Michelle's Shell

Merry Christmas!   I don't know about you, but I grew up loving Christmas.   The lights, the songs, the festivities, the snow (yes, it was the north!) and of course, the presents – gotta love the presents.   And every Christmas Eve my brother and I would gather around with my parents and read about the baby Jesus, born on Christmas – compete with small donkey clip-clopping to Bethlehem, bright angels bursting through the night sky to sing to shepherds, and Joseph and Mary, full of wonder.   As I’d sit there listening, colorfully decorated house, family all around, the world seemed so bright and full of hope.   It was easy to see why Christmas is known as the season of hope. But my “hope” seems to have gotten a little more… realistic… over time.   I’ve come to realize that Christmas brings out not only the best but also the worst in people – including fights over mall parking spaces and gaudy commercialism.   The joy of receiving present...

Desire.   There are times it seems like almost a dirty word.   Desire can be as innocuous as craving a sandwich, or as consuming as the deep passions of the heart for love and companionship.   It can be as passing as a fleeting thought or as enduring as the chains of our strongest addictions.   Yet desire, by its very nature, is empty.   It represents a void unfilled, a longing unmet, and hope yet to be realized.   Without fulfillment, desire can leave us hollow, searching, or enslaved. So I used to flee desire.   Let’s be honest, more often than not my desires have seemed to be for the selfish or unholy rather than the righteous.   I long more for my own attention and enjoyment than the salvation of my neighbors.   I long for my “needs” to be met more than to meet the needs of others.   Desire reveals the selfishness of my heart.   And so I may try to run from it.   Squelch it.   Label it as “bad” a...

Michelle, are you really living, or are you just surviving?   I know that whole TV shows have been made around the quest for survival.   But is simply surviving what most of us long for?   Generally not.   Unless we’ve sadly given up on the possibility, we long to not only “get by,” but to have full, free, meaningful lives.   We long to truly live. I think I picked a bad week to write on this topic… You see, I’m a worker.   I somehow happen to have about three jobs at the moment and am about to make a major transition and take on even more responsibility.   I’d say that now could qualify as the definition of “crazy” in my life if any time could.   And in times like these, it’s tempting to just “survive.”   Christmas cheer?   Ain’t nobody got time for that!   I mean, if I make it through to New Years still sane and without a bunch of things falling through the cracks, I’ll be doing well!   So in times past...

There was a time when I didn’t feel like I could be very real.   I lived with spiritual people in a religious world.   Yet I remember thinking, “If I really tell people what I’m going through I’ll probably just get another Bible verse, quote, or be told to have more faith.”   And sometimes that did happen.   I’d leave feeling more guilty and more motivated to just keep my wall up.   But the nature of playing a part is that the only way to keep the outside looking great is to let the inside crumble and die a little more.   I was struggling.   I longed for people to know, yet I feared it like the plague at the same time.   I was a spiritual leader…   What would people think?   Thankfully though, I had a friend who noticed.   And one night he took the time to come to me and say, “Michelle, how are you doing?   Really.”   Then the wall came down.   I didn’t even want it to!   Yet instead of jud...