Avoiding Walking Dead

My boys and I are watching The Walking Dead together.   The zombies have no emotion, no thought except that which drives them to survive.   There is no chance for fulfillment of their talents or life dreams, no love for others.   They are on auto-pilot, their brains taken over by the virus or disease that has hold of them.   When one of the characters we follow puts a knife through a zombie's head, I usually think "thank goodness, that one's suffering is over."  I think this, though the writers make pretty clear that the zombie doesn't know it is suffering or the depth of its suffering.

Yesterday, a friend sent me Elizabeth Gilbert's blog post, which quoted Tracie Cornell's essay called Getting Back to Me, and talked about how Tracie was "slowly dying in a failing marriage."  It speaks of how Tracie chose life and decided to experience the strange and wonderful in the gym, with her girlfriends and her small children. Tracie likened the gym to Italy, a weekend away to a trip to Indonesia.  Life tied her presence, but not her spirit, to one place.  Elizabeth was moved deeply:
"Whenever I see people trading in their numbness for awakening, their self-abandonment for self-care, their shame for dignity, their fears for boldness, their lies for truth, and their passivity for ferocious self-accountability, ... it just makes me want to cheer.  I think it makes the whole universe want to cheer. "

Much is unspoken in the post.   That's because Elizabeth understood Tracie as I understand her.   For me, the words "slowly dying" resonate.   When we give too much of ourselves to something that is unhealthy or gives little to nothing back, we slowly die.     When we "turn aside to false gods" or lies (Ps. 40:4), we slowly kill ourselves.   We slip slowly, deeper and deeper over time, into "slimy pits" and "mud and mire"  and we walk on ground that threatens to give way under our feet (walking on eggshells, perhaps?)(Ps. 40:2).    And because so much of our time on that journey is spent trying to deny that it is happening, to paint it more brightly with hope that somehow, some way we  can change the circumstances, we are like those zombies, we don't even know we are suffering.  Then, something happens, our denial and hope is stripped away and we wake up one day and say "How did I end up here? I am in one deep and slimy and miry pit - way the hell down here."

( I like the word "mire".   It is a "stretch of swampy and boggy ground."  Or, "a situation or state of difficulty, distress, or embarrassment from which it is hard to extricate oneself." (Oxford Dictionary).   I think of a miry pit as being like the tar pit in the Croods movie; sticky, black, life-sucking.   Slimy is distasteful and requires a shower to be rid of.  Miry?  It implies struggle, and useless struggle at that. The paradox is that if you don't struggle, the mire gets you; it wins.)

One of the saddest moments of my life was when I woke up and saw the depth of the pit I was in.   One of the happiest moments of my life was when I realized I didn't have to stay there.   I decided, again using Elizabeth's words, "to participate stubbornly and constantly and joyfully in the riotous and unique experiment that is [my] own life."

I had to dig out of the pit.  That was not fun.   Say what you will about the Bible, and your faith may differ than mine, that book was instrumental in my digging.   It helped me redefine myself as a person of tremendous value and to see that others, for centuries, had endured what I was going through and lived to thrive.   Slowly, and sometimes suddenly, I was lifted out, my feet found solid ground, I stood firmly in my own skin and I sang songs of life and love and joy.   (Ps. 40:2-3).

Maybe you don't "sing?" We all do, I think.  Those tapes in our head that run constantly? "You are worthless, you don't matter, you'd better listen to him/ her, you're so ugly - who'd ever want you?"  Those are songs; they have rhythm, and a chorus, and verses.    I sang those dirges.  Over and over.   Now, there are new songs.   Songs like this:  "You are loved with an everlasting love."  "You are the apple of my eye."   "Be strong and courageous.  Be strong and very, very courageous." "You are fearfully and wonderfully made."   And one of my favorite songs I sing to myself, "The Universe is glad I am here, I bring much good."

Elizabeth thanks me, and you:  "Thank you to anyone who has ever decided to live boldly, rather than to fold up into a small parcel and wait for life to pass them by."

Here's to us, us avoiders of walking dead, us non-folders.  Like the characters in the series, we make, and reaffirm, the brave, courageous choice of living bigger.  Here's to you - what's your song?
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Psalm 40: NIV
http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/eatpraylovemademedoit