I'm compelled to reach out, but I don't know what to say.
I had a troubling afternoon. I faced something in my work today that is just a bit beyond me: my experience, my knowledge, even my skills I rely on to help bring about understanding. I have to confess that often when this has happened in the past, I've found a way move on, rather than face my inadequacy. (I find blaming something or someone else quite useful). But I kept trying today.
I didn't get very far, and I have to try again another day because I am on a deadline. I have to uphold my responsibility.
I'm afraid that this will happen again. That I won't be able to accomplish what needs to be done. I'm worried that my old friend "procrastination" will kick in and my anxiety will be given a chance to bloom with the extra time. I don't like the unknown-ness of that day and my ability to produce. Oh, in saner moments I know all will be well, but sanity doesn't really have a chance in the face of my fear.
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There a saying that goes "God only gives us what we can handle." I think that's a crock. Really? God gives me what I can handle?
It seems to me that we get more than we can handle on a regular basis, sometimes it's far more and sometimes it just teeters beyond our limit.
Last night, after I had a full and productive day at work, picked my son up, made dinner, and tried to have a nice conversation with my husband, I erupted because the constant drum of activity throughout my day finally crescendo-ed as my husband teased me. AHHHHHH! (I wish my yelling had been that benign). That little, loving, annoying jab pushed me right over the edge.
And then there are those awful circumstances that are far more than we can handle...I shudder to utter them. We know. We've born witness to women faced with what couldn't possibly be fair or just. Sometimes we are those women.
No. We cannot handle what comes our way more often than not. We think we do. We cope through constant worry, detailed planning, controlling who and whatever we can or conversely avoid, blame, procrastinate, and run away. And we become tired, frustrated, angry. Tied up in knots or disconnected from people and life. But by golly we managed it, didn't we?
To what end?
There are learning theories in education which define learning as a transformative process. In other words, we are not the same once we've engaged in the learning process.
When I "handle" what comes my way, am I transformed? Or am I constipated?
I just put my son to bed, and I sang to him a song that begins:
"Day by day, and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here."
"Here." I'm experiencing Communion.
A mysterious, strengthening, graceful power enters my life when I am open and when I share my life and myself with others.
That sounds trite, I think. But then again, how can I convey the mystery of connection and fellowship, especially with other women?
Or with the God of my understanding?
Communion is intimate. It is mutual. There is a baring of souls and a bearing of one another. Something transcendent occurs. We are more than our circumstances.
But we are empowered to live within them. And to live through them.
And we learn. We grow. We are ALIVE.
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So I am not alone and I am not limited to my own resources as I face my responsibilities at work this week. Hope refreshes my despondent heart, my spirit renewed.
We come from varying spiritual traditions, I'm sure. But I "stumbled" upon these words tonight as I sought something deeper and stronger than myself to face my life. They may ring true or metaphorical to you, but I offer them as a reminder to myself that the buck doesn't have to stop with me.
I cry aloud to the Lord
I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy
I pour out my complaint before him;
before him I tell my trouble.
When my spirit grows faint within me,
it is you who know my way.
May the resources for our communion be made known to us each time we face more than we can handle. Thanks for being mine tonight.
"Every so often I need out--away from all these people I love most in the world--in order to regain a sense of proportion...a circle of quiet. [There] I move slowly into a kind of peace that is indeed marvelous." - Madeleine L'Engle
Invitation
Please feel free to contribute your thoughts, your experience, your challenges, or sources of reflection (like books, movies, or quotes), or to simply read this blog as a resource for your own reflection and peace. Your perspective is warmly and gratefully received whatever your age, your life situation or your family arrangement.
About Me
- Christy
- Always wondering about Being
Posts
This post made me think of one of my favorite books, _When Things Fall Apart_ by Pema Chodron.
ReplyDelete"Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really got solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."
I'm still working on this...
xx Carolyn
Thanks for sharing this Christy and for offering comments on "God never gives us more ...." I agree with you on its crockiness on two scores. Firstly, I just don't believe every negative thing in our lives is God given. We live in a fallen world, and I have to believe that some of what we go through hurts Him too. Secondly, and I think what we need to be reminded of so very often and you wrote about so eloquently ... the more we "handle" on our own ... the less we can "handle" it. "Cast your cares ...." "Lift your eyes ...."
ReplyDeleteOh to be reminded of this ... always and often ... so we can enter that "circle of quiet" and have it be .... quiet.
Janet
As I was reading this entry I re-thought to myself of the times in my own life when I found that phrase going through my own head and, just like Christy, was not finding it comforting at all. I have come to believe that a word has been left out of this phrase. I wonder who started the misquote of the Original which surely must have been : ”God only gives us those things we think we can handle."
ReplyDelete(I am supposed to take care of THIS?, and, How the HELL has it occurred that I am involved in it anyway?) Blaming God has always been a great source of comfort and relief for me also when all else fails.
So then, throwing my hands in the air (figuratively, most of the time), getting angry, or collapsing and/or giving up, or storming around, feeling like a victim and utterly powerless, or blaming God, myself and any innocent bystander, or, even the worst, actually proceeding to do something to “fix it” without any consultation with my own better judgment, or a friend, or a mentor or an expert, or ANYONE else would have been better than me alone in my own thinking at that moment,
—after all that and sometimes more—with still NOTHING working, eventually I would hit a brick wall. Knocked onto my butt, I could then start shaking the cobwebs out of my head. Finally, through trial and error I learned that I could turn around, lean back onto the wall and rest. Fall back. Back onto my Source. That abiding, mysterious, and amazingly deep within me Stillness and Knowing.
Somehow, those “things” would end up being “handled” (by whom, what, how, when or where I now cannot remember but I have lived to tell that it was not handled by me even if it was “handled” by me).
“The life that I now live, I live in faith….”
Hi Women Friends,
ReplyDeleteThis has been a helpful string of conversation.
Thanks everyone for taking the time to give us excerpts from your life and your learning about screaming through and embracing failures and inadequacies (sitting against the Wall - great picture), letting things fall apart and opening to a realm beyond, lifting our eyes unto the hills. Recently, something came along in reading Walking on Water by L'Engle: "...We are afraid of that which we cannot control; so we continue to draw in the boundaries around us, to limit ourselves to what we can know and understand."
In context, she is talking about "the me I can organize and understand". When we are pushed beyond this we enter a purifying fire and this is the juncture of risk, of daring, of faith.
It's a lifelong struggle which brings us again to the focus of this blog to a "circle of quiet". L'Engle ends the chapter.."and then there is time in which to be, simply to be, that time in which God quietly tells us who we are and who he wants us to be..."