Here are the intriguing titles of Elspeth's recent work on my computer:
Chocolate
The Bird Died of Hunger
Trashy the Trashcan
And my favorite:
THE ANSWER TO ALL QUESTIONS
I eagerly opened that document, excited that I would finally get an answer to all questions and fascinated that there is only ONE answer to ALL of them,
but this is all the document has so far:
THE ANSWER TO ALL QUESTIONS
by Elspeth Cockroft
And that's it. I raptly await the text that follows such a promising title.
Speaking of questions, Martin and I are fighting our own devils at the moment, which I realized when we went out for Spanish coffee and bread pudding at the tapas restaurant last night for an hour without the children.
He expressed this feeling that's been dogging him for the past few years, a feeling of waiting for the next hammer to drop on us, a feeling of intense dread, a distrust in the innate goodness or predictability of goodness in our lives. I agreed that I've felt similarly for a while now, too, torn by irrational worries about the children, our livelihood, the health of those we love, the future of this messed-up world marked by so much violence, job-security, whether or not anything I do really matters or is building up to success of any kind, blah, blah, blah.
It was good to get all that out into the open.
And then we assessed what has actually happened to us in the past three years. There's plenty to make us distrustful: a fulfilling job suddenly and unexpectedly torn away because of a idealistic belief in freedom of art and expression, the loss of our warm and hard-won community (and the following losses: our home, our garden, our friends, my job); the recent, unexpected illnesses of close family members, and most profoundly, the suicide of a close friend whom we counted as family.
I think some of these things can be described accurately as traumas: "deeply distressing or disturbing experiences."
We have been living in great health and grace and functioning with humor in the aftermath, and I am so grateful for that. But the truth is, those things shook us to our core. Our teeth are fairly rattled. And it was good to remember that, hey, our recent propensity to look over our shoulders waiting for a bullet to whiz by us, our mind and spirit's tendency to prepare for the worst should it happen suddenly--those are natural reactions to distressing things that have happened to us.
Martin said last night: "I just want life to be simple again."
Is this the child-like plea of every adult who is suddenly forced to grow up in a broken world?
And yet I am distinctly humbled by the distress of the world. My own distress seems not lessened exactly in comparison, but reflective and part of the groans of injustice, lives cut short too soon, promises and hearts broken. In this way we have become more compassionate, less afraid to enter into the sorrow of others or to take a risk to love or engage even though it may mean pain later down the road.
But it's that jumpy, jittery restlessness that I hate, the unwillingness to trust simply in life's goodness. That bothers me.
Still, we're taking steps. We've bought a house and hopefully will not be booted out of it for many, many years. We're planting a garden again. We're deepening friendships, enjoying our family. We have a neurotic dog who brings us joy.
Too, we're on the cusp of moving into a new reality. I can feel it. A reality of living with greater abandon and ironically more trust than ever before. It's what we want, and I think God can give it to our weary hearts. As I reminded Martin last night, we're still young. It's not like we're about to die tomorrow--as far as we can see, anyway. We have lots of life ahead of us still. And as he reminded me, Security is always an illusion anyhow. Better to live in hope and trust knowing that than to live in fear. Oddly, life could be simpler on the other side of this, and more simply freeing than we realized possible.
How to get there? One foot ahead of the other. Plod along up switchbacks and steep, wooded hills until we finally get to a clearing. A vantage point. A wide open space.
Last night, we finished the bread pudding. We drank up all the Spanish coffee. And we stepped out into the cool evening, arm in arm. It was so good.
Chocolate
The Bird Died of Hunger
Trashy the Trashcan
And my favorite:
THE ANSWER TO ALL QUESTIONS
I eagerly opened that document, excited that I would finally get an answer to all questions and fascinated that there is only ONE answer to ALL of them,
but this is all the document has so far:
THE ANSWER TO ALL QUESTIONS
by Elspeth Cockroft
And that's it. I raptly await the text that follows such a promising title.
Speaking of questions, Martin and I are fighting our own devils at the moment, which I realized when we went out for Spanish coffee and bread pudding at the tapas restaurant last night for an hour without the children.
He expressed this feeling that's been dogging him for the past few years, a feeling of waiting for the next hammer to drop on us, a feeling of intense dread, a distrust in the innate goodness or predictability of goodness in our lives. I agreed that I've felt similarly for a while now, too, torn by irrational worries about the children, our livelihood, the health of those we love, the future of this messed-up world marked by so much violence, job-security, whether or not anything I do really matters or is building up to success of any kind, blah, blah, blah.
It was good to get all that out into the open.
And then we assessed what has actually happened to us in the past three years. There's plenty to make us distrustful: a fulfilling job suddenly and unexpectedly torn away because of a idealistic belief in freedom of art and expression, the loss of our warm and hard-won community (and the following losses: our home, our garden, our friends, my job); the recent, unexpected illnesses of close family members, and most profoundly, the suicide of a close friend whom we counted as family.
I think some of these things can be described accurately as traumas: "deeply distressing or disturbing experiences."
We have been living in great health and grace and functioning with humor in the aftermath, and I am so grateful for that. But the truth is, those things shook us to our core. Our teeth are fairly rattled. And it was good to remember that, hey, our recent propensity to look over our shoulders waiting for a bullet to whiz by us, our mind and spirit's tendency to prepare for the worst should it happen suddenly--those are natural reactions to distressing things that have happened to us.
Martin said last night: "I just want life to be simple again."
Is this the child-like plea of every adult who is suddenly forced to grow up in a broken world?
And yet I am distinctly humbled by the distress of the world. My own distress seems not lessened exactly in comparison, but reflective and part of the groans of injustice, lives cut short too soon, promises and hearts broken. In this way we have become more compassionate, less afraid to enter into the sorrow of others or to take a risk to love or engage even though it may mean pain later down the road.
But it's that jumpy, jittery restlessness that I hate, the unwillingness to trust simply in life's goodness. That bothers me.
Still, we're taking steps. We've bought a house and hopefully will not be booted out of it for many, many years. We're planting a garden again. We're deepening friendships, enjoying our family. We have a neurotic dog who brings us joy.
Too, we're on the cusp of moving into a new reality. I can feel it. A reality of living with greater abandon and ironically more trust than ever before. It's what we want, and I think God can give it to our weary hearts. As I reminded Martin last night, we're still young. It's not like we're about to die tomorrow--as far as we can see, anyway. We have lots of life ahead of us still. And as he reminded me, Security is always an illusion anyhow. Better to live in hope and trust knowing that than to live in fear. Oddly, life could be simpler on the other side of this, and more simply freeing than we realized possible.
How to get there? One foot ahead of the other. Plod along up switchbacks and steep, wooded hills until we finally get to a clearing. A vantage point. A wide open space.
Last night, we finished the bread pudding. We drank up all the Spanish coffee. And we stepped out into the cool evening, arm in arm. It was so good.
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