Lent, Day 2: Being the Hero

Yesterday was heavy, and I don’t just mean because of all the stones in my pockets. 

I don’t remember how many there were—I never did count them—but I felt so burdened by the griefs of those in my community that I wrote lots of individual and family names on stones and stuck them in my pockets. They were heavy and cumbersome and the longer the day went on, the more I felt them in my spirit, not just on my person.

They were clacking against another stone I’d added that was maybe the heaviest of all. It said: “Being the Hero Who Fixes the Pain.” I’ve been working on my hero complex for years, but there are still harder times than others to come to terms with it. There are many people in my community holding pain that they can do nothing with or about, and I want so badly to swoop in and wash it all away like a cleansing rain. 

Conceptually, my awareness of a creeping reversion to the Hero Self inspired me to write it on today’s “Lenten Stone.” I frequently held it in my hand, contemplating, praying, trying to release it in my heart so I could release the stone itself at the end of the day. Then, we got some bad news around dinner time, and I found myself immediately clutching the stone more firmly than ever.

“Why do things just keep getting worse and worse? I mean: how much worse can it get? When will things start to get better?” I asked my husband. He reminded me that it was very “seasonally appropriate” for things to feel heavy. True. But also, things don’t just feel heavy right now because of Lenten practice. Things have felt heavy for a really long time. As I am using this season to intentionally recognize those long-held burdens, gaze plainly at their un-sugar-coated ugliness, and spend energy acknowledging or reframing them, the pain of these wounds is hitting me full force, all at once.

I had intended to release the weight of being the Hero. You know, put it into bigger hands et al. But by the days’ end, there were only fresh wrongs being added to the pile of previous wrongs that just keep getting wrong-er…and I realized that I had no desire to give up my Hero energy. In fact, I doubled-down; giving up the role would require from me reliance on God to be the Hero. To be completely honest, right now, it feels like that Hero is out to lunch and isn’t coming back any time soon. Instead of being eager to let my Hero burden go at the end of the day, I clung to that stone with an anger that threatened to break my dishes (I do chores angrily when I’m mad). My heart burned madly with the sentiment: “if you’re not going to do anything about this stuff, God, SOMEONE HAS TO AND I GUESS IT’S ME.” 

I was REALLY getting some chores done last night, REALLY loudly (possibly scaring my family). I wanted to get some things DONE. I wanted to stop WAITING. I wanted to stop feeling POWERLESS. Relying on Outside Power for help does not seem to be working for me. I want things to be different, to change, to heal–there’s a lot that needs fixing around here and IT’S NOT BEING FIXED. The world OBVIOUSLY NEEDS A HERO, and I’m not going to sit around waiting for a train that aint comin (*cue dishwasher being slammed shut).

My husband’s response to the fear, uncertainty, and continued pain was to quietly go to our greenhouse and gently re-pot some tender new plants. UGH.

I followed him out there, not to plant things (untrustworthy at that moment to touch delicate things), but to be near him. Before he repotted my drooping Monstera, I leaned over his shoulder, drew the name-bearing stones from my pockets, and settled them at the bottom of the pot. Earlier in the day, I had fostered all these grand plans of quietly going to the greenhouse alone to plant flower seeds over individual stones–each one represented a grieving person I love. But the day’s events had de-railed me and it was all I could muster just to put them in that pot and watch M cover them with dirt. I can barely even find hope that the poor Monstera survives, much less that it will grow new roots to wrap those griefs in a tendrilled embrace even as it anchors the plant above to stand tall and strong again.

I kept the Hero stone, a lone weight left in my pocket. I didn’t have capacity for the hope and trust it would take to let it go.

This morning, I woke up late, grumpy about it all. I trudged through the cold morning air in my pajamas. I carried the stone, gripping it tightly, still not ready to let my Heroism go. I stood in front of our compost pile—a heap of rotten and rotting things. It was smelly and gross. I hadn’t even brought a shovel along. I picked up the nearest stick and dug and dug and dug through the rot until there was a deep hole. I peeked at the promise of rich black compost glimpsed underneath, but, like I said, my hope is fragile right now. With a heavy and reluctant sigh, I dropped the stone in the hole and covered it up. I trudged unceremoniously back to the house, hugging my arms around myself against the chill. 

I can’t claim to have fully released the job of Heroism into God’s hands. But I can say that yesterday's experience brought into stark reality how very very heavy that load is: the carrying of other’s burdens; the carrying of the responsibility to fix it all. It was definitely too heavy for me to carry, and not for lack of trying. There was and is nothing I can do to fix any of the pain I was carrying around yesterday, nor the pain that is yet to come. I hate feeling powerless, and with every passing day, I am drawn deeper and deeper into that slough. 

Today, as an act of faith-to-come, not faith-achieved, I bury the lack of trust that compels me to act the Hero. I speak aloud in the cold and dark of a day dawning that it’s too heavy a burden for me to bear, and I beg of you with that same breath, God, to descend like a torrent into our pain and wash all evidence of it clean away.