Each early summer, I write a letter to the firstborn daughter of one of my greatest friends. I consider it a privilege, and since I haven't written much exclusively here of late, wanted to share - with her mother's generous permission - this year's message. I took her name out, and replaced it as well as I could, but if the placeholders for the proper nouns sound awkward, this is why.
Or, alternatively, it could just be me.
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My Dear, Sweet Girl,
You must hear this so often from your mom and dad, but you are
growing up so, so quickly, before our very eyes. I was able to see you this spring, which, though the
circumstances were desperately far from ideal, was nonetheless a gift to me,
and I was amazed at how tall you are, how beautiful your smile is, and how you
are now beginning to become a young woman, rather than the little girl I
remembered you to be.
I am writing this from our cabin nestled in the woods of
northwestern Maine, where my husband is a Camp Director, and where we spend the
summer months. It is a beautiful place, and I hope that somehow, at some point, you will be able to see it in person. If I ever doubt
that there is an indescribably large and loving God, I simply have to think of
this place, and I lose all doubt that it is true. The world is often ugly and dark and disappointing, but
nature is a priceless gift, and it is displayed in generous and flamboyant
ways. Wherever you find yourself
as a young adult, I hope that you make time and find ways to wander in the
outdoors. I promise that it will nourish
your soul.
Two things are happening here at this moment. First, it is raining outside – so much more
than a drizzle. Coming down against
my screen door is cats-and-dogs rain; the kind that thunders on the porch and
amasses in puddles the size of swimming pools. It is the type of rain that you dream about when you
hike in the desert; the kind that you instinctively want to run from, and yet
also the kind you recklessly want to run out into with arms open wide.
Second, our faucet is leaking. It is drip-drip-dripping into a two-liter soda bottle that I
have strategically placed beneath it.
It has been leaking all morning (signs of a bigger problem, I’d guess),
and I have been catching water in vessels of all shape and size in an effort to
preserve it for things like flushing the toilet, washing dishes and making
tea. However, as I write this
letter, the soda bottle has reached its fullness, and water is spilling out
over its mouth and flowing down its side in a clean, single stream. It is literally filled to overflowing. It cannot hold even one drop more.
Life is like this sometimes. There are periods in living when it seems like there are
challenges pouring down by the bucketful.
When pain and obstacles refuse to stop coming, and they are overwhelming
the space you have reserved for them, with no respect for your capacity or the
strength of your walls. It can
feel like there is too much, almost, of everything,
and just as I would feel if I were in this storm outside, you simply want a
place to get out of the rain.
I often wish this weren’t true. Life tends to feel simple when the skies are clear – love
the people you are with, work hard at whatever you are given, and enjoy the
small things [for they are the easiest to overlook] – but sooner or later, the
heavens cloud over, and something moody and grave rolls over the mountain,
blacking out those clear skies. It
is a difficult truth: you cannot run from trouble. If not faced, it will always be waiting nearby, like that
extra five pounds or spinach in your teeth. Ironically, this is a fact we can all prove by looking at
the lives around us, of people who have tried to escape it. Avoiding obstacles, avoiding pain –
this is always an illusion, because it is fact: you will have trouble in this world. It cannot be wished away. It cannot be hidden from. It will not disappear if you close your
eyes. Please, sweet girl, do not
run from it. Trouble is a patient adversary;
it will wait for you, and will find when you when you’ve forgotten to be ready.
There is no easy answer to the affliction you are bound to
experience in your life. I wish
there were. When you face your
pain, I guarantee that the grief will be sharp and deep and seem without end. A challenge may require far more from
you than you imagine having to give.
But please know that in the course of history, you stand in the company
of a courageous assembly who have gone before you and have also overcome, and that,
like a lighthouse on a rocky shore, you were built to withstand such a
storm. And also, like that
lighthouse, know that your resilience will depend wholly on how tightly your footing
is fastened to that stone.
I hope that you find something to believe in. This is my most precious wish for
you. In my opinion, belief is like the mast of a ship in high
swells or a compass in the deep forest.
In my life, I have been able to do more, with more freedom, enabled by a
notion of belonging and purpose, than I could ever have imagined
otherwise. Granted, I haven’t climbed any
Himalayan mountain or overcome a life-threatening injury, but I have adventured
in my own ways, and been challenged and afraid and still felt incredible
joy. Human beings are capable of
wonderful and fearfully astonishing things, Sweet Girl, but we are bound by
skin and blood and bone and inevitably, we will swell and bruise and break. Our bottle will overflow. Our vessel will snap.
There are things that are inevitably beyond our control, and
outside of our reach. We are
touched by violence and hatred, by disease and by injustice. We are unfortunately, as a human race,
also quite often the cause. So
while I believe firmly that there is a divine locket in each of us – a space
designed to hold a sacred truth – I don’t feel that we have the truth in
ourselves. I know myself too well,
and have searched there too long to think that I contain the answers I
seek. I think we have to go out to
find the truth. But – and this is the most important detail – the truth wants
to be found.
Seek something in which to believe. This world is complicated. It is in one hand lush and awe
inspiring, and in the other desolate and heartbreaking. It will disappoint and hurt you. Find what will ground you, and give you
hope. Search for what will fit
precisely in that locket, for what will never leave you. Find the stone on which to lay your
lighthouse.
And if and when you are curious to know where I have laid
mine, I hope I will be here for you to ask. This letter is written in a year of trial and deep sorrow
for your family – a year when the rain came and was relentless. I know that both they and I would cast
our wishes to spare you from anguish like they have endured (and as their love
is greater for you, I imagine their wishes also to be). But each of us knows that like gravity,
trouble is bound to come. You will
never climb a mountain unless you risk a scratch, unless you dance with disaster,
just a little, and life is no different.
So what I aspire for you to learn through this year’s letter is that
though your control in life is limited and your reach will fall short of changing
your circumstance, what your soul believes in will determine your ability to
overcome.
Seek your hope, Sweet Girl. Seek the truth.
Find your shelter from the rain.
