Life Update
Every time I open my Facebook, which has admittedly been quite often recently as I attempt to distract myself, the little status bar asks me what is on my mind. Right now, that is an awfully scary question. If I could tell you, I would. At this point, there is so much on my mind, I don't even know if I know what it all is. I feel like I am drowning in thoughts with no way to express them.
There has been one thought, however, that has a clearly presented itself every time I open Facebook. We live in a society in which it is easy to distract ourselves, with outlets such as pop culture and social media, because focusing ourselves on those things is much easier than facing the reality of our world today. Acknowledging these realities means that we take responsibility, in some form, for what is going on. And responsibility demands action. Naturally, it is much easier to stay passive and plugged in, content with facades or watered down depictions of reality, but not the reality itself.
Fictional depictions do not need solving. Reality does.
I got the chance to go back home this past weekend, and while I was there, I experienced the inevitable "how is school?" question an overwhelming amount of times. On probably my 7th answer to this question, I realized that I was not being entirely truthful about my responses. Instead, I was slapping on a big smile, and saying that school was going so well, that is was great, and that I loved it. While this is not untrue in itself, it is not the full truth, and I believe the full truth needs to be told.
Truth is: this semester has been a challenge, emotionally, spiritually, and physically at times. Saying that it has been "good" feels like a cop out. The smiles feel fake, and the answers feel like blatant lies the second I let them escape my lips. I slapped on the smiles because I do not feel like explaining what I am doing here in LA anymore, especially to people who probably don't really care. It just seems easier to hide behind a facade of well-being when I constantly feel like I may be one step away from completely falling apart. But I do not like this response because I feel like a fraud. In the midst of a semester in which I am coming face to face with the oftentimes heartbreaking and frustrating realities of this world, I am still choosing to distract myself from taking full responsibility through my tailored responses.
I do not know how, nor can I, bring back together the broken pieces of this world. But sometimes we are not always called to create solutions or to actively fight against injustice. Sometimes, we must simply stand for truth. So in this season of life, I am challenging myself to stand for the truth that God is good. There have been weeks here in LA where I seem to experience frustration after sorrow after heartbreak, and I cannot understand any of it. I cannot seem to reconcile a broken world with a loving God, or why He would allow those things to happen. And yet, while I cannot fully explain the sentiment, I do know that God is good. I am learning that God is more than goodness, too. To say He is good does not mean that there is not bad in this world. That would be a dismissal of pain. But just because God is good does not mean that He is not also in the brokenness. I am learning that God is that in between. He meets us where we are at.
To be fair, it is close to impossible to summarize what I have been learning and how I have been growing this semester. But here is where I am at. I have begun to vicariously grieve through the experiences of others, but I cannot make anyone else acknowledge that pain. I have begun to realize that people often act like they are above brokenness, and I cannot make them realize that this refusal to acknowledge hurt only perpetuates it. I have begun to understand that marginalized people may not want to hear that "God is good," because His goodness can be hard to understand when everything around you is bad. This has been alienating for me. The fact that whole communities around me do not seem to acknowledge these realities in order to promote change inclines me to believe that, when I am asked how school is going, they would not really want to hear about it. The brokenness of the world is easy to ignore or become hardened to, because action against such injustices are hard. I do not write this condemn anyone. I write this to remind myself, and anyone reading this, that others' passive reaction to any situation does not dictate our personal response. The fact that I would perceive others as being apathetic to the given situation should not suddenly enable me to continue to ignore those realities when in conversation with others.
My smiling, grand, fictional depiction of how school is going does not need solving. Reality still does. And God can.
I apologize if none of this make sense. Like I said, I don't always feel like I have the right words to express my thoughts. This blog post has been percolating inside me for over a month, and I still don't feel like I quite did these emotions justice. While it may not have all flowed together, that is what is on my mind, and I figured I would spare Facebook the really long status update.