Good Life

Sitting quietly, here in my room, with the week old snow on the ground, I realize that this is a good life. For so many years, I’ve been wanting something different, something more. I’ve been waiting for my life to begin, to take off into something wonderful, adventurous, and amazing. It’s partly because I’m a dreamer at heart. It’s partly because I was sold a lie that this is what life really is: one big adventure, onward and upward, forever.

Our culture does a good job at masking what we really think about the good life. We try to be inclusive and affirming by telling people that they need to do what’s best for them and make their own decisions. I believe that much of this comes from a good place, reacting against exclusivity wherever it lives. But, in reality, how many of us believe this for ourselves? Sure, we may say that we want others to do what they need to do and live the life that they want to live, but we often hold ourselves to the classic standard of “success”: money, fame, promotions, booming business, etc. 

Christians don’t get off any easier, in my book. Evangelicals haven’t decided to be more inclusive or affirming of the choices and lifestyles of others. All they’ve done is swapped one set of morals and values for another: marriage, children, perfect answers to everything, easy, “blessed” life, booming congregations. 

Across the board and throughout history, humanity has said one thing and done another.

For years, I’ve worked to be grateful for the life that I have, rather than pining after some future that may never happen. I’ve worked to honor the good things right in front of me, rather than being sad that they aren’t what they “should” be, whatever that means. This started because, soon after I moved to Radford, I realized that my life wasn’t going to turn out the way that I thought it would. I lived in denial, for some time, but, in retrospect, I always kind of knew that things were going to end poorly - there was just no other way.

I was caught up in an embattled culture that felt threatened by any question or critique of their values. I was trapped in a cycle of trying to make sense of a weird community and series of events. I got caught in the web of the sin of others and was cast aside as collateral damage.

I wasn’t going to get the promotion and expansion in my job that I’d been promised. I wasn’t going to get trained. There was no opportunity for growth, despite the brief hope I was given at the end. It was all a lie. The most charitable explanation is that they didn’t know what to do with me and nobody wanted to take responsibility for the mistakes and errors of others.

So, I had a choice. I could be grateful for the good that I got to do, the life that I got to live, or I could be bitter, looking for something more.

Bitterness has been an ever-present temptation for me. All but abandoned to raise myself and left trying and failing to earn affection for my entire childhood, I was a pretty angry adolescent. Some healing in my early adulthood turned that around, but there are old, rotting stumps in my heart that have been there for most of my life. When they were fertilized by my experience in Radford, it was all that I could do to keep from growing a whole garden of thorns and thistles. Gratitude and perspective became a weapon that I could wield to keep the darkness at bay.

To be honest, I’d become pretty content with the work that I was getting to do in college ministry, at the end of my time in Radford. I’d looked for other things and nothing was really panning out. So, I chose to be grateful and keep on doing what I was doing, until God made another way clear. Then, out of nowhere, I got fired for no good reason.

Now, if you’re interested in spiritually bypassing the pain and betrayal involved in that decision made without my consent, you can kindly go catch a stomach bug that lasts for a week and leaves you in repulsion of your favorite food for the rest of your life. God did not intend to make another way for me through the sin, betrayal, cowardice, and incompetence of others. He did, nonetheless, because he’s the hero, but not because what they did was ok or because I shouldn’t be deeply wounded by it. It was wrong, plain and simple. It did not have to be this way.

My experience left me disoriented and disconnected from my efforts at gratitude and contentment with the life I was living because I didn’t know what to be grateful for anymore. I’ve known how I needed to spend my life since I was fourteen. I’ve never wanted to do anything besides tell others about Jesus. The specifics of that tug on my heart have taken a variety of forms, but it’s never really changed. It’s all I want to spend my time doing: imbuing life with meaning by knowing its author and bringing as many people along with me as I can.

When the primary vehicle for me to do that was taken away from me abruptly, I didn’t know what to do anymore. Especially, since I’d spent years carving out a small corner in which I could live out my dream. Being a woman in an evangelical setting, there were naysayers and obstacles around every corner. Bitterness invited me to take her hand at every turn.

So, I sit here today, thinking about all that I get to do regularly and all that I hope to do in the future and I realize, maybe for the first time in my life, that this is a good life. If it’s never anything more than today, it’s good. If it’s the sun on the snow and the birds in the yard and the pavement under my feet, it’s good. If it’s kindly chatting with my coworker and making bread from scratch and hugging my daughter, it’s good. If it’s playing games with my husband and walking the dog and quietly living my life as Jesus would, it’s good.

I’m not giving up on my life-long dream. Far from it. But I’m letting bitterness go and unrealistic expectations go and saying that I don’t know what’s next. I don’t know how I’m going to get to tell people about Jesus next, but I get to do it right now, in all the ways I listed above. 

The hardest part for me is, on my worst days, I want to go back to that rotting old stump in my heart and mine it for compost. Everytime I think that there is something good left in my bitterness and hurt over my life, I just make myself sick. Bitterness can look like good fertilizer, but it’s not. It just feeds the disease.

So, rather than going to the stump of bitterness, I’ll go to the fountain of grace - for myself and those who have harmed me. Because the Gospel isn’t good news if it’s not for the worst of us, you and me. For my part, I began by wishing those who ultimately betrayed me well. I spoke up and fought back and listened and argued because I wanted more for them and those that they led than the small, boxed in life they wanted me to lead. I wanted the full, free, abundant life that Jesus promised them. I wanted hope, healing, welcome, and grace for all and sundry.

I want that still, but I won’t get it at the stump of bitterness. Oh God, keep me near the fountain of Grace.