I’ve been thinking about why I am so intent on steering away from soft, cushy, feel good sentiments – whether in the lyrics of a song, the echos from a stage, or the words in a writing – and driven more to manifest ideas that prompt you to think and be challenged. What’s wrong anyway with a pleasant little quip reminding you to take a deep breathe? Often expressed in calligraphic writing and pretty pastels. God knows (literally) that we are short on stillness. Yet it feels as though even a ploy for stillness is confused by discontented exhaustion and badge worthy busyness. Our only reminder to breathe is in the 2 seconds that it took to read that post, and then we go right back to scrolling, to grumbling, to pursuing.
Soft isn’t helping. We know soft.
Soft reminders.
Soft church.
Soft selves.
With hard schedules.
Hard complaints.
Hard lives.
Gentle reminders are not shaking us to live the lives we were made for.
Cue the eye roll, because no one even knows what that means. Just another miss in the dark, pointed naively towards the reality of life.
Doesn’t it seem ironic though? Slowing reminders should prompt slowness. But we scroll on. Nudges of perseverance should inspire patience. But we’re more anxious than ever before. Expressions of value should spur on contentment. But we grow more ardently in desire. We treat what would otherwise be profound changes as mere suggestions, to where we have made lightness of life itself.
“Ah, breathing. Doesn’t that sound nice.”
Instead we just resolve to be more gracious with ourselves. We’re only human after all, though capable of much and yet pushing ourselves towards super power greatness in only the ways that are defeating us.
Jordan will tell you that my favoritism towards hard nudges (if that expression doesn’t hold too much irony of its own) has always been so, and that hasn’t necessarily always proven a good thing. Rather than being sensitive to speak into him in a way that would cultivate growth, I more often times fell upon words that unintentionally caused him to feel more of a disappointment than an individual capable of immense value. Thankfully he has helped me understand the power of a strong word and consider how to share – and sometimes when not to share – in a way that brings insight, not judgement. Not defeat. Nobody wants that.
Although humor me for just one moment, and perhaps even be gracious with me as Jordan has been, and tell me, what if you read this on Facebook?
“COME ON.
There’s a way that is better. Open your eyes.
There’s a life that is sweeter. Taste it.
There’s a love that is deeper. Abide in it.
Worry. An unnecessary weight.
Fear. Mistrust disguised as common sense.
Anxiousness. A belittling of the self.
Discontentment. Gratitudes beating.”
How could someone be so judgmental and insensitive? Out of touch with the realities of life and unfair to narrow a real emotion down to a few meager words of opposition. Anyone?
We scowl at hard.
Yet we remain unchanged at soft.
So either we would rather complain about life than unearth dry roots, or we will continue living on in our broken normal because words are not enough to make the difference when they come from someone else’s mouth, or someone else’s instagram account.
Forget someone else, since that doesn’t seem to be working. What if the grappling for change begins to come instead from you?
Hard circumstances help us feel the weight of a life, a lens, an addiction, an anxiety, a fear, a stress, a priority, a desire that desperately needs to be changed because we see, perhaps for the first time, how the fibers of our fragile selves are being shredded one innocent thread at at a time. When something tears slowly, we don’t recognize the damage until much of us has come undone. Maybe a hard yank on that stray thread is exactly what is needed, but not because I or anyone else has pointed the tear out. At some point you have to simply look down and see that the covering you made for yourself is unraveling. And let’s be honest with ourselves. We look down often at our feet to track which way we are headed and the steps we are taking to get there, but we don’t often enough let our gaze bend a bit closer, towards the heart, to see the loose ends that are wary of keeping the whole covering intact.
That is, until a hardship comes – say a job loss, a threatened business, an unexpected diagnosis, a forced juggling act of the demands of your boss and your children, perhaps even the newfound demands of yourself. There may have been a saying that you glanced at with a recent scroll or a teaching you heard on a Sunday morning only weeks ago. The words of a friend perhaps even prompted you to pause and consider, but only for a moment.
Then came hard, and breathing suddenly started to sound really good. A desperation for it actually. Forget the deep yoga breathe. (Although those are lovely.) No, we are past that. Now we begin to see how little we trained ourselves to sustain beyond the stretch and into the hard.
All that you hoped to know in stillness – assurance, contentment, calmness – was intended to be known through the hard. So what happened? Why is it that when these attributes are actually needed for the fibers of our very selves to stay intact, they are nothing but frayed ends? What is the point of contentment if only known when there is much? What is the point of assurance if there is nothing to fear? What is the point of trust if the road is never through darkness?
Okay, so there was this boat out on the water. And there were these men – the men who called themselves followers of Jesus – and they were absolutely freaking out. Waves were to the size of overwhelming. Death was at their door. The one they called Lord was with them, but where?
Napping.
He wasn’t being insensitive or unaware or negligent. He was simply showing them a new way to live from the way they had otherwise known. The way of normal that says, when hard hits you are expected to feel every stress, every worry, every angst. And then here comes Jesus, and he has the audacity to think that when hard hits you can have the emotional capacity to rest. Yet there he was, resting. Exemplifying a type of trust that cannot show itself in full until smack dab in the middle of a storm. Literally.
No one wants hard, but hard will come, and all those days of soft will be the yarn that you use to weave your covering. How are the threads holding up?
EXPOSITION: This is by no means to convince you that hurt can be avoided, but even in our hurt, even in the most trying of moments, there can be a stillness for your soul. So here’s a question that might be worth considering: To be free of worry or anxiety or fear is rather unheard of, and anything but normal, but do you believe it’s possible?
RISE: You don’t even need to have faith in Jesus yet to begin following him. Besides, how can you have faith in someone you don’t yet know? Sit with him. Hear what he has to say. You might even discover that the faith you held to is more full of life than you realized.
DENOUEMENT: “He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ -Jesus