I am grateful for many things this evening, many of them so small that they are almost missable amidst the noise and tumult that whirls around me at any given time. I had, as might have been apparent to people who regularly read this blog, a really difficult weekend. My blog expressed it, my morning journal described it, my “crying towel” by the side of my bed witnessed it. But as so often happens, I had a new day today, a fresh 24 hours during which I could continue to rally myself and have a better week. What I love about resilience is that it provides this sometimes sudden, often mystical burst of energy that, in my case, brought me from the edge of despair and sadness back into the realms of hope and possibility even though virtually none of my external life circumstances changed. I love that. There is some measure of grace that enters in at that low point and then this ridiculous sense of “everything’s going to be alright” flows in even when it shouldn’t be there. I am speechless with gratitude about that.
I have written about this before, of course. Over the course of these 347 days I have repeated some themes quite a bit; they bear repeating. Certainly perseverance and resilience have been big ones because I have called upon them so frequently in this past year. Still, there is something miraculous about getting to the end of your strength–“I just can’t take another step. I am going to sit here and die. I give up. I can’t do this anymore. I have nothing left in the tank…” You get the idea. And then you wake up the next morning and not only are you not dead, you find that you can in fact take another step, you can make some movement, you can, in fact, get out of bed and get on with the day. Wait, where did that come from? It wasn’t there last night, but darned if it isn’t here this morning.
Yesterday I stormed around my house for much of the afternoon (as I was heaving boxes of books into my car to take to the storage unit.) I was raging against God, as I often do. Mostly I was recounting all the reasons why I no longer believed that God exists, fussing and swearing and having a right good tantrum about the whole God thing. (Someday when I finally meet God we’re going to have a right good laugh about the whole thing.) I can’t tell you much in the way of specifics about God–I was born and raised in a faith tradition that taught me one particular view of God that I have modified several times over the years. And I frequently get into these one-sided shouting matches at God–after all, God has some explaining to do. But whether or not I believe in the God that my faith tradition introduced to me or have some other spiritual twist on the Supreme being is irrelevant. Somehow that grace, that strength, that energy showed up this morning out of nowhere. Poof, like magic. I didn’t do it. I didn’t really even ask for it (wait, I guess I did when I was sobbing into my crying towel saying, “Help me, God!) And yet, there it was. I do not take for granted this well of grace that bubbles up through the cracked and parched soil of my heart just when I need it. I feed it, as best I can, by trying to live as honorably as I can offering what I can for the good of others and for the planet. It’s not an even exchange by any stretch of imagination–my ROI (return on investment) is incredible.
So here I am again, grateful. And I take these moments as they come. I might feel awful again tomorrow (though I’m planning on feeling terrific), but I know that there is a grace that is beyond my comprehension that shows up no matter how grim the hour. No, my external life circumstances have not changed appreciably over the last few days, but internally things are percolating and I find myself remarkably calm. Thus is life riding on the mechanical bull. Sometimes there’s peace and stillness, whether it’s when the bull stops moving or the quiet moment of sailing through the air when I’ve lost my grip on the virtual reins. Either way, I enjoy it.
