The Kids Are Not Okay

What if the middle of the story still feels like the end?

I had all kinds of plans for some year end posts for you, but last week when I shared on my Q&A post a vulnerable answer to one of your questions and it seemed to strike a nerve in the comments, I realized what you actually probably wanted (and maybe needed) from me was just a bit of vulnerability.

I can count on three fingers how many times I’ve cried this year and yesterday was one of them. As the snow whipped straight across the river and my husband was about to leave for Texas, I walked by his desk and into our bedroom and said, “Will you snuggle me for a few minutes?” and he did. He laid down on the bed and curved his body around mine, nesting his nose in my neck and his arms tight across my chest. And I heaved.

The sadness is too much and too varied to say much about in detail. Suffice it to say there’s some grief that I’m having to weather through, the tendrils of which touch everything in life.

December is always a sad month for me. I’ve never known quite why, but it is. I’m sad about not having a church that feels like family. I’m sad every single time I open the news app. I’m sad when I run into a former friend turned stranger in the store. I’m sad when I read a text message, DM, or email that didn’t need to get said or sent except to make someone feel a moment of justification as if they got that off their back and can move on, never considering for a moment that they’ve now laid a heavy burden on someone else’s back. I’m sad that everyone says their 40s were great—finally came into themselves—but mine have felt like an assault against my body and brain in every single possible way. I’m sad that the eye doctors don’t know what’s wrong with my right eye and a second opinion can’t be for another month. I’m sad that five of my friends are going through awful divorces or silent separations or in indifferent marriages or estrangements. I’m sad everything costs so much money these days and I’m sad that Nate’s gone this week because it’s his last week of work and we have nothing lined up after this. I’m sad about growing old without children or grandchildren.

There’s more that I’m sad about that I can’t even write much about, but it’s a sadness that frames and fills out all the other sadness I mentioned, bloating it all and billowing it out of proportion probably.

In the midst of all this unshakeable sadness, me listing it all, while silent tears filled the corners of my eyes and stuck themselves in my nasal cavity, Nate thought it would be a good idea to mention the opening sequence of UP, which I can’t remember ever having seen. We pulled it up on YouTube and watched it together, both of us choking back sobs at the end.

I wish I could tell you those five minutes weren’t realistic, but as they hammered and sawed their way through saving a dilapidated cottage and prepared for a baby and had picnics just the two of them and read silently, reaching out a hand for one another, and she miscarries and he looks out the window at her unspeakable sadness and gives her the gift of hope in the form of adventures that never end up happening because life and trees falling in the middle of a storm and medical events, and their hair graying together and her body breaking down while he feels incapable of fixing it, it’s all true. It’s all true. It felt like watching a mini-biopic of our lives and it was so, so sad.

Maybe I’ll watch the rest of Up someday and it will redeem those five minutes, or at least give me more hope of something changing. But it seems more important to just say that sometimes the middle of the story feels very much like the end of all the stories we’d hoped for our lives and it’s very difficult to know where we are in the narrative while we’re going through it.

And, friends, the Wilberts are going through it right now. And so I’m sad. We’re sad.

I’m not going to do all those year end posts I’d planned because I don’t actually think you need them from me. Instead, I’m just going to log off for the next few weeks, set my auto-response, mostly ignore my phone and texts and emails, and give myself a break from work and at least part of my mental load. I’m sad and I’ve got some fears about our future and maybe I shouldn’t but I do, and I’m not afraid of saying it aloud

Have you preordered my latest book? The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience from the Forest Floor?

Also available A Curious Faith & Handle With Care

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