Some things I learned from 2007.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger      3 comments      link this post     


::In keeping with the idea of writing the year to a close, I decided to write down some things I learned this year.::

Don't save the pain pills.
In May, I had surgery. I didn't really talk about it on the blog, and I'm not really going to talk about it now. However, I was required to purchase a bottle of fairly potent narcotic pain pills because, I was told, I would be in a some pain in the first weeks. Driving would not be allowed for a certain time frame when taking the pills. I have often jokingly referred to myself as a sturdy German peasant girl meant to be doing hard labor, and in reality, the surgery wasn't too big a blip on the radar for me physically. I felt pretty good right away, considering. But I had these pain pills. I knew they were expensive (I'd paid for them, after all). I knew that taking them would prevent me from driving and I sort of have to be mobile to get to my weekly job.

There was some pain. But I was never sure it warranted the pain pills. Maybe, I thought, there will be worse pain and if I use up these pain pills now, I'll regret it. I'll just wait this out. There were moments I should have used them. A couple of nights were rather like agony. But it might be worse later! I'd better not use it all up now! I figured I could make it. And I did, of course, but it wasn't a great finish some evenings. As it is, I have a 3/4 full bottle of expensive, unusable pills collecting dust on my dresser. I didn't use the pain pills when I should have.

In 2007, there were some other kinds of pain for me, both actual and residual, with the residual being from friends who didn't know the depth and tried to help in shallow ways and conversations. I didn't always take it to God in so many words, nor did I really make use of those friends. It wasn't their fault. I just never told them anything when they asked.

"Oh, things are pretty good. Yep." There might be worse pain later, I thought, and I don't want to wear them out now.

I can pretty much guarantee that there will be worse pain later, and that there is always a chance that human friends can be worn out by too much neediness, melancholy, and weepy poor-me-ness. But God is without limit, and needs no hoarding and saving. How much pain is serious enough to take it to Him? Why do I wait?

Don't save the pain pills. Use them when you hurt.


People are not stationary.
I used that line in so many of my "relationship" posts that it's probably annoying at this point, but I can't stress enough how I understand that so much after this year. If time does anything for us humans who are locked into it, it passes. It passes and we are all carried along on it, our paths veering and winding and colliding and ricocheting. If there was anything I could tell a person wondering what to do with a possible relationship (friendly or otherwise), it is to not assume people will still be waiting when or if you come to a decision about them. What was offered up in one moment in time will likely not be there weeks and months and years later.

This isn't a call to rush into things foolishly, but just to say: people might not be there when you finally get back to them.

So often I've heard the line that a person is just "waiting to see what happens" or "waiting to see what course things take" or "well, I'll just wait and see what God does" -- so often I've heard it, in fact, that I've come to see how much of the time such words are a passive way of never making decisions, never taking a chance, never doing anything but holding out for the myth of hoping to be safe from hurt born of becoming vulnerable while having cake and eating it, too.

In discussions and thinking and experiences, I see how we all somehow hold onto the idea that if we could just hold off on a person or opportunity for a while, just enough to make sure something better isn't around the corner, then we could know and be sure of our decision. But, by stretching the time to see around that corner, we may find, when we turn back, that the person is gone. Gone, and not to be available in the same way again.

People are not stationary. This includes you. The opportunities might stay put, but you won't. Don't waste the moment.


Being a good gardener is important.
This lesson came in almost under the wire this year, a lesson from a book in which, upon reading, I finally understood how my many elaborate efforts and words and discussions could be boiled down to something far simpler. I finally had the words for what had always eluded me out on the periphery.

I need to take better care of the center of the garden. Letting any and all inside means the grass is trampled, the plants are overused, and the vegetation is all tired out. There's just not much left, after everyone has made a tour. Somewhere, sometime, I need to understand that not all walls are bad. That keeping a person out who is very insistent on getting in isn't an effort to dehumanize or hurt them, but to maintain a beautiful garden for its better purpose someday.

This year, in an an email I wrote to a person who I let inside, I tried to say this, though I did it very clumsily. He's gone now -- rather a kindness of God, in hindsight -- but towards the end, in that email, I stated that I felt like I was merely the Lone Prairie Tourist Stop to him in which, after his life became busy and the vacation was over and I was no longer new or unusual but something accustomed to, he left.

