“This Wasn’t Even a Bad Day”

You say today wasn’t a bad day. I know you don’t mean it to be callous or cold. I hear what it is you are trying to convey—today could have been worse. I know that is what you meant.

I have been there before. The same thought process rolling through my mind. But it didn’t happen that way for me, at least not this time. 

Their grief radiated in my bones.  The sobs, the wails, the “I don’t know’s” the “how can I go on?” and “how can this be’s?”.

Each hitting me hard. Rocking my fatigued body.

So, for you, it wasn’t a bad day. But it was a sad day. A day that was someone’s worst day. For me, a day where the iron suit of protection couldn’t be held up any longer.

I felt my human softness. Your tone was your iron suit. I am not judging or criticizing you for it. I just couldn’t hold my suit up, the heaviness was too much to bear on top of the sadness of it all. So, I laid it down and let the blows hit the soft flesh of my own heart. The vulnerable softness of my humanity.

Your tone suggested my weakness and for a split second I believed it.

Believed a voice that is deep inside me—that has told me I am not enough, or too much, that I am weak, and should be able to hold it all, that I should think “this wasn’t even a bad day”.

Then I remembered softness is not weakness. It is strength. It is being able to say, “what doesn’t kill me makes me softer.” It makes me kinder; it makes me more human, more willing to be gentler with others and just as importantly, gentler with me, my very own self.

So maybe it wasn’t “even a bad day” but it was a day of softness—one that left me remembering deeply my own humanity, my own vulnerability. A day that reminded me of my own limits and illuminated where I had chosen to ignore them, pushing myself forward and through till I was exhausted and gasping for air.

Then I remembered my own body, my own mind, my own soul, my own heart.  And I whispered “you, Margaret, you matter too.”

So, I chose softness, and I will continue to do so. I choose to be impacted and instead of pushing myself through—I will remember they are people, and I am a person too. I will honor their grief and pain with as much compassion and humility as I can. Then I will tend to my own self, to the best of my ability.

No, it wasn’t a bad day. But it was a learning one. Where I was invited, yet again, to find another way. A way of being, living, and showing up for others that is not heavy and hard weighed down by the iron suit, but one that is not too soft and muddy that I get stuck. A pathway that has a firm enough ground, with nice tree trunks that invite me to come sit and rest a while.

No, it might not even be a bad day. But it was a tender one and that is wonderfully and beautifully okay.

Amen.

            This poem was penned a few weeks ago. I had returned to work after an intentionally restful Thanksgiving, a mental health break with new interventions of care, and I was still feeling quite tender. I was hit with a particularly sad situation that required me to care for a family amid traumatic grief. I cared for them as best as I could but found that I pushed myself too hard. I expected myself to return to a pace and level of care that had never really been helpful or healthy for me.

            Someone told me that it “wasn’t even a bad day” and for a split second I tried to downplay the day’s events and the ways it had impacted me. This poem is an expression of my thoughts and feelings as I processed what had happened and how it had touched me. I am continually being drawn to this idea and invitation of softness and allowing myself to soften—to name when things have been hard for me.

            There was a time, not too long ago, that I would have probably said the same thing, “it’s not even a bad day.” But that has begun to feel too heavy, hard, and too cold—not when it is someone’s worst day. Not when I am a human entering into the fragile spaces of another human being’s suffering. The iron suit way of approaching this world may provide protection from letting the suffering hit too closely to home but it also can, if taken too an extreme, prevent a person from fully experiencing another’s humanity including their own humanity.

            The line in the poem about a path that is not “too soft and muddy” was an image that came to my mind. Sometimes if a walking path is too soft it might become muddy and difficult to pass, if the ground (or my heart) is too soft you run the risk of getting stuck and sinking. The hope is that there is a pathway in life that is not weighted down with the heavy and hard protective shell we use to avoid feeling our humanity and the impact of the suffering of others. But we also don’t want a path that is too soft, that causes us to sink and get stuck. Much like Goldie Lock’s search for the perfect bed, I am searching for a way of life that allows me to be both protected yet open, tender yet resilient, soft yet strong. A way of being, living, and doing this work that is firm enough to travel on without being too heavy and laden down and a path that isn’t so soft I get stuck. A path that has space for rest, reflection, and renewal. A path that welcomes and honors the humanity of us all.

I realize that life will take me to different places and I will experience moments where I layer myself with the iron suit , closing my heart off, or I will find myself on too soft of ground, open and vulnerable to. everything causing me to sink and become stuck. Perhaps the just right path isn’t so much of an actual pathway and more of a mindset, one that continually offers grace, rest, peace, and compassion towards myself and others. A way of living that gently invites me to take off the iron suit, or pulls me out of the mud—leading me to a tree stump to sit and rest a while. For life is full of treacherous terrain, as well as beautiful roads pass still waters. Navigating it gently is the only way I know how to keep doing this.

            Shalom in Hebrew means “peace, wholeness, and wellbeing”, my hope is to find a pathway forward in this life that promotes all of those things. A way of being that invites us all to be our whole selves and to work together, along with God, for the wellbeing of all of God’s creation. The second week of Advent we light the candle of Peace and I hope and pray that God’s shalom might come and transform this world and we are all able to walk the pathways of life that are firm enough for us to pass through and when the path gets hard or dark, there are lights that burst through and tree stumps that invite us to come and rest awhile.  

            Peace be with you all. Amen.