Keeping Home While Drowning

In a session when I was feeling particularly burdened by our burning existence, I told my counselor, “It’s a terrible thing to be young in a dying world."

Melodramatic, maybe, but when I think about the losses that will accumulate as my loved ones age and the globe changes along with the horrors I wish to keep from my children, I feel, well—bereft.

The world is dying and yet—someone still has to make dinner. And we still sing grace before supper and babies still smell sweet like milk when we get the chance to hold one on our laps. How in the world are we supposed to hold both existential dread and indefatigable beauty in these jars of clay?

The last few days I’ve felt unsettled, distracted. As a child growing up in the Left Behind generation and a young person who went to a Baptist college, I spent a decade of my life in absolute terror of anything related to conflict in the Middle East. Now as an adult, I wrestle with how to keep moving through old stories of terror that conditioned me to be more concerned about timelines than thousands of hurting people. I no longer know how to view prophecy alongside apartheid, how to long for a new world while feeling a fierce loyalty to the delights of this beat up old one. I’m not sure which parts of my kids’ Bible I want them to read, especially when even the Adventure Bible has Q & A sections like “Will there be an atomic bomb?”

How in the world are we supposed to hold both indefatigable beauty and existential dread in these jars of clay?

I don’t have the answers for some of these questions. I’m not sure they exist. But, here are a few thoughts as an offering, if you, too, have been struggling to move through the past few days and dread the weeks to come.

Consider the lilies… or the pear tree unexpectedly blooming in October, or the orange flash of a newt or the ridiculous grace of mosses. “If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you…"- Luke 12: 28. Or as poet Lori Hetteen put it in her Instagram post yesterday:

When much of the world is burning or under water or trembling or mourning, it does us good to lament, to help where we can, to pray, to light candles, to wail. It also does us good to remain open to what is lovely. Delightful. Healing. Those things pull us forward and keep us from permanently sinking in despair. They keep us in the arena of care. They keep us from bowing out of this wild human experiment.

Practice Struggle Care: In her beautiful and compassionate book, How to Keep House While Drowning, therapist KC Davis outlines what she considers to be a way forward amidst overwhelming pressures whether a new baby or an old conflict exploding. She calls this “struggle care.”

Its six pillars are care tasks are morally neutral, rest is a right, not a reward, you deserve kindness regardless of your level of functioning, you can’t save the rainforest if you’re depressed (as someone who cloth-diapered until post-partum anxiety rocked my world and who felt so guilty with boxes of disposables, this is a good word), shame is the enemy of functioning and good enough if perfect.

Find Ways to Internalize Safety and Presence: A friend of mine tells the story of how when she was growing up in the midst of Cold War hysteria, her mother baked bread almost every day. Later, her mom shared that she knew that her daughter was going to school and having to do fallout drills and hear whispered rumors, and she wanted her to actually smell safety and warmth when she returned to her home. I’ve never forgotten this story, especially as my own children have returned from school with stories of intruder drills, true-crime podcasts, horror movie characters their friends talk about, and facts about climate change that keep them up at night. I slice apples and make muffins, we drink tea and snuggle against the whirling outside.

I also think of this when I picture my emotions as my internal family. When the world is shaking, I can embody steady leadership and presence to my fragile feelings in the midst of fears old and new. And because of Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit, I don’t have to manufacture that steadiness or peace:

I like this paraphrase of John 16 from the Message: Jesus told his friends, “It’s better for you that I leave. If I don’t leave, the Friend won’t come. But if I go, I’ll send him to you… when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. He will honor me; he will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything the Father has is also mine. That is why I’ve said, ‘He takes from me and delivers to you.’

It reminds me of what I’ve been learning about attachment as well from the parenting book Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy. She talks about how when our kids hate separations, won’t sleep, or are fearful of new situations, our goal is to help them internalize the secure presence of a parent, so that even when the parent isn’t there in body, the kids can access the reassurance, guidance, and confidence they need.

Again, I see parallels with the gift of the Holy Spirit: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth… you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ..the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:15-25)

Lean into God’s gift of community for light, strength and healing: Last week, I was up late with my daughter who was sobbing as she faced the problem of pain, the question of why doesn’t God fix things if God is all-powerful? She’s only ten but already she feels the deep dissonance of hearing promises of protection and provision while seeing the shambles of a sinful world. At one point, she cried, “So, God is just going to leave us all out here to suffer til we die? Why doesn’t God DO something?!!!”

I worked to breathe through my own helplessness and questions and to stay with her in her grief. After we lamented for a while, I shared with her that while I don’t understand all the answers, I do know that God does something, often through the people of God, God’s body.

I shared how two years ago when I was in the midst of crippling anxiety and insomnia, I begged God to take away what felt like unbearable pain. God didn’t just make it go away in a snap, like I would have wished. Instead, God gave me people who let me cry on their couches. God provided meals from Immanuel folks who barely knew our family but who offered to care for us. God gave us people to hold our hands and pray, and to bring ice cream sundaes or candles to light. Now, I can say I’d have chosen this instead of instant relief as suffering broke me open, reinforced the foundations, and built something new and beautiful. I shared with her as well that she’s not alone in trying to find answers to scary questions but that we’re given a family and church family to do it with us. May I take my own words to heart as we face new tragedies almost every day in the news.

How in the world are we supposed to hold both existential dread and indefatigable beauty in these jars of clay?

I suppose we can’t. Both will occasionally break through cracks and spill out. The best we can do is allow the Holy Spirit to hold when we rupture, to be patient with leaky eyes and hearts, and to trust that if enough of us are close together, there will be enough left to grow something from weak vessels.