Basement Utterances

I feel the inclination to blog but also a definite reticence to share what’s really going on in my life. It’s the reason I put off starting a blog in the first place. I knew these questions would plague me: How much should I divulge? What is safe to reveal? What is better left unsaid? It’s aggravating. In many ways I’d rather “let it all hang out” and “let the chips fall where they may.” But it’s not just self-protection that motivates me to withhold information and insights into my life. It’s my family, my employer, my colleagues, my friends and my fellow parishioners I’m also shielding from my boisterous tendencies. Caution is a virtue.

Having said all that, let me tell you something seriously personal: I talk to myself. Oh, we all do, all the time, I know. But I say things out loud, and I tend to get into patterns of issuing the same self-admonishments over periods of several weeks or months. (Amateur psychiatrists: Kindly refrain from diagnoses.) A few years ago, whenever I found myself alone with my thoughts (a scenario too typically reserved for the basement and the two piles of laundry in our household—the dirty pile and the clean pile), I found myself muttering the question, “Are you sure?”

Now, if self analysis is akin to dream interpretation, this was an easy one. I was in my 20s, a new mother, working full-time and going to grad school, frequently overwhelmed and generally underwhelmed with wisdom, knowledge and experience. I felt downright insecure, and my self-talk reflected that fact. At the height of my “Are you sure?” phase, I was also spiraling toward clinical depression. When a good friend prompted me to seek treatment (God bless her), my doubts about myself diminished. My confidence returned…at least to a reasonable level. I could function, and fairly well. Praise Be.

Lately—for maybe the past month—I’ve been saying “I’m sorry” to thin air. What does it mean? Have I sinned some terrible sin? I don’t think so. I mean, maybe. But nothing really jumps out at me. There are my usual Whack-a-Mole temptations of gluttony, laziness and pride. I try to avoid those jerks. I wrestle against the “powers and principalities.” God knows I want to land in the lot of the righteous. No, I think I’m saying “sorry,” not for anything I’ve done wrong but for everything I haven’t done right…or simply haven’t done. I’m expressing regret for my absolute inadequacy to be a superhuman being. There’s so much good I want to do in my little world—my family, my church, my town, my “sphere.” And I know that all of my efforts, while well-intended and multitudinous, are enormously insufficient. It’s never enough. I am not enough.

Before you go feeling sorry for me, or chastising me, or—worst—cajoling me, I think you should know that I think my “sorry” problem is OK. I believe in a God who is bigger than me and my problems, plus bigger everybody else and their problems. By “bigger,” I mean more powerful, more loving, more magnanimous, and more magnificent even than we can possibly imagine. The God of my salvation proffers hope, healing and miraculous provisions for this life and the next. I believe.

So this unnecessary apologizing is just another phase—something I need to work out of my spirit’s system, perhaps. Something that will lead me to realize, more profoundly and completely than ever before, how much I need the grace of the Lord in my life. Don’t we all?

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I don’t think you can ever be too detailed in your prayers, too specific, too minute…We are not dealing on the front line with grand general truths and cosmic metaphysics, but with daily bread and ingrown toenails and forgiving the rude behavior of an old friend.—Eugene Peterson, The Wisdom of Each Other

Image from www.educationforthesoul.com.