Mistake after mistake and they tell you to stop making mistakes. At least stop making the same ones over and over.
Failure after failure. For everything that goes well is another that sinks without you even noticing sometimes. Sometimes, the failure happens while you're sleeping under the sun on a pier, and this boat with all of the life and joy and happiness floats by slowly. This unforgiving boat stops for no one, so you have to get on when you can.
For the rest...? We keep moving. If you stop moving, you perish. People can move forward or backward, but they have to move. No one living gets to stay put: Life just isn't that simple.
You have to learn to live with the lot cast for you in your life. Good or bad, you are in your skin for now and you have to learn to live in it. It isn't easy, but nothing worth your time is.
I've been struggling to figure out what it means to be me in all places I have to be. To many people, I mean different things because that's what I have given everyone. Maybe it shouldn't be this way. Maybe I should just be the whole beautiful and ugly me all the time and let whoever wants to walk with me..walk.
The real question I have to solve is where I am going. I don't know if I'm doing better or worse at this point. I'm just turned sideways staring. Everything I have ever believed has been challenged this last 5 years. I have tried to grasp old thoughts that brought me comfort before, but they are just beyond my reach. Terrible thoughts filled their vacancy and I wanted to hold on to them, but they are exactly what they are...terrible and not true.
I won't stop walking. If I stop, I will fall in. I need to keep moving, so I move in the best direction I can. It may be the right direction and it may be the wrong one, but I see the sun on the outside of one of them, so I will follow that and try not to second guess and follow the one that is completely dark.
I get it now...the most common funeral verse. "Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." I have to believe that I am seeing this valley and that there is a powerful and hopefully graceful and forgiving God shepherding me to where I can feel the sun.
This is faith I think. To really believe when everything tells you to turn around and leave it behind.
But doesn't faith live in the beauty of the misery of God's people when they mourn with hope? Isn't that sharing in the suffering of Christ? Somehow, I think my whole life I pictured this as growing up without a dad. It's far worse than that. A crucified, and undignified Jesus suffered and I though that sharing in that meant that I had to live without a catch with my dad? To walk with Jesus means true suffering for some people and I guess I never thought that would be me. Yet still others suffer much greater. Suffering isn't of God. What happens during your suffering is.
Meanwhile, I sit here with this wonderful life, filled with people that love me and want to be a part of my human experience.
So then I realize. This is a pity party and I am the guest of honor. I whine about what and who is not here because it hurts. I often forget the other side of the coin. Who is here? I am not on some planet alone. I am here. I am breathing. I am breathing in sync with many people, so I am full. Joy is found beyond sorrow and grief. Joy is found in the man crawling out of the mud covered in blood, but so happy to see help.
Help has always been here.
Sing.
Migrate.
Thanks for reading...Z
