Tempered by Fire

My apologies for the gap in posts.  I have been weathering.  There is something to be said about documenting the storms as they occur, but I think that sometimes the most significant documentation occurs upon reflection; certainly objectivity is more present.  I have been doing a lot of thinking in the past couple of weeks.  I have always been a great proponent of thinking.  You may say, “We think all the time,” and that would be an astute observation, but the kind of thinking I am talking about is mindful.  It seems life moves so fast that we are often swept along, our thinking processes narrowed to surviving the moments, and while there are platitudes that come readily to the lips and are adopted as internal anthems to summarize singular moments, we do not often stop to calculate what exactly is happening internally.  

I am fixated on the need of human beings to categorize.  I find that our need to lump life into neat categories, such as good and bad, sad and happy, depressed or normal, are serious impediments to the ability of human intellect to simply calculate on its own.  I certainly find it easier to tell someone I am struggling or that I am fine than to turn inward to really ascertain if what I am experiencing truly fits the labels I assign outwardly.  And when I take a look at the inward landscapes, the process involves my disconnecting from my outward scenario to look at what is going on internally.  

In dealing with mental illness I found early on that I could not be afraid to look at what was going on inwardly, because if I was unable to ascertain how mental processes were impacting my emotive states and vice versa, how could I ever hope to divide and conquer?  You do not go into battle without having some sort of recon—knowing as much as possible about the situation.  So, if I was suicidal, I had to know it.  I had to look at how bad it was.  I had to know whether I was able to follow through.  I had to be able to tell whether I had reached the end of my short rope or if my frustration level had escalated to the point of short circuiting my self-preserving abilities.  Sometimes I was not being honest…I was not suicidal, just rash.  All of things come to light when pausing to let thoughts roam freely.  

It is so easy to be avoidant, to talk self into just ignoring what is going on, like ignoring it will make it go away.  But that just does not happen, and as is the case with experiencing loss of a loved one, or dealing with major illness, or just long-standing habits that have begun to have ramifications, avoidance is lethal to healthy human condition.  And in leaning toward avoidance coupled with busy, busy, busy, there is a real possibility one day the bottom will fall out of the world in a way that is irreparable.  I submit the following as an example:  

I have known two very amazing women who lost children.  The loss of a child cannot be recovered from.  We are not wired to accept the loss of a child.  One of these women dove into passive aggression.  The result of her avoidance of what happened caused a complete and total shut down of her personality.  There truly was nothing left of the person I knew before the loss.  Eventually, she became a shell of a human, her marriage becoming a shell as well, her living child suffering from the lack of a mother.  

The other woman I knew lost her child as well.  She was no less devastated and is, I wager, still devastated to this day.  But she refused to avoid what had happened.  She grieved, she malfunctioned, she gave up a piece of herself to the devastation, but she did not give up her entire person.  Her living child did not lose a parent as well as a sibling.  And while this woman experienced all the aspects of loss from memory to malfunction in relationships that occurs from such a tragedy, she maintained the ability to be present.  I have the utmost admiration and awe because of this woman’s determination to keep living.  I have known both these women rather well, and I will posit that the tragedy never leaves, but there is a resilience in one of the women that is not present in the other. 

 I have often heard that we are to be joyful in the worst of situations.  That is a Biblical reference I have heard over and over, and I think that it is abused or misinterpreted.  I think that it boils down to what we perceive as “joy”.  It is completely unrealistic to think it is possible to experience joy when having just lost a child.  But I think that chara, which as I understand it, is the Greek word for joy is possible.  It is a joy produced and tempered by fire.   Tempered by fire….Hubby and I watched a guy take a piece of glass, and with fire to temper it, he turned that piece of glass into a three dimensional stallion with flowing mane and tail.  That is the kind of impact fire has.  Ever been burned?  It hurts like a son of a gun, doesn’t it?  Blisters and turns the skin red, and that is just a minor burn.  So, it would follow that chara refers to the kind of joy that is a result of massive pain in a fire that can make the end product extraordinary with little resemblance to what it was before, BUT the individual has to choose to walk through it.  Lying down in the fire and choosing not to get up again will not produce the kind of joy I’m referencing here.  Maybe this kind of joy is that which is residue from the process, filtering off that person to gather on everyone who comes near, kind of like the dust that continues in your house long after the construction conducted nearby has long been concluded…

I have been pondering how much my recent issues with my work and my bipolar brain have narrowed my view, shifting my focus to all that is not right in my little world.  And then one day I was spending time listening to Abba’s voice in my life rather than prattling along as I usually do, and I experienced a metaphorical slap upside the head.  My view shifted, and I realized I was missing the jewels present in the week.  My kid making first chair in band, hubby’s tolerance and utter support, the continual comedy between my two dogs and our effervescent kitten.  I am not experiencing chara as a result of my current conundrums, but it is the fact that deep tragedy has occurred in my life in the past and the fact that I have been tempered by fire that has produced it in my life, making it present now.  I am not fool enough to think tragedy is over for my lifetime.  That is not the way of living, but I understand better joy’s place in it all, and I think that it is the gift of authentically living rather than a directive on how to be.

Blessings,

L