An audaciously big question

I was recently asked to fill in a form for our organisation that included the question “What emotions characterize your last two years?” 

Yep, it’s two-year-review time. I’ve reviewed my attitude and just got on with filling out this form that includes lots of hard questions like this (I’ve been grumpy about this process in the past).

Last time I did this (2021) I also blogged about it. Here’s a portion of what I wrote:

“I don't think I got any surprises as I went through the questions this time, although the question about "What subjects have you thought about in the last two years?" always flabbergasts me: no one really wants a detailed answer to that! “

But back to what kind of emotions characterize the last two years? Words like sadness, isolation, and anxiety came to mind. That’s a different group of words than I usually have written on this form in the past (we’ve done this approximately every two years since 2000).

What’s changed? We’ve experienced loss, but not the sort that immediately comes to mind. I’m currently reading a book called A Grace Disguised (revised and expanded) by Jerry L. Sittser. This book is about how the soul grows through loss and is intertwined with his personal story of losing his mum, wife, and one of his daughters in the same car accident. That kind of loss makes most of us feel shocked and automatically we start comparing. He addresses this upfront in the chapter “Whose loss is worse?” I was encouraged by this:

"There is a different kind of loss that inevitably occurs in all of our lives . . . this kind of loss has more devastating results, and it is irreversible. Such loss includes terminal illness, disability, divorce, rape, emotional abuse, physical and sexual abuse, chronic unemployment, crushing disappointment, mental illness, and ultimately death. If normal, natural, reversible loss is like a broken limb, then catastrophic loss is like an amputation. The results are permanent, the impact in calculable, the consequences cumulative. Each new day forces one to face some new and devastating dimension of the loss. It creates a whole new context for one's life."

I’m so grateful this list includes mental illness and disability. These are the realm of loss that we’ve inhabited in the last couple of years. Not a sudden loss, nor one that has a clear beginning or ending. But a loss nonetheless. It’s helpful for me to acknowledge that this hasn’t been without consequence in my soul and the context of our lives has changed, even if it’s hard to see for the outsider.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing where he goes with this. Part of the pain is related to struggling to see what the future holds. The dreams you had in the past no longer give comfort. Sittser writes:

“Loss creates a barren present, as if one is sailing on a vast see of nothingness. Those who suffer loss live suspended between at past for which they long and a future for which they hope. They want to return to the harbor of the familiar past and recover what was lost—good heath, happy relationships, a secure job. Or they want to sail on and discover a meaningful future that promised to bring them life again—successful surgery, a second marriage, a better job. Instead, they find themselves living in a barren present that is empty of meaning. Memories of the past only remind them of what they have lost; hope for the future only taunts them with an unknown too remote even to imagine.”

Some part of the practical, competent me says I’m being melodramatic, that this isn’t true of me, that what’s going on for us isn’t that bad. But then my body quietly whispers signs that I shouldn’t ignore.

I’m sorry if I’m writing in riddles here. I wish I could tell you more details about our story, but it really is not completely my story to tell, so I won’t, at least not right now. And that’s part of the isolation that I’ve felt. Not that I’ve don’t have friends who regularly ask me how I really am. But that I don’t have many people who I feel able to really open up to about how I really feel. I did dump some stuff on an unsuspecting friend the other day: someone I hadn’t seen for three years. She looked shell-shocked, and I realised that I’d overstepped an invisible line . . . Again.

Whenever I get to this point in a blog post I’m confronted by the decision of how to finish it off. There’s no obvious conclusion. But maybe back to the question of emotions that have characterised these last two years. I did have some positive emotions that I might have included in the list, like contentment and joy. Yes, I think loss can teach you that your soul can expand to allow you to experience immense opposites, even at the same time.

I highly recommend this book. In the “praise” section at the start, someone wrote:

“Our souls need stories of how other people have overcome challenges so we can believe that our own hard stories can be ones that testify to our overcoming as well.”

I hope that my blog can be also a vehicle for helping others, in a small way, to believe that they too can make it through hard times.