A Divine-ish Comedy

I am walking through a tunnel. A vortex tunnel. But the vortex has shut down. There is no wind. There is no pull toward the vortex anymore. There used to be. It used to be full and fast. It used to be blaring with riches and wildness like a rave out of control. It used to be moving so quickly that there was nothing to hold on but to yourself. Dynamic and beautiful. Wild and full of spirit. But it has shut down. Now everything has fallen around me. I don’t know which way is ahead anymore. I am lost in clutter and confusion. I do not see a light. I do not feel a directional pull. I just search around amongst the mess and look for things I cannot even remember what they are anymore. But I keep looking. Maybe it will turn up. Maybe it won’t. Maybe I believe I will know it when I see it. Maybe I saw it and I didn’t stop long enough to pick it up or maybe I stayed too long with the wrong thing while it passed me by. Who knows. God does, I know. He’s giving me time. To look at all the things. Figuring out what is important to carry on with to the next journey and what is not. I hesitate to start very far into the next journey, so I stand around holding things that get heavy. But I can’t figure out which ones are the right ones to put down. So, I keep carrying. Some I cannot put down. Like Linda. Jake. Mom. Dad. Some I cling to tightly, Carleigh, My bonus kids and my grands, my brothers. A few family and friends that are left. My dogs! Friends that have lost touch. Life keeps moving. Imagine standing in the middle of a forest in the fall when all of the leaves are falling, and the wind whips up and blows all of them off the tree and you are a rock sitting in the middle. Life is the leaves. Friends are leaves. Time… is in the leaves. They blow away and winter comes. It covers you with new snow. Spring comes. The snow melts. New things begin to grow around you. Some of the deep-rooted things that lost their leaves shortly ago are now resprouting. You recognize them and gravitate. But all the while you hope that the things that blew past you will all return. Things are different now for you. You remained in the same place the whole time and things around you are growning new directions. Where do you fit in anymore? Do you even want to? It gets lonely sitting in the forest in the winter. It’s nice to see the new growth. I’m also sad to see some things did not return this year. They must have lost their purpose here. Maybe they were carried away by a bird and replanted somewhere else. It is ok. Seasons, you know. For everything has its season. As do you. As do I. What happened to the life where seasons were so obvious. Where grandparents were old and gray and did not move very fast and dressed funny and talked too loudly. Now… well, grandparents don’t look the same and life seems much shorter than it used to. People aren’t growing into the last season together as often anymore. Too many people aren’t making it out of their summer/fall into winter. Do you wonder, too, what is happening to the world? Why is this phenomenon occurring? Why didn’t things go as planned? Why didn’t life play out as it was supposed to. Where did mine go off track so many times. and why. Not supposed to ask that are you. Why can I not go further. I was recalling today… the last time I remember having the feeling of… “normal”. “Everything is ok and going to be ok and has become ok”. Probably about 2 years ago now. That would’ve made it almost ten since the first “before” I had experienced. I always liked to think that after losing Jake it was a good three years until I found a “new normal”. But looking back, that was only when I regained feeling in my soul. Like when your foot starts to gain feeling again after you’ve been sitting on it and it fell asleep. I finally found a place after 10 years of searching. The peace I never thought I would have found a place in my heart again. Oh, it’s gone again. I reckon it will find its way back again if I live long enough. It is an oddity… the feeling of chaos that runs incessantly through your veins. I think a normal would be that occasionally chaos takes control in life but not constantly. It is opposite over here. Chaos rules your soul and there will be moments of peace if you are lucky. It’s funny how people have no idea. You jump into that lazy river with everyone else and look like you are floating along with the rest of them all the while your raft has a hole in it. You are just hoping that you make it back around to the ladder again so you can get out for a while to repair it. This becomes overwhelming at times such as holidays when you feel you must be present and participate but you start noticing that your raft is deflating rapidly, and the ladder seems so far away. You begin to panic even though you did your best to prepare for such a time as this, but you really had no way of it. Sometimes you try to jump out on the side and then people notice and think something is wrong… and it damn well is! But what is there to do? If there was something someone could do you would tell them, and someone would try! Some people will notice when you get out to mend yourself. Most do not. But that is the goal! You would rather be left unnoticed. There is nothing anyone can do anyway. It is just easier to let them go on by while you try to figure it out. Maybe you’ll catch up the next go around. You don’t know what you’re really afraid of even if you don’t. You’re just afraid. This all sounds like a Dr. Seuss rhyme doesn’t it. It is a whole lot of nonsense about nonsensical things that unless you know, you don’t know. I feel like writing all the time, but I cannot put my finger on the thing I wish to share. That is life daily right now. Not being able to put my finger on just whatever it is. It has to be some sort of purgatory. Life on hold. I get frustrated wondering how much of it I am wasting but then at the same time, I don’t really care. I try to show up on the occasions. It is the rest of the time I don’t quite know what to do with. Who am I kidding. I have zero idea what I am doing. Do others feel that way or do you always feel that you are working towards something. I have no idea what that something is anymore. It is day to day. Hour to hour still. Don’t get me wrong… I feel that I have come a very long way from where I began. But somehow it feels like a very tight circle that repeats itself more often than the earth can turn once on its own axis. We lost 3 important people in this past year alone in my family. This right on the heels of the Earth-shattering year before. I have almost lost track of the years. Do you even get time to grieve? Nope. Life keeps going. I watched a video last night about a woman who lost 2 children. At separate times. She went off the grid… from a successful businesswoman to living on the streets. She was still quite articulate despite being on drugs. I must admit, I was impressed with her ability to carry on with the interview in spite of her obvious and admitted active heroin addiction. She believed that she could rejoin her old life at any time that she chose… but she did not choose to and likely supposed she never would. So many dichotomies in that interview. She was certain she was still successful but would rather have the insanity over the structure of a “successful” life. I could understand her. Really. I am fortunate to not have chosen a more chaotic path.

