LETTER TO STEVE
Ach Steve, we're both growing old and it isn't fun. 2015 without a doubt has been the toughest year of my life health-wise and it has continued on into 2016 with no let up. Back pain, infections, rashes, respiratory trouble, insomnia, bone-deep weariness, teeth/mouth trouble, vision difficulties. Old? I think now and then I'm going to take out whatever mirrors there are in this apartment of mine so I won't see my aged self.
But we didn't ask for exemption from human ills and disappointments and we aren't getting it. We're two of the multiplied millions living in a world that's too big for us to handle. But we won't be here much longer. One of these days you won't hear from me at all and then on the wind the word will come to you that I have died—suddenly and yet not suddenly for it was creeping up on me and will one day pounce.
But Steve, I wouldn't have it any other way. I hate what is happening to me as I hate what is happening to you and all the millions around us—all of them—without exception. I'm a human and have known pleasant days, better than pleasant, some glorious days, delirious days, with love and friendship, little things achieved and projects begun that couldn't be finished and with slumped shoulders thought I'd not be able to move on but did. Looked for praise here and there and got none, expected criticism and instead I got a smile and a handshake. Healthy days when I felt unstoppable and indestructible, rejoicing in energy and feeling that it was great to be alive in this big round teeming world.
I have many regrets, screwed up over and over and over again, found myself in near despair, tears flowing, wanting to die, a sense of unworthiness that I felt as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning. In a host of ways I've been trusted again and again and again when it was clear I couldn't be trusted and then there were days when I did and thought and said lovely things, truthful things; times when I was generous and kind and I could hardly believe it was me, doing things that if I'd seen others do them I would have thought they were so like Jesus Christ.
Now and then just to stay on my feet I'd take one of these lovely moments out and examine it with care and tell myself that I was the one who did or thought or said this. These weren't self-glorifying moments, they were moments of profound need where I had to be sure that the entire story about me wasn't and isn't: "Bad. Simply bad!" I've never made my mark in the world nor will I and like the billions before me and around me I will die and be remembered for a while by those who love me before they too lie down to sleep and then I will be forgotten—as it should be, as it is with everyone else. But it's okay. It's true I can't change things so I must, like everyone else, put up with them as they are, and I do, but I'm now content to do it and as RL Stevens would put it, "I lay myself down with a will" and as Robert Browning would have it, I don’t want a cover for my eyes when the end here comes—I want to see it all.
The one unwavering reality—a Person—who's always there, the one I can see clearly when my eyes are not fogged over with some worry or other, some brawl or other, some looming fear or other. This note has that haze of gloom hanging over it but as I write it I don't feel gloomy—I don't understand at this moment how to explain that but I'm not going to edit it. There He is and if he is the truth of things—the truth of the entire human story—with its sins and righteousness, its joys and sorrows, it fears and its assurances, its suffering and its glory, its present and its future then I can rejoice in the throbbing hope he generates and finish my race here knowing I have the best possible reason to think and live in noble thoughts of God and that must bode well for all the untold millions who were born into the darkness and raised in squalor of many kinds and who’ve never had the chance to know Him.
always,
jim
[This note is to a very dear friend who lives isolated in a far away country. He said he felt old, he is greatly burdened by life. I haven't changed the note, just corrected typos and such. It's a genuine expression of where I'm at in life. He's in Christ Jesus so all is well. A very close reading of Psalm 117 comes to my mind now. God is good]
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