Elephants in the Room

(Photo: Dan Scofield)

My stomach tightens around my breakfast as I try to recount the week I’ve had. I’m scribbling on my coffee cup with the pen I can’t bear to use to journal about this week. I’m shaking in fury. I’m pitted with anxiety. I am heavy with grief. This week, I feel as though the pits of Hell opened up and belched on my life. In more ways than one. (Literally, has anyone stepped outside into this 95-degree weather?) Little by little, day by day, things have happened to chip away at my optimism, and obliterate my happiness. Each time I’ve gotten up, I have been knocked back down to the point where I am ready to resign to hopelessness.

I can’t get to the turnaround of this post until I explain the gravity with which this week utterly yanked me to the ground and dragged me through the dirt.

It started on Sunday, my birthday. It was my last day in Louisville before I moved to Branson, and I tried to start it off right with my usual routine: learning language and reading my Bible over coffee on the back porch, on an impossibly beautiful day. We Facetimed Heather and Ben, I opened some of my presents, and my little sister Bella melted my heart by giving me a ukulele she paid for all by herself with all her birthday money. All was happy as it could be, and my boyfriend was on his way down to see me. That is when we learned of an unexpected death in his family.

How do you even find words to comfort those who experience the death of a loved one? If my heart was in my feet, I couldn’t imagine how he must have been feeling. How do you deal with such a fresh wave of pain for someone whose happiness you care so much about? I wanted to make it all go away, but of course it isn’t that simple. We skirted around the rest of my birthday celebration with feigned pleasantry, but there is no real way to remedy that scarring news. In fact, to ignore it would feel like an injustice. It plain freaking sucks.

The next day, things got harder. I left my family, my boyfriend, and my dog standing in my driveway to drive eight hours west, with my apartment in my car, to restart my life… again. It is never easy repotting your life and starting anew, and it is always accompanied by a grieving period, no matter how positive the change. I always have a good cry in my car on my way to my next new place.

But as more and more vibrant green mountains came into view, I began to viscerally recall the sweet life in Branson I knew and loved and would be returning to. This was the moment I had been waiting for since the day my last contract ended on November 24th. Though I would miss my boyfriend and family sorely, I was determined I was going to enjoy my time in Branson. I couldn’t wait to move into my new apartment, jump in the lake, see my friends and my twin, and pursue my performing career again. I was two hours away from Branson, and more elated than ever when I got the call. The Showboat would no longer be using our cast this season due to cuts from the Corona virus, and I no longer had a job.

Attempts to describe what went through my head would be fruitless and inadequate. It was a living nightmare. I was shocked, furious, in denial, devastated, hopeless, lost, depressed. Suddenly, the “Showboat Branson Belle” billboards I was passing on the highway turned from symbols of happy anticipation to bitter betrayal. Every theatre, every restaurant, every old street I passed that previously held memories of warmth and happiness had been soured. It was like taking a gulp of spoiled milk. I chugged it as I raced along the highway in burning anger, on my way to the place where I suddenly no longer belonged. I wanted to feel it go down my esophagus, to let it burn out my insides, because I didn’t want to feel. I was so angry. I was so beside myself. I looked at everything I passed and let the memories course through my neural paths. This wasn’t even happening anyways.

Unfortunately, it was happening. The threads of my perfect plan were unraveling at a rapid speed. I couldn’t put my life back together faster than it was utterly falling apart before my eyes. My roomie and would-be coworker and I got screwed over in more ways than one. She had signed a six-month lease at the apartment we were moving into an hour before they called her with the news. For two days we were on the phone continuously with our leaders pleading with them to let us keep some form of our jobs. They kept us in limbo for two days, but zero compromise was found. Even when we asked for a relocation stipend or bail out money for our lease to cover the inconveniences of our fruitless move, they couldn’t even do that. I was beside myself with anger as I realized the company that I thought had stood apart from Disney World in their superb treatment of their employees suddenly fell into the same old category with the other list of companies that had royally screwed me over. I felt betrayed, hurt, lost, like I was falling through the air with no parachute and nothing to grab onto.

Tuesday, after hearing the final verdict of this news, I moved my stuff into the apartment anyways. Because this wasn’t happening. And what the heck else was I supposed to do? I cut my ties in Louisville. I relocated. I made a life change. I had no real other options. The rug had been pulled out from under me, and I didn’t know how to not follow through with this plan. I had no material to even improvise with. Everything had been taken from me, at the very last minute, with no time for me to even make other plans. I saw all my things moved into this new apartment that I so desperately wanted to feel like home, but just didn’t after all that had happened. I felt so sad.

That night Heather and I watched her tiny hamster Gus-Gus gasp for air until we couldn’t bear it anymore and went to bed. We didn’t want to leave him alone but didn’t know what else to do at midnight. The next morning, poor Gus-Gus was dead. We buried him with flowers on one of our favorite trails. It was so sad. Now I felt sorry for Heather, and Joel, and me.

In the following days, the emotional bully fest continued. I tried to go to the grocery store, but my car had trouble (I fixed it). I found a tick in my leg (I flushed the bastard). I broke an entire jar of pickles on our new kitchen floor (I cleaned it up without a dustpan). I found out my grandma had a mini stroke (luckily, she is okay). I mean what the heck even gives? Does it never end?

