Deborah Spooner
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Hi, my name is Deborah Spooner, and I can’t not do this anymore.

I just can’t.

It was January 5th at approximately 11:30 PM. I’d hopped under the gold and burgundy comforter and put my head on the Sam’s Club, t-shirt pillow-cased cushion next to my sister’s. She was there, too, in the upstairs spare bedroom, in the city where we’d struggled to find what it means to be women during our high school years. The walls enclosing us now were not the ones we’d grown up in but those my parents moved into recently, a dim reflection of how this town was our hometown but still just wasn't our home anymore. I felt the well inside my chest. I couldn’t help it, this time. She was still next to me, but I felt like I was far from her, not wanting to disturb her almost-sleep with my cries. So, I slid out of bed and went to the adjacent bathroom.

I knew I needed to cry, so I let myself slide down the wall to sit on the floor as a tear slide down my sleep-deprived cheek. I’d found my bin of stuffed animals earlier that day, and to be embarrassingly honest, I held one, now. Bubbles, the fluffy white bear wearing the teal pajamas covered with rubber ducks and (yes) bubbles. I was, yet again, in pain.

And tired of it. I’d spent too many hours on the floor crying in the last ten months than I’m proud to admit.

This time, I was thinking of how the stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas had been much harder than I'd realized. And now I had to go back to the new-home-state, and the thought of getting into my blue grey car and driving down the highways and walking into the grocery stores made me cringe because I felt the pain. I thought of the faces that I’d seen over break and how I’d had to say goodbye. I thought of the doubt I’d had about the choices I made and the rip of leaving those I loved. I sat on the floor, then I looked at my phone. It was 11:30. I had to drive nine hours in the morning. And I thought to myself. I can’t do this, not anymore.

Father, I can’t get myself free of the sadness and pain. I can’t get some of these thoughts off my mind. I want to be free. And I just can’t.

I’d had a conversation, earlier that month. My roommate had been on our deeper-than-jean-denim-blue couch, brown eyes staring into my blue. “And is weakness a bad thing?” I blinked, and hesitated. Weakness disgusted me. I ran from it as hard as possible. Anything but. But I stopped, to actually think deeper. Hesitated. “… no. Maybe weakness doesn’t actually mean… failure.”

I’d been so critical. Deborah, get it together. Deborah, learn how to adjust faster. Deborah, spend more time praying. Deborah, meet goals faster at work. Deborah, you’re disappointing everyone and not being faithful to live as fast and efficiently for God. Deborah, get it together.

Weak. I viewed myself as that. And, it disgusted me. Not even my own Christian living was good enough for me. I didn’t love God enough. Get it together, Deborah. I didn’t stay as faithful to doing the right thing as I should have. Get it together, Deborah. And it was all my fault, all in my power to change. Get it together, Deborah.

I sat, perched on the taller than bar-stool height silver metaled, black cushioned chairs at the island separating our kitchen from the living room. I pulled up my computer and pulled up Facebook messenger video. Soon, the large understanding brown eyes looked back at me. My college mentor and I were finally reconnecting, after months. I told. I told her of the weakness I felt. I told her of the pain of having to realize that I had so much spiritual growing to do, of the frustration with myself at doing the growth so inefficiently. I told her of the disgust, the disgust that I had to go through the process of development and never did it "enough" to satisfy myself. And I should already be past all this anyway, right?

“Deborah, isn’t it beautiful that our wretchedness makes Christ all the more glorious?”

For the past four months, I’d been working on a project with an incredibly gigantic goal. The project’s name literally had Gospel in the name, and it brought me face to faith with the reality that the Gospel is our foundation. It’s where we start and where we end. It’s what carries us through it all.

I was reading another bit for work. And, it talked about the Bible. Bringing me back to my Seminar in Theological Method class and Christian Smith’s work on biblicism, it put it more simply: the Bible isn’t a manual telling us how to live. It’s a beautiful tome showing us who God is. That? Is the core of how we, then, live. We’re wretched and weak, but He is glorious, so glorious.

