2012: Reflection on the Questions

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“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Now that we are into February of the new year, I’m at a place removed so I can adequately reflect on the year that was 2012.  It has taken the better part of a month to process, and even still, I’m not sure how to digest it all.  But here’s a first crack at getting my thoughts, questions, and overwhelming confusion out of my head and into this blog.

Some of these thoughts are disjointed – but that is simply a reflection of the past year.  Bear with me as I try to piece together some of my lessons learned….

1. Things can always get worse.  And they most certainly will if you don’t get off your butt and make some changes.
2. Eating too much will indeed make you fat.  “Too much” must be redefined for each person and at each age.  For instance, 25 year-old Terry can eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s without a size change; 45 year-old male at the gym can eat a serving of Ben & Jerry’s each night only to lose weight and increase his lean muscle mass; and 45 year-old Terry can work out every day for an hour, eat salads, lean meats & veggies at every meal, and still need her fat pants after eating a spoonful of Ben & Jerry’s at her birthday party.
3. Life is not fair.
4. Women cannot be trusted with choices about birth control, but any person purchasing ten assault rifles at a gun show clearly will make choices we can all trust.
5. While no good deed goes unpunished, every bad deed is laden with curses.  I say this for whomever stole my brand new iPhone 5 I left in the church after a funeral I conducted for a friend.  Stealing in a church from the Reverend-Lady wearing the white robes, just after she provided Christian burial services for a family who lost their son, will cause your karma to turn sewage green.
6. Forgiveness is hard.  That’s why I need practice.
7. You may selflessly model good behavior and invest in disciplined practices with your children for 14 years, yet some will still emerge unconcerned about clean rooms, clean clothing, clean hair, and clean bodies.  That little baby that smelled so good when you snuggled him will eventually have feet that blister your sinus membranes and a room that requires hazmat protection.  The same indifference will apply to punctuality, healthy foods, homework, and musical instruments.  This is indeed your fault and reminding your child about hygiene, diligence, and courtesy is a crime against humanity.
8. Contained, controlled consequences have a way of creating responsibility that cannot be instilled by example or by nagging.  Create opportunity for consequences to ill-mannered behavior as a civic duty to your community.  Be brave and trust the process.
9. Try to limit my vote, my voice, and my choices, and you will take away the one thing you had in your favor – my apathy.
10. Even if you have nothing, you have your personality.  So use it!  No one wants to hang around an angry, depressed nong-nong who yammers on about how horrible life or the country or the world has become.  Smile – even if it’s not in you to smile.  Do it.  And be grateful – if not for the fact that you are better off than three-quarters of the inhabitants of this earth, then because somewhere in this world the sun is shining just enough for one flower to bloom.
11. Cry with the right person.  I know I just said to smile, but in those few moments you cannot manage it, find the right person and let go.  Sometimes that person is only you, so you have to trust yourself with these emotions.  Release the painful energy, scream at the top of your lungs, pound the ground with your fists.  Then rest.  You’ll need your strength to smile again.
12. Money may not buy love, but it certainly reduces stress-related eating and the need for Xanax.
13. The only hope you have is in the letting go of what you don’t have.  You cannot reinvent yourself or your career or your relationship if you are still trying to make work what clearly does not or control what you clearly cannot.
14. Exercise is only worth doing for the endorphins.  If it weren’t for how good I feel afterward, I’d spend my precious time accomplishing more than aimlessly lifting heavy objects, running without getting anywhere, and swimming in circles.
15. Loss is inevitable, but tragic all the same.  My husband’s business is the shell of its former self, dreams of fame and fortune crushed beneath a cruel economy.  The phone doesn’t ring for this 40-something actress, who wasted her 20’s angling a corporate career.  And a beloved friend dies, young and with so much promise, gone forever from the families he established everywhere he went.   I could cry, “Foul!” but I remember #3.  So, we live on.  See #13.
16. If I have control over nothing else in my life, at least I can do the laundry and vacuum.  Both always make me feel better.  I may not have a clue, but I have clean clothes and a clean floor.
17. Fear is the enemy.  Ultimately, life is about learning how to move past the fear so you can let go, reinvent, go on a diet, exercise, forgive, and face the world with a smile.  Acknowledge the fear.  Then grab it by the throat and twist its gnarly head off.
18. There is no better feeling in the world than clean sheets at the end of a difficult day.  When going through particularly harrowing times, always have clean sheets available.  See #16.
19. When you are left with nothing, turn it around to realize you have everything.  A blank slate has the potential of the universe lying within its surface.  What is required is a limitless imagination and a piece of chalk.  Write anything, write everything – the important stuff will stick and the useless will fall away.  Try new things, explore everything you can – you never know what might give you joy.
20. Trust God, not for your deliverance, but to be your companion.  So often we ascribe to God the most horrifying situations – ruin, illness, destruction, death. I find it curious that we choose to accept God as maniacal ruler of the universe, meting out mayhem and malice to people who don’t deserve it simply because it’s “His Will.”  We send people to jail for racking up carnage like this, yet we expect this kind of behavior from our Creator?

I’m not arguing sovereignty verses free-will.  This is an argument in favor of co-creation – that God invites us to join in the continuous building of the universe, breath by breath.  Nothing is planned.  Everything is possible.

Bad stuff happens, it happens to us all.  It is a cruel God who could stop the bad but would choose not to.  I don’t believe in that God.  The God I believe in loves us and is on our side, through thick and thin.  The miracle is not deliverance from evil, but God working with us to create something good out of the bad.  It’s always about resurrection, re-invention, rebirth, and re-creation.  Spring comes from Winter.  The seed that dies is the one from which the oak grows.

In other words, it’s about grace.  The gift to us is that we get to participate with God to make this happen – to do some of the heavy lifting, too.  The universe isn’t created alone.  You can’t change lead into gold by yourself.  It takes all of us, and a little grace, to bring that sun around every morning.  That’s the magic of it all.  And that’s the hope.

Whether this has been a helpful exercise is still a question.  Hell, after this year, it’s a miracle I’m still trying to figure it all out – a miracle that I still believe in God at all.  So I reflect, in hope that reflection brings healing from the year of questions.  Perhaps, through it, we can find some answers in this year to come.  There isn’t any guarantee.  But there is hope.  And that’s all I need for today.

Amen.

About Post Author

Terry Gau

tgau13@gmail.com

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