The thing is, I don’t normally do things in winter.
That’s one of several pretty good excuses I could give. I’ve been struggling to take action on things I truly care about—specifically, things related to justice and community care. I started writing about it a couple of weeks ago:
As the whole saga has continued, I’ve examined my (lack of) motivations from many perspectives:
I asked myself repeatedly if these are really vocations for me right now.
I tried to look at them, and at all that prevents me from doing them, with curiosity and compassion.
I decided not to put too much pressure on myself, hoping the will to take action would spontaneously arise.
There’s a lot I could say about how we learn hopelessness and helplessness, but here’s what they eventually come down to: analyzing motivations is fine, but nothing, in the end, can really take the place of simply doing something.
And still, the bridge from “I should do something” to “I have chosen and completed an action” is looooong.
Here are some of the planks I crossed.
Move forward. Let me reiterate from before that I have not come here to wallow in shame. If I had wallowing on my calendar today, I’d at least not do it publicly. I don’t list my “undones” as a show of false humility or a backhanded plea for absolution. I’m just talking about the reality that we all have things to do that we struggle to take on. That it’s easy, when someone needs you 14 hours a day, to resent any other claims on your person. That despair, perfectionism, and denial are real, and heavy, and they come for us all.
Wallowing in shame—if I had come here to do that—would be just a little self-important, wouldn’t it? No one has asked me to do these things and I haven’t made any promises about them. I may believe them to be vocations, but God hasn’t penciled some cosmic deadlines on God’s syllabus.
If it’s helpful, maybe say out loud to yourself: “You are not behind.” Even if you’re objectively late, the good news is that you have the power to act now. You can’t move forward from anywhere but here, and no one benefits from your shame. In fact, sometimes we allow feeling sad or guilty to sap our energy to the point that we feel we’ve done something, when in fact we haven’t.
Setting down shame might mean spending some time in prayer about what’s going on. (I find myself talking out loud to God in the car lately.) Why does this feel so heavy? What exactly have your feet gotten mired in? And what do you hear God saying about your guilt or frustration with yourself?
We’ve individually and collectively failed to care for each other, and that’s heartbreaking and infuriating and gravely sinful. And. God knows about our sadness, our smallness, and our weakness; God is not smugly pleased when we punish ourselves or each other. We can begin from a place of grace.Get mad. Who benefits from your sense of helplessness?
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