From Your Minister
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There are predictable thresholds in our lives, when we move from one life-stage to another—when beloved children begin school, when we downsize from a house to an apartment, when we begin a new career or class. Each of these thresholds is significant, and involves stages of anticipation, recommitment to a changed life and adjustment.
There are also unexpected thresholds where we feel more like we are standing in the door of an airplane looking out into vast space, being pushed out over the threshold between the solidity of a plane and the terror of freefall. Facing a new time of living without a loved one who has left us or died, getting fired from a job, dealing with a diagnosis or injury that radically reshapes our life.
And then there are thresholds we cross which are desired and yet still terrifying, chosen and yet still dreaded. Ending a relationship that is diminishing us, but still being terrified of who we are without it. Facing an addiction and committing ourselves to living without it. Leaving a job we hate to dare to try something new. Moving to a new place. Even though we have chosen it, we still may feel as if we are in that airplane doorway, looking out in terror at the groundlessness before us, trying to summon the strength to take the step we know we want to take over that threshold. Letting go of what has been and embracing a new life takes all of our spiritual strength.
One of the many chosen, but terrifying, thresholds in my life was the decision to adopt a baby. After I had spent a year gathering paperwork and proving that I was a fit parent, and four months gazing at a photo of a baby who became increasingly beloved to me, I finally went to China to bring the baby home.
It was complicated. I am a lesbian and China was becoming increasingly homophobic in their adoption process (though I was not forced to sign an affidavit of heterosexuality as later folks were). I was absolutely terrified that before I could bring my baby home, someone would say I was not allowed to. I knew that I had to undergo transition after transition while in China, similar to all of the hoops I’d jumped through in the US getting my paperwork together, and I feared that at any one of these transitional moments, someone might determine that I should not be a parent to this child.
I was so stressed out about it that at one point I thought I was having a heart attack, but it turned out to be pure panic. After I ascertained that my physical health was fine, I went to see my spiritual director to talk to her about how to manage my fear.
“Imagine each moment of transition as a doorway to more love,” she said. And I did that for the entire time in China, a time of daily and hourly meetings with officials; each moment taking me closer to when I could come home with my new baby.
I go back to this practice of imagining transitions as doorways to more love over and over again in times of terror. The truth is that when I’m afraid of something new, I begin to fill in the blanks with the worst possible outcomes. I’m falling in love and suddenly I live in terror that my new beloved will drop dead of a heart attack. I’m going on a long-desired trip and I wonder if the plane will crash or I’ll drive over a cliff. I remember when I was in junior high, finally getting my braces off, I was convinced that the orthodontist would accidentally pull out my front teeth because I couldn’t let myself imagine that I could finally smile without stress or anxiety.
So what I try to remember to do, when I’m crossing a threshold to the unknown and find myself filling in the vast space with small terrors, is remind myself to fill it instead with love. In China the concrete love for the baby made it simple and clear. In other instances, I have to align myself with the longing that is suddenly turning into terror and assure myself that this longing is a positive thing. I’m in love? How amazing! I’m going on that trip? Look at photos and dream! And it’s good to remember, all these years later, that the orthodontist managed to get my braces off while leaving my teeth intact.
The truth is that we often don’t know what’s right ahead of us—whether a day will bring agony, ecstasy or something in between. We can’t control many, many factors. But we can practice drawing on love, rather than fear, as we face into the unknown. We can trust that our love and our longing, whether our hopes are realized or unrealized, is itself a blessing given to us. And we can surround others who are in fear with loving affirmation as they face their own times of freefall, knowing that we would want them to do the same thing for us.
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