i've never liked the words "in between."

because when you're in between, you don't fully have either option.

"hey, can you commit to this project?" "sorry, I'm in between one job and another right now."
"did you decide what color you want to paint this room?" "no, I'm still in between grey and tan."
"can you come over right now" "no, I'm stuck in traffic, in between 440 and 40."

in between.

in between where you are and where you're going. in between one option and another option-while being kept from any other options not included in the two.

it seems like life gives us seasons of in betweens.

the hot-red overhead light made the deep-black, leathery heavy bag with TITLE boxing club sewn look extra ominous. I "one!" jabed, "two!" crossed "three!" uppercutted "four!" jab, uppercut, cross, hooked in time with the trainer's shouts. But the thoughts still interjected in between the words and my punches. "one!" you've been coming for six months, and you're still not strong enough "two!" you're probably spending too much time here anyway; you're being selfish "three!" you just don't know enough about how to train, and it's your fault "four!" you're tired, you should give up; giving up is all you do.

in between one negative thought and the next.

my troyathalon quinoa veggie burger complemented her lettuce wrap turkey sphere and the next's sweet potato fries. one youth pastor's wife, one high school leader who'd become a dear friend, and me, a third. elizabeth had asked us what was going on in our lives, and we were opened-up catching up. my co-leader was co-mingling the truth of God's word with the pain of her current reality: getting hit at home, getting hit in her heart, but knowing in the home of her heart that God is still good. "I've been seeking this and asking for it for so long; and it seems like everyone is having it; so why? why has God not given it to me?"

in between hopeful expectations of a good Father and fearful unease about what might never come from His hand.

the yellow, porcelain squirrel peeked up at me. he was sitting by the upper left corner of my cubicle's sit-down-or-stand-up adjustable desk, right next to the blue-glow and dark-grey rectangular charging receptacle. things have been getting so much better. one step at a time, I had been getting my steps in line with work: learning how to tackle the project management tasks so they didn't tackle me, learning what data and financial areas were worth the effort to push for information, learning how to vary the day to maintain focus. but my inbox. the emails. the bane of my work existence since day one. my little porcelain squirrel of encouragement was given by a friend on one of the hardest weeks, one where I almost called in to work because I was not in a mental state to walk in those doors. instead, I brought her squirrel, a yellow orb (the color of quantified joy), a sign of her quantified support. in my cube, i now sat, staring at the emails.

in between what I'm called to do and what I feel like I lack ability to do.

it was then after my cube-working time. i was going to a bingo rally (don't ask). i pulled up directions and checked my friend's location on Find My Friends. Just as she'd thought, she wasn't going to be done on time. I checked the group message; someone else was going to be late. The original inviter I knew would be there, but I was uncertain who he'd be with. So I delayed, not wanting to be there alone, have a 1:1, even when a part of believed that this was what my subconscious wanted most.

in between what I thought I wanted and the ability to start chasing it.

in between.

It seems like life is a series of in betweens right now.

I'm-
in between the reality that my job is a daily, mud-walk-through-struggle that hasn't improved substantially in a year in a half and the reality that this job has so many blessings and perks
in between my heart-fire desire to mentor all my students at church and my heart-deep insecurity that I am maybe the worst mentor alive
in between a desire to devote maybe the rest of my life to tutoring kids and working against community crime and poverty and the tugging thought that I am not the person for this, my time is better contributed elsewhere

I'm-
in between belief that I'm serving the Lord as He wills and a belief that I am a chaotic failure.
In between a faithful daily surrender to the Lord and a faithful daily bout with guilt and regret.
in between a conviction that God is sovereign and in control of my destiny and a crippling pressure that I must control my life and do everything right to end up glorifying God.

I'm in between the perpetual inaction of trying to figure out how to obey and the reality that this desire might be keeping my from costly, maybe risky (ooo, ah) obedience itself.

in between.

But my co-leader co-mingled truth in her heart-bearing: maybe she didn't need the answers right now, as much as I would fight through 10,000 strongmen to give them to her. Maybe her not having answers now is part of the answer: maybe it's part of the cross she's called to bear in this season. Maybe it's an act that's bringing her to the feet of Jesus, surrendered to a future that seems loomingly unknown and living out a daily that feels like it's taking daily loads of crazy-lots strength to make it through.