“Yes, Deborah, I’ve been making it my prayer. Christ, you’re living in me, so please, live out of me.”

Christ in us, the hope of glory. Christ the enabler, empowering us. Christ. I was brushing my teeth later, hit hard. Do I really understand the work of Christ? Have I really let the Gospel transform my life?

I’m a pastor’s kid, working at a highly religious company. I’m a girl who has a bachelor’s degree in Biblical & Theological Studies. I was the champion of my Sunday skills sword drills who’d now given multiple presentations about religion at undergraduate theology conferences. A member of an academic religious honors society, I’ve presented about Koine Greek syntax traced through the epistle of 1 Peter and had collegiate deans and vice presidents come to hear my work. I’m currently reading What is Reformed Theology and The Institutes of Christian Religion just for fun. And now I stood, hair in a messy bun, sweatpants on, with my light-pink toothbrush in hand and weakness in my heart, humbled and being humbled. Do I really believe the Gospel, for me? For my own life?

The hum or the toothbrush contrasted this new hush in my heart. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

Because, I can’t.

I can’t live a Christian life.
I can’t even make it through a half an hour without having a self-referential thought, drenched in my preferences and annoyances, my own critical self-standards of how I don’t measure up to a life reflecting Christ-like character.

Because, I’m just not Christ. That’s why I need him, so deeply. To put on righteousness. To count myself dead to sin and alive to Christ. To count all else as loss except the sake of knowing Christ crucified, and knowing that only through His finished work on the cross can I ever hope to finish any growth inside of me.

Because when I am weak, I have not failed. It is then that I am strong. It’s when my weakness leads me to lay down my striving, my keeping score, my desire to live for Christ good enough that I can realize that He left us on this earth with the very best thing: himself, His Spirit.

I can’t bring transformation.
And who am I kidding. I don’t want that kind of pressure.

This one thing I want, this one thing I want to always want to single-mindedly seek: to each day realize how hidden I am in Christ alone, and how in Christ alone I can lose myself in the best sort of way.

I can’t.
I can’t love people like they deserve.
I can’t be as amazing as a human as my insecurity wants to prove that I am.
I can’t break these bad habits and this sinful desire for more and more and more to fill this void of dissatisfaction.
But I can’t deny that someone died.
Someone died to bring me to the freedom on the flipside of surrender.

Hi, my name is Deborah, and I can’t not do this anymore.

I can’t not realize that my weakness is my greatest strength, because God has used the incredible disruption of my life’s past ten months to disrupt these levels of unknowing selfishness and self-dependence that I revert to in my very worst—He’s used it to bring me to my knees, the very place I need.

I can’t. I can’t not see this anymore even as I fumble to still live it. But oh, how glad I am.

I believe. Lord, help my unbelief.


I’m a coward.

My worn, white high-top vans cushioned my stance as I’d neglected the chair in the heat of the moment in the cool of Ugly Mugs café.

You know what, Deb? I’m starting to believe that maybe you are.

These words of hers actually were deeply kind and hit me with the best sort of pain. You see, less than seven months earlier, I’d moved into an empty room in her house and our conversations had moved through the house into me. There were the early days – when I said “mom’s mom” instead of grandma and she had an indicator of some distance and distrust, when we would discuss our ability to share so much without venturing into vulnerability.

Our deep-striking banter crystalized through the enneagram. I have a love hate relationship with personality tests, mainly that I love to hate how much I think they can become a crutch in our lives keeping us from conforming to Christ instead of a tool to help us do just that. But as an eight, she’d challenged me to dive deeper. At first, we thought I was an eight. A flame that burns too intensely. A force with trust troubles and angered strength. But the truth began: my not only fleeing but denial of pain, my constant hunger for new, my love of the laugh. I am a seven, painting hope over piercing pain because I’m afraid. Deeply, deeply afraid.