I feel utterly beat down. I feel lost. I have no inkling of a lead. No idea what I want to do. I am devastated. I am on breakdown number who knows what of this week. I know that Showboat, or no Showboat, I love Branson. It feels like home to me. It does something magical to my spirit. But the unemployment CARES act is up in July and I’m going to have to have a job by then or get out. With the global pandemic going on and the terrible racial tension in our nation already sizzling, this week has been the personal climax of 2020 for my family and me. There is no good answer. There is no prominent solution. I am just playing a major waiting game. Waiting for an opportunity. Waiting for a rainbow. Waiting for God to open a door. I am at an ultimate low, an ultimate loss.

But here is the thing. I refuse to go down without a fight. I can’t sit down here like an angry little ant, shaking my fist at the elephants around me. That isn’t going to get me anywhere, and my anger won’t even be heard. This is not an effective way to bring justice to my situation. If I’m going to grow to the size of those elephants and really stand a chance against my circumstances, I am going to have to stop being angry, and reroute my methods. I will have to take the beaten path, the long way around. Though it may seem roundabout, though it may look like weakness, I am going to have to walk the backroads of acceptance and perseverance. I aim to kick this year in the balls, oh yes, I do. But I will do it with the taste, grace, and elegance of a lady in pearls, silk gloves, and six-inch heels.

If this year and this week has taught me anything, it is that life is never done dealing you crappy hands. Even when you think you are done being beat up, you get thrown another punch. But that can’t keep us from standing up straight after each one. This year sucks so hard. This week has been the worst week imaginable. But I can’t waste more time in sorrow when I could be finding a way to break through this sh**show like the badass I know I can be. Pardon my French, but if any week deserves to be described with dirty words it is this one.

My life feels totally screwed. But I can’t help experience joy as I meditate on the sehnsucht feelings this situation has induced. I am not happy, but through my bitter sorrow, I can rejoice in my salvation in Jesus Christ. I rejoice that I will one day exist in an eternity where there will be no more pain, or suffering, or stress, or insomnia, or betrayal, or death, or acne, or Corona virus, or racism, or furloughed jobs, or financial problems, or sadness, or hatred. All of that will be taken away from me. All that will be taken away from this earth. I will exist with my creator in beautiful harmony, in eternal paradise. It is coming. Oh, it is coming. I would love for Jesus to take me this very second, so I never have to see the darkness of this world again. But I know it doesn’t work that way.

Until then, I know I must stay strong while I wait out the rest of this year. I am sitting here at my favorite coffee shop in Branson, looking out the window at the rain, trying to regain some semblance of normal after this hellish week. Whether it is a blissful illusion of normalcy, or if things really are going back to normal now, I don’t know yet. I’m still bracing myself a little bit for whatever on earth comes next.

In world-rocking circumstances like these, I am forced to ponder the grandness of life, and what that all really means. With the way I move around so much, I frequently see my life play back to me on a highlight reel. It sends my heart reeling through all the good and bad and beautiful and ugly things that have ever happened to me. I’ve maybe been through more life changes in my 25 years on this earth than some people have been through in their entire lives. But I wouldn’t trade it. It constantly forces me to keep an open mind, to see a new perspective, and to remain adaptable, able to improvise. I say all this to support this thought: when life shakes you up in such a radical way, sometimes there is no other way to adequately respond than just in pure, total opposition. So, as I sit here, in my new favorite jeans, with my trusty journal, and my thoughts tried and true, I can’t help but experience this strange but genuine, imposing gratitude for the things I do have.

For the wonderful memories I have in Branson and on the Showboat, even if they were shorter lived than I was expecting them to be. For my beautiful, loving family. For my incredible, selfless boyfriend. For my wonderful, supportive group of friends here that have lifted me up and helped me laugh to diffuse some of this absurdly abundant cortisol. For the love and kind words I have received from those on social media. For a beautiful apartment with my own bedroom and bathroom and a view of the mountains, that I get to share with someone who has truly become a dear friend to me. For mountains, and rivers, and lakes, and star-studded skies, all laced with warm memories, and comparable in my mind to Narnian wonders. For curvy hills to drive on. For wineries on every corner. For my ukulele, my new hiking boots, and camping gear. For an able, healthy body to use them. For the unemployment I was approved for so I could stay in this place a little longer. For the potential of moving forward. And for the promise of a joyful life – not a happy one – not an easy one – but a joyous one, lived in Christ my savior. These are the things I cling onto.

I am flying by the seat of my pants. I am not happy. Life is not easy. But I have hope. I have faith. The light is here. It always will be. In the midst of this trying time, though I am weary, I can truly say, my heart leaps and fizzles with an impossible joy at the eternal promise and the blessings I’ve been given. There will always be reason to celebrate in God’s kingdom.

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“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” - James 1:1-2

“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” – Habakkuk 3:17-18

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;perseverance, character; and character, hope.” - Romans 5:3-4

“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” – 1 Peter 1:8-9

“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” – Psalm 118:24

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