In the lifetime that skewed off from my old life on May 19 when my mom took my dad in to the hospital, I've wondered: What do you say about it to the casual observers, the tangential people in your life? How do you explain falling off the map for months, or being confused and tired so often? Do you explain at all? Do you just muddle through, letting them see the effects but not the cause?
As I drove to work for the first time after the worst-case scenario became reality, I was sobbing, thinking how bizarre it was that I was so miserable and everyone around me was just driving along as usual, and then it hit me that I had no idea if that were true. I could only speak for me. Who's to say the person in the car next to me wasn't at least as miserable as I was?
It is a paradox—how deep we are, yet how exposed. We carry our pain below the surface, but only barely. We can look like we're happy, like everything is fine, but brush against us and you will see that we are raw bundles of nerves, scars only half-healed. Scars not just from death, but from life, life here in this place where suffering got itself invited in disguised as knowledge. Life where we hide from each other and from God and then lament that nobody finds us.
I make a lot of excuses for myself, especially right now. I want to extend to others that quickness to overlook irritation and wrongs. When they snap at or ignore or disappoint me, I want to wonder first if everything is okay with them instead of feeling aggrieved. I want to assume that they are messed up and imperfect and in need of compassion, just like me. (And I will, God helping me.)
Death is a certain thing. It is coming. If you or I might easily die tomorrow, is it worth being angry with you today? Can't I put aside my issues with you, just for today? And then just for the next day? And the day after that? Not to pretend we have no differences, not to pretend that there aren't things that need confronting, things we need to work out. That's passivity, not love. Just that if death isn't quick, but leaves enough time for thinking, I would want you and I both to feel confident that everything was clear between us, that you knew who I was and what I believed and that I cared about you. Or that at least if you didn't, if we missed each other somewhere, it wasn't because I wasn't willing to go more than halfway to meet you.
I am not back. There is no "back." But I am looking forward, and to something far greater than the season premiere of any television show. "I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:14)
And I hope that along the way even the tangential people will know more about Him because of me.