Despite the humor of my last post, the last few weeks I’ve been in a funk, and I’m realizing it was for several reasons.

First, let me say that financially, we’ve had a couple of atomic bombs dropped on us recently. About two weeks ago the riding mower that my in-laws gave to us a couple years ago stopped working. You might think, well just buy a new mower, right? Get rid of this one? But it’s a zero-turn-radius Dixon, which costs several thousand dollars…so discarding it never really felt like a reasonable option. The engine apparently threw a push rod, which meant that rather than trying to actually repair the engine itself, a cheaper and easier alternative would be buying a new engine.

I was able to find one on Ebay for just under $500 with shipping, which I was greatly relieved to find…but still, it’s $500 we hadn’t quite itemized into the “Lawn and Garden/Landscaping” portion of our monthly budget. And also, the engine I bought needs an exhaust system which didn’t come with it, a new throttle cable, and of course, we’re having it installed for us…which all add to the cost of these repairs…

Also, we found out this week from our orthodontist that both our boys will be getting braces in the next couple months – and both are needing to have teeth pulled. While I do have excellent dental insurance, it’s still a motherload of information for us to process through. And our orthodontist informed us that we have to pay one lump sum up front, and then pay monthly dental bills up front, for which we then get reimbursed through my dental plan.
But still, I heard someone once say if you have a problem that money will fix, then you don’t really have a very interesting problem…

What I think really started me down the road to this mild depression, though, was seeing a person in our community die in a car accident.

Mrs. Page was a local teacher greatly, greatly loved by her family, friends, and students. She passed away about ten days ago in a car accident, an event that roared into the community like a tornado and left a lot of people feeling completely devastated. And knowing her family, her death just seemed inconceivable. Her husband has cancer; her son is in remission from two forms of leukemia; her dad passed away of cancer this last year, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer around the same time her dad was…

I have this image in my mind, a sort of representation of the way our lives are lived, and it’s this: I see myself walking on a long plank of wood that’s balanced on a fulcrum. The plank represents the amount of time we hope we have to live our lives – eighty years, maybe? ninety if we’re lucky? – and we start out walking along the plank on a steep incline.

Those first years you live seem to take forever. You’re a kid, and it seems like all you want to do is get to the next stage, whatever that is…first, you want to be a teenager so people will stop treating you like a child, then when you’re a teen, you want to be old enough to drive…and then you can’t wait to be old enough to move out of your parents’ house and get your own apartment.

Then, we’re often looking to get married…then, we want kids…more job experience to get a better paying job…then a comfortable retirement…

And for me, I think what’s really put me in a funk these past few weeks is feeling like I’m already at the fulcrum, like life is suddenly rushing me forward faster than I can handle, I’m wishing for the next step, and the next step, and not living in the moment.

Somehow when this teacher died, I started realizing how many people I’ve known that have passed away. Just in the time I’ve been at Albion, I’ve seen maybe two dozen local people disappear…

Blanche, who worked at the bank I used…I came in one Monday afternoon, and found out she’d passed away that weekend.

Bobbie, who used to work at a local liquor store…he was shot and killed by a fellow employee…

Mr. Seiler, who used to own a car dealership and several other businesses across the country. A heck of a nice guy with very salty language, who always drove big, fat American cars and complained that the Japanese could design a reliable car, but never a comfortable one. He died five or six years ago…

Gary, the local AAA insurance salesman who had a bad fall a few years ago that he never really recovered fun…he ended up dying about two years later.

I could go on, but you get the idea. And all these people I’ve listed are only people I’ve known through work. There are perhaps a couple dozen more I could think of that we’ve known through the community we live in, through our church, etc.

I was thinking about all of this in relation to the fulcrum metaphor, and I realized that if we live long enough, we all come to a point in our lives when we have more close friends that have passed away than are living. That thought really hit me hard for some reason, and I think it’s because it says something about human existence and human suffering.

There is no question that life for all of us will be hard, the only question is: will it be bearable?
I finished reading the Book of Matthew, yesterday, and flipped through the concordance in my Bible to find references for the word ‘hope’ – and I ended up in Lamentations, which seemed to feel somehow right, a representation of where I’ve felt I’m at…and perhaps the only way to end this post:

“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, the Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” (Lam. 3:19-24)