More than okay

I came into this year braced, if I am honest. I was ready for things to be difficult, like trying to predict the future the way my great-grandfather predicted the coming of the rain in his bones. He lived in eastern Oregon, and I imagine his eyes scanning the horizon in a squint as his hand massaged his aching right knee.

My eyes weren’t squinting at the haze in the distance… Rather, this time last year I stared suspiciously at 2025 with a decent helping of mistrust. I got what I was focused on, and thankfully so much more.

You see, I know that I am not alone in how challenging these past years have been. In some ways I feel that we need an update to our modern calendar: Before Covid Era and The Years of our Lord After Covid Lockdown. I’d say “trademark!” but that’s such a mouthful I think I’m safe.

There have been plenty of sociologists, economists, and preachers who have written about the changes experienced by society over these past six years, so I’ll leave it to them. What is more important is the cumulative effect the recent years have had. Year after year of the unknown, of losses, challenges, change, and hard work.

Parts of me have been tensing up in response.

In high school we were expected to get our work done before relaxing or playing with friends. On the occasions when my folks would leave the house for some reason it was… difficult to stay on task, shall we say. Then the moment would come where we heard the garage door open and I’d think, Oh shit! You haven’t done what you needed to yet! I’d sprint to the table hoping to beat them to the room and look like I’d been hard at work the whole time.

I realized this fall that I had a similar reaction to the coming of a new year… oh shit. I’m not where I needed to be. Not prepared. Not ready for another round in the ring with this unknowable opponent named The Future.

So, a year ago I chose to brace myself for a hard year. And you know what, in so many ways it was hard. Several close friendships changed or were lost irreparably. We had several rounds of different accidents on our home costing tens of thousands of dollars to repair. My family had plenty of rounds of health complications, myself at the top.

Here at the end of the year I am confronted by the fact that my bracing did not prevent anything. In some ways, by continuing to speak those words over my year I believe I focused on the suffering. Perhaps even sought it out, like a boy learning to ride his bike… who, fixated on the streetlight at the corner, crashes right into it.

The posture also caused me to lose focus on living in the day. On all the of thousand things I have to be grateful for. The grace and provision that was available to me. I still needed to enter into the suffering and let it do its work, bracing for it didn’t get me through the process faster.

Call this confirmation bias, agreements, manifesting, positive psychology, perspective… I don’t really care. I’ve always been a bit of a pragmatic person: What is the next tangible step that I can take from what I’ve learned and been through?

Here’s an answer for me: Be careful what you speak over next year, or your future in general. Come back to the present, and pay attention to all the small miracles you passed over. Practice the discipline of entering fully into what is in front of you. Suffering, Joy, Calm, Chaos. Live your life as it is, not as you fear it will be.

More than okay

I’m not wishing you failure,

or heartbreak, or the loss

of who you’ve worked so hard

to be. But I’m standing here

on the other side of my own

destruction, my bare feet

warming in the dark soil,

and I’m whispering little

ribbons into the wind that say,

“You’re going to be more

than okay.” You don’t deserve

the pain of this world. But

no one arrives in their own life

without the cataclysm of birth.

– James A. Pearson