Wednesday, January 26, 2022

An Achy Cold Day in Which I Messed Everything Up

Ugh, another one of these cold days in January. It’s nice, at least, to see the sun shining, even though today I see it mostly through my bedroom window.

The cold weather is bothering me this year, more than it has in the past. Perhaps it’s the dampness. But I want to go out for a good walk. I want so much to go outside. But I can only step out onto the porch and take a few deep breaths of the brisk air as the sun sets.

Not that I didn’t have a “busy day” here at home in my bed. This is the Internet Age. Never before in history has it been possible for someone to interact with so many people and have access to so many resources without leaving the house. But what is the value of all of it? I want to accomplish things, engage my talents, build a legacy… my heart still bursts with aspirations!

The years of living, the stiff limbs (I have dealt with these kind of things for longer than most people my age, but experience affords no advantage here), the rapid onset of stress, frustration, exhaustion because I mucked it all up today. Distractions, problems, blind alleys, no adequate solutions.

But do I know what I am really called to accomplish? I follow the “signs” and make my daily efforts. “Success” is rewarding and brings some relative satisfaction, for a time. It also leads to more signs, more questions, more awareness that anything I do is insignificant in relation to the Mystery I seek in everything - the Mystery who calls me. “Failure”? Is it really the end of the world? No. I just need to get up and keep going, fixing what I can, getting help if I need it, and letting go of the baggage that’s just weighing me down. Letting go… because there is Another who will carry it away; there is Another who implores me to entrust everything - success and failure, joy and pain, life and death - and let myself be carried to a destiny beyond all my imagining. Ultimately, I am “carried,” even as I do my best to “follow the signs,” to be devoted, to serve, to witness to the truth, accomplish the good, and build up the beautiful along the journey of this life. This life is a precious reality; even if everything is passing away, something new is already beginning.

I fail a lot. So I get up a lot. Sometimes I “get up” metaphorically, because… that’s the way it goes with me (read THIS BOOK if you want to know more about why), but since my work is done mostly with the part of my brain that’s still in good shape, and there are so many gadgets that can assist me, I have confidence that I still have much to share.

Ultimately the goal of all our efforts, the goal of life, is the fulfillment of a promise, a gift that fulfills our journey and even now begins to transfigure us, gives a new value to our efforts (beyond what we know), even “uses” our failures and weakness and distractions if we allow ourselves to be converted and formed by the One who loves us and redeems us: the One who has come to be with us, to find us when we’re lost, to bind up our wounds.