Moving Through It

much gentler than "getting through it"

Is it corny to find inspiration in one’s own book? Well, I admit I do. As we stumble our way to the end of the school year and into summer, I’ve had this reflection from Hope: A User’s Manual on my mind, called “Moving Through It.” I hope it encourages you as well. 

My father died suddenly during my last semester of seminary. I had just negotiated my first ministry position and was days away from having my first baby. Selling our house, buying another one, graduating, moving cities, and starting the job were still to come in rapid succession. 

Dad’s death cast a shadow over what would have been a happy, albeit stressful time. There was so much to process emotionally. A few days after the memorial service, I made a decision, or perhaps it was simply a realization: I cannot deal with this grief right now. I put it all in a box and tucked it away in my heart, which was broken but still needed to keep beating for the sake of my child still to come and the transitions that would follow. I knew there’d be a reckoning, a time that the box would burst open and its contents demand to be dealt with. That moment came to pass months later and landed me in therapy for a long blessed while. 

I’m not sorry I partitioned my grief this way. I don’t second guess how it all went down. Sometimes we simply have to get through certain periods of our lives. But as I age, I’m learning to cherish the distinction between getting through something and moving through it. 

When I think about that time of my life, I remember a lot of joy: the way our daughter changed day by day, the excitement of choosing our first house as a family of three, meeting the congregation that would come to love me as their own, and vice versa. But then I consider the grief, and I flash to a scene from a war movie, like I’m barreling through no man’s land, hoping I miss the mines and the snipers miss me. Getting through was a brute-force motion, a hunkering down, a squaring of the shoulders. “Just do what you need to do,” we often say. 

Moving through is something different, starting with how it feels in my mouth. Getting through is a gritting of the teeth. Moving through is a two-word poem, with soft consonants, and vowels you can draw out as long as you wish. 

For me, running is an indispensable part of “moving through.” The view from a recent run.

During dark nights of the soul, we are like the psalmist, waiting like those who watch for the morning. But the dawn doesn’t come to us. Rather we move into the dawn, simply by virtue of being on the revolving earth. The light is fixed; we are the ones who shift. No, time doesn’t heal all wounds. But “moving through” leavens our experience with a lot of grace. Even if we do nothing, the ground under our feet is moving us, and there’s little we need to do but pause. When I was a child in Houston, people would say, “If you don’t like the weather in Texas, wait a minute.” 

Most things in life are like the weather in Texas. 

As part of Caroline’s high school graduation celebration, we invited grandparents and other family to share the answers to two questions: “what do you know for certain?” and “what is still a mystery to you?” 

The mysteries were delightfully varied, but most answers to the first question were variations on “this too shall pass.” For these wise elders, moving through often means trusting the passage of time.

In a recent conversation, trauma specialist Bessel van der Kolk talked about how different cultures cope with suffering. In Northern European and US cultures, he quipped, we typically talk or we drink (or take medication). Other cultures move their bodies together more than we do. “We’re not very good at singing together and moving together,” he says. “You go to China after a disaster and people are doing qigong together, and so that’s interesting, or tai chi. And you go to Brazil, and you see people practice capoeira. [And you think], are they practicing capoeira because it looks good to the tourists, or are they practicing capoeira because it does something to the way they relate to their bodies and their sense of self-control?”

Exercise helps us move through. So does tending a garden. Calling a friend. Taking action for others. Dancing. Sometimes, not always, we look up from our movements to discover the thing that “too shall pass” has passed. We usually don’t notice it until we’re looking back, though. In the moment, things are better, then worse again, then better. And they’re only marginally better, imperceptibly better. And then, 1 percent better than that. Or 0.01 percent. 

Moving through needn’t be dramatic; it can also be subtle. Movement includes the motion of our belly up and down as we breathe, unable to do anything else. Or the sense of being carried along by friends. 

After civil-rights pioneer John Lewis’s death in 2020, I delighted in the videos that were shared of him in the latter years of his life, full of hard-won joy, and often dancing or moving his body in some way. My favorite is of a seventy-six-year-old Lewis, crowd-surfing on a late-night talk show. When a journalist asked him about it later, he said, “It was amazing. I just wanted people to keep me up. . . . I’ve been beaten and arrested and jailed a few times. So [I figured I’d] just go with the flow. I thought it would be OK. And it did work out.”

Reflect 

Consider the difference between getting through and moving through. What does each phrase connote? 

Practice 

What helps you move through? Practice some of that this week.

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What I’m Up To

If you, too, are longing to move through your days in the spirit of dancing and breathing and tending, I’m cooking up something special for supporting subscribers this summer. I’ll announce that in a post to them next week, but if you’d like in, you can upgrade your subscription. To sweeten the deal and just for fun, I’m doing a giveaway—anyone who upgrades in the next week is entered into a drawing for one of two gift packs: a signed copy of all three of my books, plus an additional goodie or two. Members and friends of Trinity Presbyterian Church can receive complimentary gift subscriptions; just ask.

Seventy comments and counting: here’s the latest—and penultimate—Ted Lasso discussion. Sigh:

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Link Love

When I was on Facebook, I would post a video of this song every Memorial Day in the U.S.… John Gorka’s “Let Them In,” based on a poem found in a hospital in the Philippines during World War II, attributed to Elma Dean. I’ve heard it said that every great war movie is an anti-war movie. Similarly, this song has peace at its heart.

Steady on.