Adulting Is Hard, Especially Alone
We don't always need to downplay our difficulties with life.
First of all, thank you to so many of you that have reached out to my family and me since my previous post about this season of upheaval. With the GoFundMe we started, we’ve raised over 44% of the goal toward a new vehicle. Thank you!
Many of the conversations I’ve had of late remind me of something I’ve had to unlearn throughout my adulthood.
In a recent lunch meeting, I am sharing with a friend all that’s been going on with my family. This friend is supportive and encouraging with their response. This friend then starts sharing with me all that’s going on within their family. It’s difficult what they are all going through as well. A chance for me to listen and support them as best I can. We get done supporting each other and they remark, “When did adulting turn into moving from one crisis to the next?” I pause, thinking about how true it is.
During the course of the conversation they talk about how they know others have it harder than them. We both know this with our situations. We both work with people on the margins of our society. Still, we both share because we’re friends and we know it’s necessary for our own well-being.
“I know others have it worse.” It’s this caveat we feel obliged to offer up so we aren’t viewed as primadonnas, weak, or lacking self-awareness. Growing up, we often heard “suck it up”, or some variation, when sharing how difficult something may have been. You didn’t feel a lot of empathy from others growing up, and more than likely you didn’t give it either.
It’s taken practice, and some unlearning, to be vulnerable and share my struggles. One way it is easier to share is if you are part of a community that is supportive of you. A community where people rally around you in big and small ways, where you are welcomed and supported, where you are seen and loved.
This is easier said than done.
Here’s one example from my life that seems comical now. Over a decade ago, I was sharing with a pastor friend about how life was wearying on me at the moment. Jana was pregnant with our third child, and it had been a hard pregnancy. It was also a difficult time for me. Work was busy and I was establishing a new role at the church. I was caring for my family more than ever, and I was not getting much sleep. I was exhausted. I acknowledged to my pastor friend that my wife had it harder in a lot of ways, repeatedly, but I was also at a low point. Their response? To take scripture out of context and use it against me for not being “man enough” and for “shrinking back”. Here’s the verse they quoted at me in support of me not being man enough in this moment:
“But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” (Hebrews 10:39, ESV)
I wasn’t “man enough” to them because I shared how I was struggling. I wasn’t trying to shrink back, I wanted to share with someone who might listen to me and acknowledge I was at a low point. That’s all.
How often have we shared with someone in our adulthood about something we are dealing with only to have it rebound against us? It hurts, and it’s not likely we’ll be so eager to do so again. What was the aftermath once I shared with that pastor? I shutdown about exhaustion and paid the price later with my holistic health.
In work circles, in church circles, if you are viewed as not having it together, it’s going to be held against you. I’ve seen it happen to friends and coworkers.
We end up sounding like Andy Dwyer.
When I worked at Christ Community Church there was a sermon that minimized people’s financial struggles because they are richer than most of the people in the world. Of course, nothing is said about context, cost of living, what we are born into, education, all kinds of debt, and so much more, and never mind that an underlying theme with these messages is that one should be giving more to the church. We are told we should be grateful and not complain because we are richer than billions of people around the world. In the spirit of the season, these pastors inadvertently invoke Bono on the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you.
I think these arguments are a way to silence people because the person doesn’t want to enter into the complexity of the situation. I think people say it because they don’t want to take the time to listen to people. (Which, unfortunately, is the nature of a lot of evangelical pastors.) In the evangelical church, there is an effort to simplify every situation to “Jesus” and if your struggle persists it’s framed as your fault.
It’s hard to open yourself up and be vulnerable around others when we are conditioned not to do so. Who wants to get verbally punched in the gut repeatedly?
Finding a healthy, supportive and loving individual, licensed counselor, group and/or community? It can feel like a Sisyphean quest when the systems in place don’t value it, but when you do have trusted people in your world you can process life in a safe and healthy manner.
In these moments where you feel adrift in life it almost is like a miracle for someone else to come along and be a mooring for you as they throw you a lifeline to grasp.
Since all the upheaval started in my family’s lives, I’ve been grateful for people’s encouragement and care. Countless people who attend One Hope Church have reached out to my family and me. It reinforces the friendships and shines a light on the fact that they didn’t see our relationship as transactional in nature.
Specifically, I want to highlight the small group Jana and I are in. They’ve walked with us through this journey. They’ve grieved with us. They’ve advocated for us. They’ve checked in with us. They’ve been there. This isn’t some mental exercise to them, or a chance to recite something from a book they just read, they are alongside us in the proverbial “valley of the shadow of death”.
There are no shortcuts with community. Information does not lead to practice. You can read all the books you want, but in my experience it is not a primary vehicle to transformation. I like how Dr. Marlena Graves says it in her book Bearing God:
“We can know that we should trust Jesus, but that is different than actively putting our trust in Jesus. Having a rational understanding of something has little effect unless our knowledge results in doing”
“Our posture toward and treatment of others, especially those closest to us, those with whom we live and work and play, is a good indicator of the level of our transformation, of our doing God’s will.”
“The real test of our love and transformation is how we treat those closest to us when there is no chance to put on a pious show for others.”
Looking back on it, we all struggle with something, or multiple things, but we shove it away because we are told to do so. I’m not sure how this came to be a sensibility in the circles I run in, but whenever I hear it now I try to call it out. We can be resilient, but only for so long. As Dutch psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s book says, “The body keeps the score.”
If you don’t already, I hope and pray you can find yourself a friend, a community, that is there for you in good and bad. We are wired for relationships. We need it for our well-being.
Thanks for reading. As you probably know, my family is down to one vehicle at the moment. We have set up a GoFundMe page where we are raising funds to purchase a new vehicle. Whether it is a $5 gift, $50 gift, or $500 gift, it helps us tremendously right now. Since we launched the GoFundMe page, we are almost halfway toward our goal. Plus, we had a family friend lend us one of their vehicles to help us out during the holiday season.
Some individuals have given through Venmo instead of GoFundMe, and if that is your preference we are good with that as well!