PARALLEL LIVES

Sometimes we live parallel lives physically, such as when we spend time on a regular basis in two or more different locations. Sometimes our parallel lives are emotional. Trying to live with sadness, grief, disappointment alongside joy, laughter and happiness. Feelings ebb and rise so perhaps contentment in our everyday lives is something to aim for. I have heard it be said that the downside of anti depressants is that emotions become muted and there are no highs or lows, resulting in a very flat feeling. A challenging part of life for most of us is handling our feelings and emotions. How do we listen to the news without being swamped by all the suffering and injustice, leaving us in high states of anxiety and depression? How do we reconcile our excitement at the joyous things in our lives, compared to the hard times friends may be going through at the same time, leaving us with feelings of guilt at our pleasure?

Then there is emotional overload. There are so many problems to solve, so many people and causes to help, so much compassion and empathy needed that we are overwhelmed with emotion and the pressure builds until we risk being burnt out. Everything looks black and life is joyless. Our vitality is diminished and we are unable to help anyone let alone ourselves.

I’m sure that is not how we were created to live and yet how do we do stop ourselves spiralling downwards in the face of so much suffering? Last week I found myself waking in a very low mood, sleeping badly with anxious thoughts and unable to shake off a feeling of doom. It was not just due to the total shock of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. Rather it was an overload of too much sadness and an inability to see the pinpricks of light through the darkness. Those random acts of kindness that remind you of the goodness of humanity rather than the evil perpetrated by the minority.

So how did I get back to seeing more light than dark? Often I find comfort from the Psalms in the Bible – all the emotions we face today were just the same when the psalmists lived. They describe them vividly and they refuse to be defeated. Rather they cry out to God in their distress and then they praise and thank him for his faithfulness and strength because they know through all their sufferings, he is with them.

It just so happened I went to a gathering of Christians on Sunday evening near to our boat and the first thing we did was sing. That alone lifted my mood but it was a story I heard that really impacted me and made me see life through a different prism. A man was at the bottom of a hill with a wheelbarrow and God asked him to put a brick in the barrow and take it to the top of the hill. The man did as he was told and started his ascent with relative ease. Halfway up he met a friend who, seeing the wheelbarrow, asked him to carry a brick of his up the hill. He agreed and proceeded on his way, meeting one or two more people who again asked if he could take their bricks up the hill. Being a kind man he agreed but by now the going was getting a bit tough and he was finding the wheelbarrow very hard work. He still had a way to go to reach the summit so he stopped and said to God, ” excuse me God, why did you make this journey so hard with so many bricks for me to carry?”. And God replied “I only asked you to carry one brick up the hill, you collected the rest.”

So why did that story speak so powerfully to me? I realised that so often, if I really try to follow what God wants me to do, that is manageable and I can cope. It is when I feel I should be helping everyone that I get overwhelmed. Then I am no good to God or anyone else because I lose my light. There are so many terrible things happening but we can’t be responsible for solving them all. If we believe in God, our strongest weapon is prayer. If we are christians, what help are we to those who have no faith if we are not a people of hope, joy and light? We need to bring God’s light into the darkness of this world, sharing the good news of Jesus who came to show us a path to eternity where there will be no more pain, crying or suffering.

So our parallel lives of living in our community and enjoying the blessings we have whilst being aware of all the injustices and heart aches around us continue on. It is how we respond that counts, so that we can give out as much light as possible in the places we are, so that we can all remain people of hope in a world that often appears hopeless. Random acts of kindness, thoughtfulness and loving our neighbour may be a good place to start.