This morning I was cruising down Lakeside Drive when a pokey car from a side street turned in front of me. That’s one of my pet peeves. If a driver feels some aggressive need to pull in front of me, fine, just go fast enough to stay out of my way. I stepped on my brakes and would have forgotten it, except the guy slowed down even more, creeping into a gas station. “REALLY!?” I ranted to my dashboard, “You had to cut me off ’cause you were in a hurry to… STOP?”
I can self-justify with the best, but I’m not so far gone as to equate my petty irritations with righteous indignation. I knew I wasn’t channeling Jesus with my defensive driving.
This also suggests a serious limitation to that great advice to “be in the moment.” Oh, I was in the moment, all right, totally in the moment, that scowling, growling, hand-clenching moment. Sometimes you need to get out of the moment, be a little less present, to grasp the bigger picture.
So I tried to talk myself down. I noticed that he was a geezer, and they do everything slower, everything. But I’ve played that chess game with myself before, so I know all the moves. I responded with, “Hey, driving faster takes no extra strength. Retirement ain’t gonna slow me down. That’s no excuse.” “Ah,” said my mental opponent, “And how many wrecks will your age-diminished reactions cause before you slacken your speed?” Okay, that was a surprise, a new argument that sounded suspiciously like my wife. How did she get in my head? That’s totally unfair–two against one.
But her voice is the one I really want to hear, not because it is right, making me wrong and bad, but because it is gracious. She wants to find peace through mutual acceptance of our weaknesses. In contrast, I find that when everyone follows the rules, we all get along. Legalistic happiness. It’s pretty common in church.
The problem is when we screw up… and we all screw up. The law has no margin for error, so it makes us all losers, and we scramble to escape that weight of condemnation. Each time others break our rules, rules that ensure our safety, we feel slighted, devalued, and disrespected, and even small slights cut deeply because we already agree with them, we believe we deserve no respect. When someone cuts me off in traffic, I feel less of a person, so I get defensive. In my relationships I push others to change, to conform, to live in a way that does not tear open my self doubt. Everyone, follow the rules!
The voice of grace sounds so small and useless against such visceral drives, and it calls me to abandon the very thing that is protecting my fragile sense of well-being: my ragged record of good, which is my only justification for squeezing others into line. Grace whispers that we are loved regardless of our record, that we are valued fully even in our failures. But I find it hard to trust. Grace is like oxygen–once you let it in, it is available to everyone in the room. If you allow grace to cover you as a loser, then it necessarily covers all losers, and then you have to drop your legalistic demands. But their flawed conformity to rules is the only thing keeping me protected. For all its defects and failures, the legal system looks pretty safe, and grace looks pretty risky. No wonder faith is the only way into grace.
I came to work early today so the daytime librarians could scoot home ahead of the snow that is now piling up on my car. Having lived in Asheville, NC for 4 years and Chicago for 6, I know how to get around well enough in the snow–it’s ice that’s the real menace. That and southern drivers. But by the time I leave late tonight there won’t be much else on the road. This town closes down by 10 p.m., even on weekends. If you want a midnight snack, you have to settle for Sheetz gas station.
All the students seem to be taking the night off, building snowmen or huddled in their rooms I guess, since nobody’s here. The snow outside is beautiful, clumping onto bushes and drifting against the porch’s classic pillars, turning everything white and pure. I love snow, the single pleasure of winter weather, and we’re expecting more than a foot. Our dog Mazie will have great fun bouncing through it tomorrow.
My latest bout of bruising depression that stomped in two weeks ago seems to be slipping away. I don’t know why it came, I don’t know why it is pulling out. For two or three days I have had a precarious emotional detente. I can see the shadowy figures outside casing the place, but they haven’t broken in again. Their brooding distance doesn’t make for peace… or even recovery, but it gives relief. I think if I keep steady, the marauders will draw back. Those with experience know that depression includes more than awful feelings. Even when the black lifts, the gray fog continues to deaden and debilitate, but I’d rather be under a cloud than under assault.
Some days I just ache. I can feel my mouth pulled into the lines of a half-grimace, like someone trying to cover up an irrepressible agony. The very question of hope versus hopelessness grows distant as the present pain blocks out any future. There is just this moment… which stretches on hour after hour. I can distract myself, but it seems so futile–like playing peek-a-boo with a feverish baby. At least if I had some huge loss, say of a loved-one, I would have clarity about the reason for my pain, a direction to focus my feelings, and hope that over time some healing would come. It would make sense. And others would understand. What is there even to share or cry over if the misery is nameless?
Sadness and pain have been oozing from my heart for a week or more. I don’t know its source, so I can’t seek a cure. Even taking a walk, which usually does me good, has not staunched the ache. Yesterday I shuffled into the kitchen, and it struck me in the gut like a knife… one moment I am thinking about lunch, and the next I am cringing. Something I saw out of the corner of my soul, perhaps the flash of some failure past that stings my feelings but does not register conscious thoughts for me to confront and fight. When the edges of the cut are raw, the slightest touch can shock the nerves. It will eventually lift, but for now I stagger along, looking for any little cubbyhole to tuck my soul into for a brief respite.
