Warming to the world

Tonight we had one of our hall meetings which I know that none of us look forward to except probably our RA. Can anything mandatory be fun? Augustine said something like - anything we are forced to do we do not do well. Anyway, I'd forgotten that I'd agreed to lead up a "prayer group" which basically means that we get into random groups and I read off a couple questions for everyone to answer and then we pray. The question was: what areas of your life do you need more faith in and what are some anxieties in your life. Or something like that.

The first girl talked openly about how her brother died a year ago and she was still struggling with that. No kidding? The next girl talked about how she's had ovarian cysts for six years. What do you say after something like that? I obviously had no major anxiety in my life, by comparison, except my current worries about a good friend who is in pain. But seriously, we take every minute for granted sometimes.

This weekend I found an old journal from a couple years ago that I had written in. Jade and I were scanning through it, finding funny things about our past to laugh about. But then there was an entry in May 2006 just after my Nana's cancer spread. Looking back, I know now that this was the point where everything started getting worse and didn't get better. I wrote about how I felt, saying that I know one day I'd want to look back and read this and know what I was thinking at the time. The funny this is, I didn't want to look back and remember how I felt. I'd almost forgotten that those hard times were a part of my life. My current life is so wonderful, full of everything good and nothing bad that I can hardly imagine a time when it wasn't. But reading that entry brought everything back. No one in my house was happy. There was a constant cloud, a lingering sorrow and fear that gripped everyone at the time. So much pain and doubt and desperation. I told Jade about the day when my mom found out about the cancer on Nana's liver. About her in the backyard screaming while I was taking a piano lesson, my heart dropping because I could hear her. How awful is that? How amazing that I managed to block it out of my mind for a year and a half.

I guess my point (if I need a point, I don't suppose I do) is that our lives are cycles of sorrow and joy and the things in between. And when we're low we can't imagine getting out of it. And it usually doesn't happen the way we imagine it anyway. Nana didn't get better... but our lives are great now, and I'm sure she's okay in Heaven. After a certain point when acceptance finally climbs into your lap (we didn't even notice it creeping into our house at first) and life produces better days, you begin to forget the horror and the pain.

Nick Drake said, "But you grow up; you do. You mellow out. Buds of compassion push through the cracks in the blackened, bitter soil. Your rage ceases to need a name. You no longer find comfort watching a whacked-out god tormenting a wretched humanity as you learn to forgive yourself and the world. That god of old begins to transmute in your heart; base metals become silver and gold, and you warm to the world."