Fierce Winters and Sidestriking Winds

Turbulence and driving winds. That’s how this New Year has arrived.

This first week comes accompanied by turmoil, stress, pain and the threat of alienation. My family is in upheaval. Loved ones are hurt, becoming estranged and looking around for someone’s feet where they can lay the responsibility. People are talking about but not to one another.

I’ve been stretched emotionally like never before. Each day’s end brings the exhaustion of having to navigate narrow relational channels filled with rocks and the prospect of sudden shipwreck. Each night is mingled with ten thousand what-if’s that keep one awake with the unsatisfied hopes of a predictable outcome or some kind of resolution.

And it all comes through no obvious fault of my own. So much is outside of my control, and outside of my influence. All I can do is wait and sigh, and talk and listen, and catch up on sleep I miss at night trying to solve what is not mine to solve.

But since my nights are filled with a tangle of thoughts and emotions, here are a few:

1. What you have can disintegrate in a minute through pride and selfishness. And it can happen before your very eyes, even if you are scrambling to prevent it.

2. There is a principle called “dying to oneself.” It’s required of families. If you don’t die to yourself, you expect others to die for you, and that can only result in alienation. When you choose to lay down your own prerogatives and give yourself away so that others can be benefited, you remove alienation in most cases. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but more often than not, it does. But families have to do this, because each person is so different.

3. It is agony to watch someone you love receive the consequences of their choices. But if you don’t let them go through it, you might not love them quite properly or fully enough. Thus love frequently involves agony.

4. Through it all, you have to keep your eye on the compass. You cannot avoid being buffeted and driven and slowed to a stop and spun around and driven again. You cannot stop the turbulence and driving winds. But you can keep your eye on the compass and stay oriented and make course corrections as soon as the opportunity presents itself. This works best if you have a clear star beyond the horizon by which you set your course.

5. It sure helps to have a good crew at your side. You’ll likely never make it alone.

6. Oddly enough, ‘tis the turbulence that can make you. “An acorn is not an oak tree when it is sprouted. It must go through long summers and fierce winters; it has to endure all that frost and snow and side-striking winds can bring before it is a full grown oak. These are rough teachers; but rugged schoolmasters make rugged pupils.” Henry Ward Beecher.

Today’s Influences and Soundtrack:
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
C.S. Lewis, The Inner Ring
Samuel Barber, Essays for Orchestra, including Adagio for Strings.
Cambridge Singers, Brother Sun, Sister Moon