Church of the Mighty Alrightness

Naked, In the Rain

My wife lost her job this week. Half our family income, zip, out the door, gone.

She became one of those people you hear about on the news every night, joining millions of others in a swelling tide of joblessness that's sweeping this country in our time of great challenge.

She had been assured that her job was safe by her boss three weeks ago. Then BAM, out the door this Monday, one week of pay for the send-off.

We felt like we'd been hit in the forehead by a two-by-four.

Betsy and I immediately swung into job-seeking mode, and started looking hard and strong.

We were in full action mode, even as we tried to manage our feelings; fear, outrage, anger, helplessness. It's like trying to walk with large sandbags attached to your feet, but walk we did.

Then I remembered that time when I was naked in the rain.

It started when when I was born, an illegitimate child placed for adoption. In therapy years later, the image of me that came to my mind one day was of a helpless infant, lying on his back on a wide city boulevard. It was cold and raining, and hundreds of people walked by. Nobody noticed the baby.

 

All during my early life, I lived with a deep, nameless fear. It was with me every day, all day, underneath whatever joys or challenges I had. An undertone of constant fear that life wouldn't support me.

In all the ensuing therapy, I finally figured out that the fear was about becoming that helpless baby again. I was in constant fear that I would loose everything and everyone, and end up helpless and die. (Babies die if left unattended out in the rain!)

One day, it even started happening.

My girlfriend and I broke up, and I had no place to live. I had suffered some business reversals, and had only a couple hundred dollars in my jeans, and no job prospects. I lit out in my car across country, running away, running toward, just running.

In the vast, empty, flat sweep of west Texas that night, my right front tire gave up and died.

There I was, far from home, near-broke, and broken down for sure.

I was naked in the rain.

Funny thing happened. I didn't die.

A trucker pulled over, put my truck onto his auto carrier and took me to the nearest small town. A gas station guy sold me a cheap new tire, and a friend in Florida sent me some money. I was on my way again, and I ended up on the east coast staying with my friend until I could get my feet under me.

I think I needed to go through the helplessness of those events to find out that I wouldn't die if I was down to nothing, that life-its-own-self would take care of me now, no matter how skinny things got.

So I remembered this experience the other night when the unemployment event was weighting heavy on my heart and mind, and I instantly felt a lot better. I could relax and sleep, quiet my nerves, move forward.

Even when you're naked in the rain, things will get better.

I remembered that I had already been to this place, and that this is just another one of those moments. All will be well, even if there is a period of great discomfort while working out of details.

When you get down to naked in the rain, life lifts you up. Things happen, the sun comes up, you're still breathing, and soon it's a better day, and that is Mighty Alright.

- The Acolyte

When We Got Sick

It's not often I come down with a bug; I'm usually a healthy guy.

But it's been a very, very stressful year. Two weeks ago it all caught up with me, and I came down with
the flu. 

My wife doesn't tend to get sick either, and when she does, it's usually a cold. She doesn't remember having the flu, so when I got it, she tended to equate it with a cold.

Fellow flu sufferers, we know the difference don't we?

A cold is a piffling thing. Uncomfortable, yes, drippy and droopy, for sure. But you can curl up with a blankie on the couch for a bit, watch bad TV and take modern cold drugs, and before you know it, you're on your way again.

Not so with the flu.

The flu actually kills people sometimes. It's a deeper thing, and when you've got the flu, all you want to do is curl up and leave your hot, trembling, nauseous, coughing, blinding headache of a body until it's over. No TV, no going to work in spite of it, just lie down and die for a while until you can move. Food? Nah. Sleep? Ha.

So when her usually dependable, active guy dissolved into a stalled-out moaning lump of sweaty, immobile suffering, my wife was quite surprised.

Her: "Sweetheart, are you OK?"

Me: "Ngbrrrrurp..."

Then she got a cold in the middle of my having the flu.

Her: "SNO-O-O-RK! drip, drip, BLO-O-O-W!!!"

Me: "Ngbrrrrurp..."

Dogs got fed, food was prepared, all in slow-motion, by the two sick zombies we had become. Anything non-essential didn't happen, and bathing became a little less frequent.

We’d run into each other in the bathroom and lean on each other like two punch-drunk boxers, checking in: “Still alive?”, “Check, still alive.” Whatever malady was producing the most noise at the time, the one who had it slept in the guest room.

Through it all, we managed to remain civil and supportive. We’ve known we are both good at care-taking the other when one of us is sick and one of us is well. Now we found out we could still stay positively connected even when we are both in pain.

That’s no small thing, to slop around together in our dregs and still do a passable form of our marital dance. It didn’t look pretty, but we did it.

And that, in fact, is Mighty Alright.

- The Acolyte