Birthday Love

Lesson: Learning to Surrender All to a Hope That is to Come

Not really sure where I’m going with this one; I just know I’m not well. Let’s start here: I just picked up some medication from the pharmacy, and a woman behind me in line was in desperate need of companionship. I could see it all over her face. The same expression I see when I look in the mirror. She began to speak to me about her problems, her day, her condition, and so on. I didn’t say much; I just listened, as it seemed like a simple listening ear is something she hasn’t had in quite some time.

Please know I’m not trying to paint myself as some hero. I’m no hero. It was a simple gesture that took very little. So it makes me wonder at times, what is it about me that makes people care so little, so unwilling to be present with me, so unwilling to care? 

My birthday was two days ago, and it’s been a bittersweet week. I didn’t expect it to feel like a birthday. I went out for a low-key dinner early in the week with my sister, her husband, and my roommate. While it didn’t feel like a birthday dinner, it felt nice to get out with some of the only people who associate with me personally. I worked a 12 hour day on my actual birthday, but I got to spend it with my volunteer team who I love dearly, so it was bittersweet. Then came the purely bitter part.

A number of people asked why I didn’t make plans with friends, and it pained me to know that the real answer is because I don’t really have anyone who’d consider themselves friend enough to want to hang out with me. Well, I guess until yesterday. 

Remorsefully Declined

Yesterday, I was actually invited to get drinks with someone I’d wanted to connect with for quite some time. Someone I wanted to befriend. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know about a negative situation I’d had with a coworker not too long ago. Well, it would have been a small gathering with that person, and I did not want to make anyone uncomfortable. So, while this was probably the first time a peer has asked to connect with me all year, I had to say no. 

You can imagine that that stung. A lot actually.

Returning to Me

Sharp, somewhat jarring pivot, but welcome to my mind: I love my job, but I don’t enjoy it the same way I used to because I feel like such an outsider. Well, if you know me, you know that work is my only outlet. So where does that leave me? As someone diagnosed with MDD, GAD, and ADHD, it leaves me empty, teetering the edge of implosion where I’m afraid to go back to a time when I first learned that depression can control the body — a time when I’d lie in bed every morning for hours, having lost functionality of my limbs, feeling weak and fatigued and unable to make the simple movements I’d made since I was a toddler … unable to simply get up. And I mean all of this literally, not figuratively.

The normal me would cope by working more. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, and there are plenty of business ventures I still hope to pursue. Minimally, I could Uber more frequently. But I’d spent a good 10 years of my life constantly on the move, getting very little sleep, working several jobs at a time, and going going going as if I had no limits. It wasn’t healthy. Obviously. I hit a wall, and I feel like my body has yet to recuperate. 

So I’m here, dreading Monday’s meeting because I’ll have to endure another crowd. A situation where I either turn on, like I did at Thursday’s gathering, or cave in, like I do often when I realize, as I have an out-of-body experience, that I’m in a place only physically and I’m watching myself afar off as I realize no one in that space cares to interact with me. In a communal workplace. Then, I return to my desk listening to the crowd that surrounds me … the joy, the laughter, the love, the connection, and I wish I could have just worked from home — something that I don’t actually like to do much.

Returning to My Senses

I’ve asked myself am I a fool … am I naive for having hope — hope that I won’t always be alone, hope that life will someday change and get better?

My obvious answer to that question is no. I truly believe things will eventually get better and that my life, at some point, will look radically different. I believe my pursuit of love and people will someday prove fruitful.

But meanwhile, I’m here. In the middle of the crowd. Hoping for a listening ear.

Art Unspoken

Here’s where I’d typically try to transition into a piece I’d like to share, but this time, I’ll let the art speak for itself — hoping that someone listens to me … hoping that someone acknowledges me for once.

Standing in the mirror

Mad at that ugly sinner

But knowing that every sin comes from the struggle I eat for dinner

I just can’t stop it

If I stop it, I’ll starve

I never knew I’d lose so much just from giving you my heart

But I promised to endure

Cause God, for me you endured

But thoughts of suicide say break it if I can’t find a cure

That advice is alluring

Yet here I am again enduring… 

This story that it seems you somehow always overlooking

I hear your voice in every silly moment of unneeded direction

But during my darkest prayers I only feel your constant rejection

Yet I celebrate the pain that helped me write this selection

God I ask you why me, and you don’t even answer that question

But you give me sweet words of beauty

And assure me you have a plan

That beauty is right here 

Even if I don’t understand

“You Just Don’t Understand” by Christian Sanders

Virtues

Recently in a sermon, one of our pastors talked about resume virtues versus eulogy virtues — the things you say about yourself versus those others say about you respectively. The point was to challenge people to identify who they desire to be, to recognize the gap between that and who they actually are, and to become anew by the grace of God. The question being: What do you want to be said at your funeral?

In a recent post, I mentioned the concept of tragedy, and I wondered what the response would be if I were to encounter an instance of tragedy. Would those who’ve made me feel lifeless go on in freedom, or would there be a weight? A hurting? A regret maybe? Any realization whatsoever?

Honestly, I don’t understand how you can knowingly make someone feel like utter trash by contributing to the very cause of their unhealth, then look at yourself in the mirror and still be ok with who you’ve become … expecting a eulogy virtue that unrealistically matches your resume virtues.

The Blessing of Life … Maybe

You know, something that’s always bugged me is that we often think of survival as the highest reward. If life sucks, we should at least be grateful for the blessing of another day. All this to say, from my view, survival isn’t a reward because I don’t want to survive; I need to. I need to because I know I have a calling. And I will choose calling over comfort any day of the week. 

They say that life is a blessing

Well I can’t think of a greater curse

Rock bottom ain’t rock bottom

I learned it can always get worse

They told me I’m loved as they left

They never come ‘round here and it hurts

But somehow I should find joy

And manage to throw all this pain in the dirt

Sorrow’s sinking soldiers

I’m not weak, I been through the worst

I do believe in love

But they all want lust first

So if I can’t have the real thing

I’ll take the fake stuff if it works

Live for the moment

I’d kill to breathe an hour without this thirst

“Absent Love” by Christian Sanders

Know a Tree by the Fruit it Bears

“A good tree doesn’t produce bad fruit; on the other hand, a bad tree doesn’t produce good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. … A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart” (Luke 6:43, 44a, 45 CSB).

This is a lesson I learned from my mom. All of us bear fruit. How do people experience the fruit you bear? If you’re a Christian, do your interactions, particularly with the least of them, seem to come from the tree of a believer? Do you see people? Do you pursue with the sacrificial love of Jesus? A love that sets itself aside for the benefit of others.

Are you praying to a black void or to a Christ you know intimately? A Christ you’re choosing to become like? I can hear my mother’s voice, “Don’t just go to church. Be the church.” Is your faith about trying and doing, or is it about actively loving God’s people in a way that demands that you lay your life down like Jesus did in order to give the totality of who you are?

So here’s what I’ve come to understand: This life isn’t about me. And if this life is not actually about me, and if God has created me for him and allowed life’s happenings, struggles, pain, rejection, etc. for him, then he will also bring about redemption for himself. And someday, I will find someone, maybe even a few people, who will emphatically answer these questions with the affirmative, and I will feel God’s love through God’s people for once.