Long Post Alert. (and its a doozy) Something has been on my mind for a long time, but I have never been sure how to put it into words. Bear with me while I try. I am a Christian and I consider myself a spiritual person. I try to live a good life and be a decent human being. Not only out of fear from some judgmental God, but also because I think it’s the right & decent thing to do. There is a HUGE list of things that I try to remember on a daily basis about how to live my best life. I pray. I have hopes and dreams. I love to laugh. I love hard. I have concrete ideas of right and wrong, which don’t waver despite my personal relationships. I am obsessed with fairness. (None of this will seem relevant until a little later….stick with me here.) While we all know that tragedy befalls everyone and it can strike anyone at anytime, I think social media has opened us up to a whole new world of experiencing the hurts, sorrows and joys of people around the globe, all at the tips of our fingers. We can dive in and out of so many of them in the span of a 5 minute wait in our kids car rider pick-up line at school. With a few flicks of your index finger, you can share in the beauty of a wedding, the bliss of new parenthood or have your heart ripped out as you watch a mother, 8 states away, mourn the loss of her child. You heart can fill to joyful capacity or crumble with grief from a quick, back-lit glimpse into someone else’s life. Throughout it all, we get to watch the shifts in attitudes, the seemingly bi-polar moments of manic highs and lows. When people are entwined in the happy parts, they are unstoppable. They are happy, positive, upbeat and sometimes self-absorbed. When people feel good though, they will tend to make others feel good. But the converse is also true. When people feel bad, they are sad, negative, downtrodden, and sometimes self-absorbed. Those in the midst of the valley tend to make the people around them feel bad. I am not indicating that it’s right or wrong, it just simply is. What I want to address though, is the pervasive theme that I see play out in those who are sick, mourning, dying or have lost a loved one. It’s a well-intentioned guilt trip that they want to pass on to those around them. It’s a the “appreciate everything, live like you are dying” message. I get it. I truly, truly do. I get that someone facing their own mortality, or the mortality of those they deeply love, causes an awakening deep in their soul. I get that an epiphany stirs within them and they want to share that experience and “warn” those around them. Sometimes it’s done in a loving and delicately cautionary way, and other times, it’s done in an abrasive, shame-on-you wake up call. This is where my struggle comes into play. The tragedy in this, is that it’s impossible. Unless you are facing death, you simply CANNOT “live like you are dying”. If your loved ones aren’t dying, you just cannot fully appreciate every single little benign moment that passes with them, as if it were their last. The sentiment behind the notion is truly beautiful. And I do understand the urgency in trying to spread it. However, those who are living their everyday lives, with work, families, responsibilities….. those who are just getting by, doing their best with what they know at the time…. They truly cannot grab life by the balls as if they were in their final days. They cannot celebrate the sweetness of every waking moment of life if they have not been deprived. I would LOVE to be able to embrace every single second of being a wife and mother. I truly would. I would LOVE to not lose my cool and yell when my kids color on the wall. I would LOVE to be able to think “one day, they may not be here and I would give anything to have them color on the wall.” Or I would LOVE to have the patience and wherewithal to remember that if I walk out the door angry with my spouse, I may not have the chance to rectify it. I would LOVE to live a perfect life where I could think that cleaning up puke is an honor and I should relish it as a sacred and potentially limited memory. But dammit. I’m human. I cannot face every single day with some “truth” that is not true for me. For the moment, I am not dying. (Of course, one day, we all die). But in my present knowledge, I don’t know the number assigned to my days left. So I just do the best I can. I cannot live with your guilts and your regrets. I know you are trying to save me from feeling what you have been forced to feel, but you cannot do that for me anymore than the people before you could do that for you. I cannot live everyday with the pressure of trying to live like it’s my last. We are all just human. We are all just doing our best. The other thing I struggle with (and this is where my Christian faith comes into play – or rather, is tested) is the proclamation often made by survivors, those that feel like they should be living (or not living) a different outcome. An immediate example is a recent post by Cam Newton after a roll over car accident. My faith believes that God is all around us, always. But I am so conflicted when I see/hear people say stuff like ‘God was in the car with me, that’s the only reason I am not dead.” Folks, I STRUGGLE. After watching 2 little girls and a teachers aid get buried this week from a school bus accident, am I to believe that God must not have been in that bus? Or was God in the bus only for the others who survived the accident? But not for those 3? Maybe God was busy planning out the other cars he would be in while allowing those 3 souls to perish. Was God saving a college football player, while declaring 2 sweet babies shouldn’t have a chance at life? I don’t know the answer. I prefer to believe that while God is all around us, sometimes, we are simply living by the circumstances that we are in. Given that we all have the ability to exercise free will, there will be casualties of those choices. Some good, some bad. Sometimes they affect only the person making the decision and sometimes they affect everyone around them, directly and indirectly. But I struggle to find joy in announcing that I am a chosen one. While others have been dealt an unfair death sentence. I’m here right now. I am healthy right now. Am I held in higher favor with God while I watch the mother, watch her young child die, after a very complicated and sick life…. For the second time? While I cannot and will not take for granted my life, my health, my family, my children, my abilities, my career, my blessings, I cannot find joy in gloating over what I have been “hand chosen” and “gifted” with, in the face of those worthy, yet denied so much. It doesn’t mean that I lack gratitude. It means I have compassion and empathy. It doesn’t mean that I am admonishing those who have said/done the things that I am referencing here. It doesn’t mean that I think anyone is wrong. We are all just doing our best. I just don’t always understand all of it. Not even with my religion or faith. I just wish we could all cut each other a little slack and realize that we are all doing our best, even if it doesn’t match up with another’s version of best. We are all just doing our best with what we know at that given time. And that will always vary. And these are just my ramblings.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 18:23:57 +0000
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