LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE

Are you supposed to admit that there’s a great sadness in you? In the insta-reality we live in, I think you’re supposed to post pictures of how excellent everything is: your PB on the park run, your good-looking dinner plate, or a memory of that fun day out with perfectly-behaving children. You’re not really supposed to admit that it’s lightning in a bottle.

But then neither are you supposed to constantly whine about how terrible life is for you. That’s seen as attention-seeking. Or something. If you’re down, depressed, struggling, gasping for air in the stifled well of your own emotions, you are required to keep it to yourself.

I’m not just talking about social media. In Christian circles it’s been true for a long time that everyone expects a ‘church face’, a kind of dogged smile that’s like plaster of piety. If you’re struggling, says the culture without saying it, hide it. Pretend that it’s all okay and that you’re blessed, and somehow that enables God to still be good and in control and all the things our cheerful songs and sermons proclaim him to be.

Don’t get me wrong. He is those things. I just think Christians (me too) fail to be real sometimes, and given that we follow probably the realest person who ever lived, that’s a shame.

Anyway, the great sadness. It’s hard to really pin down the why. I don’t think it’s simple tonight - it’s not one effect mapped to one cause; it’s a network of causes and a flurry of effects, like a weaving where all the threads tug and pull on each other. It’s okay. I’ve been here before, I know. I know you know too if you’ve read enough of these posts.

Perhaps I should take up park running. By the way, great to have a hobby, just like it’s great to have a nice dinner. I’m not knocking the lightning in a bottle. I just want to stand up sometimes and say that it’s tough to think that’s the norm in the middle of a long and dreary thunderstorm.