"...one must command from each what each can perform, the king went on. "authority is based first of all upon reason. if you command your subjects to jump into the ocean, there will be a revolution. i am entitled to command obedience because my orders are reasonable."
" ...then my sunset?" insisted the little prince, who never let go of a question once he had asked it.
"you shall have your sunset. i shall command it. but i shall wait, according to my science of government, until conditions are favorable."
--the little prince
"whenever you do what is holy, be of good cheer, knowing that God Himself takes part with rightful courage."
--menander
"listen. are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?"
--mary oliver
i've maintained for most of my thirties that being brave is not about being without fear. it's about feeling the fear down to my toes, and continuing to move. it's about being relentless in not laying down, or at least not staying down. we can't help but fall sometimes, even when all the lights are on, and the floor is level, and there are no obstacles in sight. sometimes, we just fall. it's easy to try and deconstruct why we've fallen, but sometimes getting up is the scariest part of the falling, because we don't know if we might have hurt ourselves in a way that won't show up until we get off the floor, or if we've split our pants, or torn our skirts.
sometimes, we fall and make a mess, and have to figure out how to get off the floor without making an even bigger mess. it's hard to know how to pick ourselves up, sometimes. we know that staying down isn't a reasonable choice we know that getting up is going to be hard. we know we will probably be sore, tomorrow, and that the bruises will take time to fade. we know those things. we know them, but we have a hard time getting right with them, with radically accepting the true fact that sometimes, the mess ends up in your lap, in your face, on the floor, right beside you.
i do a crappy job of giving myself permission to struggle--i think that's true of most people i know, though. i know myself well enough to know i can go right from giving myself permission to do/feel/think a certain way into manipulating myself into laying down on the floor and wallowing in delicious misery. and MY G-D, what a way to waste time...and i hate wasting time. but i know that there are days when i have to look at myself in the mirror and tell that girl that it's ok to struggle for balance. it's ok to not have the next right answer. it's ok to be frustrated by circumstances over which i have no control. it's totally ok.
what's not ok is for me to beat myself up about struggling, because OH MY GOSH, major life changes have been happening for the last...i dunno...11 months, and while all of them are incredible and wonderful and life-changing, and i wouldn't change a single thing about any of them...a lady has a very full brain and full heart, and life simply does not stop so that i can digest and process all of it, and catch up. none of us ever get to stop the game clock. there are no commercial time-outs. the test is now, and it's all cumulative. get right with it. i also can't lie about not struggling. integration and transition are hard life-processes to learn, no matter how old i am. and it's ok that i don't know all of it, right this minute. the things i don't know about life in general far out-weigh the things i do know. i'm reasonably sure that will be true no matter how long i live, or how many different life situations i have.
i had lunch with a good friend, today. my friend is struggling. we talked a lot, and cried a little, and i did my best not to fix. but that conversation reminds me that all of us are learning how to do something new, right this minute. we know that the people around us give us more mercy and grace than we can possibly know about, but we both have a hard time giving that to ourselves, both have a hard time being grace-filled and merciful to ourselves.
i'm convinced that learning to be friends with myself, with falling in love with the substance of myself, the good parts and the bad parts, are a life-long process, and since i really started that endeavor three or so years ago, my life has taken many turns that i would not have been able to weather, had i not started that process. i know i have to continue to be committed to knowing and loving myself, not just for the good of my marriage, my family, or my vocation, but for my own good--that wild and precious and unique creation of G-d, that will never ever come again in this form, that Jesus lived to love.
and when i remember that, when we all remember that about ourselves, something like courage and strength bubble up, and i can smile at the face staring back at me from the mirror, and tell her, in all honesty, "honey, it's all just fine. all of it. now, go do your best, and believe that the rest will be just as it should be. because it will, and it is."
mil besos,
rmg
