I have had unprintable insights about a bad situation. How to tell this story? Only questions, but perhaps the same questions everyone else is asking about their past:
Why didn’t I walk away? When can I move on with my life? Where do I put all this pain: pain of loneliness, pain of replacement, pain of apathy, pain of interruptions when I thought you were listening, pain of aching loss, pain of regret, pain of missed opportunity. Maybe that’s the heaviest thing: the aching regret of the opportunities squandered. The self-hatred of not having been able to get one’s act together in the past.
And how do we move forward? We learn emotional regulation. As adults this takes much quiet focus. We must throw away our crutches – the socially acceptable man’s big anger, the socially unacceptable shrill spill-over womanly meltdown. The phones full of photos of other people’s desirable lives and shiny talents that constantly numb us to the pain we have to work through in order to move on with our own living, cope with our own gifts.
So I’m grappling with much loss and failure this advent. Where in the manger do we place our loss? If the nativity scene is an altar, what receptacle is built and waiting for my pain? Perhaps it gets scattered across the floor like straw. Perhaps it is the warm smelly piles of dung.
And after Christmas, then what? Can I leave my suffering with the Baby Christ? Can I drag it out to the woodchipper with the browning Christmas tree? Can I bury it deep to nourish plants in the fresh new year?
Let’s hope so. Let’s all hope.
Post 12 of Waiting: An Advent Series