On Straddling Sadness and Joy, Fear and Hope
The movie Inside Out has been in my top five since its release in 2015. If you haven't seen it, you should, but here is a short synopsis for the sake of this letter. The movie follows a little girl named Riley as she processes a major relocation with her family. The story is told through the lens of five key characters, each representing a different emotion—joy, Sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. These emotions live in a place called Headquarters which is the control center of Riley's mind, and throughout the film, we are shown how those emotions struggle to adapt to Riley's changing world.
One theme of the film is watching how Joy attempts to squander the other emotions, believing that she should be the hero of the story. In the end, we come to see that Sadness may play the most pivotal role in our development. The movie is not so much telling us to walk around sad all the days of our lives as much as it is telling us that it's ok to deeply feel our way through the troubling things of the world.
I'm no stranger to Sadness, or melancholy, or whatever you would like to call it. Susan Cain wrote a book called Bittersweet that put words to how I have made my way through this world since I was a kid. She defines bittersweetness as "a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy when beholding beauty. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired."
Some of you may read this and think to yourself, "that sounds like an awful way to live." It may be, but I know no other way. I can remember listening to sad songs as a kid and feeling alive. Weird, I know. The more complex life gets, the more comfortable I feel. I can go there and linger there. Joy and Sadness have never been mutually exclusive in my mind; even before Cain penned her definition, I have long argued that the deeper the sorrow, the deeper the joy. I have never had trouble accessing my emotions; my problem has been what exactly to do with them all.
I write this on the last day of March 2023. Generally speaking, the year's first three months seem to drag by, and the back half of winter hasn't always been kind to me. But today, I sit here in disbelief that this is the end of the first quarter. We have lived a year in the past ninety days. They have sped by so fast, with so much intensity, I'm still attempting to wrap my head around it.
On Monday of this week, Chad texted me in the middle of my day, telling me there had been a shooting at a small private Christian school in Nashville. In the end, seven people's lives were taken-- three children, three adults, and the shooter. Nashville is a big small city, so we know people affected personally. It's true; it hits harder when tragedy strikes close to home. My six-year-old goes to a similar kind of school, and though these atrocities are happening more frequently in America than could ever make sense, you still don't believe it will land so close.
Here are some thoughts I shared earlier in the week on Instagram. I'm purposefully leaving it unedited, full of run-on thoughts. It is what was appropriate then, and it still feels relevant now.
I took this photo seconds before she walked out to the door to be dropped off at a small, private Christian school in Nashville on Monday morning. A few hours later I got a text from Chad that there had been a shooting at a school like hers just down the road.
Like many of you, I have been glued to the news and clinging to any semblance of hope I can grasp onto. Every so often, my breath is stolen. I've looked at this photo so many times over the past couple of days with the unimaginable thought that maybe one of those parents took a similar photo, or has a similar memory, that is now their last. I think about empty beds and seats at tables and friends lost and heaven forbid our babies being taken this way. I think about it and my breath leaves me.
One of my first memories of real fear as a kid was when the AIDS crisis was emerging. I can distinctly remember the feeling of fear in my body. I suppose that was when a little bit of my innocence was stolen, when it became clear that the world wasn't always going to offer safety.
I haven't talked to Crew about what happened yet. The truth is, I'm still processing something that we were never meant to process. I feel a visceral deep down groan that every so often finds words that sound like, "it doesn't have to be this way."
What are we as a society when we aren't, above all else, protecting our precious children? We are failing, friends.
Which leads me to this. What does it mean to protect our children? I'm afraid if we aren't able to take a holistic approach to answering that question that we will continue the downward spiral.
We have got to be willing to step back and examine first our own hearts and then how ideas have swept through society that are totally and completely incongruent with human flourishing. I don't understand for the life of me how ideology and power have choked out our ability to lay down our weapons, both physically and metaphorically.
