This is a hard season, I will not lie. I would say dark, but that sounds a bit ominous, so let’s just leave it at really hard. So what do I do with that? To be honest, for a long time I have been trudging through this season waiting for things to resolve, and I have my trudging face on. It’s no fun. It hurts. And I am not having a good time. And by golly, everyone on the inside of my life knows it.
Every time I get in trouble in life it is when I expect someone to come in and make it better – – or circumstances to change to fit my picture. At a certain point, I have to just own my own life, independent of everyone around me, independent of circumstances – – and decide whether I am going to make it good or not. Really if I dumb it down, (which helps me sometimes) the question I would ask is do I want to be that bitter, disappointed woman or do I want to enjoy my life and those in it who want to enjoy it with me?
What if joy was a choice? What if my circumstances are not going to change and all those things that are not as I would hope they would be – – even those things that are hopelessly missing the mark, what if I just put those things on the back burner and took every moment as it came – -as a gift from God, and fought to find the joy in it?
Who says life is easy? Really? What if I didn’t count on the people in my life to make me happy or validate me but just took the moments as they came and found the joy in them, found the beauty in them, found what good there was and held onto that. What if I didn’t expect life’s reward to be found in what others gave to me but what I could bring to each moment, what I could bring to others, all while staving off any expectation of return?
Expectation does a number on me every time. Every time I go into a circumstance with expectation, I am disappointed. And I think that just because I invest my own expectations on things that “should” happen – – or are the “right things” to happen, I then feel justified in being disappointed – – but life is not there to please me or to be fair to me. Where I got that notion, I don’t know. But deep in me there is this place that expects life to be fair. And it’s just not. Not for me or for anyone else. So reacting to life not being fair, or as I would like it to be is like me banging my spoon on my high chair. No matter how justified I may be…When I pick up that spoon and start hitting it against my tray, It will make a racquet, it will make me cry, but it won’t change a thing.
One of the wisest people I know used to be a photographer in New York, and she had this hard edged sensibility, but also a depth and understanding of the human condition that she lavished upon her friends. I was lucky enough to be one in the years I lived and worked in Manhattan. Her love was always delivered face-to-face, unminced and salt-laced. There was never any doubt when Allison wanted to make a point. I still hear her heavily accented voice saying, “Everything you get in life is a gift….It’s just sometimes, you don’t like the wrapper…” And in some of my most difficult moments, after patiently listening to me unload, she would take me by the shoulders, look me directly in the eyes and say in the most convincing way, “I know exactly how to make this better….”
I only fell for that the first time, because at the time I was young and was sure the world was crumbling in, and equally certain Allison had the answer – – because in her homespun New York way, she almost always did. She was certainly older and wiser, so when she told me to meet her later that evening at the Westside Restaurant, I thought great, this would be wisdom worth waiting for…so I spent the afternoon anticipating just what advice she would give me to resolve my situation and move forward. We sat down in a windowed booth looking out over the corner of 69th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, and I could barely contain my curiosity.
“Hold on, let’s get some food in you.” She said before I could start in on my agenda.
The Westside Restaurant is one of the most wonderful places in New York. For diner food it was a 4 out of 10, but for soulful staff,a neighborhood feel, and never ending coffee, you just couldn’t beat it. It was one of those wonderful Greek-owned diners in which you could get everything from Souvlaki to Creamed Chipped Beef, with a menu so long and comprehensive you almost always ordered something as an act of surrender rather than preference. I had never before made it through the entire menu before I cried uncle and inevitably defaulted to one of my three or four favorites. And if all else failed, you could just ask for a dish of your own invention and the staff would always accommodate. I really loved that place.
That night as I lifted up the menu, Allison gave a wave of her hand and said, “Just go for the burger and a shake. And get a side of fries….I’ll help.” So I ordered and we ate, and even dunked the fries in my malted shake. Every time I started to broach the conversation, Allison would wave me down and say something like, “Eat, eat. Then we’ll talk.”
