SPOONS
April 2, 2021
The last time I wrote I said I’d try.
If you’ve been paying any attention over the last year you’ve probably been doing your fair share of trying, too. “We’re just trying to follow the guidelines”, I’ve heard so many say. “We’re just trying to stay sane these days.” In the beginning, “We’re trying to get our hands on a pack of toilet paper” and now, “We’re just trying to get through it” or “We’re just trying to process this grief.”
Trying has remained verb and also transitioned, somehow, to pseudo proper noun. Recently, “I am Trying” feels more like an introduction to who I am more than how I’m doing. ‘Trying’ feels like a name. I suppose that’s because lately all experiences feel one step removed from the thing itself. There are all these attempts at them, but the fulfillment isn’t there. I’m trying to get more sleep, drink more water, exercise, eat better, pray every day, be careful little eyes what you see, ears what you hear, hands what you do; but I’m not achieving. I think I can safely blame some external stimuli for that (It’s a Pandemic!) and almost more safely not (My Life Has Not Changed Discernibly in Seven or Eight Years!)
I don’t do very well to keep calm or stay in the present moment, though it is the best advice of my multiple therapists, my immediate friends and family and the blogs I read about OCD. But the trying is going on. It’s going on a lot.
Recently through work with my therapist it’s become clear there’s a malignancy in some daily habit of mine and it’s time to scalpel bravely and make some changes. And I’m comforted by the support I find in that setting. The trust and resources there make the trying of it all seem less daunting. But in the initial conversation around it, I found Gollum voice sneaking up on me, pleading with me not to cut this thing out so unceremoniously. I felt a little sad about it; how I hadn’t come to a dramatic conclusion of growing out of my bad way ~naturally~. I did not ascend/achieve/arrive. The gecko (have you read The Great Divorce?) did not self detach, but instead must die a pathetic, unceremonious incineration by careful, deliberate trying.
I’ve made such companions with my bad habits and I guess I thought at some point I’d sever from them after I achieved some self-purchased wholeness. But then again, I’m reminded of Mary Karr’s essay on her conversion to Catholicism where she says that maybe some “saints turn to God to exalt him, from innate righteousness. The rest of us tend to show up holding out a tin cup.” So it was only a few moments later that (by grace!) I realized today is Good Friday and for the life of me, however faith-filled or fear-fueled, I can’t think of a more ceremonious time to lay my tin cup down. To let it die its death and hope for some resurrection breath on the horizon. To fail and reset. To run (try) and not grow weary. Calvary teaches us resurrection is not same-day delivery.
The last six months have been trying (it can be an adjective too!) and filled with so much trying for me that I’m becoming good at just that part of it. So if you have some trying that you’ve been putting off, whether for fear of failing or simply lack of energy, I want to share some graces you can look out for when you get to it. I am discovering through experience that you can attain these particular graces in almost no other way but to try. They are simultaneously earthy, grounded and yet of Heaven and in that way, are like their assumed Giver whether you acknowledge the Him part of it or not.
Here are some graces you can expect.
Almost no trying will kill you. Sometimes it hurts like it will but it won’t. The function of pain is to convince you you’ll die if you keep behaving that way: “RAFE, YOUR HAND IS LITERALLY ON FIRE” but we know from experience that, while often helpful, this function of pain is an overactive smoke alarm that can’t effectively distinguish between scorching human flesh and the banana bread you forgot was in the oven. It’s almost always the banana bread.
Either shortly after trying begins or right when you’re feeling like #1 wasn’t true after all, you will see a photo on your phone or get a voicemail from a friend or see an Arby’s ad that jogs your memory to a time when you tried before and you made it through. This will make all the difference because you’ll tell other people about it and your memory will help them with the thing they’re trying and haven’t told you about. It will seem like a miracle to both of you and the trying will get easier for a few days.
While trying, you will see the same number of babies and puppies on instagram and in real life that you’d see if you weren’t trying. And quite possibly more since trying self attracts and both babies and puppies have to do a lot of daily trying at things you’ve accidentally mastered. The babies you see will smile at you when you’re in a bad mood from trying and you will forget that earlier this morning your sweatshirt pocket got caught on the door handle when you were in a rush and you cursed God and His kingdom your whole way to Target.
You will discover you get hotter while trying. This is because being hot is a result of a lot of trying as much as the hot people in your life would like to convince you it’s not. “It’s just good genes.” We’ve seen your parents. It’s not!
At some point you will fail and get really disappointed. This is crucial. Failing while trying is obviously the best type of failing (because Hey buddy! You tried!). And under the crushing guilt/shame/disappointment of your failure, you will realize you’re starting to want the thing you’ve aimed at more than when you started, if you wanted it really at all back then. This is Holy Want, and it is Trying fuel. It won’t do much by way of actually getting you all the way there, but often it’s enough to get you trying again.
Conversely, Trying is Holy Want fuel. If you’re still on the horse and the going is surprisingly good, you will discover more want of the good thing. This will surprise you because you did not imagine this scenario. You had imagined that trying would be the slow removal of each of your fingernails and squirt of lemon juice/dash of celery salt on the raw skin beneath them. It still is kind of like this but I think without the lemon juice which, you’ll be surprised to find out, you can endure.
