It seemed fitting this year that trying to mark my birthday by the simplest of celebrations, making a rare outing to use my Starbucks birthday reward, should be fraught with peril. This entire post already sounds decadent and whiny, but I promise, it won’t last.
I drove the hour long trek into Calgary from our forest home the morning of my birthday, two days before New Year’s Day. I relish my birthdays. I don’t dread getting older, I look forward to being wiser. To settling into the confidence of middle age, the slightly more settled-ness. I long for the silver to mark my hair, am content with leaving the bravado of my 20’s and even early 30’s and have accepted that I know less than I thought I did. I relish the position of learning. When I feel myself getting my dander up and feeling a bit know-it-all, it’s now a position I mistrust. I don’t like that version of me. She’s not relatable, unapproachable. I digress, though. So. To my birthday. Which I usually love. And because it is so close to the New Year, causes me to take stock of the year and feel the fullness of it.
I’d gone on a morning cross country ski by my lonesome, enjoying crisp air and golden sun in the pines. I’d come home to my husband’s homemade waffles, and crispy bacon, rich, mocha-laced coffee, all things delicious. I’d then set out in optimism, despite all this year has thrown at us. I arrived at the local Indigo bookstore where a Starbucks usually lives in its midst. As I wandered, seeing others also masked and keeping distance, all of us endeavouring to be considerate and responsible, I also realized that, due to the pandemic, the Starbucks was closed. I wandered, a bit disappointed but knowing there was one in the Safeway across the street. I browsed in what is usually my comfort zone: books upon books upon books, but was beginning to realize that retail therapy wasn’t cutting it, that I was restless, weary, when faced with seeing how the pandemic has changed even these large and seemingly untouched businesses, and our shopping and social habits.
I left with only one purchase for the kids, and headed across the busy road and plaza parking lots to the Safeway to try again to redeem my birthday treat. I made my way in, and was thwarted even there because birthday treats aren’t redeemable at licensed stores (as an ex-employee, I should have known this, but had forgotten). I knew it was just silly and slightly irresponsible to drive to another one to try for a third time. I was frustrated, feeling already frivolous for making two wholly unnecessary stops and indeed, an entire hour’s drive for what had been a fruitless shopping trip and a still-empty coffee mug.
I got back in my car and the weight of the year seemed to fall on me. The realization that today was typical of the way that trying to do even the simple, almost mindless tasks we’d taken for granted had been made complicated or even impossible by this past year. That I’d spent a year being disappointed again and again, in the big things like an overseas trip, to the small things, like date nights at a restaurant. The weariness in absorbing the emotions and angst of those around me, of processing not just my own frustrations, but those of friends, work colleagues, church family, social media acquaintances, across the spectrum of positions and views… it all tumbled down and waved over me again. Pressing on to hope had seemed a two steps forward, one step back trek for so long. The scope of frustration has touched every single aspect of life, from toilet paper to politics, and no one is secure or comfortable.
I’m in a privileged demographic, and the weight I feel is one that is relatively minor in the grand, global, and even national, scope of seriousness. I’m more aware and looking for ways to raise up and give voice to the most vulnerable and marginalized, sensitive in ways I haven’t been and needed to be.
I sobbed. I cried the entire drive home. I cried for myself, aware it was a “woe-is-me, I missed out on free coffee” trigger, but knowing the depths of the tears came from a year of waiting and weighting down, of living in the “not-yet” in a little too literal a way. I cried for those literally dying under the weight of this year. For those in desperate frustration over the lack of leadership in so many places, sacred AND secular, that had been revealed, raw this year. For the twisting of truth to play to the power-hungry, those desperately seeking to restore their own comfort and security, at any cost. For even the pain that has been necessary in the personal growing up this year has caused. I mourned that these lessons are hard. That developing character, perseverance, trust, takes so much patience and hope deferred. I cried over the library being closed. Reader, I am both basic AND contain unplumbed depths, just go with it.
I came home and laid down, the weariness in my bones now. I groaned for my own shallow places, and for the depths that were also in pain. The duality of mourning both lost coffee and lost lives. I remembered that God IS redeeming. That one day, all will be redeemed fully, and those who look to the Redeemer in the simplest faith they can find, will rest. I realized that getting pulled too much into the past or fretting too far into the future is a wide pit. That ability and peace to live and serve is found in TODAY. In seeking Him who is the I AM. Who is in the past, present, and future, and says we do not need to be. I can function, one step, one day at a time. Paralysis comes in looking too far behind or forward. The waves and billows lie outside of my next right step. I’m on solid ground when I stand in today next to the Author and Keeper of all time.
It is because of the Lord’s lovingkindnesses
Lamentations 3:22-23, AMP
that we are not consumed,
Because His (tender) compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great and beyond measure is Your faithfulness.
Thank you for sharing your heart and soul Anna. You are in my prayers. I am guessing that you went to West Hills for coffee? If you did, did you know there is a Starbucks store there. On the same side as Safeway, just a number of stores down from it.
D.