I vividly and desperately scare myself sometimes. Usually I try to avoid it, listening pointedly, through my memory, to my mother's historic warning, "Don't work yourself up, Katie." Her nurturing eyes warned me appropriately. I have a tendency to rush into experiences and I often will myself to feel them to the depths. To really gaze at the incredible; to weep at what is broken; to laugh until i pee my pants (and what mother wouldn't want to guard her daughter from such embarrassment?); to clench infuriated fists at the unjust; to intensify idiosyncrasies when i feel abnormal. But part of maturing has been recognizing my selfishness in my emotions and exercising my ability to control my intense knee-jerk reactions. Even Anne of Green Gables was a more attractive woman when she had learned to channel her child-like tantrums into selfless, productive love and labor.

I walked out of another church service this afternoon. At my school. Admittedly, I went to the Easter celebration with built-up and built-in prejudices about what it would be like. "It doesn't matter what they are doing, it matters what you are doing in your heart," I told myself as I closed my eyes to focus on the worship song, shutting out the chattering and wriggling teenagers so distracting my mind. It didn't take long, though, for my frustration to mount. In the pit of my stomach I can still feel the retching-churning that made me physically need to leave the gymnasium in the middle of the Easter presentation. This is my God, was a phrase rising from the roots of the swirling emotions that were welling, welling and scaring me in the pit of my spirit. A well-intentioned teacher had, after 10 minutes of dysfunctional video, sound, and lighting, just shown the bloody Jesus-whipping scenes from the Passion of the Christ movie. And the students laughed.

I was disgusted, and my face is still pink and burning as a result of my deep emotion - the emotion that I often leash (for good reason). And I was thankful for my mother teaching me to control my emotions because I didn't sink into anger - anger at the teacher who presented Jesus in a manner that students were actually set up to laugh (they were shocked! and were drastically unprepared to deal with the spiritual reality that might possibly have been evoked by the images) or anger at the students for laughing at the man that I adore more than any one or thing in the universe with a love unspeakable and depths I do not fathom. In spite of good reasons for anger, I was not angry.

When my hands stop shaking, I will be sad. And I pray, pray that my sickening reaction to the cultural Christianity and meaningless iconoclasm and mocking of Yahweh will only lead me, drive me, bore me deeper into the depths of Truth in my own heart. If I am sickened by others' disregard for spirituality at the heart level, then I must be one who acts spiritual in all that I say and do. I must hate lies in my own life and love Truth, and cling to the reality that I hope for but do not yet see. I must acknowledge my own hypocrisies and lean into, lean into, lean into my grace and salvation in a way that will, O please Jesus, impact a life around me. I must, or there would be no purpose to the physiological need to vomit that God's spirit allowed me to experience this afternoon.

This intensity scares me. And requires action.