I look at these two, knowing the day they will remember their first real feeling of fear is coming, and sooner than I would like. We are failing our children. The question is, will we be courageous enough to do anything about it?
Around the first of the year, Chad and I were informed of a 21-month-old boy needing an immediate, permanent home. We were asked if we would consider that being ours. One little girl came into our lives through adoption at birth, and we have always known our family wasn't complete. Honestly, this wasn't the best timing at first glance. Chad is launching a brand new business, and this last year has been one of so much transition, with still uncertain arrival times and destinations.
I tend to make decisions by arguing for all of the reasons why we shouldn't do something. In this case, it was easy. The weight of raising children in a biracial family with a history of trauma should give any of us a sober pause. We considered how our two children would have similar, but in so many ways, so very different stories. And how a transition like this for a child with a traumatic start could shift a dynamic more the average family adding a sibling. I also had to address my own heart. How I thought I had grieved the larger part of my miscarriage, but how grief will always resurface until we are forever home. I had to face the fact once again that life on earth is not as it should be, that adoption is a second chance at a flourishing life, but never the intended first way. I had to recall the hurdles of the last time we did this and how those were attempting to stop me from moving forward on this one.
We took some time to process this. We got on our knees, gave name to the things I mentioned above, spent a lot of time in prayer, and sought wise counsel. In the end, we arrived here. There was a need, and we had a desire. That this would undoubtedly be hard, but that is part of our purpose here. As somebody who believes in Jesus, the one who gives us explicit instruction to care for the orphan and the widow, to run towards our fear with courage, we arrived at the only clear answer.
This little boy has been with us for almost two months, and it feels like a lifetime. Over the course of eight weeks, we have been stretched more than we ever thought possible. The truth is, we had gotten comfortable, but that is not where we are meant to live. Too much is at stake in the world to let a need like this slip through the crack.
Lots of people have been asking me how I am doing in all of this. The honest truth is, it has been the hardest thing I have ever done. I have an incredible partner in Chad, thank goodness. But you can never really be prepared for how our children will rip our hearts out of our chests, leaving them exposed and very vulnerable. I see with greater intensity and urgency the things I need to address. The truth is, the stakes are now double in our home. My children need as whole of a mother as I can be to have a chance at facing the world I am watching unfold. On weeks like this, it feels like too much to carry.
Sadness, anger, and fear have been the prevailing emotions swirling around in my proverbial control center this week. So much Sadness. So much anger. So very much fear. It seems those are the only options this year, and specifically this week. It's weeks and moments like this when we have to dig deep for a kind of hope that not only believes in something greater but is the fuel for living a life that makes it so.
Chad had a scheduled sabbatical the month after we miscarried our baby. It was July of 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, a time that we can all remember the weight we were carrying. We traveled to Oregon to be with family and to take some time to golf. One afternoon, on a par three that sat on an elevated green, I hit a tee shot not unlike any other. The only difference is that this one landed and kicked left toward the hole until it came to rest at the bottom of the cup. My eyes could barely believe what had just happened. I had hit a HOLE-IN-ONE. To make matters even better, Crew was there to witness it. Friends, I totally and completely lost it. I was overcome with whimsical, unfiltered joy at that moment. It was as if I literally needed it. Unhinged joy in a time of some of the deepest sorrow I had ever felt. The best I can tell, that is right where hope is contained.
As somebody who lives that bittersweet life, I'm constantly bouncing back and forth between deep states of longing and sorrow and curiously piercing joy. What I think Cain is ultimately pointing us to is hope. The gritty, unafraid kind. The one that allows you to feel the more profound pain that we are ever meant to, and the one that allows joy to bubble over in a time when it makes no sense.
We are living in times that don't make sense. As Cain said, these moments make us recognize that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. And yet, we hope. And maybe that hope propels us to go to work. If we wish to make a better future where we protect our children, it is time to put ourselves on the front lines. I'm afraid it's now or never.
Love this, friend. Thank you for sharing it all.