Old pictures from someone else's life
You're exactly where you need to be. Stop worrying about it.
We were in the path of 97 percent totality during this month’s solar eclipse. I could have driven about four hours east to see the extra three percent, (and then four hours back), but as it happens, 97 percent is pretty spectacular.
I tried to create an eclipse filter for my iPhone with one of those special eclipse glasses everyone seemed to be giving away all over the place. That didn’t work out so well. I should delete those pictures because I know for a fact that I’ll probably come across them in my 50,000+ photos someday and wonder, “Was I taking pictures of a candle at the end of a pipe?”
The funny/ironic thing is that literally moments after peak eclipse for us, the FedEx guy arrived with an old family camera my mom sent me. If he had gotten there just a few minutes earlier, I could have had some National Geographic shots.
Well, I suppose I would have had to fashion a homemade solar filter out of panty hose for it or something, which would have been really tough to find at the monastery, but I digress…
Later, I pulled the SD card from the camera and put it into my computer. Mom had said there might be some pics on it.
There were. They were from times and situations I’d mostly never known about.
There were pictures from one of my sister’s baby showers. It might have been ten years ago.
There were numerous pictures of TV sets with old cartoons playing on them—the context of other pictures told me that my nieces had taken the pics because those cartoons meant something to them.
There were family pets I’d never seen.
There was another picture of my sister looking over a fence at her approaching husband. Whoever took the picture (Mom?) framed it beautifully—trees vignetting it from the edges of the frame, Uncle Tyson right in the center, caught mid-stride in a rugged, country-man kind of a gait… The beautiful part was how my sister seemed to be looking at him. Even with her head turned away from the camera, only the back of her head visible, her whole posture said, “Here comes my man.”
Coincidentally, my cousin Luke sent me some pictures of some of my family yesterday. I don’t know where he found them, but they were also from eras I wasn’t even aware of.
One shot looked like it was taken at a bachelor party, or right before a wedding. In another, my dad is goofing off and pointing to the camera, probably on site at the golf course he’d just bought.
Why were these so alien to me? Why the sense of distance?
I’d moved to DC in 2001. I built a life, or tried to, and had all kinds of adventures of my own, and they had theirs. These images were documentary evidence of it.
I had known that I was choosing something Other back in the early 00’s. I had major reservations, but I also had an over-inflamed sense of duty and loyalty, and so I let my family go, or tried to, while I built that DC life. And now, post-DC life in this weird Oklahoma life, I’m tempted to grieve for the things I lost. My little nieces are grown up, or very nearly so, as are my nephews. There will be no more baby showers, big family Christmases, etc. Our family is in the middle stages of life, or so it seems.
I hadn’t thought of it much growing up, but I guess I had an assumption. I assumed that whatever life would look like when I was a grown-up would be like my experiences then. When I grew up, all the uncles and the aunt would bring their kids, my cousins, over to grandma and grandpa’s house, and we’d swim and ride motorcycles and take saunas (because hey, we’re Finns), and we’d run through the woods until well after dark and argue when it was time for everyone to go home.
My family life would probably look like that. How could it not? That was how I grew up in the late 70s and early 80s.
My life looked nothing like that.
But I don’t grieve, because I know something important. For all that seems lost, so much more is being gained.
I say that was just an assumption because it was. Boys don’t plan out their whole lives as soon as they’re able to think and plan. (Beside—thinking and planning comes in your 30s, or thereabouts, for guys. Haha). We don’t plan our dream weddings. We…do other stuff.
However, I did try to figure out what my purpose was since forever. I begged God to show me what my path was. Where was the Meaning?
I never got any answers.
I did grieve for a little while. The life I’d assumed would happen didn’t just not materialize—it was opposed by a loved one I thought would benefit most from it. It made me bitter as hell.
It’s only now, in this weird, unexpected place that it’s starting to make sense. All that longing, all that strangeness of place, of people, of unknown purpose—it was some sort of setup.
For what, I’m not sure. All I can say is that things are resolving. Fuzzy, indistinct shapes are becoming solid, with weight and gravity like Easter Island heads emerging from a Pacific Ocean fog.
I’m writing about this not (just) to share some sort of sentimental journey, and a manifestly incomplete one at that. I’m sharing because if I had to choose just one adjective to describe so many of the young men I meet these days, it would be purposelessness. So many of the men I meet and know just seem lost. They’re bitter because life isn’t going the way they thought, or, in many circumstances, they feel like they aren’t getting what they’re owed. They work hard, they follow the Path of righteousness (in the best ways they know how), and they take their duties seriously as husbands and fathers. And yet…it’s all turning to crap.
