#BlogElul 12 - Trust

Trust.

Ugh. Son of a bitch. Fifty-three, and I still only mostly trust the bad stuff. The good stuff, the stuff I don't trust, when that happens, it's always a surprise. Even so, I wait for the other shoe to drop. Sometimes I feel as if I am walking through a minefield only I can see. The traps are many and deadly, and their placement has no rhyme or reason.

Nowhere is safe.

I'd like to say that it's gotten better. And you know, at times, it has. There are times, when my faith fairly pulses with life, when I fit inside my own skin and my own head, when I am not hungry or angry or lonely or tired - it is infinitely better then. I trust. Not just that the good stuff will happen, but that the bad stuff most likely won't. Or, that even if the bad stuff does, or the good stuff doesn't, it's still all good. Because that's just stuff that happens around me. It' isn't me. It is not God's cosmic party joke of pulling the rug out from underneath my feet like the bad magician does to the tablecloth. It's not karma, payback for sins real and imagined (and trust me: I have an awesome imagination).

Stuff happens. Or doesn't. And life continues, in all its glory and joy and pain and wonder and delight.

Like I said, this is me, on a good day.

Me on a bad day? Minefield, laced with quicksand and evil spells. And faith that is, if not absent, infinitely small. And while I would love to live in the drama of woe-is-me, this is Elul, and so I am called to right-size my life, my belief, my thoughts and fears. Small as that faith is, microscopic, and if it were sound it would be pitched so that only dogs could hear it - it is enough.

You get the picture. My faith shrinks. And my ability to trust - really trust. not just wait for the horrors of life to visit themselves upon me - is directly proportional to that faith. Here's the curious thing though. Even when I am stuck in that waiting line of dread, I can (to mix a metaphor; sorry!) step back. I can, disconnectedly and dispassionately get out of the way (sorry, one more mixed metaphor) and leap. 

Sometimes, life is hard. And you're afraid. Or I am; you may not be. And you're - I am - tired, and a little lost, and kinda broken and lonely and maybe you skipped lunch and the noise was too loud and the damn air conditioner broke-- or not. It could just be one of those beautiful, sunny, blessedly cool and non-humid days, and the sky is a liquid blue and everything is just going right. Sometimes it's one of those days.

And you're asked - I'm asked - to trust. Something. Someone. Some Deity. And I freeze. And I can't. And my faith has taken a powder and I am defenseless in a very scary world.

But you do it anyway. You leap. I leap, as if the dogs of hell were nipping at my heels, or sometimes I just stumble and fall forward-ish. But I trust anyway, because I know, even if I can't feel it in that moment, that I will be okay. I will be caught and carried and held, safe. I will not always get the Good Stuff. The bad stuff of trust will still happen.

As Stephen Sondheim said, "Well, now you know. People love you and tell you lies. Now you know." 

But I do it anyway - trust. I suck it up, screw my courage to the sticking post and get out of the way. And life goes on. And good stuff happens. And bad stuff. And I stumble around, almost blind, and just when I'm absolutely certain that I will fall - fail - there is a hand to hold me up and help me along my way.

(c) Stacey Zisook Robinson

2014

Twelve Elul 5773: Trust

Trust. 

Ha! I was really planning on skipping this one. Take it from me: it's overrated. When it's dark and I'm feeling particularly broken and lost, I have no problem trusting that you will fail me, that God will leave me, that the other shoe will drop soon. Most likely on my head. causing grave physical and psychic pain. All the other trust stuff? I tried it once. It turned out badly. As I said. I think I'll skip this one.

Trouble is, I can't. Dammit.

First off, I made a commitment. Not that you would necessarily care, I but I did commit to Blogging Elul (please note the capital letters and the implied stentorian tone). It has come to be a fascinating discipline. Much as I'd prefer, based upon the topic, the day or the alignment of the planets, to defer, delay and desist-- I made a commitment. 

The other reason is not quite so easy or straightforward. I came relatively late to my current level of observance and my mindful brand of Judaism. I skipped around a lot, a spiritual journey for the ADHD set. A God junky by thirteen, an apostate by fifteen and spiritually desperate and lost about a minute and a half later, I took to whatever bright and shiny thing caught my eye. Mostly, I denied my search, and settled for diving into a bottle.

It came as quite a shock to me that I went from believing in the pain and despair of nothing, to believing in miracles, all in the blink of an eye. Or at least, what seemed like it. In a blink, a heartbeat, a twisty, turny tortuous path, I got sober.

While I may have started, quite tenuously, to believe in miracles, on all the other stuff-- faith and hope and trust and God-- I was still a bit shell-shocked and resistant. I mean, really-- I had clear evidence (so it seemed to me) that faith was a sham, hope was a sordid and dirty mess, and trust merely a prolonged lesson in pain. I'll spare you that tale of my journey to (and in) sobriety (although please feel free to read them here, at Simple Stories and Anniversary).

Early on in my sobriety, when every day was a Herculean effort to fit, to be able to sit comfortably in my own skin, to not crawl back inside a bottle, to stop feeling so raw and exposed, I went to meetings. Lots of them. Sometimes one after the other, for hours at a time, until a morning, an evening, a major chunk of a day was gobbled in meetings, surrounded by other drunks all fighting to stay sober a minute, an hour, a day at a time.

It'a not that I don't go to meetings now, but they don't feel so desperate these days, so much a razor-thin dividing line between me and intimate dance with my fear and pain.

So there, at one of the eleventy-seven thousand meetings in early sobriety that I used to haunt, where my skin crawled and I felt ready to jump out of it, I heard a woman give a lead, the very end of which was a prayer: Please God, let me learn to be open, honest, trusting and vulnerable every day, a day at a time.

I may have stopped breathing at that exact moment. For certain, my head caught fire. Asking-- actually praying-- for those things. "What are you-- crazy?" Bad enough, to ask; worse to do so publicly. I wanted to shout, and jeer and pound the table with derision and condescension.

Instead, I wept.

For all that those particular traits terrified me, that somebody offered a prayer, simply, peacefully, hopefully, to a roomful of intimate strangers... God, I wanted that. I yearned for that, and I didn't even realize my longing, until that very instant. "God," I echoed, "please let me be these things, trusting, hopeful, vulnerable. Please." 

I still echo those words, almost every day, in some iteration or other. More than 20 years later, they still have the power to take my breath away, fill me with wonder and make me weep. I still don't do them very well, though practicing is not quite the chore it once was. They're tough, though. My first thought is still, more often than I care to admit, to deflect, to hide, to keep the barriers at defcon five. 

Every so often, light gets in. Every once in a while, the steady practice of my simple, borrowed prayer takes hold, and I find that I trust, that I open myself to God and the universe, that I allow myself to be vulnerable with dignity and strength. I allow myself to hope. Every so often, I remember that when I finally leap, in my faith and trust, I am caught. Every time. 

And so today, 12 Elul, I offer this prayer: Dear God, please let me be honest, open, trusting and vulnerable today. Please let me leap, so that I can soar.