December 31, 2023. I wasn’t thinking much about the date on this New Year’s Eve morning as I eased out of bed, poured a cup of coffee, and made my way upstairs to the den (I prefer to call it the library, but den sounds less pretentious).
I got comfy to sit in silence for a spell. Call it meditation. Call it contemplative prayer. Call it what you want. Quieting the mind on some days is easier than others. Today it took a minute for the incessant stream of thoughts to dissipate, but it did and, before long, I was sitting in beautiful nothingness.
It was in the solitude of that nothingness that, at one point, something dropped in.
“25 years ago, Dave. 25 years ago today you got engaged.”
Wow. I did a quick mental double take and validated the math of the still, small, voiceless voice that dropped this tidbit into my psyche. Sure enough. 25 years.
I tried to let it pass so I could return to the nothingness, but it wasn’t easy to let go.
The memory of the night I got engaged was now vividly present, colored with every detail of the evening’s unfolding. The location. The set-up. The presence of my best friend and his wife. The fusion of nerves and excitement. The details were unending.
It was a pleasant memory, notably bereft of wistful or sorrowful feelings. More present than anything was the thought of how long ago it seemed.
25 years. A lifetime ago. Or half a lifetime, I guess.
I wondered what it would’ve been like if the me of then had been given a glimpse of what life was going to look like 25 years later.
Divorced. “Out,” as they like to say. A deconstructed faith (which the me of then equated with being destined for hell). And dealing with a medical diagnosis that has launched its fair share of fear-laden Molotov cocktails at me.
I had a sudden appreciation for the wisdom of not wanting to know the future (“Say, maybe that’s why divination is frowned on in the Bible.”). Because sometimes what the future holds is simply too brutal for our present reality to comprehend. Or at least it appears too brutal.
And when we glimpse that kind of brutality, we usually have one goal in mind: avoid it at all costs (unless it’s not our own, in which case we may stare with a morbid curiosity that knows we can look away at any moment, untouched). So we flinch, fight, deny, defend, avoid, assert, shield, scorn, beat, bury… or some combination thereof.
All because we can’t imagine life looking like that. We can’t imagine being able to endure such brutality, let alone that anything good could come from it.
When we live with unyielding ideas about how things are supposed to be – including big things like the concepts of truth or right vs. wrong or fairness vs. unjustness – it can create a rigidity that closes us off to possibility.
If the Me of December 31, 1998 were given a glimpse of my life today, he couldn’t have handled it. He would’ve fought tooth and nail against it, because destruction is all he would’ve been capable of seeing.
But the Me of December 31, 2023 sees differently.
He sees a meaningful relationship with his ex-wife and relationships with his kids that keep getting better.
He sees his sexuality as something healthy and sacred, not the abomination that a lifetime of religion helped him to internalize at a cellular level for so many years.
He sees a faith that continues to be reconstructed into something more expansive and life-giving than ever, rooted in love, wonder, and possibility.
He even sees the medical diagnosis as a gift (at least on his good days).
Would I want to repeat the times of pain and fear and sorrow and struggle that separate the me of then from the me of now? No, of course not.
But would I change anything? No, because I’d only revert back to old patterns of rigidity and control and fear, the very things that the so-called brutality has been working to free me from.
The Me of December 31, 1998 saw what he was capable of seeing at the time. What he needed to see at the time, I suppose.
The Me of December 31, 2023? He’s thankful for his current vantage point.
Thankful to see the subtle intentionality woven into the journey and challenges of life.
Thankful to see beauty in the brutality.