It's not like we are abandoned here, in our certain uncertainity. God hasn't left us forgotten, but He might be witholding the answers as we see the answer behind what our heart-longing-for-answers have us crying out for: He is the answer Himself.

I want to know what direction I should take in my career (and I'm not going to stop seeking), but I have the answer that whatever career I'm called to, He is going to have ways for me to serve. And I can do so now.
I want to know who the heck I'm going to marry or even date (still waiting), but I have the answer that my deepest security and source of love will never be less than Christ Himself. And I can learn more about this love now.
I want to know if I can finally give up writing words and words or if I'm called to do and stay (only one way to find out), but I know that I must be faithful to obey Christ with the next thing and trust He'll give the strength to keep doing until the time to do is done. And I can be faithful in each task now.

In the in between, we are in between some of our worries, sin, doubts, and Christ's truth. It's in the in between that we see our deepest: all we have is need, and all we need is You.

Post-bingo, I cried in the car. So sick of me getting in the way of loving people. So tired of people trying to show me love that I seem unable to receive. So caught in between where I think God might be leading and the certainty of feeling like I am actually heading there.

Maybe obedience isn't taking the next step in the "answers" of what God has for us or where God is leading us. Maybe it's a commitment to trust and wait and do the next right thing, to learn to seek and sit savoring the beauty of Christ even when.

Because we do know some. We can pray, praise, rejoice, bear each other's burdens, give, take every thought captive, meditate on the word, abide in Christ. We're always in between a chance to remain self-soaked and sulking or to obey the simple commands in the source of truth.

I'm not giving up on seeking clarity and direction in all that God is bringing me through -- through the mental chaos, through the constant fighting against myself every time I sit down to the yellow-squirrel cubicle, through the freezing and awkwardness many times I enter a conversation with a guy, through the discomfort of learning how to mentor, through the daily drudgery of having to do dishes and wash laundry -- but I'm going to choose to focus on the things He's already led me to and called me to devote my life to: to loving Him. to loving people. to crying out with open hands of surrender even connected to deep hands of action. For, I'll pick up my cross and say yes to the unanswered todays in the temporary permanence because the answer is--I have a chance to get to serve Him: here, now, always.

even if I'm ever in the in between.

I've never liked the darkness.

I mean, I think most people don't. Or at least a solid 65%. I remember, as a kid, reading The Stone King from Dora. This stone king hid behind monuments in the darkness. He'd pop out and turn people into stone when they least expected it (which really could be anytime because who expects a zapping stone king to be waiting around a corner?).

I was convinced he lived in my basement: but only when the lights went off.

The basement lights in my childhood home were divided into two sets with separate switches. The majority of the chair-molded, white and green room was controlled by the first switch, which when hit, left only about 20% of the room--the area right before the stairs and the stairs themselves--in light. Whenever I'd hit the first batch and shroud the room in darkness, I'd run, skipping stairs two at a time to get away as fast as my small feet would carry me, convinced the stone king was at my heels, or (maybe better) the flying eyebrow man from Veggie tales who would turn me into a unibrow. Either way, my fate hung in precarious balance.

I didn't like the darkness. The darkness that opened the door to the stone king and the flying eyebrow man. Or maybe, the darkness that opened the door to the fear deep inside of me.

Fear. I really couldn't think I felt it many times until recently. I was in Florida running the Tough Mudder obstacle race with my dad, a current roommate, and a few of my dad's friends. We came to an obstacle that required us to submerge ourselves in water and slide underneath one of many gigantic black, circular tubes a mere four inches above the water. Uncertain of water and chronically claustrophobic, I tried. I made it to the third black tube before freezing up, feeling terror, and backing out.

At the climbing gym mere days later, I with a self-protorted cerebral fear of heights, felt it not come into my mind but into my heart. I was only climbing a 5.9 at the time, and I froze, three-fourths up the wall. "Katie, can I come down now?" Deep breath. Pause. Repeat with increasing intensity. "Katie, I want to come down." She'd recognized my fear and knew now was not the time to keep pushing often-quitting me. I then climbed a 5.8, enter fear, and I didn't make it to the top. A 5.7, and that was the worst yet.

