In the Dirt: by Olivia McKain
I have always had an active imagination. Growing up I could create vivid and complex stories in my head that I would immerse myself in. I didn’t have imaginary friends, but more of an imaginary world. My ability to visualize so well quickly became a key way for me to process through how I was feeling. Whenever things felt stressful or hard, I would “make a movie” of what I was feeling in my head and it would help me make sense of it. When I was around 12 years old, I was dealing with some pretty complex issues at home and in myself. It was a really heavy time in both mine and my family’s lives, and there was always a really specific way that I visualized and explained how I was feeling.
The movie I would direct in my head during that time, played like an animated film. Everything was black and white, like an old Mickey Mouse cartoon. The opening scene would begin as I walked into view with a huge bag on my back, filled to the brim with something. It felt heavy and I never really knew what was in it. But I just assumed that's what everyone did, carry around a big mystery bag. Slowly, I began to realize that not everyone had the same big bag that I did. Suddenly, the bag would start to feel heavier and heavier. There is a pivotal point where I thought, “Maybe I don’t have to carry this anymore,” and in that very moment, the bottom of the bag tears open and everything falls out. For the first time the weight on my shoulders feels less and it’s like I could breathe again. Relief. There is a moment of relief that I had never felt before. But the moment quickly ends when I look down and I realize that the bag was filled with a bunch of dirt, and now the dirt is all around me and I’m stuck. I can’t move. There is mud on my hands and my clothes and I don’t know what to do. People try to come help me but when they reach out their hand, I realize the only way they can pull me out is if I get my dirt on them. There was no way for me to receive help without getting them dirty. In my head the message was really clear: you are capable of getting yourself out of the dirt if you dig hard enough, but you have to make sure you don’t get your mess on other people.
Anyone that knows me well probably wouldn’t be surprised that this is something that I believed growing up. Honestly, anyone that remembers my blog post from a few months ago where I explicitly said that I am not good at asking for help probably isn’t that shocked by this either. I have always thought about this story as something that exclusively explained a really specific part of my life, but in the last few weeks I have realized it reflects a lot on the way I interact with my current community.
For those of you that don’t know, because of the pandemic the fellows are living in community housing instead of with host families this year. I am humbled by the generosity of a few families that donated the funding for the apartments, which in turn allowed the Fellows Program to continue despite the uncertainty of our world. They provided the program with a way to move forward. That being said, living in apartments together is very different than living with host families. I live in a two-bedroom apartment with four girls. My two-bedroom apartment is right across from the other girl fellows’ two-bedroom apartment. So, even though I technically have three roommates it feels more like six. And to add to that, we had only known each other for approximately five days before moving in together.
When people ask me what my favorite part of The Nashville Fellows has been, I have responded “it’s getting to live together.” It is fun and silly and I believe we know each other more deeply because of it. We have shared meals and laughs and tears. It has been an invaluable part of my transition to Nashville. However, when people ask me what the hardest part of Fellows has been, I have responded “it’s having to live together.” I have never spent so much time with the people I am living with, in such a close proximity. We are, in a lot of ways, each others’ only community; which is beautiful, but sometimes suffocating. There have been really challenging aspects of living together, and it feels like the longer we have done it the harder it has gotten.
Recently someone said to me that they felt like the events of the last year had really exposed the hearts of a lot of Christians, and that oftentimes, what’s been exposed has been pretty ugly. While it is easy to see how that applies to our greater world, it also made me think of the different ways my own heart has been exposed, especially through living in the apartments. It dawned on me that the reason it keeps getting harder and harder to live together is because the longer we do it, the more we see of each other.
When we moved into these apartments almost six months ago, we carried in all our belongings, but we also each carried in our own personal bag of dirt. We all brought our habits, defense mechanisms, and past hurts to a new city, with new roommates that we had known for 5 days before moving in together.
At first it was really easy to keep all of our dirt in the bag, but for each of us, the seams slowly ripped, the dirt has trickled out, and what’s been exposed isn’t always that pretty. Suddenly the movie playing my head isn’t 12 year old Olivia being scared of getting people dirty, it’s 22 year old Olivia wanting so badly to look like she has it all together that she is trying desperately to scrape the dirt back into the bag so no one has to see it. Despite my best attempts, I can’t seem to hide my dirt and mess from this community. And on the flip side of that, I can’t help but see everyone else’s dirt too.
We have found ourselves in the midst of a great tension. The more of each other’s dirt we see, the more we need to extend each other grace. But at the same time, the more dirt that we see, the harder it is both to give and receive that grace. The concept of being known and loved is probably desirable to everyone, but the action of knowing people and choosing to love them despite what we see is incredibly difficult. In fact, nothing has exposed my own sinful heart more than how often I don’t want to love my community well. It is truly humbling how quick I am to hide my dirt, while at the same time being frustrated that I can see someone else’s. It makes the difference between my humanness and the Lord’s holiness palpable.
A little more than a month ago I told one of the other Fellows about how I used to picture the bag of dirt in my head. I told her how hard it was for me to feel like I was getting my mess on other people. She listened for a long time and eventually said “Olivia I see your dirt, and it feels like I’m already standing knee deep in there with you with a shovel in hand just waiting for you to tell me where to start digging.” Her words struck a place of deep longing in me, but also a place of deep fear. But it begged the question, “Am I willing to let people get in the dirt with me?” And “Am I willing to do the same for them?” The thing that 12 year old Olivia got wrong was that I was never supposed to get myself out of the dirt alone. Community isn’t about everyone dealing with their respective problems by themselves, it is about bearing burdens with each other. That requires getting in the dirt. So, as I go into the last several months of my year as a Fellow, my prayer is that I see the mess and the hurt as an invitation to enter in, rather than an excuse to walk away. And more than that, my prayer is that I have the courage to allow others to do the same for me.
