Writing is some lonely work. Lately, I’d rather clean wet dog food out of my turquoise Dyson than write. This could be because I’m in a six-week writing class, to which I say bring on all the tasks I can’t force myself to do in my ‘real’ job. Business card design, scrubbing a trashcan lined with bleachy foils and padded with six inches of hair, prying hardened facial wax off from every surface in my studio with my pinky nail but do not, Do Not, force me to sit down on my new computer, bought for the purpose of writing in my writing class, and actually write.
A friend asked me this morning why I’m not writing and I’m ashamed to say I had some pretty lame answers mostly adding up to I Don’t Know. For the last couple of years I’ve been talking to a guy that I pay to help me keep my head on straight (if you don’t have one of those, I recommend you find one), he doesn’t accept the answer “I don’t know.’ “It’s lazy,” he says. “I don’t believe you, I think you do know.” I give him money to frustrate me and help me unearth from deep within, my true beliefs, my core confessions, the things I tell myself in a steady stream of affirmation and degradation, more or less equal parts depending on the day. The truth is that it sucks to wrestle with life and living and God. No wait, that’s the politically correct, nice-girl, go-to answer, but it’s not necessarily the truth of what I feel.
The truth hiding behind my nice answer is that it sucks to not get what you desperately want.
Do you know the thing I’m talking about? That one last thing, if you could only clean up one teensy tiny little detail in your reality, one dream in your heart that still hasn’t found a home in the daylight. That thing that threatens to overshadow every other detail of your life. That one. It stinks not to get it, or rid yourself of it, or have it fixed, or even fix it yourself because not having to deal with that red-hot thing would make every other detail in your life, sunny and 65.
I have teenagers living in my house. Daily, they deal with answers they don’t like. Boundaries they’d rather blow through. In fact, yesterday it seemed as if one of them was willing to wire themselves to an electric fence, sacrificing their very life in attempt to make it to the other side of the lines I’d drawn.
It got ugly for a long bit. Hobby Lobby, Walgreens, the doctor, every mile in-between the tension was building and with each turn on the odometer, more opportunities were presented from this litigator. They were waiting for me to step off my game and give them the argument they wanted. This one has been a student of my weakness since their birth.
While the fury was still blazing in my van yesterday, I found myself identifying with the fuming kid in the passenger seat.
As a compliant child growing up, the reason I didn’t break rules was because I was terrified of the consequences. Early on, I found that my missteps resulted in swift and sometimes disproportionate reactions and the over correction isolated me. It came with intense emotion and unintended separation. The sad thing is that the desired outcome, character strength, backfired and resulted in shame. I still dance with some of these same tendencies, but I’ve grown as a parent and more importantly, as a living breathing soul, a human being, so scenes with my kids mostly don’t trigger me like they used to. But I remembered what it feels like to be the chid.
When the worst of it was over, I sat in the car alone for a few minutes processing my own emotions. I’m not gonna lie, when the kid told me I was “the worst most controlling mother ever” followed by a few direct accusations, shame threatened to creep back in. Every day it’s a struggle to keep that emotion from paralyzing me but I realized that I had remained calm, connected and unswayed during the entire scene. Sadly, this hasn’t always been the case.
It’s a price we have to pay as parents, a denial to indulge our emotions. We have to sacrifice our own childishness. I’m the grown-up and though I’m in control of many aspects of my life, I can identify with this kid, more than they have any idea. I’m smacking up against a hard wall that I’d expected would be demolished by now. It’s my one thing. and believe me, I’ve taken a jack hammer and tried to smash it, gathered grime under my fingernails as I clawed at it. I’ve even whittled my own shiv and tried to tunnel my way through solid concrete one teaspoon of dust at a time. I’ve begged and bargained thinking that one of these days, God would take care of it once and for all. For as long as I can remember, I’ve expected a ‘save the day’ sort of moment. Like Ronald Reagan, eyes burrowing into the camera, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” I’ve been staring straight into the hole of heaven trying to work a deal.
In my twenties, I was sure there didn’t have to be a wall in my life. I had decided that I’d do life right the first time. What I learned was that doing it right the first time is a myth. I used to believe that God had a ‘best’ for our lives. I don’t believe that any more. I believe that we live in such a messed up world and we’re presented with hundreds of choices every day. God has a lot of things he says about how we should live but he also gives us opportunities with absolutely no right answer. More, in fact, than I’d ever imagined. As a result, I’ve realized that life is more about becoming truthful to who we’ve been created to be than it is about doing the right thing. We can do the right thing and not be completely ourselves but we cannot be completely ourselves and not do the right thing.
If I tried to do it right fresh into adulthood, I decided in my thirties I would simply fix everything that was wrong. Rebuild what was broken. Replace what didn’t function. I restarted and redoubled and recounted and recalled and relayed. All strategies and techniques I unearthed in order to keep my disappointing wall from becoming my future.
Then, I turned forty and you know what I found out? Every single one of us have the same wall. I call mine disappointment but you might call yours anxiety. Mine is something I live with but yours might be something you live without. Mine might be bigger than yours but maybe someday yours will get knocked down. Maybe there’s a new wall behind it. In fact, I think you can count on it.
I’ve put a fight in my forties, digging through another layer of unhealthy thinking and working hard to get to truthful layers of myself. There’s a reason we’re told it requires pain and suffering to work out our salvation. Choosing to think true thoughts can feel like a full-time job and living in a way that reflects the truth of my soul requires overtime. Because as I’ve stood within the ugliest parts of myself and begun to do the hard work of digging out, I’ve realized that my life’s work is dismantling the wall within my own soul. Just last week, I asked another friend just how holy is a body supposed to become down here. I was angry about my disappointment and what feels like a near-constant struggle to navigate around it. As I was throwing the equivalent of a teenage tantrum, I heard God within myself…..
Holier than you were yesterday.
More broken than you were yesterday.
More healed than you were yesterday.
More loving than you were yesterday.
More forgiving than you were yesterday.
More honest than you were yesterday.
Marcy Holder 