I grew up believing that I was superhuman, that I could and should have every quality admired in others. After all, my grandfather’s biography was titled “Always in Triumph,” and I was cut from the same cloth. So I inherited a Supersaint cape, but not the genes, expectations without the abilities. Every attribute in others turned into a goal for me, and every weakness of mine must be muscled into a strength. Without asking how a basketball player would fare in a saddle or why marathoners and sprinters had such different builds, I was determined to be a complete spiritual athlete, equally good at figure skating and weight-lifting.
I did not realize that my qualities as a gift to the church were unique, that my strengths supplied the lack in others’ weaknesses and that their gifts filled in for my inadequacies. None of us were designed to do it all, but rather each is to be a vital member of a team, offering his unique perspectives, abilities, and traits. Someone who is good at sympathizing is shaped differently from someone who is good at challenging. The cheerful and friendly are not usually given to reflection and quiet. Often we assume that maturing makes us all alike, good at all aspects of spirituality. But if each of us is designed uniquely, becoming more mature may well make us more distinct, though each a beautiful aspect of God’s character.
We are God’s orchestra, and the drums are not in competition with the flutes or the trombones fighting the violins. Each has its own music. We can delight in one another’s contributions and seek to find the flow of harmony in concert. I can be inspired by their dedication and enthusiasm, discipline and creativity because we have the same values and shared goals, but my score is my own. May I take satisfaction and pleasure in the instrument God designed me to be.
Grace is truly a mystery. I understand how justice works to set things back to rights, but how exactly does forgiveness work? Isn’t it bound to set things more out of whack? Fair trade makes great sense–everything adds up at the end of the day in the universe’s great balance sheets–but giving things away willy-nilly is going to ruin the bottom line. How will we know who owes what to whom? If you fling the doors of grace wide open isn’t there going to be a run on the bank? And if grace were as common as pebbles, there’d be no market for it–you’d have to give it away without charge. Imagine that: free grace. Who can predict where that would end: the collapse of the world as we know it.
Today it was overcast with a high of 20F (that “F” would stand for Fahrenheit, though other words come aptly to mind). I decided to take a nap instead of a walk in the afternoon. My soul approved. Naps are highly underrated. Go take one right now and tell me it doesn’t improve your life’s outlook! (Or if you read this at night–go to bed early. same thing.)
I went walking with Mazie today thinking it might relieve my depression as it sometimes does. After all, it was sunny and not too cold. For the two hour walk all I could think and feel was, “I just want to curl up in a ball and die.” Some days are like that.
By this afternoon the snow had mostly melted at our house, and it didn’t feel that cold, so I pulled on my tattered loafers sans socks and drove to the park with Mazie to walk. The asphalt path was mostly free of snow, but by the time I reached the end, my toes were stinging. When I turned onto the wooded dirt trail, I found half an inch of unmelted snow, and I started waddling with my feet splayed to keep from scooping snow into the gaping holes on the out-sides of my shoes. As I walked, something strange happened–my toes began to warm. I was surprised enough to pull out one foot and check that it wasn’t just going numb. It was cool to the touch, but not icy, in spite of the snow that was clinging to the edge of the open splits. Even on cold days my bare feet in loose shoes rub themselves warm against the leather as I walk, and now the broken trail made my feet slide around even more, increasing the friction. There is an upside to friction… even in relationships.
Berly uses her lunch break to stretch her legs, and since I walk Mazie at the same time, we phone-walk together. Today we chatted about yesterday’s blog post and how grace plays such a big role in our relationship. My sketch was true in its broad strokes, but don’t suppose that Berly is always trusting and I am never selfish. We screw up regularly. But we make room for that in our relationship. Our family values are framed by grace–we structure our lives to make space for one another’s weaknesses, fears, needs and the like. Grace designs the principles by which we live but also the manner in which we live these principles, or rather fail to live these principles. In other words, we give ourselves grace for failing to live by grace.
In my last post I said Berly trusts “that I am doing all that I can within the sphere of my emotional strength.” But sometimes I shortchange Kimberly by doing less than I can, intentionally or not (that is, sometimes I am lazy and at other times I simply underestimate my own energy level). We are deeply committed to one another, to mutual understanding, acceptance, and support and we live this consistently, but not perfectly. We have expectations… our expectations are that we will fall short of our ideals on a fairly regular basis. We trust one another not because we live flawlessly, but because we live in grace towards one another’s flaws.
In other words, we live with friction, and we think that’s good. It’s possible to smooth over all interactions, but the cost of such a tightly controlled “peace” is shallow and inauthentic relationships. Nothing is more lonely than a friendship where we cannot be ourselves. If we are unique individuals with our own histories, views, personalities, and preferences, then doing real life together at any depth is going to bring tension. Real life and growth comes from rubbing up against the rough grain of those we love and discovering that our flaws are the basis for our bonding. It is not fixing faults but embracing grace that strengthens relationships and deepens trust.
