On Embracing Our Humanity

What do you do when you find yourself at a desperate junction or in a place you never wanted to be? When what you thought you were trying to do, turns out the exact opposite of absolutely everything you were planning?

Six months ago I was living in another country on thirty acres, heating my home and cooking my food over fire. I lived down a five mile dirt road, homeschooled my children, and spoke Spanish all the time. How in the world do I make the transition from there to here? And there are so many more devastating pieces that make it difficult. The bigger question I’m dealing with is how do I let everything be absolutely different than anything I ever imagined and dreamed for my life? How do I sit in the rubble of ruins and still find hope?

If I know something about life, I have a hunch I’m not the only person who feels this way. I’m not the only one who has had to look round about themselves and take a big deep breath, wipe the alligator tears from their cheeks, let out a sigh, and say “Yeah, so this isn’t really what I was hoping for.”

We weren’t planning on still being single at thirty-six, or getting divorced with two kids, or being this financially poor and needing food stamps. We didn’t plan on the market taking the turn it did, or on that one investment going sideways, or the person of our dreams becoming our living nightmare. We didn’t plan on not having enough money to send our children to college, or for our kids to live so far away we’d never get to see our grandchildren. We didn’t think the cancer would come back, or on having to have a double mastectomy, or on battling an life-long auto-immune disease. None of it was was part of the plan …

There is no magic wand. There is no simple solution or three points that you should follow so everything will turn out better. Despite what all those self-help books tell you. There is no fairy godmother who is going to fall out of the sky and turn your pumpkin into a carriage and your little tiny mice into gorgeous horses … and there is certainly no incantation that is going to deliver the prince to your doorstep with the glass slipper.

So what do we have if we can’t believe our fairy tale dreams are going to come true?

We have each other. We have good and loving people all around us who are good gifts. My children are wonderful and smart and full of life. I have great parents and awesome sisters and kind friends who love me just as I am. Each of us has someone or many people we can choose to honor. People who will pull us out of our crushed dreams and remind us that we matter. When we choose to honor another person, we also honor ourselves and step into our own human dignity.

We have prayer.  The singular path to joy is always through the winding labyrinth of gratitude. When we choose to be thankful we aren’t denying our problems, we’re simply not letting them define us…

And we always have the power and ongoing invitation to ask … Ask and you shall receive. It’s never too late to start talking to a higher power, acknowledging that you didn’t make it all happen and you certainly can’t make it all better … and maybe you could use a little or a lot of help. Ask for help. Ask for clarity. Ask for wisdom. Ask for strength and courage, for love and hope. When we ask in authenticity, we’ll get authentic answers.

We have Christmas. For Christians Christmas is about how God became human and suffered and felt the weight of this world. Christians believe God came to us as a human so that he could be present with us in our suffering, and help alleviate it through friendship with himself, and somehow do a great big rescue. Pretty much the whole of Christianity is built on radically counterintuitive truths that require just a tiny little bit of faith on our part. The idea of God becoming a baby and Mary being a virgin and delivering Jesus in a manger or some kind of cave in the middle Bethlehem with all the angels and shepherds … well, let’s face it, the story is slightly absurd. It’s also a great source of comfort for me.

It comforts me because it means that God is not far away from my broken heart and he doesn’t expect me to be fine about my shattered dreams. He understands that our dreams get crushed and life hits us on every side and leaves us in rubble. He understands because he was here … Is here … and he meets us dead center with his radical love and gentle presence and somehow gives us courage to face the most stark truth of our lives and also endow us with the grace to embrace his.

What is His truth? God’s truth is sort of beautiful, actually. It’s quite simple: He’s the master of remodels. He takes great big messes and over time, through gentle tending and radical methods, somehow turns them into something good and meaningful. God IS creative. And he is always whispering, always beckoning me to open my hand and invite him into my rubble, because he knows exactly what to do with it. God’s truth is that my story isn’t over yet. He’s right in the thick of it, present and tenderly calling me to believe …

Much Love,

Tina