Rocks, pearls and hot messes

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” 

--Frederick Buechner

I once read a book where a woman talked about her life experiences in terms of "waiting." She said that each season of her life was defined by waiting for the next impending, major life event. As a young girl she was waiting to become a teenager, as a young teenager she was waiting to turn 16 and get her driver's license, as a high school student she was waiting to go to college, as a college student she was waiting for graduation and a job, and as a post grad she was waiting to have a family and get married. As a result, her heart's fulfillment seemed ever set in the future. Again and again the same voice whispered, "Once you arrive at this next major landmark, then you will truly be satisfied and happy." Unfortunately, she had no such luck. She'd get the keys, cross the stage, say her vows and feel satisfied for a moment but then the aching would come back. In addition, she was faced with a whole new set of expectations and agendas and life went on. Her solution to the madness was simple--embrace the present. She gave the metaphor of life as a string of pearls, each pearl representing  a sacred moment worthy of investment. It's a lovely thought and picture, something you could put on a handmade card with a vintage picture of pearls and then write in frilly cursive ending with a dainty ellipses but, alas, my life tends to be so much more complicated.

I have that pearl quote written down somewhere in my heart, but it's not on a romantic Etsy greeting card. Instead it's on a grimy Whole Foods napkin I've used to clean up scalding tea, blow my nose into in the dead of winter and wipe away tears in the parking lot outside a friend's celebratory party. The pearl picture makes sense when you're hiking in the woods and rowing on a lake at dawn but what about all the in-between moments? What about scrubbing the toilet, chopping up vegetable and slicing your finger, sitting with a friend who's wrestling with an eating disorder or crying yourself to sleep because of chronic pain that's lasted a decade? Those moments don't seem like pearls but grains of sand to me--rocks strung around my neck that I have yet to see dazzle with luminosity. Ugh. Blah. I find myself feeling the pressure to make these rocks into pearls. For some reason I feel the need to smile and pull myself up by my boot straps and call a rock something it has yet to become... yet my gut grumbles that this mentality is "off".

I'm sick of pretending things are pearls when they aren't yet-- I can't make myself do it anymore and I don't want to. It's like those moments when you haven't washed your hair in three days, have no makeup on, are strung out exhausted and wearing sweats with a big stain on the leg, not to mention you old tie dye shirt from 7th grade camp. Oh yeah, and your eyes are swollen from crying. You just want to be alone but unfortunately you see someone at the library printer or maybe the check out line in the grocery store. Please don't pretend like everything's fine or try and encourage me by saying, "But you're beautiful!" after I say that I feel like a hot mess. Ugh. I am a MESS. Let's just accept a grain of sand for a grain of sand. Usher me to a tub with lavender and a warm bed with wool socks, don't give me a speech about hope. Maybe you can encourage me tomorrow afternoon but no now. Just let me be. Why can't we just accept the process and ruminate in it, even when it's disheveled and crusty?

In these moments, stout-hearted Frederick Buechner consoles me. He reminds me that blood, sweat and tears are part of the journey and that pain and ecstasy are equal nonnegotiables. Seeing things for what they are brings the real revelation and insight--honest analysis, in some ways, is like the dissonant pressure necessary for a grain of sand to become a pearl in a clam's mouth. I think Fred would whole-heartedly agree with Sabrina Ward Harrison's life perspective: "bless the mess." Ultimately, the mess is what shapes and forms us. In fact, I'd say that the mess is part of what makes our precious moments of felicity authentically glorious.

In college, I had a professor who planted his soap box on similar principles. Without relent he would tell us: "Dissonance is the birth place of growth. If you're not uncomfortable or feeling stretched, you're not growing." It drove us all insane. Those words meant nothing to me at 2 am when I was tying to finish two papers, study for a test and then wake up again at 6 am... and they meant nothing to me when I was driving home from small group feeling overwhelmed and exhaustingly confused about my future all the while yelling at God through sobs. In fact my professor's words offended me and made me grumpy. "Who gives a flip! Ugh!!! I HATE process! Why can't it just be over?!! I'm DONE with the stupid process!!!" And I felt that way for a long time... I often still do. But with each passing day, the older I get, the more Dr. Davis' words make sense and the more I realize that we never arrive at the "end" of the process. Unfortunately, that's where my hope arrow has been aimed. I'm realizing that my "waiting" isn't rooted so much in being fulfilled by a singular moment such as getting a dream job or getting married, instead my waiting's fulfillment is focused on finding and entering a season of life doused in static stability, unchanging and eternal peace. I think that when I arrive there, then I will truly be fulfilled, without a want in the world. Yet, if life has taught me anything, it has shown me that the seemingly "unchanging" seasons bring little, if any, fruit or growth. In fact, they get boring rather quickly. It's like summer vacation in middle school. You spend all of May and finals week counting down the minutes till that final Thursday unleashes three months void of homework or responsibility... yet Thursday comes and goes, along with the ecstasy. You sleep in, go to the beach and movies with friends, watch TV, and stay up late, but it all gets old after a couple weeks. After a while you're ready for some new project and challenge to come along because bumming around isn't all it's crack up to be.

I think life's like that too. I wouldn't call each moment a pearl, but I would agree with Buechner and say that each moment is sacred. Glory dwells in the ordinary. I don't want to be blind to the significance and abstract beauty of pain and process. The birth of dreams is always preceded by labor pains. Don't feel ashamed to acknowledge and embrace the rocks strung around your neck-- maybe our honest embrace is part of the dissonant pressure that transforms our calloused, rigid stones into pearls.