What Were You Made To Do?
On certain days, life feels crushing.
I need to learn to live in the moment–stand in a shower and notice the water pounding my back.
Take deep breaths and count to 10–only numbers in my mind.
Try to relish the morning school drop-off routines, where my daughter plays the exact same song over and over again. I swallow audible sighs; tell myself I’m thankful.
I keep a leather moleskine journal, in the trendy shade of evergreen, to write down a daily list of thanks. I pray. I read. I journal. I lay in bed at night, finally free of everything that binds me–sports bra and to-do lists–and while flat on my back, inwardly whisper: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”
And somewhere between prayers, recitations, the nightly trip to a dark bathroom at 3 a.m. and the morning alarm, I wake up with a lead blanket draped over my soul.
It’s meant to preserve me from the harmful rays of life; protect me from the possibility of any evil. But it crushes me instead.
There are too many requirements to lead a good life:
I must live up to the potential that parents, gifted tests, and teachers who encourage by saying that one day you’ll be this great thing or hold that astonishing honor have prophesied since the age of seven.
I need a marriage that feels easy–full of sex and laughter; companions of the soul that never want to give up.
I raise children who will be different than me–never accumulating large bills for therapy. No need to heal from things I’ve said, arguments they’ve overheard, the mean people I’ve allowed to enter their lives and leave scars.
I need to see dreams come true because I have the vision, the work ethic, the grit to pull a white dove from my you know where and make it fly.
I’ve been trying to create the good life since I was fourteen, and I’m so, so tired.
I used to think that fall was my favorite season of the year. As proof, my middle name is Autumn. My parents thought I was born on the first day of the fall equinox in 1978, and were two days off. I loved the fall for its yearly routine of birthday candles on red velvet cakes covered in buttercream roses and presents wrapped up in a pile on the dining room table–seated next to my Grandma Juanita’s celebratory dinner of homemade chicken noodles. The day was beautiful because it occurred under a canopy of the orange and red leaves of midwest maple trees.
But this year, at the age of 45, I changed my mind–spring is now the season that makes me smile. Spring forces me to stop and notice. Many have tried to get my busy mind to rest.
My husband says my eyes cross when I’m trying to listen to someone, but my mind pulls me a million directions with its inner chatter. He laughs. I wonder what sort of mental unrest causes eyes to involuntarily move diagonally.
After months of being caged on a squeaky treadmill in my unfinished basement, I go outdoors to take slow runs, or even slower walks, on cracked sidewalks. While huffing and puffing, a sweet smell stands firmly in front of my senses; refuses to move out of my path. My feet slow, and I walk towards the low branches of a purple lilac bush or white crabapple tree, and take seconds to put my nose in its blossoms and inhale.
Spring makes me pause and breathe in the air where my running shoes are planted.
Now that my college-aged son is home from college, I force him to take long runs with me after he wakes up at 11 a.m. His thick, wavy hair forms a piece of bed-head modern art, and I try to keep up with the strides of a six-foot-tall youngster.
Oliver tells stories about all that was discovered in the pile of trash accumulated in the corner of his friend’s dorm room, the girls he tried to date, what it’s like to feel stupid in a pool of engineering geniuses.
“I feel kinda bad for them. So many of my friends feel so much pressure,” he says while purposely slowing his pace for his short, aging mom. “They say they have to be the best. A lot of them say they have to create ‘generational wealth.’ And to do that, they need to be making 250K by the time they’re 30.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. So a lot of them don’t do what they love. They study what they need to–to keep up the lifestyle they had with their parents. I feel bad for them.”
My heart rate spikes. I force Oliver to walk with me for one long, uphill block.
“So what do you feel that you love? What were you made to do?”
“Well, when I take my engineering courses, all feels right–like I’m supposed to be doing that,” he veers out of the way of some gigantic bush claiming its right to a large portion of public sidewalk. “But, really, I feel like I’m made to love people. God made me to love people.”
What??? Did I give birth to some version of Benjamin Button–an old man trapped in a 19-year-old body?
At that age, while paying more than I could afford to live in a cockroach-infested dorm and studying music and English, I would have answered that question quite differently. I’d say I was made to make a difference in the world; to sing; to write; to help people worship God–all noble goals.
But I had a hard time loving the gay guy who worked with me at the local smoothie shop–blending green spirulina shots with frozen bananas and strawberries for menopausal women. Living in my college’s Christian bubble of the 1990s, his choices made me uncomfortable and I didn’t know how to start a conversation, let alone love the kid. I’ve often thought about him, and wish I could go back. Hear his story. Offer him one of my comp smoothies on a hot summer day to share with his boyfriend.
Once a guy asked Jesus what rules he needed to follow to have a good life; to be acceptable to God. Jesus was likely surrounded by poor farmers and fishermen; sex workers and dusty children with wild bedhead like Oliver’s. His response was simple: “Love God. Love people.”
I’m so tired of trying to make a difference in the world; trying to make good on the potential others have called out in me.
I’m tired of whipping myself with a list of tasks that make dreams come true; with habits designed to make someone pure of heart.
What if I woke up every morning, jammed myself back into that sports bra, and asked one question: How do I love God and love people today?
Sounds cliché, I know. But sometimes the things that have been talked about so much from pulpits and in seminary classes become the hardest things to actually do (and not just pontificate about.)
The religious moralist inside of me screams, “You can’t get that relaxed. You need to be vigilant to remain good!”
My fourth grade teacher mumbles near the water cooler in the faculty lounge: “What a waste of talent…”
The research psychologist Brene Brown says that we hate in others the very things we despise about ourselves. We criticize and judge because we have a constant barrage of harsh personal criticism boiling within.
The part of me I didn’t trust and taught to die long ago says: “To love others, you’re going to need to re-learn to love yourself. Extravagantly. Like God does.”
I’m scared to see the kind of Olivia that emerges in a world where her value is not measured by how gifted she performs or how holy and surrendered she appears.
But I have a feeling, it will kinda feel like walking into spring. I may just have to stop in my tracks; thankful for the scent of something beautiful arising from a desolate winter.
I know I won’t be alone.
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