I’d recognized the tendencies.

Oh, I’m not going to tell him that. Even though I’m also the co-founder of this magazine, he’s older, more experienced. What do I have to offer? I’m sure he sees things more clearly. Yes, I have this idea for this digital marketing campaign, but I’m so new. What do I have to suggest to my college that they haven’t already thought about? Yeah, I’m the vice president of student government, but he knows better. I just probably am wrong. I don’t know what I don’t know, so how can I know that I actually have anything to give?

Insecurity masked as respectful deference.
Fear covered in a silent excuse that I’ll say more when I know more, have done more, have earned more years.

I’m afraid.

I’m afraid if I stand up, I’ll be told that I’m so wrong so shut up.
I’m afraid if I step up, all I’ll be is standing alone, having tried to contribute and failed.

I.

If I, then I. When I, then I. Till I, then I.

Me.

You see, I think it goes back farther than I’d even care to admit. I used to not have a filter. I used to have a much shorter circuit between what’s in my mind and heart to my mouth. I was fire. I’d ride home from the soccer games, words faster than my sprint after the soaring sphere. I’d watch what was happening at youth group, spewing opinion opinion opinion afterwards.

Then, I started going. Going to a new school as a fourth grader. Looking out at all the people and just wanting to have a place to fit. To understand why their parents drove Lexuses and they could buy their lunch in the hot lunch line instead of carrying a brown bag with the sandwiches like I did. To know why they could spend their time thinking about the next movie they were going to see on their cruise vacation while I was thinking about how that movie didn’t make me think about my Christ I told the wide-eyed, worn souled kids about on Wednesday nights.

When I tried to share my words, I saw. People didn’t think like I talked. So, I learned to talk like they think.

Say words that will make them like you.
Learn to understand their world that seems so different than yours.
Figure out this game of how to live their way.
Because their way is right, and you’re wrong.

I didn’t realize that when I learned to figure it all out, I was learning to keep others out.
I didn’t realize that when I learned to hide myself, I was learning how to carry the burdens of my unpursued dreams.
I didn’t realize that what started as a girl’s desire to securely know she was valuable and loved and could trust people enough to share her soul would turn into a woman’s exhausted habit of living with her head and not her heart.

Doubt would become the rule of my days. I’d trade rest for resentment. I would hide, masking her insecurity as a shield of logic.

For being known and rejected might be one of the biggest fears of all.

I am a coward.

I’m afraid that people won’t like me.
I’m afraid that maybe I’m actually not likeable in the first place.

And I’m so afraid of preserving whatever semblance of happy stability and competence I can give myself that I don’t emerge with my whole heart into the word, trapped by my self-deception that it’s better safer happier right inside me. That people aren’t worthy of trust. That people aren’t ready to hear truth because they might not like the truth giver. That no one understands and never will.

But truth.

“Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourself. Do what it says” (James 1:22).

Listen to my own circular thoughts. Deceive myself into believing that the world is a big scary place that is waiting to slaughter me and my dreams. Do nothing.

Maybe it’s as simple as one step after another.
One small courage in the face of fear.
One conversation more ruled by what I think not just how I think they talk.
One day of putting the needs of others in front of the insecurity I hold as my own.
One deep breath and realizing that the world just might need the uninhibited contribution of yes, even me.
One word closer to being from my heart and not just my head.

I am a coward.
And maybe it’s one day at a time of realizing that it’s not about me.

And I cannot even take a step.
I need transformation.
But I know the one who saves.

Courage, dear heart (c.s. lewis).
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About Me

Deborah Spooner is an analytical creative enamored by ideas and addicted to dripping words in candor. Serving as a Marketing Strategist for LifeWay’s Adults Ministry, she loves all things big-dreaming, difference-making, and Jesus-pointing. A pastor’s daughter with a background in communications and theology, you can find her at her local church with her students (and probably way too excited about the color yellow) as she seeks to know Christ more and make Him known.

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