The waitress was threatening to clear and I was still hungry for whatever direction and clarity Allison could offer. But all I got was the hand. So I ate, and I ate, and as I slowed down and breathed deeper, as the pile of fries diminished and the shake got low, I found myself settling back into the booth, my neck unhinging from my shoulders and my eyes wandering to the window that looked out toward the stream people moving uptown to repopulate the Upper West Side after a long day at work. So when the waitress came back with coffee, Allison was the one who leaned in first. Her advice came while I was still lost in thought – – still looking out the window.
“Everything looks a little better on the other side of a cheeseburger, doesn’t it.”
That was Allison’s version of “This too Shall Pass…” Her notion that you cannot stop living your life just because there are parts of it not going according to plan – – or even parts of it that are just this side of crash and burn. You cannot focus on those flames to the exclusion of what else life demands – – or offers. Life isn’t about making everything better. It’s about eating cheeseburgers in the midst of the mess. Life doesn’t stop. I cannot live well or fully only when things are going right. I have to get out there and trust God with the what-if’s. Trust God with the direction of hard things.
I will forever love Allison. She was ornery and loud and cared more about you than your feelings. She was a rare friend who wasn’t going to waste any time coddling anyone. That kind of friendship is a rare gift. She was grateful for everything she got, she really was. And somewhere along the line I stopped living like that. I got focused on what was missing. And even when those things are big and important to me, I didn’t trust that God could take those in hand if I just focused on showing up. And even if it never turns out “good” or “o.k.” there is always something to be grateful for and there are always places in life to stop in for a burger and engage with the people around me in love. And because I didn’t do that, I became a part of the problem. I am not the woman I want to be. But if I take life in very small chunks, like “the rest of today….” I can be. I actually can.
So joy is a choice. And I don’t mean the kind of choice I feel obligated to make – – I have to be ready to find those moments – – recklessly pursue those moments of joy, even if they are small, like flax seed scattered in a field. This is not an easy season for me, and there are big things that I wish were different. But all my best efforts have done nothing to make those areas better, so perhaps it is time to just leave them to God. And carry on focused on what I CAN do, what joy I can find, what kind of woman I do want to be. Maybe it’s time to live grateful for what there is, not what there isn’t.
I know this is true in my life, but I think it is safe to say that most lives, as they mature, move further and further away from some age old and original expectation of how they might have “turned out.” – – it’s just the nature of life. Sometimes that movement is in a good direction, and other times, not so much. But either way, the delta between expectation and reality is, at my stage of life at least, broader than the horizon itself. And in the areas in which my life has increasingly veered from what I had hoped it might have been, I have fought that distance, rather than simply accepted it. God is taking me somewhere, and the sooner I realize it is not to the destination I had preordained, the better off I will be. The reason this is a hard season is because I have chosen to examine the delta instead of looking to that horizon in which all the possibilities of God still await.
Buckminster Fuller said, “The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it’s a different kind of life.” I think the way I translate that is that it’s really hard to live a good life, leaning away from the parts that don’t work. It’s time I began to live leaning toward what does and follow that trajectory to its logical end. Like toward the burger, fries and shake rather than toward the ever present and ubiquitous “issues.” God has a way of working the issues out – – he really does. And I suppose it’s my choice if I want to enjoy a burger while he does, or whether I want to hem and haw, wring my hands or bemoan my fate while my life works itself out, anyway, and far beyond my control.
I have a friend who is going through enormous challenges right now. Today on her Instagram account were pictures of her beautiful girls playing in the snow. That’s what I am talking about. All is never well, but you might as well eat burgers and build igloos when you can. Here’s to moving toward something, not fighting against anything anymore.
God bless the Westside Restaurant – – such a wonderful shelter in the storm, and God bless the possibilities God gives me today to move into the light, make good choices, and focus on what’s right while He cooks up the rest of the story.