My Very Own Demolition Derby

This morning I put in a good chunk of time editing—as I often do when my cupboards are getting bare and the landlord is sure to be peering in my bathroom window looking for his money—and noticed the sunlight flooding through the kitchen blinds onto the hardwood floor, which of course got my mind wandering and wondering. Why wouldn't it, right? I started thinking about this time last year, which I spent on the other side of the world and wondered if it could be exactly a year ago today that I was soaking in the stillness of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem. So I went to my room to get last year’s journal and did a little searching. I was close. It was a year ago yesterday.

That day the light filtered through the tall, reaching branches of the Garden . . . the birds chirped happily and endlessly as if they too knew how sacred a place it was and just couldn’t keep it to themselves . . . the colorful group from Mozambique sent out hushed, soothing melodies . . . and my own heart beat more powerfully than before. All are imprinted in my mind, feelings and images with few words.

What I felt, not what I saw, changed me. It brought a reality to what I’ve always known and seemed to solidify the spiritual ground beneath me. I’d forgotten until reading my journal this morning, but that day my challenge to myself was to come home a better woman. Lucky for me that happened, but in all honesty, I don’t think it took much work on my part. It was a natural result of the experiences I had. I came home sanded and polished shiny and beautiful. The pinnacle of something great, right? But not for long. I was actually at the perfect point in life to be broken down and then crushed to smithereens.

Reflecting on who I am today, I don’t feel like a better woman than a year ago. I’m rougher and perhaps less tolerant of annoying people and often out of tune and a little off balance. I might even admit I’m back to being a blob of indecipherable artwork. Guh. Definitely not refined. Is this what my life has amounted to? Yes and no. Here’s where it all made sense to me just a little minute ago. At the beginning of this year my world was stripped down, and I was left to rebuild from the ground up. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. (And now that it's happened, I can very well see it happening again.) So I'm not the masterpiece of last year anymore, BUT—here’s the kicker—I haven’t digressed like I first was convinced of when I reread that journal entry. Okay maybe I've digressed a titch in certain areas, but I’m just in a new state of life that I’m working to sort through and organize and figure out. I’m on my way to becoming something even more, even better than before, but I still have a lot of work ahead of me. Now I see that the only way for me to progress was to not just be broken down but completely demolished. Personally I think it would've been more fun to host a demolition derby and let all of you have a free shot at me. Vroom, vroom, vroom . . . Wouldn't you agree? Maybe next time.

So how do we not remain a purposeless blob of clay? Simple. Implement what we’ve learned from being smashed to smithereens. Simply put but not simply done. That might mean digging through all those blissfully painful memories to make sure we really learned what we were supposed to learn. If we don’t slow down enough to mourn our losses and analyze those defeats, changes, and trials we've survived AND change for the better, we will digress.

So maybe it’s time for all of us to do a little self-reflecting. Maybe you're stuck. Maybe you've been on the brink of rebuilding your life but gave up because you couldn’t see an end in sight. . . . and it seemed easier and safer to blend in with the dirt. Well alls I gots to say is this life ain’t over till it’s over and you best be cowboyin' up. There’s much, much more in store for you. And then before you know it, it'll be time for your next demolition derby, just like me. Maybe you and I can coordinate and plan a joint derby together. Yeah, I like that idea.