I wonder so often why people chose what they do. It seems that the phrase “I just don’t understand people” has become a stable in my vocabulary lately. I really don’t understand though. But I go back to what I used to tell my daughter, “Aren’t we glad for people who don’t understand the real things in life because they would have had to go through something horrific to actually understand what we know”. It is an impossibility for others on that side of life. Perhaps once you have crossed over to this side, it is an impossibility to understand the workings on the other side again. The frivolous. The mundane. The absurdities. The pettiness. The “struggles”. It’s almost comical… which makes me think of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I suppose when you reach this side as he did, you can or have to see the comedy otherwise what else do you have? In researching why is this called a comedy when it has such dark connotations throughout… you discover that Comedy is the adversary of Tragedy. Also… a comedy is defined by having a happy ending. I suppose inherently as a human being who has faith… life must be viewed as a comedy if we are to believe that it will all end happily. Does that mean that those of us who see the comedy in tragedy have gained a knowledge that we otherwise would not… that all in all, life will end happily? Maybe it is a gift God has bestowed upon the tragic. Just a little trinket of knowledge to go along with the rotten goodies that have been so unfortunately placed in your basket of life. Gee. Looking over this letter, I laugh again at myself and the place I have found myself in at this moment. Sounds pretty bleak and depressing I imagine. Can’t take the bad without the good, can you? That pearl we have already learned. Without the bad there could not be good. Comedy and Tragedy. Yin and Yang. Black and white. Color and Contrast. Life is incomplete without both and all. Perhaps we on this side are more complete? Having seen both to so many degrees? Oh, there is a silver lining for you! Count your tragedies along with your blessings as it is within those that have made you who you are today. Are you satisfied with that? Are you complacent with who you have become today? I hope not. I am not. I know that even in writing this nonsense I am working through to become something better than I was before I opened this laptop.

As I write, I contemplate on whether or not I will share this with the world. Will it make people look at me differently? Will people draw a pity on me? Shouldn’t I be further along by now? Do I project a happier, more stable self than what you are reading? The objective is dual. One is to express and work out something that is within me needing a voice. The other is to empower someone else to relate and as I have been so graciously told several times, I am helping someone else by sharing what is buried so shallowly underneath the superficial surface of my life. So, with that being said, I will share. So that you will know that you are not alone in your thoughts. As nonsensical as it may sound to you or to me… perhaps you will catch the thread of the fabric that weaves us all together. So here I am today. In this moment. Unravelling the fabric of the holidays where many of us feel so lost. A new year is upon us. Only days away. A new hope. A new opportunity to thrive. It is all we have, isn’t it? Behold. Two thousand and twenty-three in the year of our Lord. Lift up your faces to Him and go forth as He shines His light upon us. In Jesus name, be well. JHW+