In Ancient Egypt, wealthy families who were grieving hired professional mourners for the funeral procession. They would yell and wail for the dead person as they proceeded through town.

Ancient Hebrews would tear their garments, beat their chest and sit in a pile of ashes. 

Nowadays in Western culture, we grieve in more quiet ways. Crying. Hugging. Putting on black. A loud wail of anguish may be permitted occasionally, if the grief is particularly deep or remarkable. 

But I long for more dramatic, loud and messy ways to grieve. (And to grieve this way with people.)

 

Yelling and screaming at the sky

Blasting heavy metal music 

Smashing old plates and glasses

Whacking punching bags with baseball bats

A chorus of loud wails and sobs

Furious dancing 

Flailing at the air

Stomping

Reciting poetry loudly

Proclaiming that which has been lost

 

Our grief, my grief, is so quiet. 

I fear that even when presented with such opportunities, I would shrink back, because I have been taught that grief should be held close, compressed, kept quiet.

I yearn for the day when I can express my grief with bombastic noise, because I’m no longer afraid, because I have found a safe place where it can be released. 

But for now, I will sob quietly in my room. 

 

I am lonely.

Oh, I have a lot of friends. Though most of them live two hours away, minimum, there’s always Skype and Facebook call. I’m part of a young adults group in town, and a mom’s group (even though I’m not a mom). I work with awesome people. I live in a small town and bump into people I know on a relatively frequent basis. The librarians know my name.

And yet, some days I still feel a crushing sense of isolation, because it feels like all the responsibility for social interaction is on me. I have to call up a friend for a coffee date. I send the message to organize the Skype. I drive myself to MomTime and walk to the library to see the librarians who know my name. And that young adults group? I started it with a couple friends because I didn’t have enough social interaction.

I would love, LOVE for people to reach out to me. I fantasize about getting invited to people’s houses or answering the phone to a friend who simply wants to chat.

Yes, it’s a lie that I have to do ALL the work. Last month I was spontaneously invited to a Bible study. My friend asked if I wanted to sew with her. I got some long newsy letters in the mail. And yet, it feels like I give 110% to only get 25% back. It’s exhausting. I wish I could share the weight.

Are my expectations too high? Maybe a little. I need to stop overextending myself. (110% is not healthy.) But all the same, is it too much for me to ask people to call now and then just to chat, to see how I’m doing? Or to say, “Hey, let’s go for a walk sometime”? Or to have a friend invite me over just to hang out and do nothing? If this is too much to ask, what kind of society are we living in?

Do I just not have many friends? Or is this what being an adult in modern-day Canada is like? If so, it sucks and we need to bring more of our childhood play dates back.

Now, this isn’t a plea for pity, though if you know me and genuinely want to hang out, YES PLEASE, sign me up. But I want to point out that even though many things in this world can be made better by changing our attitude or perspective, loneliness is not one of them. Curing loneliness takes multiple people. We all need to play our part. So go call a friend or invite them on a walk. And not just one time. Your lives will be better for it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who daydreams about receiving a friend’s invitation.

There are different kinds of hard in the world.

One of them is like wading through molasses. On a cold day. Just living feels unbearably heavy. It’s that feeling you get of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Or wanting to eat chocolate icecream and only getting vanilla while your tastebuds scream “WANT CHOCOLATE”. It’s when you go to bed exhausted and wake up the next morning still tired, and you don’t want to get out of bed.

The other one is like that feeling when you hit the fifth kilometer running on a forest trail. (For someone who likes running.) At some point part of you is like, STOP NOW, but the other part wants to keep running and running and running. It’s going to bed exhausted, but still wanting to get up in the morning.

Because the English language doesn’t have simple phrases for these different types of hard, I’ve decided to call the first one Philbert and the second Eugenie.

