A Lesson Before Dying

The past two years have been a challenge for me for a number of reasons. I have been tested in more ways than I could have possibly imagined, and more deeply than I thought myself capable of enduring. I am thankful for the ways in which God provided me with the small important things that bring me joy, such as a home a mile from the beach (which I desired more than anything) and a community of friends and common believers who have been my family here in L.A. God has his ways of showing himself present in difficult situations, mostly notably in the small prayers we pray sometimes without even knowing it. These small signs of God's presence have given me the strength to face darkness and uncertainty and change head-on rather than flee into hiding.

Nevertheless, this does not minimize the amount of sacrifice that following Jesus requires. I came out to California around the end of June, 2006, and I am leaving California around the end of June, 2008. For the past 731 days, I have had to live one day at a time, one sunrise to one sunset, one moment to the next. Anything else, even the thought of tomorrow, was more than I could bear. I have lived in an emotional and spiritual pressure cooker that has more than permanently affected me; it has completely reshaped who I am, in ways that I don't even think I can yet articulate. This does not mean that my experience has been negative; my experience has been difficult and painful, but as I see now, necessarily so.

I think the easiest prayer for me to pray would be a prayer for comfort and happiness. Nobody wants to hurt, hunger, need or wait. They seem to be weakening agents that amplify what's already wrong with us. For this reason, the decision to be a follower of Jesus is completely ludicrous if one does not believe that Jesus is who he said he was 2,000 years ago. It would be impossible if God wasn't real. No person in their right mind would choose to live in a framework of constant submission and sacrifice to a will greater than his or her own. It's completely counterintuitive. Choosing to walk with God is to choose to live a life full of life, but it is a fullness of life manifested in death (strange, strange concept). And not necessarily physical death (though it began as such with Jesus), but death to the natural human instincts that lend themselves to multi-level self-destruction.

Suffering is the agent of internal change. I don't know why this is. It certainly isn't fun. It's painful and it's sobering. I don't remember noting any verse in the Bible that talks about Jesus exuding bubbling happiness. If anything, nothing suggests that he was particularly happy to the end of his life (which was a horrifying end, I might add). He was focused, purposed, and ultimately pleased at completing the task set before him by God, his Father, but this feeling was not the temporal fuzzy (and often fleeting) feeling of happiness.

Does this mean that followers of Jesus live lives that completely suck? No, no. But our lives are guaranteed to be tried and tested. It's the only way we can become better people; someone bigger and better molding us and reshaping us and replacing the warped with what's real.

We sometimes wrongly assume that we are born perfect, when the reality is that every person is born with defects regardless of how perfect or imperfect his or her family structure seems to be. As Malcolm X said, "every experience is an ingredient in the make-up of a person." It does not matter who you are, though - there is bound to be an eggshell or something in that cake batter that's going to throw off the taste, make the cake collapse, cause it to burn, and so on. Those defects become insecurities, they are compounded by negative experiences, they are exacerbated by the defects of others. And so we all, in our own ways, live already broken. Money might hide it, status might hide it, fame might hide it, devotion might hide it, drinking, drugs and and sex might hide it. But they do not erase it. It's something we are reminded of constantly when we are by ourselves with no one around. That naked, damaged person is the hardest person to face by ourselves.

It's kind of funny that I say all of these things because many of the people who meet me assume that I have everything in my life together. They assume that I am always confident and self-assured, that I am so strong I don't need anyone else, that I have never struggled with the things other normal people struggle with - like hurting, hungering and needing.

Part of the reason I have been so misinterpreted is because I have spent my life creating an impenetrable membrane around myself and my weaknesses. At first, it was necessary for my survival in the suffocating community in which I grew up. Later, it just became comfortable. It also allowed me to control how people viewed me, which mattered more than anything else in the world. My race, gender, background, and economic status were all unstated points I had to prove, stereotypes I had to deconstruct, perceived weaknesses for which I had to overcompensate. It gave the illusion of being sharp and fierce and unconquerable. What it was, though, was the flawed me hiding within the thick callous of my own creation, hiding with the fear that people would think less of or altogether dislike the imperfect person who was, in essence, me.

The external me could not be hurt, the internal me could. External me needed no one, internal me feared loneliness. External me never failed at anything, internal me worried that failure was inevitable. External me was always certain and always right, internal me was often uncertain and often second-guessing herself. External me was much, much safer because she wasn't weak. Internal me wouldn't be able to recover from being hurt by somebody else.

The challenges to my reality began in college where I was confronted with circumstances that stormed my life and shook my foundation. Most of the experiences that hit me hardest were those that I had with people. Some of my closest and most meaningful relationships ended in abominable ways, and those people hurt or lost or distanced in the process are the sources of my greatest regret...which is ironic, because I actually thought for the longest while that taking two O'Connell classes would top my list...

Vagas and I were talking one day about the impact of experiences and whether or not regret is something that people should even take to heart. "Everything happens for a reason," he said, "and the people we become in the process of those circumstances we wouldn't have become without the experiences. Either way, a lesson had to be learned, because personal development would be impossible without it."

"True," I said, "but the loss is still regrettable. If you sever ties you had with someone, you might walk away having learned a lesson on how to be better next time, with the next person, but you still walk away from that person. If that person meant anything to you, you are going to feel the loss, because that person is irreplaceable. Lessons might be the same, but people are not."

This is a lesson I have learned a few times at the unfortunate cost of destruction. Only since I have had the parts of my veneer gently stripped away through failure, uncertainty, loneliness, and acknowledged weakness I have come to realize this. I know now that I was not the best Sarah in the past that I could be to other people because I didn't know who that person was, behind that little curtain.

But then...

I walked into the classroom a perfectionist, with an Amherst degree English and Black Studies, only to discover that I didn't know how to teach. So the little curtain was flung back and my glass house shattered. From there I had to fish a different identity out from the shards, then get up and come to my classroom the next day, and the next day and the next day, failing, and failing, and failing again until one day, I didn't care anymore about how it made me look. Then, I stopped failing.

I moved to a different state needing no one and found myself struck with such an aching loneliness, I had to reach out to others for the sake of my own survival. I had to make and maintain friendships with people and learn to articulate how much I needed them - not just desired them, but needed them in my life because having them in my life made me a better person.

I came to California thinking that certainly the next five years of my life would play out like the movie I created in my head. I leave California in a few weeks without a clue as to where I will be a few months from now and feeling quite uncertain, yet absolutely certain that the way of uncertainty is the way to go next.

Finally, I came here as a person without any visible flaws and I leave noticeably flawed. I leave now at a place where I am finally getting over myself and the embarrassing reality that I am, in fact, human. Frustrated by my own limitations still, I am yet willing to be different, to have my mind changed, to be wrong (and admit it) and to consider the position of others, not as a person on the other side of a divide, but as one person to another on the same side. I am a more visibly imperfect me, but a better me nonetheless.

I still struggle with the insecurities that lead to the erection of my glass house, especially when a situation gets uncomfortable and my impulse is to retreat into what I know is safe. They are insecurities that God has begun to heal, but whose scars yet remain. I imagine that I will always struggle with those natural inclinations, because they are the foundation of my humanity. But, as Jesus demonstrated by example, the suffering we experience by dying each day to our natural inclinations for the sake of who God intended us to be is resurrection. And life.