The World -- Upside Down or Right Side Up

What do you do when your world is turned upside down? Someone you love begins to disappear before your very eyes and you can do nothing to stop it. You try over and over to make things right, to pull this person back to your reality when he or she just won’t, or can’t, come back.

Every day provides new or different challenges. Who will I meet today — the person I know or someone else — someone this person has become that I am not ready to recognize.

Facing death when it isn’t yours; facing life when you walk with someone who is dying can be frightening. Ron Rolheiser once wrote that the weakest among us are the most important spiritually. St. Paul talked of being strong in his weakness.

I replay these thoughts over and over, realizing I am certainly weak, but I am yet to find the strength, to find the lesson to be learned from this weakness. I have learned that people who thrive on “command and control” often find themselves without anyone listening to their commands and everyone more or less out of their control. The chaos and messiness of life throws us into unease. We don’t quite know what to do or how to respond. If someone would just give us the formula, the recipe, the “answer,” we could shed our doubt, step forward with confidence, knowing we’re doing what’s right, what’s needed. We can be back in control.

Life seldom works that way outside a movie theatre. We seem to muddle through, doing the best we can, as opposed to “what’s right,” because we can’t quite figure out exactly what that means. That’s why those with hindsight and the “Monday (should be Tuesday in some cases) morning quarterbacks” have such easy duty. The road generally stretches out so clearly when we look back and sometimes appears so foggy when we look ahead.

One of the most important guides for the upside down world and the foggy road is a friend who will share the questions, try not to give you too many answers and help discard the extra baggage that we collect along the way. Those who have traveled similar roads can be the best guides because they realize control is not generally an option. They know, as we continue to learn that whether the world is upside down or right side up, the center of command and control rests with God, and that’s sometimes all the comfort we have and all the knowledge we need.