I think we do a huge disservice to ourselves when we say “You need to do hard things to get anywhere in life” or “life is hard” without taking into consideration the difference between Philbert-hard and Eugenie-hard. Eugenie-hard is healthy kind of hard, where struggle is part of growth. Philbert, on the other hand, is a drag, a heavy weight, an encumbrance. I personally don’t want to put up with Philbert. I will embrace Eugenie-hard. But Philbert-hard just sucks my energy and makes me crabby. If they were people, Philbert would be a person you must deal with occasionally, but you don’t invite them home. Eugenie, on the other hand, would make a great friend.

(P.S. I also think there are other kinds of hard. Dorothea-hard is a cousin of Philbert’s, where your energy is drained, and it’s like dragging yourself across a desert. BUT you do it because of a deep love for another person. And so the pain of Dorothea-hard is worth it because there’s love. There is no love with Philbert; just shame, condemnation, exhaustion and all those nasty things.)

I am very hard on myself. Whether it’s because I’m a visionary and I see what could and should be better than what is, or whether it’s because of past legalism telling me I was never good enough, I struggle to see my positive qualities. I’m learning slowly to focus on what is there, not what is missing, but it’s a process.

Last night was rough. Self-condemnation reared its ugly head, and I felt like an unfinished mess of flaws. I was discouraged by how far I have to go. The voices, “You’re not measuring up, you’re a broken mess, you’re a pain in the butt, you’ll always struggle with this,” were loud and strong. I knew that wasn’t true, but it was so hard to see in that moment. I could only see what I was bad at, where I was failing, where I was struggling. So I reached out to my friends on Facebook with this post:

“Help. I’m really good at seeing the problems in my life and areas where I need to improve. I’m not so good at seeing my skills, talents and positive traits. I need some outside perspective. What am I GOOD at?”

And then I went to bed because everything is 300 times worse when you’re tired.

In the morning I checked my Facebook, excited and curious to see what my friends had to say. And then I read this comment:

“I see many good traits in you, Lyndall, but instead of listing them I want to encourage you to look to God instead ❤️
Pray for Him to reveal what gifts He has granted you. While it can be helpful to receive the opinions of others, we cannot look to other people to affirm us. This is a beautiful time to pray, ask God what He thinks of you. Read your Bible and see what it says! And take the time to explore what you enjoy doing.

Self-confidence is found in God and His Word! And you better believe He’s given each person gifts and abilities to be used for His glory. Even if it’s the gift of being a janitor… Be a janitor to the glory of God!”

Did my friend mean well? Yes.
Did she want to be helpful? Yes.

But I felt like I had been kicked in the kidneys. I wanted to throw my phone across the room. And I started crying. Because what I heard in my friend’s post was

You’re not trying hard enough.
You’re doing it wrong.
Your needs and feelings don’t matter, just listen to the Bible.

I had asked for help, and instead I got a sermon. I’m sick and tired of hearing religiosity when I simply want love and encouragement. It’s not like I haven’t already read the Bible and asked how God sees me. But humans need affirmation from other humans too.

I’m not angry at my friend. But I am upset and angry at a system that overlooks human needs and genuine heart-cries with Bible verses and pious phrases.

Instead of new years resolutions, in 2019 I’m going to be looking for new year’s revelations.

I don’t like goals. They stress me out. Resolutions seem like let-downs waiting to happen. Maybe one day I’ll be friends with goal-setting, but today is not that day. And this coming year is not that year.

In the summer, I felt like God was encouraging me to focus on what is there, not what is missing. I’ve spent so much of my life looking at the gaps and the holes, the places where I’m not living up to expectations (my own or others’). I would look at how I needed to change and where I needed to grow. It’s pretty stressful always living in that emptiness. God’s suggestion was pretty radical for me. I started looking at what was good in my life. What do I do well? What was a great moment from today? What am I proud of? What am I already doing? The shift was a breath of fresh air. Instead of looking at all of holes in my garden beds of life, I started looking at the plants that were already there, and I was astonished by how beautiful they are. It gave me hope. The empty spaces just made me stressed.

I’ll be taking this attitude of looking at what’s already there into the new year. And as 2019 goes on, I hope to stumble across all sorts of amazing new years revelations.

(And I’ll probably write some of them here. No promises though!)