Maybe Even Thailand

There's something about pain, that as it heals, it only brings up more. Or maybe that's just me.

I have a birthday coming up. I hate birthdays. I really do. Not like I used to. I used to say I hated birthdays, but really I loved them. I always hoped if I said I never liked my birthday, someone would try to make me feel differently. Such is youth. Then I met someone and fell in love and everything changed. Love does that, you know? Real love changes everything.

This year, however, I am experiencing a sort of visceral reaction. Most of my life has been a stressful dance between denial, survival and grandiose hope. It all hinged on someday. Someday things would be better. Once I got here, did this, accomplished this. It was my family's motto. The big fights would stop when... fill in the blank. I always waited for that blank to be filled in. Jumping from lily-pad to lily-pad trying to make it all fit when I knew it never really would. Wedding says, children, houses, degrees, whatever it was that was 'out there.' But hope is a commodity that youth can afford, no matter how ignorant or misguided it is.

Then one day, for whatever reason, things did start to work out. I got into a great school fell in love, had the life of my dreams. Whatever it was that helped bring it about, I felt good. I felt wonderful. Everything did work out. The formulas, the systems, the promises, they finally paid off. Never mind the ache that still sat there, or the feeling of uneasiness I couldn't get rid of. It seemed like there was more, but I couldn't figure out what. I was living on a razors edge, instinctively feeling it. It seemed too easy. Signing on for loans and credit cards wasn't as easy as it felt. People don't fall in love, never fight and get married. I was stacking up debt, in more ways than one, living like I had no tomorrow to pay for. And I knew it, but I didn't know what else to believe. Life had been full of so many extremes, friends forever, until tomorrow, feast or famine, kings or paupers. There was never an in between and I think I knew I wanted to believe it would last forever, but knew, at some point things would have to change. I closed my eyes, took a breath and dove into how great that moment was, swimming in a world of denial and ignorant bliss.

So here I am, facing the first birthday in 27 years, honestly. Between the heartache of loss still creating a few shadows, the grief of time hangs over head like a harvest moon and the chains of debt pulling me back into a stark reality of how youth is wasted on the young, there seems to be nothing much to look forward to.

I'm curled up on a small couch, computer in front of me, a mixture of icons surrounding me. In one corner is a small box filled with memorabilia I had forgotten I had from a love long lost. In it is a letter written in hand by a man that can't spell and finds words hard to find sometimes. It was four pages long pouring out a vulnerable heart. Next to that is a box of things I have to ship out tomorrow that I sold on Ebay. $500 worth of things that I haven't looked at, touched or used in years and finally it will be going to a worth while cause, Sallie Mae. It's all sitting on top of the class Financial Peace by Dave Ramsey I just started taking. In the middle of the room, a stack of books. Some by NT Wright (since he is coming to town on Friday and I have registered to listen to him speak), Anne Lammott (a brilliant memoirist that I would love to emulate someday), Donald Miller (that I am mildly disappointed to hear is recently engaged, which scraps my plans to drive up and introduce myself explaining why we are the same person and he should marry me), a book of poems by the Brontes that I carry with me everywhere and a few leaflets on teaching in Thailand or getting my masters in theology. Really, both are a distraction, my empty attempt to feel as though I still have an excuse to not start really living a life I should be well on my way to establishing by this age.

And that's the point, isn't it? There is a truth that lingers beneath each pile that I have a hard time admitting to. A deeper reality that is the flip side to every coin. The old letters and items. I see a time of happiness, bliss, feeling loved and special and cared for. What I forget is, the letter was written after he started using again, lying to me the whole time. The whole thing was written with resentment in his heart, blaming me for driving him back to substance abuse. I'll never know how much of what he wrote was true, how much of it was an attempt to right the guilt in his own heart, how much he loved me for me, or because he needed something to make him feel like he wasn't the monster he would later allow himself to become. The pile of stuff is the sad result of living a life on luck and a prayer. There are bounds we live in, and when they are violated, when we push too far, when we let things and stuff and wounds spin us out of control, somewhere, somehow, we pay the price. I have a lot of work to do to get out of that mess. And the books? Well, that truth is actually the silver lining, if there is one.

