Sometimes I’m on the brink, sometimes I write about crawling away from it. Sometimes I’m in the hole, sometimes I write about how to climb out. Sometimes I’m in the dark, sometimes I try to tell you how I found the match to light the lamp to get the light to lead me out.
Man, if these aren’t brink, hole, dark days, then I don’t know what are.
On the internet, I am a part of a community that has been resisting the narrative about these brink hole dark days. They’ve been firmly standing in the narrative that these days are these days and we bring to them what we will and some of us will bring hopelessness while others of us will bring creativity and energy and the refusal to become another statistic in the battle between dark days versus life. They are an inspiring group that maintains the stance that life has not been cancelled. We have a duty to continue to work, and work hard and find opportunity and not fall victim to victimhood.
The narrative is pretty important. We are people of story. We are people who live out our crafted identity. Most of our choices have already been written in to our stories a million times and we write our character in a way that is predictable and lines up with our past actions. If you’re older than 30 and you think you’ve been handed a script and an identity that was assigned to you, well, I hate to break it to you, but that’s not true. You may have been shaped in the past, but these days are squarely your’s and your’s alone. The sooner you can own your part in your story, the sooner you can take steps to redefining it.
These days are squarely mine and mine alone. I am living out this story. Not my mom, or my dad, not my spouse or my children. On the last day when the good Lord calls the roll up yonder, the only person responsible for these 24 hour increments I was given is me. It’s mine and it reflects what I thought to be true.
Shut down, COVID, rioting, division, protest, distance, unemployment, continued tech problems, money problems, closures, man, it took me over. It has been overwhelming. It has hijacked my narrative in a way I never wanted it to, but despair is contagious, fear is contagious- and I’m not talking about fear of getting the virus. I’m not talking about fear of people looting the Target. I’m talking about straight up fear of fellow humans, fear of hearts on high alert, fear that love is no longer love and freedom is political and not even the good Lord himself can conquer the disease of this present moment.
I fell for all of it. II fell into all of it. I fell in to the hole, the dark, the brink. I used to be a musician, I used to be something, I used to have thoughts and then nothing. No job, no purpose, no goodness, no hope, no thoughts, just empty.
Heck, I’m still in the hole, but at least I don’t feel as powerless. I wrote a thank you note to a church worker I don’t know, I started reading a book about systemic racism. Such a move was frightening for me. But you know what? Reading it doesn’t feel frightening. It doesn’t feel guilt producing. It actually feels helpful. Information is power. Just like stepping on the scale or calling your parents, or asking for financial help. Knowing stuff makes us feel like we can do stuff. And you know what? The best news in the whole world is that we can still do stuff.
It probably doesn’t help that I’m 43. I think I’m squarely in danger of a midlife crisis. A midlife crisis whilst the whole world is in crisis is a real double whammy.
And I keep going back to how we were created for work. Heaven won’t be sitting around. Heaven will be an eternity of fulfilling joyful, tiring, satisfying work in the best way geared to our abilities and passions. I know. It’s hard to imagine. So here I am. Reminding myself that this is the day the Lord has made, that human foolishness cannot thwart the plans of the Almighty, that we were made to work and learn, and that, every day of living is a day for life. Those are the lessons of this present age. Those are the lessons for every age.
I don’t want the world to go back to normal. I don’t want us to breathe a sigh of relief that we’re back to the mindless tolerance of total B.S. that kept us from rest and kept us from one another and kept us from seeing what we wanted to ignore.
Refiner’s fire. Am I right? The thing is that it hurts. Refiner’s fire gives us feelings. Remember that thing about stories and narratives? Not only are we curating ourselves, we’re curating which feelings are in the story and which feelings don’t have a place in our story. You’d think that’d be cool, but actually, it’s not cool.
The minute we live in the grace to feel all the feelings, is the minute shut doors come open and you are welcome to walk around wherever you wish. Feelings won’t be the end of you. They don’t judge you to be a good human or a bad human. Feelings point to your being squarely part of humanity. And that’s a good thing.
Crawling. Crawling back from the brink. One thing about our culture is that we have a very short attention span and we are bombarded by all the things all the time.
It’s exhausting. The narrative might be COVID, Shut down, distancing, division, unrest, riot, protest, discrimination, fear, distance, everyhing. The narrative can be exhausting. I am exhausted.
I’m 43, exhausted, sad, helpless, jobless, directionless.
So I wrote the thank you note. I started the book. I went on a run. I said, “This is a story about a woman who…..
falls in a hole, cries, quits, feels helpless. This is also a story about a woman who is Ok with recovering from that chapter and not letting that be the end of the story.”
The truth is that my biggest fear has always been living a life that somehow turns into the same thing over and over again. I’ve always told Jon that my fear has been that I will get to a point where I don’t like change.
Well, when you think about it that way, the Good Lord has answered my prayers and then some. Change is everywhere. Change is a good thing. Change is part of life. And life is what’s happening right now. Go git it.