Driving back to Monterey two days after Roy told me about the death in Lana’s family and Ira’s cancer diagnosis was a memorably sad trip for me.
The further and further we drove away from LA, the more I could sense my hopes for the pilot slipping away from me, too. But at the same time, I couldn’t fully let go of all of my hopes that something “might” happen after Labor Day.
I know I’m a glutton for punishment when it comes to Eloise — I can clearly see that for myself over and over again in the entries of this blog. But when it comes to pursuing the things I believe I’m meant to do, I think it’s too much to ask of me to take away my own heartbeat when there is a remnant of hope that never stops beating inside of me.
I was babysitting one of the two-year-old girls in my life the other day. (Captain Obvious at your service!) When I was playing with this little sugarplum, she had all of her dolls lined up on the sofa, and her favorite teddy bear was off to the side. So I picked up the bear to add it to the line-up.
As soon as I handled her precious friend, the toddler shouted, “Mine!”
She snatched her teddy bear from my hand, and then she nearly squeezed the stuffing out it. She looked at me with a steely stare of determination. She was clear about her feelings of entitlement to her bear, and I was certain I’d be wise not to challenge her in any way!
I don’t have all that much experience with children, but I’ve never met a little one who didn’t know the word “mine.” Along with “mommy” and “daddy,” that word seems to find it’s way into everyone’s earliest vocabulary — no matter how people parent their kids. Perhaps there is a natural bent inside of human beings to cling to things that we believe are exclusively ours. The idea that we can take ownership of something that makes us feel safe…or important, or maybe just happy seems like a natural quest.
Maybe we all think we need to carve out a little piece of the world that somehow “belongs” to us — even when we’re not toddlers anymore. Maybe we think those things can help to define our lives somehow — to ourselves, and to the world.
The truth is, I think I’m just now starting to understand this unbridled compulsion I have inside of me to snatch up all of the things I love, and then pull them into my being with a determined certainty that they are exclusively and wholly mine. I see this in the things I write: I call it, “my career,” and “my work,” and “my husband,” and “my life…” Maybe all of those things are meant to be mine, but maybe it’s the stranglehold I have on all of them that’s killing them inside of me.
As I ponder these thoughts, what I recognize is that this entitlement in my attitude only gives me a false sense of ownership over the things I care about the most. At the end of the day, I never get to do anything useful or good with any of the talents, ideas, or passions I call “mine” without first letting go of them, and giving them back to God somehow…
And what I know now is that I’ll never be able to truly love the people in my life if I don’t give them the space to be imperfectly whole outside of my ideas of how they should be.
When I look back on the details that I’ve recounted in many of the entries of this blog, I have a newfound understanding of how specifically God has been wearing me down over the past decade so that I could finally surrender and see that nothing is ever really mine.
I can finally see it now in black and white.
With hindsight, everything that I thought belonged to me has been somehow wasted, or stolen, or nearly destroyed by my own two hands. But the things I’ve had the faith to finally surrender back to God seem to hold the potential to be gifted back to me someday — completely and without compromise.
I see now that once I truly let “my stuff” and “my people” go, I might finally be able to receive something much more valuable back that can be gathered on top of my open palm. However, I have to let go of my greatest loves with no guarantee that they will ever come back to me… That’s the truly tricky part of this whole revelation.
It didn’t occur to me until about five months ago that totally giving up on Eloise would actually give me more relief than sorrow. It’s taken me such a long time to experience that reality.
But on that drive back to Monterey from LA, I felt like I was wallowing in a gloomy pit of confusing feelings, and to keep from drowning, I know I clung to my hopes like a toddler with a stuffed bear. In fact, I was holding on so tightly that my fingers of my soul earnestly ached. Yet back then, I think I even found a strange comfort in calling that ache “mine.” And while I know that I hated feeling that kind of pain, the fact that it was “my bitterness” and “my fear” made me feel less empty somehow.
