The High of My Life

Let’s discuss the concept of perseverance, a continued level of effort and achievement despite difficulties, failure, or opposition.  It’s the never-give-up, rolling up your sleeves, perfect version of the American dream. I think secretly, we all believe we are born with this like an innate spirit, even if we didn’t earn it and we just wear it like a cloak around our neck in pretense.

The Bible discusses this, considering it joy when humans face trials of many kinds, due to the steadfast endurance it builds. It even goes as far as to celebrate suffering, as it leads to endurance, character, and even hope. There is an entire story dedicated to a man who sat in the dust wallowing in his own bedsores. No wonder people think Christians are all whackos. Turn the other cheek, celebrate your suffering.  Um, no thanks. I’m no masochist.

But way back in the infancy of my adulthood, I was thrown unwillingly into this category of One Who Faces Hard Things. I was not unique. It’s part of the human experience. But cancer and subsequent radiation that pulsed through my body and the panic and anxiety I felt at the concept of my own mortality were met with some fake assurances that I was paying my deposits early, and after this I could go around being fully vaccinated from pain because I Paid My Dues. Oh early adult self.  Bless your heart.   

So later, when I lay in the hospital room and my organs were displayed on the table and I was split down the middle like a roasting hen, after the doctors said “there’s nothing more we can do” and washed my insides out with saline water, my feeble shaking hands put this verse, the one from the Book of James that talks about facing trials and endurance, on the tray that held my ice chips and pudding cups. I didn’t know if I believed it, but somehow it was comforting just the same.

I said to God: Dear Sir, if you let me live, I’ll be a good mother to that girl. And every day, I ask myself.  Am I? Am I good enough to the point where my life was worth saving?

It wasn’t until I got a divorce from the father of my children that I really broke, split wide open at the thought of my children being in two homes, the marriage and family that had become such a home to me now turned into a foreign and desolate land. I didn’t know if I would make it. The shame nearly buried me.

I put the same familiar verse on the warped chalkboard I bought at the Pottery Barn outlet store, but this time I added a little more.  Not only will I somehow persevere, but God is always faithful, even when I cannot see it or understand.  I mostly just sobbed and stared at the various prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs I had taped to my refrigerator, promising myself I wouldn’t fill them and take them all in one fatal swoop. 

What I wasn’t seeing, back in the thick of it, was the slow walk up the mountain that I had already begun walking, one small step at a time.  Every time I’d make it a little way up, I’d stumble backward. Half a day hike, a fall. Another day trudging forward, a cliff.  It was not a straight walk, but a series of forwards and backwards, some mishaps causing significant wounds, others less so. But I kept getting back up and somehow continued upward with a backpack full of conceit and emotional patterning of my youth. I would have been better off with granola bars.

I’m now facing another setback, which is unfortunate. That’s a lie. In reality, it’s heartbreaking. I had worked so hard for so many years and I thought I had found the redemption I had long sought after. But while gaining some ground, it was too much for me to bear. So I sat down on a rock, slid the backpack off my shoulders, and simply stopped. I don’t know what the future will hold, but for now, I could not take one more step.

I looked around. I could see the valleys far below, the sweeping clouds that drifted past, the swaying of the trees on a ledge beneath. The birds, oblivious to my suffering, sang loudly and defiantly in the direction of my pain, which was amusing. I tried to interpret their songs, but it’s gibberish unless you are a bird, which I am not. I wished for a moment that I could speak bird language so I could tell them to shut up, that this was my mountain top experience, as crappy as it was, and that couldn’t they give me this one thing in peace? A mockingbird dropped a load on my backpack. That figures.

But at the end of our life, don’t we all end up alone? I had walked up this mountain, almost half a century now of moving and writing and laughing. I had persevered through many trials without even realizing how far I had come. I shook my head and gave God a little smirk; the Bible was right. I had developed endurance, but not through my own attempts, but out of sheer and utter necessity. And this time, instead of lacing up my sneakers and trying to go even higher, I just let myself be. It may not be what I had hoped for, but it will have to do. My insides do not ache, my mind is clear, the cancer and sepsis and heartbreak– none of it broke me.

Today I bought a Jewish prayer shawl and a prayer rug typically only used by those who study Islam off Etsy, because I wanted to create a holy space inside a closet where I could establish a very clear routine of prayer and silence.  I told my daughter this, and she laughed at me. “I appreciate the effort to be multi-cultural, mom, but honestly?  You’re so weird.” I smiled.  This is the girl I promised God I’d be good to, that I swore if I could only have a chance to live, I wouldn’t fail her. Mostly these days she forces me to listen to her indy music and tells me I know absolutely nothing about fashion.

I am trying to learn to just sit still and not keep climbing higher and higher, desperately trying to find a partner who won’t leave me out of a fear of my own making.  I am learning that even children do not complete me, that I can bake a truckload of muffins and bring gallons of coffee but teenagers are built to pull away and move on.  Halsey, the singer, writes: 

I know you’re chokin’ on your fears
Already told you I’m right here
I will stay by your side every night

–

I don’t know why you hide from the one
And close your eyes to the one
Mess up and lie to the one that you love?

Because we are humans, that’s why. Because we are flawed, confused, unbridled, fucked-up nut-cases who learn as we go until we grow old, and then often it’s too late. We choke on our own fears because we are still in the process of growing up emotionally, and in time, with prayer and stillness, we can see that we are enough right here where we sit. Because we are in essence never alone. We are constantly surrounded by love and light and a holy spirit that never needs anything from us at all.  Not one damn thing except our attention, which we scatter to the winds instead of allowing it to be quiet.  I blame the birds for my attention deficiency, but that is an unpopular opinion.

So here I am, persevering after all. I’m listening to Post Malone, a Texas born rapper with face tattoos who sings profanity-laden angsty songs about love and money, and how he says he’s coming down from the high of his life. I am weary, but not worn out. I am unpublished but still writing. I’m partly-grey but still cover it with golden blond. I still have life and blood left in me, pulsing in me, warming me through the hard nights. Perhaps this is the very high of my life. God, thank you for letting me live through all the things that should have killed me. Thank you for the endurance these trials led to, and a feeling that nothing can ever break me, truly, ever again.

Except the damn birds. They are going to be the death of me.