Good morning…
A really wise friend who I admire profusely sent me a very honest article. “Great message today Sue!” she emailed me after yesterday’s blog post After A Stormy Day. “Saw this last night – similar idea.”
I felt relieved, hopeful and energized after reading the following words.
******
If you can’t take in anymore, there’s a reason: an essay on circuit breakers, empty buckets, and the shame-show of social media by Nadia Bolz-Weber from August 17th, 2021
It’s all too much
I used to live in a very old apartment building with super sketchy electrical wiring. Were I to audaciously assume my hair drier could run while my stereo was on, I would once again find myself opening the grey metal fuse box next to the refrigerator and flipping the breaker. My apartment had been built at a time when there were no electric hair driers, and the system shut down when modernity asked too much of it.
I think of that fuse box often these days, because friends, I just do not think our psyches were developed to hold, feel and respond to everything coming at them right now; every tragedy, injustice, sorrow and natural disaster happening to every human across the entire planet, in real time every minute of every day. The human heart and spirit were developed to be able to hold, feel and respond to any tragedy, injustice, sorrow or natural disaster that was happening IN OUR VILLAGE.
So my emotional circuit breaker keeps overloading because the hardware was built for an older time.
And yet, when I check social media it feels like there are voices saying “if you aren’t talking about, doing something about, performatively posting about ___(fill in the blank)___then you are an irredeemably callous, priviledged, bigot who IS PART OF THE PROBLEM” and when I am someone who does actually care about human suffering and injustice (someone who feels every picture I see, and story I read) it leaves me feeling like absolute shit. I am left with wondering: am I doing enough, sacrificing enough, giving enough, saying enough about all the horrible things right now to think of myself as a good person and subsequently silence the accusing voice in my head? No. The answer is always no. No I am not. Nor could I. Because no matter what I do the goal of “enough” is just as far as when I started.
And yet doing nothing is hardly the answer.
So I wanted to share something with you. Every day of my life I ask myself three discernment questions I learned from one of my teachers, Suzanne Stabile:
What’s MINE to do, and what’s NOT mine to do?
What’s MINE to say and what’s NOT mine to say?
And the third one is harder:
What’s MINE to care about and what’s NOT mine to care about?
To be clear – that is not to say that it is not worthy to be cared about by SOMEONE, only that my effectiveness in the world cannot extend to every worthy to be cared about event and situation. It’s not an issue of values, it’s an issue of MATH.*
So I try and remember, 1. We are still living through a global pandemic and that means the baseline of anxiety and grief is higher than ever and shared by everyone. 2. The world is on fire literally and metaphorically. But 3. I only have so much water in my bucket to help with the fires. The more exposure I have to the fires I have NO WATER to fight, the more likely I am to get so burned, and inhale so much smoke that I cannot help anymore with the fires close enough to fight once my bucket is full again.
So I try and tell myself that It’s ok to focus on one fire.
It’s ok to do what is YOURS to do. Say what’s yours to say. Care about what’s yours to care about.
That’s enough.
If immigration reform is yours to do, if it is the fire you have water to throw on, (thank you! and…) that is enough. There will be voices saying “but what about climate change? You don’t care that the planet is dying??”. Tune that shit out. I mean, you could turn around and ask the environmentalist next door why they heartlessly don’t care about immigrants, but there is no percentage in that. Instead, we could be so grateful for the people who are called to work on and respond to worthy issues that are not fires we ourselves are equipped to put out.
I’m not saying we should put our heads in the sand, I’m saying that if your circuits are overwhelmed there’s a reason and the reason isn’t because you are heartless, it’s because there is not a human heart on this planet that can bear all of what it happening right now. So thank you for being a person who cares about and responds to animals, or the environment, or immigration, or domestic violence or any of the other worthy-to-be-cared-about shit-shows we are in the midst of right now. Just, thank you.
******
I now open my journal to a blank page for today and a make a little grid of sorts for myself.
Across the top, I lay out two categories: MINE ————— NOT MINE.
Down the left side of the page, I make three categories: TO DO —- TO SAY —- TO CARE ABOUT.
Then I draw a middle line down my page and three horizontal lines across, leaving open space in between. For the next chuck of time, I fill in each square – MINE TO DO, MINE TO SAY, MINE TO CARE ABOUT. NOT MINE TO DO. NOT MINE TO SAY. NOT MINE TO CARE ABOUT.
By the end of my clarifying time with the LORD, I notice these words appearing on my page.
“It’s not that I don’t care about the big ticket items in our world, it’s just that when worries well up within me about these circuit breaking stressors, I need to prayerfully lay each burden down in the capable hands of our God. Again and again, I surrender everything to the powerful God who will inspire the perfect person to pick up each pressing need for which they are uniquely designed to care about deeply. In this creatively collaborative way, the Creator of our universe will say and will do through all of us collectively what God yearns to do and to say today, as our living LORD cares for every single need weighing heavy on our globe.”
God will use me today. God will use you today. That is enough. Trusting God to care for the deep needs of this world through all of us today, that is enough. That’s more than enough.
You will keep the peace, a perfect peace, for all who trust in You, for those who dedicate their hearts and minds to You (Isaiah 26:3, VOICE).
…Sue…
