stages

It was merely my own voice speaking from within my own self. But this was my voice as I had never heard it before. This was what my voice would sound like if I'd only ever experienced love and certainty in my life. How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine?

I'm reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love... and the passage above really hit me today. Elizabeth (its the story of her life) describes a lot of the things I've been wrestling with this summer... finding God's place in my life, figuring out how to view the "old me," moving to a strange place... and her description of how she "found God" struck me.

She saw God at the same moment she most clearly saw herself. It was like a two way street had been opened up, and they had become one.

That's prayer.

I've been seeing myself a little more clearly lately. It's funny.. I did not anticipate a summer filled with intense soul searching -- in my immeasurable capacity for ignorance, I had assumed I got it all out of my system last summer. But alas, God's not done with me yet. Go figure. :)

I've realized how segmented I've made my life... there's the middle-school Bridgette, the one who fought with her parents and hated the world and went through a mildly-gothic stage when her two best friends moved to tokyo within a month of each other.

Then there's the Charleston middle school Bridgette stage... a pudgy yet fairly happy and rambunctious over-achiever with a group of inseparable yet continuously-dramatic pre-teen gal pals.

Then there's high school/freshman Bridgette stage.. the one that's harder to talk about. She had it all figured out... or so she thought :)

And then there's me.

But as I sat by the pool reading this book, I read Elizabeth describe her old self, addicted to a man who didn't love her:

"He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes... So that's it. You have now reached infatuation's final destination -- the complete and merciless devaluation of self."

The depth of that passage didn't hit me until Mass tonight. I was sitting there, singing my little heart out... when I suddenly realized that I, like Elizabeth, had decided at some point that it was okay to set off a part of me -- one of my "stages" -- as pathetic. I, like Elizabeth, have said so many times ... "I would have hated me, too."

But is that really okay? Can we really hate our "old selves" -- or excuse others for hating our "old selves" -- even if for just a little "stage" of our lives?

No. I was, and forever will be, Bridgette.

No matter how great things are now or how shabby they were then... even in the depths of despair and the worst moments of life, we are still people to be valued with dignity and respect. Even during the stages we'd rather forget.

So in the middle of Mass, for no real reason at all, I fought back a tear for the first time in a long time. I realized that even my "old self" was worth something.

Rascall Flats says...

The Heaven knows those years without you were
Shaping my heart for the that day I found you
If you're the reason for all that I've been through
Then I'm thankful for the day before you

Now you're here and everything's changin'
Suddenly life means so much
I can't wait to wake up tomorrow
And find out this promise is true
I would never have to go back to
The day before you

Cheesy as the song may be, I like that he doesn't trash talk the days before... they were a time of shaping. And shaping is ugly, and sin is ugly, and life is often ugly (especially some of those 80s fashions. eep!) But in retrospect, it's also precious. All of it.

How will we ever clearly see God if we only selectively see ourselves?

Just a little thought :)