing. Keep trying. Keep growing. 

Insecurities are like underwear. Everybody wears them and arranges their clothing in such a way to conceal them.  Most people hope for the right relationships to come along that allow them the vulnerability to expose what is normally hidden and in return find affirmation and acceptance.  If you’re blessed, you find this with a select few.

I do my damnedest to live honestly.  I assign much value in being the same Beth with my friends, as I am in church, as I am at home. I do not act this out perfectly, but have come far.  I spent too many years carrying around shame about my weaknesses and internal ugliness; worrying about the opinions of others, fooling myself into thinking I had any real control of how others felt about me any way. I finally gave much of this up and am so much lighter as a result. My friendships are richer, my happiness deeper, and my smiles reflect the state of my soul instead of masking its unseemliness.

But if my vulnerabilities were valentines to be given away, there is at least one that I still clutch to my chest. That one valentine reserved for the person you care about most but are just too insecure to give. My neediness. It embarrasses me.  I need relationships. I need acceptance. I am fearful of being alone. I am terrified of rejection.  I desire to be wanted.  I abhor the slick, dysfunctional steps I have taken to meet these needs in the past; a desperation for love, just as thick as the desperation to hide my need for that love.

My neediness is perhaps the scariest of all my insecurities.  Why is this? The need to be loved is arguably the trait that makes me human. It is just as basic as food and air. Why does admitting my need for it feel so raw? Why do I make ridiculous choices in an attempt at hiding this need?  Saying no to initiating conversation that could be meaningful simply because I worry not enough time has elapsed since the last time I initiated a conversation.  Not making eye contact with someone for fear they will catch a glimpse of that engulfing need.  I passively sabotage the very element for which I am longing.

It only takes once. One time to strip your clothes and be laughed at. One time to give that valentine only to have it balled up and thrown back at you. One time to say “I need you” only to have one reply “I don’t care” in return. That one humiliation or even just the fear of it can scar all emotional choices for the rest of your life.

If you let it, that is.

It only takes once.  One time to strip your clothes and be embraced.  One time to reach out in love, meet another’s need and have them respond back in love. One time to make a connection you could carry with you for the rest of your life.

One time to dismiss your fear and walk forward in freedom.

Lent is funny.  Every year it comes along and every year I mock it.  For the unfamiliar, many Christians fast or sacrifice certain foods or activities for 46 days before Easter as a way of remembering God’s sacrifice of His son Jesus for the salvation of humankind. Personally I just love coming up with ridiculous ideas I will give up like my dog, my sanity, or last year when I said I am just “giving up for Lent.” It is not because I take any issue with the pre-Easter season, rather I possess an irreverent sense of humor that enjoys poking fun at the status quo and even religion.  I am mature, I know. Don’t get me wrong, I have committed to my share of Lenten sacrifices, like last year when I successfully gave up sugar for the first 36 hours of Lent.  Now THAT was a mountaintop spiritual experience, let me tell you.  Especially the part when I took the Lord’s name in vain 13 times in the last 20 minutes of that 36 hours upon being presented with two Cadbury Cream Eggs. Suffice it to say, I would not make a great martyr.

This year as I started brainstorming all of my fake sacrifices, I had a bit of a spiritual epiphany.  HEY. Don’t judge.  If God can get the attention of a Christian killer like Saul/Paul, blind him, and convince him to turn his murderous ways around, knocking a little sense into a smart ass sinner like me should be a cake walk for the Lord.  Mmmmm.  Cake….sugar.  See what I mean? I am a mess. What was I talking about again?  My epiphany. Right.  Anyway the thought entered my mind “Beth, what about giving up ‘giving up’ for Lent?” To which I thought back “Now THAT is an awesome play on words.  Thanks Big Guy for that funny idea.” God has an AWESOME sense of humor.  Just look at hairless cats, tomatoes being considered a fruit, or celebrities being allowed to write autobiographies or become goodwill ambassadors.  Funny stuff!

Except this epiphany wasn’t funny. After I let the weight of that phrase sit and have a cup of coffee with me for a few minutes, I was struck by the seriousness of that statement.  Much of my life, I have given up too quickly.  For too long, I have automatically resorted to “no” as my knee jerk answer when presented with opportunities to try a new activity or job, make a new friend, or even risk a new lipstick color. I give up and give in too easily. If something feels off or different, I have assumed a choice must be wrong, when in reality the very act of doing something differently is the key to transforming your life, one “wrong” decision at a time. Of course the decision will feel different. But this is what I have wanted all along; a different life.  A life that is challenging, one that optimizes my gifts in spite of my weaknesses, one that is filled with new and beautiful friendships.  One that is filled with risking much in hopes of gaining infinitely more. This is my one life and I want it to count.

