Stretch Armstrong
October 14, 2014
October 14, 2014
I am
writing this in a coffee shop. Hanging
outside on the wall of the multi-use building where this coffee shop is
contained is a sign the reads “conflict resolution center.” As I drove up this morning I noticed the sign
and instantly thought of the lyrics of a brand new U2 song – The Troubles – where Bono sings:
“You think it’s easier
To put your finger on the trouble
When the trouble is you
And you think it’s easier
To know your own tricks
Well it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do…
You think it’s easier
To give up on the trouble
If the trouble is destroying you
You think it’s easier
But before you threw me a rope
It was the one thing I could hold on to.”
Maybe it
was the fact I had just stopped at the store to pick up a physical copy of Songs of Innocence (on its release day),
but it think it is more likely the living through/in a week of some of the
poorest mental health of my life. The
flash of thought that contained the connection to Bono’s internal conflict was
blended with the waves of internal conflict that have been battering me much
like the storms that I witnessed as a boy thrashing against the breakwater at
the end of the pier in Holland, MI.
While the
image of the breakwater works for how it feels inside my head these days, it
was a much smaller amount of water that touched the storm in the first place.
As I headed to bed a little over a week ago I stepped on something wet with my
last step before jumping into bed.
Bedroom floors are not supposed to be wet I thought. After a few minutes of investigation Stacey
and I discovered that a pipe in the wall between our bedroom and the bathroom
was leaking and had been for sometime.
The floor in our room, and the bathroom was wet. Who knew what else was wet? So I went into the belly of the beast. It was not a good time. The water damage from this episode is not
easily distinguished from previous water damage. The trip also yielded a couple of other
issues needing to be addressed. As I
write this I still have no clear idea what to do…
What I do
know is that all the feelings I thought were 8 years dead (check out the post
“Flashback”) came flooding back like a dike bursting. As I crawled beneath my families home in a
space filled with cobwebs, musty smells, water, and the soft muddy ground on
which our ramshackle “foundation” rests I just kept hearing a voice telling me
that this is not a suitable place for my family to live. Another voice repeatedly interrogated me with
the question “is the best you can do?”
After a short period of time I climbed out of the hole and the thought of
leaving the trailer park – just selling this home and moving – crossed my mind
and with a second wave of insecure wondering.
This time centered on what I really believe. We moved to the park because we felt called
here and I have taught for years about the idea of living among those we are
called to serve. Thoughts of leaving
made me feel like a quitter, a phony, and an imposter.
So it
happened again today my life was called into question, and I crawled into the
hole again. Eight years ago we felt like
God was calling us to the trailer park.
We sold our house and moved. We
took our three girls (then 8, 6, and 4 years old). We bet it all on that call. Now looking back from nearly a decade later I
wonder if it has been worth it. I spent
the entire first summer in our new home waking up and thinking in a mild
depression “S#@!, I live in a trailer.”
Over the years I have grown to love my neighborhood, but don’t feel like
I have made much progress in tearing down the wall of feelings that accompany
physically living in sub-standard housing causes me. Some of it is me needing to let go of my
middle-class expectations and over-educated expectations about what I deserve
in life. That grandiose sense of
entitlement makes me sick, but not enough to change apparently. Making matters worse is a discomfort I feel
when interacting with people called to minister among those who our world sees
as the lowest, least and last that don’t live among the very people to whom
they profess to be called. That type of un-incarnational
existence troubles me. So the second I
feel like selling the trailer and moving away a wave of feelings slams into me
telling me that I am giving up on the people God is calling me to - not
specifically people in the trailer park - but those who are the most vulnerable
in society.
When we
first moved in my wife had time to do the community development she really felt
called to, but as the family grew she needed to go back to work. Now the days of kids filling our house for
dinner, advocating for those in the park at the elementary school, and generally
being involved in our neighborhood have given way to a pace of life that finds
us living at the trailer park and not in the trailer park. On a good day I think we are OK with this
because we needed to do something different to care for our family, but on bad
days – like the days you have to crawl under the trailer – it just feels like
we sold out to maintain our middle class needs and wants.
Then there
is the conflict, accelerating over the years, that we are caught between two
worlds. Never is this more apparent than
at 6:50am. At that time of the day my
two oldest girls sprint out the door to jump on the bus that will drive them up
the hillside to South Anchorage High School seven miles away. South is the most wealthy and least diverse high
school in Anchorage. The majority of the
ethnic and economic diversity comes from the trailer park where we live. The diversity is literally bussed in (or
drawn in). The buses my girls ride to
and from school are referred to at both the Jr. High and High School as the “ghetto”
bus. However, my girls are not typical
of our neighborhood in a variety of ways and easily pass for kids who do not
arrive on the “ghetto bus.” My girls are
caught between two cultures all day long, and our family is in many, many ways
as well. As my wife talked to a friend
yesterday she told her, “It’s like your being stretched in two different
directions, and your not that flexible.”
As I have reflected on that statement I have begun to see our family
much like that old toy Stretch Armstrong that you could pull in a bunch of
different directions and he would snap back into shape. I just wonder if in our case we are pulled
all over and are beginning to not be able to bounce back.
So as I
gazed upon the “Conflict Resolution Center” sign I saw this morning I said a
little prayer that the conflict inside of me might find some resolution.
Joel K
“and you know the thing is sleeping a scratch below your
skin
and God knows if you wake it up you gotta calm it down
again
and I wonder what it felt like when the waters flooded in
and it got too hard to swim”
