February 12, 2024

Life is like a wave. It's one big ebb and flow that pulls and pushes us along. There are events that sweep us up and leave us feeling as if we're teetering just over the edge and those that overwhelm in an odd sort of comforting way, like the peace found within after a terrible storm. 

Life keeps going whether I want it to or not. There's a seasonal structure to things. A wintering and summer, a time for planting and for harvests. I can see the seasons now on the backs of my hands, the creases around my eyes and in the faces of my children. There's beauty in each cycle. Birth, dancing, love, breathing, death and dying. They each have their role to play in the cycle. 

I tend to keep people at a couple arm's lengths. I tend to rely on learned experience and hurt when navigating others. I tend to get caught up in the doing of life and lose sight of who is with me. The heart is a muscle and mine laid dormant for years. I convinced myself it was easier that way, but it's just lonelier. 

I sometimes think of those times when I was my loneliest. When the death of a loved one brought me to my knees or the realization that a friend I'd held in such high regard had disappointed me. There were also times when my loneliness was brought on by my own willful actions and in every instance, I missed out on something truly life-altering. Community. 

To me, community is about going about this life with others by letting people in. Just the simple act of sharing our hurts and our feelings with others, opens doors that would otherwise remain closed.

I've had many of these instances lately, and I know they wouldn't have occurred had I remained unwilling to  let people in. 

One occurrence happened almost a year ago. It was a Wednesday afternoon and I had just found Dad two days before and I had felt physical pain in my chest ever since. I was in bed, completely under the covers. I didn't want anything or anybody but one and nothing was going to satisfy. I was four months into my sobriety and there was nowhere to escape to. If misery was its own person, I was it. It was a deep sadness like none I'd ever known before. I'd lost my grandparents by that point but this was substantially worse. Every piece of the life I had known before, was no more. 

The phone rang and it was a friend. I didn't want to answer. Nothing would satisfy the ache in my heart. It honestly just seemed like a pointless conversation, but I answered anyway and she said, "I'm throwing you a rope. Hold on to it and let me pull you out."

I almost told her no, trying to pretend that I didn't need her help and that I could be the rock of a person that I had been for the last four years for my sisters and my dad as I had watched him slowly leave us. My pride said no. I could do this. I could lay there until the funeral Friday, wallowing in self-pity and utter despair. I could. 

But there was something about the words she used. "Hold on to this rope while I pull you out." She wasn't forcing me to walk through it on my own. She was asking me to let her carry me out, to let go and let life do its unimaginable things. She was telling me not to fight it, to just let go of being anybody or anything that I thought I had to be to get through. She was saying, "I got you." 

I let her hold my heart and she listened to me while I questioned God and everything that I felt and I shared my inner most feelings about the awfulness when the pause came right before the pull of that last wave. She let me be vulnerable and real and it was safe and things happened that week, that I'll never fully understand but it made me a believer in divine appointments and in a God that had me covered through the kindness and willingness of a friend who proved to me that it's better to let people in. 

That was just the beginning of a year filled with moments of blossoming friendships and realizations that we need each other. Just last week, another friend asked a question that turned into a heartfelt conversation about our children's similar struggles, something I wouldn't have known had a conversation never taken place. Now, there's a person to advise and talk with and learn from dealing with the same things as me. 

Let people in. Let them come alongside you in the tides of life. Find community, your community. We need each other. It's as simple as that.