Then, Beth? Give up giving up.

So I am.

For the next 46 days, I am taking perhaps the biggest step of faith in my adult life.  Once a day, I commit to saying yes to something I would have otherwise said no to the other 319 days in a year.  I have no idea where this will take me.  I imagine God will present small choices some days and seemingly enormous ones on others. I also imagine the small acts can quite possibly have even larger impact than the larger. What would happen if for once in my life I was known for one who simply says yes?

This year I am hording as many of those sickly sticky slimy sweet eggs I can get my pre-diabetic hands on.  I need all of the fuel I can to be ready for this Lenten adventure.  Stay tuned.

The instructions were simple.  Select four rocks from the dish and stack them on top of each other.  They waited patiently in their glass home for me, each one gleaming with potential energy, begging me to select them and explore their unique workings.  Some of the rocks were beautiful and polished and you could almost see your reflection in their face. Others were untouched and left in their natural state; porous, rough, dull looking. None of them symmetrical.  Ten stones in all, I picked each one up, examined them and laid them on the table next to each other. A casting call for a strange game of Jenga.

A little known embarrassing story about me. My junior year in college I joined my family on a 3 week cruise to Australia to celebrate my parents’ 25^th wedding anniversary.  As strange as my family can be, this was not the embarrassing part.  While there I participated in a talent show.  My area of study in school was theatre and music, so naturally my contribution to the show was to belch the alphabet.  OK, not really. I performed an aria.  Habanera from Carmen to be specific. And when I say perform? I mean PERFORM.  See, there was this guy also on the cruise who I believe is the single reason why the world hates American tourists.  American Guy was loud, brash, rude and even threw a drunken punch at my dad the previous night. And? It just so happened that American Guy was sitting in the front row for the talent show.  I will put it this way.  Habanera is known to be one of the more sensual arias in all of opera. Physically directing this sort of sexual energy via choreographed song to a specific person under a spotlight in front of 100 other people is the sort of revenge Shakespeare only wished he could have penned. However this is STILL not the embarrassing part. At least for me.  American Guy can work through his own mortification on his own blog; this is MY story. The embarrassing part immediately followed the talent show.  A Talent Representative from the Miss America pageant was also in attendance.  She approached me and asked me to consider competing in the Miss Michigan pageant.

Rock stacking is not as easy as looks. What I quickly learned was that the prettiest rocks were almost useless.  All of the time and energy used to make them shiny reduced friction making it difficult to keep other rocks from slipping from their surface. No matter how many different ways I tried to arrange them, they just couldn’t hold the weight of the other rocks. They were rendered almost useless for anything other than sitting on the table looking delicate and elegant. Funny how 2 millimeters of glaze can completely change the usefulness of an entire object.

Me committing to wearing a bikini with high heels in front of a national audience would be like Chewbacca opting for a full body wax. The training process would be exceptionally painful and the end product would be frighteningly unrecognizable, if nor hideously funny.  The Talent Representative caught me off guard.  I was not trying to win some silly ship talent show.  I was just trying to have fun; be my goofball self.  I had never in my life entertained the idea of competing in beauty pageants. Getting recognition and rewards for attractiveness was not a value I was raised with, not to mention I did not see myself as a beauty queen in the first place.  I will always be a Gilda Radner, never a Grace Kelly.  Yes, yes.  I get the argument that pageant contestants are celebrated just as much for their ability to be articulate under pressure and their varied gifts, as they are for their perfect smiles.  And yes, the fact that the Talent Representative was drawn to me in my natural goofball state is not lost on me either.  However, the idea that I could be a product and that someone viewed me as something raw to be refined was unsettling to me. 

I shifted my attention to the rough, weathered rocks. I set the largest one on the table and with great ease was able to place other rocks on top without them slipping off.  What was impossible for the glossed stones was effortless for the natural ones.  In fact, I saw that the coarser stones could even hold the glossed ones with little difficulty. Without the crude, rudimentary, uncut, undressed, unfinished, uncultivated and unrefined stones, this task would have been impossible.  The ugly ones were perfect in their imperfection.