New Year...The Cycle of Life's Seasons

I turned 48 last month. My sister turned 50 this week. I'm beginning to measure life through the lens of decades rather than years. I can frame who I was, what I was, how I lived, where I lived, who I lived with, in pockets of time, and now I near the end of the 5th pocket of time, the pocket of decades.

Timo's accident last year was like being put in a washing machine - the kind with the window in front, where every few turns you see the splash of bright colour of a favourite garment, only to be whisked away and replaced by earthtones and stained dishrags. It felt like the world was spinning and I was spinning with it, and being disoriented, and confused, and drowning.

Truth be told, it wasn't just last year that was like that...it's been much of my life. I can measure seasons of depression and disorientation through the lens of adolescent life, transitioning countries, relational transitions - from daughter, to friend,  to student, to teacher, to single, to married, to mother, to aunt, to cousin, to neighbour, to Spiritual Director, to Grief Companion, to Public Speaking Coach. Depression can feel like wearing multi-coloured glass lenses that warp and change any given situation. And every tumult that life's voyage tosses me through gives more opportunity to explore the experience with eyes wide open and a discernment that asks, 'is this the warped view I experience or the reality of a difficult situation?!' 

I meant to keep an account of what it was like, and I started and stopped, and meant to start again. But life didn't slow down enough. I reflect on what I wish I was, what I wish I could be and do - wishing I could take the time to write it all, and then realizing the reflecting would only open a grief I never was able to grieve. There is a before and after happening - unfolding in my memory, even as I write.

Life is so full of befores and afters. I think I always was waiting for stability, for predictability. My whole life has been thinking things will get better - there was never room in my imagination for things to get worse. Am I the only one who has thought this way? Ignorance may well indeed be a kind of bliss.

The world was such a blur a year ago. I kept a list of people who made us meals, sent us gifts - such needed interventions that both encouraged and sustained us. I intended (and still intend) to write personal thank you notes to everyone. Opening the mail and finding well-wishes for Timo, and assurance of prayers, and even monetary gifts to help with take-out meals, extra gas, needed handicap accessories - these all overflowed into my heart as direct touches of divine providence. I was going through the motions of what was needed day to day - getting Timo into a wheelchair, getting him through the door, buckling his seatbelt. It was like having a young child all over again. Everything was slow. As anyone with a toddler knows, you don't simply get out of the house in a hurry. Every step was laboured, cautious. 

And even in the heartbreak of seeing my child so broken, there were gifts for me in it. Gifts for Timo, for sure, but gifts for me. I was having to touch him, to help him, to support him, and he was letting me. Timo is fiercely independent, but this breaking of his body, opened him to receive from me the help that he needed. He could not 'do' for himself - though he figured out how to balance a spoon between his third and fourth fingers and aim and catch each bite. Having two broken arms in casts presents significant and interesting challenges. I won't even begin to try and explain how one uses the bathroom with such limitations. Suffice to say, we made some modifications and installed a bidet. (And we've never looked back! Why didn't we do this sooner?!) Sorry, maybe that's TMI. 

In many Psalms there are lines about "I will tell the generations to come what You have done" or "In the midst of the congregation I will praise You!" or "I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the midst of His people." I have reflected often on these verses - they jump out at me, and I think, 'That's what my blog is! A telling of all that God has done!" I know without a doubt that God spared Timo's life, limbs, and faculties that day when he flew through the air and flipped and broke his body in so many places. And yet it doesn't all make sense to me. But it doesn't need to. I've had to reckon with God over this need of things to make sense. 'Make it make sense, Lord!' I cry. And then we hash it out. And I come to a place of knowing. What is this knowing? It's that I know I am weak, and tired, and helpless, but held, empowered, with access to the throneroom of heaven. I know that God allows things, and still protects, but also takes people to be with Him when it doesn't seem their time. And that none of us is guaranteed another day, another breath. This knowing is that without Him upholding and sustaining, and writing the pages of our lives, that there is not being, no knowing, no anything: "He upholds all things by the Word of His power." 

What is this knowing? It is that He is trustworthy in my pain, He is faithful in my doubting, He is kind in the midst of my confusion. It is that this broken reed I call my 'self' is not crushed by Him, but held tenderly and nurtured into life.

And I know now that as I measure the seasons and decades of life, that the steady, unwavering faithfulness of God has undergirded every difficult trial I've faced. I'll tell more about these sometime, I imagine. I used to long for and look for a time of stability. And God keeps allowing curveballs to come my way - Sam lost his job suddenly last month. I'll update about that next post... 

So I'm realizing we can't hope for or look for an imagined security, or lack of difficulty in life. There simply will be trials. That's it: In this world you will have trouble. "But," says Jesus, "take heart! For I have overcome the world!" (John 16).

I am learning to rest in the One that is, in fact predictable in a few ways: He is predictably PRESENT. Predictably FAITHFUL. Predictably PATIENT. Predictably LISTENING.

The stability of life and wanting events and children and home and family to all be okay (whatever I imagine that might be), is not a bad thing to want. But Jesus seems to call me to a deeper longing, a deeper yearning - one that longs for the sweetness of His presence in all circumstances. 

My Dad's cousin once wrote a book of poems, the title of which is 'A Deeper Hunger Starts.' I think I'll pick it up and read a few. He seems to have caught on to something that I'm rabbit trailing into in my thoughts. There is a deeper hunger we are unaware exists in each of us. A hunger to know, to be known, to be satisfied, to live without fear, to rest and trust in the Almighty God, the One Who made us, knows us, and hears our deepest soul-cries.

To be continued.