A Good Crumble

   One of the quotes I hear often in my line of work, and possibly the one I dislike the most, is: “God will never give you more than you can handle.” There are some people for whom this is a lifeline, and I would never take that away from them, but for me it doesn’t work. Today was a good example of why.
   First, I don’t believe that God “gives” us things like challenges, difficulties, or problems to “handle.” (A conversation about Job is for another time.) And more importantly, sometimes we are given more from this world than we can handle, and we need to crumble for a while. Today, within about 45 minutes, I learned that a good friend had received a difficult diagnosis that will be challenging for him and those of us who love him, and I also learned that my college field hockey coach, Vi LeClair, had died in North Carolina. Vi was a pioneer in women’s college athletics and in the 70s fought to make sure that Title IX regulations, supporting women’s athletics, were in place on college campuses. She was also the first certified female athletic trainer in the state of Ohio. I was lucky enough to be coached by her and to work for her in the old Ban Johnson Field House at Marietta College, for my work-study job. She was the first adult that I got to know in my new environment. Far from home and surrounded by mostly 18- to 22-year-olds, she stood out as someone I could lean on.
   It had already been a rough morning at work, with a group of people holding a rally across from the hospital where I work to demonstrate their support for hospital employees who do not want to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. (At this point it is not a mandatory condition of employment, but it may become so.) I fully support people’s rights to rally and demonstrate for the causes they support, and have myself, but as employees in a health care setting working to keep our community and co-workers safe, it felt like another confrontation aimed at us at a time when we’re facing yet another unpredictable surge. So, by the time I received the phone call about my friend and then an email about Vi’s death, my usually strong resiliency muscles were softening. I went to my friend Patty’s office and said, “can I come in? I just need a place to cry.” As I shut her office door and before she could answer, I was already in tears. Patty hugged me while I cried and then sat me down in a chair across from her. Through tears, I told her about my friend’s diagnosis and Vi’s death. I told her that I haven’t even seen Vi in over 30 years, but her death still hit me hard today. And then, I remember saying through the tears, “and then there’s also Afghanistan,” as if solving that crisis was something on my checklist that I was responsible for. It all seemed so overwhelming. Patty had the wisdom to know that she couldn’t take away my sadness and weariness, but she could provide comfort. And she did.
   In a recent post, Episcopal priest Nadia Bolz -Weber writes about an old fuse box in one of her first apartments that would trip if she used her hair dryer and played her stereo at the same time. She compares the fuse box to us when we’ve got too many things plugged in that we’re trying to manage. It’s a very apt comparison. There are days when it’s easy to feel like an over-used fuse box. She is much more eloquent than I when she describes how our “emotional circuit breakers” overload when we not only try to deal with the issues, challenges and crises in our own corners of the world, but then also feel compelled somehow respond to what’s happening in elsewhere in the world - the earthquake in Haiti, the fires out West, another mass shooting, and the fear and loss facing the people of Afghanistan. We’re not wired to deal with it all. Nadia Bolz-Weber offers some suggestions on how maintain our “emotional circuit breakers,” so it’s worth a read (at Nadia Bolz-Webber – The Corners).
   Although it happened years ago now, I can vividly remember being with an older woman from out of state who was traveling with her husband, sister and brother-in-law, when her husband experienced a medical crisis. I was with the wife just after she was told by the emergency room physician that her husband had not survived. The woman quickly collapsed into a chair, understandably overwhelmed by pain, grief and confusion. Her sister attempted to get her to stand up, and with all the good intentions she could muster, said to her, “come on now, you need to be strong for Robert.” (not his real name)
   I politely and quietly suggested that maybe we should just let Doris (not her real name) crumble in the chair for a bit without having to be strong right now. In my mind, I said to the sister, “Robert isn’t requiring Doris to be strong right now, and so let’s just let her be however she needs to be in this moment. Being strong can come later.”
   I am very much an advocate of being strong and resilient, and hope I passed those qualities on to my daughters, but I also hope the three of them, and the rest of us, can allow ourselves to crumble for a bit when we need to, and hopefully in the caring presence of a someone with the good graces of my friend Patty.