Also, any progress made before failing and starting again is compounded on at your next attempt. You don’t go back where you started. Now you start where you are. This might seem obvious but here is not there. From here, you see things you could have never seen when you were there, and you are not the same person that was there. You’re here!
Science tells us (it doesn’t) that time slows to a near halt when trying (there’s literally no way to prove this). This will seem really horrible at first since time passing is also a key ingredient in your eventual success. But once you realize things have slowed down a bit, you’ll discover some non-trying related activities you’re able to savor that eventually dull the trying’s more painful impacts. For example, I was certain I played the piano for 14 and half hours the other Saturday only to discover that I had actually played for 42 minutes. The 42 minutes filled me 14 and a half hours worth of whatever playing the piano fills us with and I made it through that day.
Your anxiety will start to lessen because you’ll discover that a lot of your anxiety was about how trying will be. Since you’re trying now, and you’re not dead, a lot of that fizzles. Even still, at some point in your process you will stumble on a sermon where the pastor says not to worry so much about how anxious you still are. She says that anxiety’s a gift because you’re so close to Hope. Despite all evidence to the contrary (anxiety is a contrary evidence factory that only produces massive contrary evidence that is nearly always inadmissible) you will believe her. This is because you’ve been trying for a while and have gotten thirsty and her sermon is real cold coconut water.
Almost immediately when you start trying, the people in your life will start to notice. None of the good ones will talk you out of it and as a result, they will start to gift you unquantifiable graces you wouldn’t have known to ask for at times you couldn’t have anticipated the need. This could be an exfoliating face brush, a granola bar, a tweet that makes you both cackle, a card left with a little money for take out, a prayer, you get the picture. Similarly, by trying, your eyes will start to open to these little gifts in ways you would never have recognized otherwise. Since Trying comes as a result of recognizing and Wanting the Good thing, you’ve already begun to train yourself to look out for other good things around you. Every good instinct in you is being sharpened and the people in your life will respond.
In the spring of 2019, my grandfather died in hospice care at my family’s home in Colorado after months of suffering an illness that took a sudden turn. He died in the bedroom I’ve stayed in the last 10 months, a few feet from where I sleep now. Honestly, his death couldn’t have come at a worse time for us (and probably for him) since it was my niece’s fourth birthday the next day. It was a confusing experience (he was the third of my grandads to die early) with an awkward numbness and dread. After the business of body retrieval and tidying up and processing was through, as a family, we realized we had some trying ahead of us. Naturally we headed to an early dinner at the Olive Garden to carbo load.
The dinner was pleasant. The niblings were being cute, we took a family photo?!, the pasta bowls were endless. We were just trying to have a good dinner after a bad day, but nothing really shakes the empty dullness that comes from witnessing the illness to hospice to death railway so intimately. Without acknowledging it, we were all in such a confused, exhausted place. But we were trying.
At some point someone whispered to the server that Emma would turn four the next day and a decadent, adult slice of chocolate cake arrived in front of her accompanied by a quasi-italian version of “Happy Birthday” and a big stack of spoons for the whole table. Quickly, the adults insisted, “Emma, you do not have to share. That is your cake for your birthday.”
Without a second of hesitation, she walked around the table and gave everyone a spoon. Intuitively, she started with the new widow and made her way to each one of us. Everyone gets a bite, a chocolate cake eucharist reminding us that what would get us through is generosity and grace.
I’d forgotten about all that until just a few days ago, at Emma’s sixth birthday, when that same intuition had her pause the cake cutting to name and thank everyone for their gifts sweetly, and then, less sweetly, rank them by preference. And I only remembered it because I’m currently trying every day, and that 10th grace of trying is that you become awake to the ways the ones around you are giving generously kindnesses you’re not entitled to.
I suppose there are more numerous good graces as a result of trying and per my previous 10th, you’ll become even more aware of them as you set out. But there is an important 11th to mention.
Trying is so much of what us human folk get up to in life but achieving unfortunately is more rare. That’s because some trying is just sowing seeds for the next wave. Most trying ends up being about the trying; an end doesn’t really materialize. It’s good to acknowledge that there’s an extent to human potential, and while setting out to try, you may become intimately acquainted with what little bang maximum buck can produce.
If you’ve found yourself in this new home at the end of your human ability; this is where Good Friday comes in. This Earthy and Heavenly event does seem to be the bridge from your trying, the extent of your human ability, across the long way to arriving. What you cannot bear was bore on your behalf. That trying distance was traversed by another. And the grace is that the real suffering of trying is only a portion (the right portion) of what could have been; and that portion is left for us in order to become the type of people who try. To be people with Holy Want. To see the Good Thing and to go for it, knowing we may not arrive, accepting we will fall on the way, and trusting the bridge that takes us from here to the new There. The There bridged to us by Another whose trying won and it made all the difference.
So, if you are trying or have been trying or are about to try, here’s a spoon. Take your bite. Get back at it. I’m right there with you.