This was a rough week.
It began with my best friend calling me to ask if I’d like to pay a $30 fee to join the singles club at her church. What!? It hasn’t even been a year since my husband died suddenly. I am still navigating the PTSD from the shock.
I graciously declined. I know the offer was coming from a place of genuine love.
Prior to this week, I had been feeling somewhat peaceful. I was taking each day as it came, slowly but surely checking things off my massive To-Do list. That list now resides in several pages of a spiral notebook, as all the sticky notes all over my house were beginning to look like the ramblings of a crazy person.
This week, I even made the hour-long trip to another town to get my hair cut by my favorite hairdresser. This was a major win for me, because I hadn’t gotten my haircut since well before my husband died. So we’re talking a good year since I’ve had so much as a trim. Not only did I accomplish that this week, but I hadn’t even cared before about how long, knotty and unruly my hair had become. The fact that I care about it again is yet another testament to how far I’ve come.
I’m now on the cusp of finding a wonderful new career, and feeling ready(-ish) to start my brand new life. I felt this deserved a brand new haircut. So I drove myself to that other town. The town an hour away that my husband used to always drive me to, and take me shopping and out to lunch or dinner after my hair appointment. Well, I did it myself for the first time, and I had my stylist take 7 inches off my hair – a physical and metaphorical lightening of my load.
Still feeling good, later in the week I realized I hadn’t called my 80-something year old parents in a few days. So I called them. BIG mistake. I told them about my new haircut and where I went. “Where is that town?” my Dad asked. I proceeded to tell him about it, saying oh, there’s a Target, and fast food restaurants and a large movie theater complex – there’s lots to do there.
“Well!” He exclaimed. “You should work there!”
“Dad,” I said, “it would be an hour commute in traffic each way, everyday, on top of a full work day. I’m just not up for that right now.”
Well, this quickly dissolved into my parents pressuring me that it’s time to get a full-time job again and that a 2 hour commute each day is fine and you’ll get used to it. They proceeded to tell me to take any job, work at McDonald’s, you have to do something, get back out there, etc.
I tried to explain to them that I wake up everyday stressed about what my future is going to look like, and that nobody puts more pressure on me to move forward than myself.
I tried to explain that some days are good and productive, but some days are still non-functioning, where getting one thing accomplished is a Herculean effort.
I tried to explain that every week I work on job hunting, and that it’s a long, arduous process.
I tried to tell them that my husband and I planned very well, and for now my finances are fine and they need to trust me. I am in my 50’s after all.
I tried to tell them that rebuilding my life is something that I have to figure out on my own and no one can do it for me. I told them that I’m thinking my next steps through extremely carefully, because I don’t want to just exist, but I want to build a life with meaning and purpose, and dare I say, joy.
All of this exhausting justification was met with absolute zero understanding.
They hung up annoyed, and I was reduced to a puddle on the floor, after having felt peaceful and strong only minutes before this phone call.
Now logically, I KNOW that they love me and are worried about me. But let me tell you what this conversation did to me.
Even on my “strong” days, my emotions are hanging by a thread. Any grieving person will tell you, it’s one step forward and at least three steps back. Grieving isn’t linear. It’s a big, messy ball of spaghetti.
This pressure to move on, subsequently had me putting tremendous (and unnecessary) pressure on myself. All of my soul-searching and journaling over the past several months, about what I want my “new life” to look like and feel like, went out the window. I found myself in a panic, frantically scrolling through Indeed and LinkedIn for job opportunities – jobs I KNEW in the depths of my being, that I didn’t even want!
I had left my big, fancy, demanding, corporate job a few months after my husband died. I hated that job and was burnt out even before he suddenly died. But I made the decision to leave due to the grief, exhaustion and sheer toxicity of that workplace.
And now here I was, searching for jobs that the mere THOUGHT of going to everyday, made my heart race and I broke out into a cold sweat. After a couple hours of this – job scrolling, panicking, sweating, shallow breathing, softly crying – I stopped.
What am I doing?
I’m doing this to please my parents. I’m doing this to please my in-laws and my friends. Am I really going to rush into a job so that everyone who is worried about me and my finances can rest easy at night? NO!
I’M THE ONE who has to get up and do the job everyday!
I’M THE ONE who has to sit in rat race traffic everyday!
I’M THE ONE who has to deal with the office politics and workplace drama!
And I KNOW that I’m not ready to go back to that! And you know what? I don’t know if I’ll EVER be able to go back to that mundane existence again! Because I know something first-hand now that a lot of people don’t. And that is, I’m acutely aware of how short life is!
I want to do something that MEANS something! I want to find my new PURPOSE.
I don’t know what that looks like yet. But guess who I’m working with on that? God. Guess who I’m surrendering it all to? All the worry, fear, and anxiety? God. And guess who’s timeline my new life is being created in? God’s.
In the middle of my panic attack, I cried out to God. “Please,” I said, “I desperately want to be fruitful for You, but I just don’t know how anymore!”
And you know what I felt in my spirit?
“You ARE being fruitful! You’re being fruitful right now. You’ve been bearing fruit this whole time.”
And it came to me. Being fruitful isn’t just earning a paycheck. It’s the fact that I turned to God in my tragedy when I could have turned to sin. My fruit is that I’m surviving this. My fruit is in the hug I gave to the 80 year old woman at church. My fruit is that I’m even going to church! And it’s when the older widow sitting next to me in the pew broke down in tears during the service, and I passed her a tissue and held her hand until she was calm again.
My fruit is in the fact that even in my own suffering, I dropped off a little care package to a neighbor who is sick and going through a divorce. It’s in the phone calls and texts to friends and family. It’s when I invited family members to come for the weekend and cooked for them, drove them around town, and listened to their problems and offered them heartfelt responses.
My fruit is in taking care of the house, and the bills, and the dog, and the taxes, and the banking, and the trash, and the yard – all while I could have curled up in bed with the blankets over my head.
My fruit is in calling the plumber when the pipes burst and water was leaking under the house. And in gratefully paying him and profusely thanking him, instead of freaking out and cursing at God for another problem.
My fruit is in the grocery shopping, and cooking healthy meals for myself instead of eating takeout. My fruit is in the holding of doors for strangers, and in the smiles I give them and the kindnesses I show them, even though my own heart is shattered.
It’s in my constant prayers to God. My fruit is even in my tears, my seeking, and in my not giving up. My fruit is in reading my Bible everyday.
And I realized, sitting there on the floor with my tear-stained cheeks, that I AM bearing fruit. Even if no one else sees it, or it’s not what they want for me or happening when they want it. I AM bearing fruit, in God’s timeline. And He is the ONLY ONE I need to please. And as He heals me, piece by piece, in His perfect Way and in His perfect timing, it will be Him that crafts my new life. Because, after all, it was HIS plan all along.
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