Living the Gray

Last Saturday, I spent much of the day sobbing, pouring out my sorrows to my counselor and my mother and lamenting the depression that was sitting on my shoulders like an unshakable heavy blanket.

This Saturday, I feel like I'm in a whole different world. While on one level this makes me feel a tad bi-polar or manic, I also recognize that in some of those dark days, I faced some realities. And since then, those realities have been confirmed and balanced. So instead of feeling unnaturally happy and bubbly, I feel content. Like I am at the end of a long battle in which I neither won nor lost. It just ended.

My CPE supervisor told me that I thought too much in zero sum terms. If I win, someone else loses. If I lose, someone else wins. And despite believing I was someone who didn't think in extremes, I've found that many of my thoughts and beliefs about life betrayed me. Dualism - boo.



For instance, as soon as I knew I got my first choice for internship, I knew someone else who had put Montana first didn't get their first choice. I immediately saw my gain in terms of another person's loss.

Additionally, I often see my "single" status as a deficiency. I either have worth because I am with someone or I do not because I am single. This kind of flawed thinking is slowly being corrected (in part thanks to my two amazing supervisors, my mother, and Brene Brown's words around shame and imperfection) but the fact that it existed shows you that I think in extremes.

It also explains the way I self sabotage. I'm either great at something or I don't do it. I'm either a fantastically skilled and loving pastor the first day of internship or I'm not going to be a pastor. (Yes, this sounds ridiculous. I see that now.)

All or nothing doesn't work in life. VERY few things are black and white. For instance, I tried to tell myself for years that the world was good. It was good. It is good. It's grand. It's all good.

And then I saw the ugliness. Saw the flaws. Saw the brokenness. Saw divorce and betrayal and death and wondered what to do with it given that the world was supposed to be good. The struggle was that if I allowed any of this bad stuff to exist, the world would be bad, evil, and ugly. The good would be gone and I couldn't live in that kind of world.

And yet, the darkness hounded. I frequently fell into depression trying to figure out how to live in a world and a body that was EITHER completely black or completely white. Like Jacob, I wrestled.

I was told once and have been reminded repeatedly that to be Lutheran you must love paradoxes. Must love embracing both/and. I'm thinking now that to be Christian you must love paradoxes. To be ALIVE, you must love paradoxes.

So I'm trying to embrace the gray. Embrace that I will never be one to exercise every single morning at 6am. This allows me to work out once or twice a week and go to yoga and feel damn good about it. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Likewise with healthy meals. Prayer. Pastoral visits. Ministry.

To give the best of myself does not mean that the end goal is perfection. And not reaching perfection does not mean that I did not give the best of myself nor that I am incomplete. Rather, it's life. Nothing is black or white. We bounce around in shades of gray, embracing the dark with the light.

I received a card from a good friend this week. She closes with saying, "You are beautiful my dear - light, dark, and all the shades of grey in between." My heart wept with joy. I will now do my best to continue living the gray.