Breaking Back into the Light

“… the brick walls are there to stop the peo­ple who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other peo­ple … Brick walls are there for a rea­son. They give us a chance to show how badly we want some­thing.“

~ Randy Pausch ~

Over lunch recently, I told a very dear friend, “I feel as though I have emerged from a very long and very dark tun­nel. And the light out here is extremely bright. My eyes have to get adjusted to it.”

Not long ago, I told that same friend for about the zil­lionth time in the past year or so, “I feel like I just keep hit­ting my head against the same brick wall over and over.”

“Hang in there,” she responded numer­ous times. “Hold on. You’re going to be fine. You’ll see. You’re going to come out on top. Your future is bright.”

At times, it was very hard to hang in there. That brick wall was extremely sturdy. It took me a long time to break it down. I had to find the one spot where it was struc­turally vul­ner­a­ble and then take advan­tage of that weak­ness, exploit­ing it to my advan­tage by chip­ping away one brick at a time until it col­lapsed entirely.

“But as for me, I will look to the Lord and con­fi­dent in Him I will keep watch; I will wait with hope and expectancy for the God of my sal­va­tion; my God will hear me.” (Micah 7:7)

Depressed and dis­cour­aged, I kept going through the motions, but my heart was “not in it” and I had no enthu­si­asm for the tasks at hand. For the first time in my life, I under­stood how peo­ple feel when they describe them­selves as “adrift.” Some days all I wanted to do was sleep and at other times, sleep sim­ply would not come. I was liv­ing in a con­stant state of exhaus­tion, drag­ging myself from one place to another.

Old friends were polite, but I came to rec­og­nize the looks of con­cern on their faces. I caught them study­ing my face when they thought I wasn’t look­ing. I’m sure they were secretly ask­ing them­selves if they too appeared to be as old as they thought I had begun look­ing. They began rou­tinely ask­ing about my health, ques­tion­ing whether or not I was under­go­ing reg­u­lar check-ups, sug­gest­ing that I con­tact my per­sonal physi­cian and sched­ule my long-overdue annual examination.

After awhile, you almost get used to liv­ing that way. Almost. I am con­vinced that when you become accli­mated to feel­ing beaten down, inef­fec­tive, and per­pet­u­ally frus­trated, and accept that your dreams have been per­ma­nently derailed, you have arrived at a place from which a return to nor­malcy is noth­ing short of miraculous.

The con­text of my strug­gle is not ger­mane. Suf­fice it to say that it recently ended.

The impor­tant ques­tions are these: What did I learn from the time I spent feel­ing upset, dis­ap­pointed, frus­trated, and depressed? How will I avoid ever going through such a dif­fi­cult time again? Or will I?

What I’ve learned is that, as Randy Pausch states, brick walls only cur­tail the efforts of those who do not want to achieve their goals badly enough to endure what­ever tri­als are nec­es­sary in order to suc­ceed. Yes, I hit my head against the same brick wall over and over for a period of more than three years. At first, your head gets bruised and a bit swollen. But over time, as you bang away at var­i­ous points along the wall, look­ing for that one loose brick that will enable you to finally start the process of dis­man­tling it brick by brick, you know that you are going to reopen old wounds that are going to bleed pro­fusely and cause you to expe­ri­ence enor­mous pain. After awhile, I ques­tioned my own deter­mi­na­tion, won­der­ing if my efforts would prove, ulti­mately, to be futile ad if I was will­ing to risk the pain in order to find the answer.

I’ve also learned that you will break through the wall not on your own sched­ule, but in accor­dance with the Spirit’s time frame.

Some­times hope is the only thing you have left. It is all you can cling to. Faith is the man­i­fes­ta­tion of hope and hope­ful­ness, and sus­tains you through the dark­est days imag­in­able. I lit­er­ally sur­vived the dark­est period in my life by read­ing and will­ing myself to believe Jere­miah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to pros­per you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” I con­stantly reminded myself that the Divine Cre­ator had never let me down before — and would not do so in my cur­rent cir­cum­stances. I would look in the mir­ror and tell myself exactly what my good friend told me over and over and over: “There is some­thing in store for me. This sit­u­a­tion is lead­ing me to some­thing won­der­ful. I have to con­tinue on this path and I will even­tu­ally see the pur­pose, the les­son that I need to learn. I have worked too hard for too long to quit now.”

Then I would add: “So show me soon, already, will ya? I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.” I didn’t know, but the all-knowing Divine Cre­ator did.

Have you ever watched a brick wall col­lapse? Blow after blow seems incon­se­quen­tial, but then it sud­denly falls apart loudly and deci­sively, the heap of bricks left strewn on the ground serv­ing as the only reminder of the once seemingly-impenetrable fortress.

A new oppor­tu­nity man­i­fests itself just as quickly and res­olutely. Sud­denly, you see “the big pic­ture.” You appre­ci­ate that you would not be stand­ing where you are had you not fol­lowed the path that seemed, at the time, to be head­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion from where you wanted to end up. You see how one event made it pos­si­ble for another to occur, for you to meet some­one you oth­er­wise would never have encoun­tered, and pre­pared you to say “yes” when the appro­pri­ate time arrived. In ret­ro­spect, it all makes “per­fect sense” and you won­der why you did not see the divine blue­print for your life sooner.

You might have wanted some­thing very badly and never obtained it because it was not meant for you. In my case, the goal I set for myself was not the cor­rect one. I see that now. Instead, I achieved some­thing far more suit­able and, for the long term, sat­is­fy­ing. Along the way, while I was frus­trated, upset, and despon­dent, cer­tain peo­ple touched my life — and I had the priv­i­lege to impact theirs. Had my life unfolded in the way I orig­i­nally desired, we would never have inter­acted, but the fact that we did has enriched me and, hope­fully, them.

It is very bright here in the sun­light, but I am soak­ing up the rays and get­ting a fab­u­lous tan just as sum­mer is finally com­ing to beau­ti­ful North­ern California.

And now I must get busy clean­ing up an unsightly pile of bricks.

Thanks go to Lori at I Will Take it, Lord, All You Have to Give for host­ing this week! Drop by and read the other par­tic­i­pants’ dis­cus­sion of this week’s quote.

Thanks to Anja Mer­ret for includ­ing this arti­cle in the July 6, 2008 Blog Car­ni­val of Obser­va­tions of Life at Anja Mer­ret: Chat­ting to My Gen­er­a­tion; Dan­de­lions and Day­dreams for includ­ing it in the July 2008 Car­ni­val of Chris­t­ian Women; and Pinkblocks for includ­ing it in the Blog Car­ni­val on Per­sonal Power at pinkblocks.

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