I am not a tourist destination. The middle of the garden, where my own trees of knowledge and of life grows, is not open for random tours. It might not always be exciting and in bloom, and sometimes struggling with weeds and drought, but the One who planted it sees its beauty all the time. I shouldn't allow anyone in who only wants to stick around when the flowers are in bloom.


Life is filled with leaving.
Everyone leaves. Maybe they physically leave, or maybe friends' lives change and morph into something that alters the friendship, leaving an empty feeling that is as much like the loss of them leaving altogether. I could either refuse to become close to people and lead a shallow life filled with other stand-ins (pets, gadgets, mindless hobbies or entertainment), or I could take the blows that come and be softer in the heart because of it. I could be cold and bitter as I get older, or not. I could rail against the inevitable each time it happens, claiming to not understand, getting all twisted up inside over a better, but fake, reality, or I could say goodbye with grace and take the blow.

When my heart is pounded down and softened, it is savory. I am able to savor the moment I am in with the people I am with, better able to not fear the inevitable day when they will be gone. In years past, I would squander and almost purposefully destroy relationships because I didn't want to be around for the leaving whenever it might happen. It is a good thing to know this, about leaving. I can relax and enjoy the time now, not worrying about what I can't stop.

That tree of my life is filled with leaves; every branch, no matter how sturdy, ends in leaves. There were many "leaves" in my life this year, some out of my control, and some that I purposefully dictated with a heavy heart and right decision. Some of these leaves, I admit, I collected in a pile and burned. But many leaves, nonetheless.

We leave easily, unless held onto. And even then, at some point, we leave.


Silence. ( )
Some silence I like. The stillness of the farm. Being alone and able to read and write. The silence that brings about understanding. But another kind of silence set in this year, and I find I wrote about it from different angles. Silence when there should be talking. Silence from God. Silence when you know you're not alone. Silence when an answer is called for.

Silence, as an answer to a direct and personal question, is cruel. It has its own message. It is worse than a no. It is empty and undefinable and wide open to misinterpretation. It lives on in people's minds, a fully unwound cord that will never be tied and finished. Silence is the missing child that you never see again. Silence is the death that leaves important things unspoken forever. Silence cuts and stops and refuses to let the natural course subside.

There is so much I still don't know what to do with, in regards to silence, beyond knowing that it is a very soft spot for me when I am on the receiving end. I suppose I'll understand the value and harm of it in the coming years. But I know this much: people who use silence as a response are not worth your time. They are black holes, if you allow them to be, as you pour yourself out and everything is pulled in. Such a person has not come to a place of a kind of social maturity that compels an action out of the need and concern for another. He or she will continue to use the fall-back of silence and keep their distance under the guise of mere wordlessness.

My best advice, for people who are adults and are still using the veil of silence or shyness or insecurity or the inability to act to almost purposefully derail the good things and good people and good opportunities in their lives, is this: if you don't know what to say, say "I don't know what to say." People will know, at least, that you heard them. Every single human being deserves a response, even if it is "I don't know what to say to you." That's enough. That will work.


Everything teaches.
I didn't save learning for the end of this year. I gotta learn all the time. Everything in life is a lesson for me, everything I experience or go through has something valuable to teach me. During one of the final emails of the waning moments of a relationship, I was asked why everything had to be a lesson all of the time. My first reaction was one of questioning myself and what I'd come to see as a normal and healthy way of functioning in life. But then I got to thinking about what happens when I don't pay attention enough to what's going on in life to make note of things, to learn from them: I repeat them again and again. I make the same mistakes, the same mis-judgments, the same relational errors.

I consider it a kindness from God that he leads us through and not around hard places, and that he helps us understand, when we are strong enough to look back with a clear eye, what his purpose was.

Everything contains a lesson, a truth, another brick for the foundation of your life. Learn it. If not, you'll keep getting a chance to learn from it over and over and over again until you do.


But then, there's happiness.
Happiness in little, big, surprising, and expected things, not tied to my emotions. A fuzzy cat. A good friend. A good and faithful God who doesn't require perfection. Because, like 2007, this post seemed long on the melancholy and short on the joy. But that's just the "seem"; God bursts the seems, always. At the end -- of the day, of the year, of the post -- God is still good. He helped me start the year, and he will help me finish it. He perfects what he creates, including my faith, someday.

This is a good thing, indeed.

Labels: essay, my life, personal, relationships

Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger      12/29/2007 09:54:00 PM      (3) comments      Links to this post    
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