This is okay. Maybe better than okay. Why? Because they’re exactly where they need to be. Or, they’re exactly where they’ve been placed.
“Sainthood is not the default setting,” a friend of mine says almost every day. She means that, contrary to what our fleshy natures will tell us, we’re far from “basically good people.” The struggle for sanctity or even just basic competence is a lifelong pursuit. It’s boot camp. If you want to get all Orthobro or RadTrad about it, life is a battle. Vivere est militare.
I look back on all those years of building, toiling, fighting, and questioning, and I’m seriously grateful for it. I was—and mostly remain—completely in the dark. I struggled toward a Good I could barely perceive and often felt rejected by. It’s only now, after five decades of clueless stumbling that I begin to see, or rather, accept, something I heard Fr. Josiah Trenham say in a podcast I found in the hardest, most painful time of my life:
“Do you know if you look at an icon of Christ, He’s always looking right at you? His hand is here between him and you. And what that’s saying is, one, he sees you. Number two, everything that comes from him is going to come through those fingers as a blessing. So nothing in your life is an accident. Nothing is disconnected from Jesus’s personal choice of what you need. And it is a blessing. In Saint Paul’s words, all things work together for the good who love God and are called according to his purposes.
So whatever the trial is, a Christian says, “I know this is from God.” In your case, maybe he wants you to treasure people because of their absence; treasure them more and more in a way you would never be able to cultivate that sense of being able to if you had 50 brothers down the block… Maybe he wants you to suffer the lack of the fellowship because he wants you raise this issue as you have right now….”
So, my brother, whatever you’re going through, it’s intended to make you. You are not complete, and wherever you are, whatever you’re going through, it is guaranteed to be for your benefit if you let it. It might be some unimaginable nightmare that seems completely disconnected from reason or common sense, but IT. IS. MAKING. YOU.
I would caution you not to try to discern too much out of your situation, though. I know, I know—you’ll want to read the tea leaves for every new bit of data that comes in. “Oh,” you’ll think, “This must be what God is doing.” Or, if you have a certain Evangelical sickness, you might even think something like, “God told me…” or “God gave me a word…”
No, he probably didn’t. And no, your interpretation is probably be wrong.
It is impossible to comprehend the micromanagement of your mitochondrial metaphysical spiritual healing process. (I’m not even going to try to rewrite what I mean by that.) In other words, you don’t know precisely what you need or how God is going to work on that part of you. You have needs you can’t even conceive of, much less articulate. And the Author of the universe has tools in his toolbox than you haven’t dreamt of, Horatio.
YOU CANNOT KNOW THE PATH UNTIL YOU ARE CAPABLE OF SEEING THE PATH.
It’s a royal bitch, I know. I think that’s why we’re commanded to have “faith” so much of the time in Scripture.
Read, “Till We Have Faces” by C.S. Lewis for more on this. And then listen to Peter Kreeft’s lecture on the book to make sense of that esoteric retelling of the story of Cupid and Psyche.
If you’re going through the crucible, I won’t patronize you and say something like, “Your reward will be great in Heaven.” Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. (You still have time to screw things up, after all…) But if you can relax for just two seconds and quit arrogating control of your destiny completely to yourself, you’ll start making some connections.
You’ll realize you are right where you need to be, and when you’re ready, or rather, prepared, things are going to be amazing.
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It is a classic tactic of abuse for the abuser to isolate their target from their family. It's also perfectly healthy to grieve for the times you missed. Great post, though. And what a gift those photos are. :)
Nothing in my life has gone the way I thought it would. Nothing. And that’s okay. It’s gone the way God willed it so I can, after taking up my cross and following Him for as long as He wills, be with Him for endless ages of ages.
I too, thought my life would be the same as when I was a kid—big Sunday and holiday dinners, lots of cousins around, the company of friends. Not what God had in mind. Living a life of holiness and service in a religious community working and praying with my brothers until, surrounded by them and with the whispers of their prayers in my ears, I made the final journey. Nope. For some, perhaps, but not for me. That was my will but it isn’t God’s.
Yesterday I had a sonogram and found out I have chronic liver disease. I don’t even know what that means. I haven’t met with the doctor yet. But, after some half-hearted wrestling I embraced it as the gift from God it is. Part of my itinerary to Heaven.
You’re so right. We are exactly where we need to be, not to be successful, but to be Successful. There really is only one thing that truly matters: being with God forever.
Once again, Chris, thank you for sharing your thoughts. They are filled with grace. I hope we meet in the future, whether in this life or the next so I can thank you in person for being a companion in the pilgrimage. Let’s pray for one another—oremus pro invicem.
Scott