I was walking back from a spontaneous tip to Opryland to see the lights with my sister, after I'd chickened out of climbing, pulling into the parking lot and pulling out because I couldn't bear to walk in alone, with all the people watching me have to face my fear and fail physically, too. I was telling my sister about the fear and the frustration. It took me back to another recent fear incident as I'd been going to meet a friend who my mind was running with if-this-was-a-step-in-the-direction-of-more-than-friend, and I walked towards the doors until I saw his car and my feet involuntarily turned around and my mouth muttered "I can't. I can't. I can't." in rapid fashion.

I told myself then that I can't also stay pacing the sidewalk forever, so I found something bright: a little yellow sidewalk patch, bubbled, light, and supposed to serve as my source of strength to walk through the doors and be a normal human. Plot twist, it didn't work. But, in my moment of darkness, in my moment of Deborah-brain-frantic-fast-fear of what is he thinking, what am I thinking, I feel dumb for no reason, I'm making this too big of a deal, I like him and want to trust him, ah I don't know how to trust I feel scared, run away go away be away I tried to find the light: light in the form of a yellow sidewalk.

I came home today. Home from church and humans I love, but home after a conversation the night before about a season of friendships not ending but morphing into a very different state. I was full of heavy, darkness-cousin
thoughts of how it felt when I was multiplied out of a very meaningful community group, of when I was leaving Minnesota and being ripped from those I love, of when it seems like God has given good things and then suddenly they shift. It felt like some of the things that had kept me sane were now fading away from me, extending beyond my grasp when I didn't ask for that. Things that were good, things that kept the black dark fear from seeping into my soul.

I got home, and I knew I was going to be alone for hours. The last time I was alone for a long period in my house, I faded into one of two most intense episodes with depression I've ever experienced--both of which had ended in humans who loved me coming to show love to broken, humbled me. And I felt a bit of that panic-gripped fear. The sun was outside, but the house felt trapping, like darkness.

I've never liked darkness, and I wanted every light on.

So I went into every room and turned on the light. The Christmas tree light, the additional tree lights, the low lights, the main light, the strange spotlight in the hallway, the recess lighting, the middle island lighting, the paneled lights, even the bathroom light and the light in my sister's room that you couldn't even see unless you rounded the corner. And it felt better. It seemed more safe.

I'd told my sister, post Opryland and auditory processing, that I'd started to feel again, something I'd been working towards. And I feel deeply. But I told her that I saw it now: I'd begun to feel what was beneath the pain and yellow-excitement and joy that people see and tell me they see when they see me. It was fear, dark-heavy-panicked, back to little three year old Deborah hiding behind her mom in the hospital office fear.

I've been working through what that fear is made of and what it means for my feet that quit and run and hide but want to be secured, certain, and held. (Sneak peak, it has to do with loss and love and control and equations and worth). But I noticed, later today, what I did, involuntarily.

I turned the lights on, all of them.

I needed something to reassuringly hush my soul and the fear of falling back into introspective depression. I needed something to bring light into the dark-fear place of losing close relationship with those I love and the hollow of aloneness that left inside. I needed a weapon against the darkness of piercing terror that I've messed up this whole thing called life, entirely, quite possibly for everyone.

So I turned on the lights.
And I think it may be as simple as that.

In order to need light you have to recognize darkness, and I'm finally doing that. There's these dark places inside of myself that are sinful or afraid. And I need the light to come and transform them. The light does not negate the reality that the darkness exists, it just strips the darkness of the power of its effect. And I need to surround myself in the light as much in my mind as in the walled-rooms we call the Kermit Casa.

In the still darkness-thick places of fearing relationship, I need the light of people who show me love.
In the yet darkness-coated places of fearing failure, I need the light of moments that show me grace.
In the evermore darkness-encrusted places of fearing loss of all things I love, I need the Savior to remind me that I am centered in His love that was hard-won and never-lost.

I need to turn on the lights, to hold onto the light, to trust that light pushes the darkness away from the bay. To take the small moments to text that friend who shows light-wrapped love. To hold onto the moments where I was shown more grace at work than I deserved. To remember the Aslan-lion who holds my tears and is the Savior I can run to when it feels like a season is closing before I had a chance to realize it was here.

So hold onto the light, my soul. Turn on all the lights when darkness feels here-already. Realize the sidewalk looks even yellow-brighter when you're running to it out of I-just-can't-fear-driven steps.

For maybe this act of obedient defiance is what starts to shift the fear of darkness to the realization that it's only because of the darkness that we grow to appreciate all shades of light.