They are the desperate attempt to make sense of the harshness of reality. If it is too good to be true, it probably is, but, what isn't true, is the feeling of unease. Peace is only subject to how much truth and reality is lived in. There will never be peace in denial, or in ignorance. There may be desperate joy, but the space that happiness needs to feel to beat back the restlessness, it just gets bigger. Those that have been down this road before me, they become beacons in the night, kindred spirits reminding me how the plight of the soul is nothing new. We are all searching, struggling, doing the best we can to walk our way through dark rooms, banging our knees on the coffee table as we go. We get bruised, step on others, fall, cut our hands on shattered glass. The mess of my life is nothing more than the attempts to get through without wanting to turn on the flashlight. I've preferred the dark and stacks of letters that still bring tears to my eyes, bills that have to be paid and another birthday that is coming seeming to whisper how little I have done of worth or real value, are all the results. Now, I just am refusing to close my eyes again.

It hurts, keeping my eyes open. I feel like I am waking up to so much, and I really don't like the sights. I hate that I have to spend a good while paying off debt of the heart, the soul, the mind, the spirit and the checkbook. And sometimes I want to close my eyes again. As I clean out my car to sell, as I sit at home alone, as I longingly stare at a beach scene, or talk to a good friend about her adventures in living the glamorous life free of the restraints I know, I just want to bury my head, and go shopping, or book a trip, or do something, anything to make me feel less stuck, less like a failure. I feel the heartache, the loss of time, the wishing I had done things so different and I want to scream, punch something, throw something, or just pray for all of life to just get better. I want to argue with God about redemption and making things right and how He should do that for me right now or the cross means nothing. My logic seems flawless until I realize, if that were to happen, if I were to get what I want and a miracle check showed up in the hand of the man of my dreams, or better yet, in the hands of every person that ever left me or ignored me, or was mean to me, I would find myself right back where I was a few years ago. Everything would be great, but then I would wonder when it would all disappear again and the razor's edge would be just as sharp. Feast or famine, king or pauper, all or nothing.... I would never learn how to live in the middle, in the grey, in the reality of death, pain, ache, loss, betrayal and I would never really survive.

God would stay up on His thrown, far away, displaced in some form of my imagination. I would never need Him to get down into the mud with me, helping me learn how to be part of my own redemption. I would miss the point. Of everything. And then, that's when the cross really would mean nothing. When I closed my eyes to the bad of life, to the pain, to the unease, inadvertently I closed my eyes to the greatness of God.

I'm scared. I'm scared I messed things up so badly it's too late. I think deep down, most of us feel that way. We are jealous of those that either never have to feel that way, or just seem to never have to face that feeling. But those of us that have big dreams, or big hurts, or big mistakes, we live in a world where the worst is possible and there are times it feels inevitable. I'm staring at my life, looking back with a critical eye, realizing how many times I've cycled through the same crap, the same way of living and I'm now closer to 30 than I am 20 and it scares me. There are no more excuses now. No more nets to catch me as I make a fool of myself. The risks are bigger now, and I am more mortal than I want to realize. I have to work at this thing, life. And I wonder how this gospel will really play itself out in my life. I wonder if I will have a testimony, or if that is just another grand illusion in the culture of denial I have grown up in. My consequences are very real and I'm not sure how much it's going to cost, in the long run, to really pay them off. I worry, did I give up my shot? Can something great ever really be produced from such a late bloomer?

I guess in time, I will find out. In time I will know what is grand illusion, and what is really possibility. Until then, I will bear down, survive another birthday, another round of holidays alone and then, spring will come. And with it, who knows, maybe even Thailand.