The Strong One
Today was the day: I finally threw away the necklace.
It was time to stop holding onto it, to do what I wanted to do for so long, but kept second-guessing myself about.
The necklace, a golden key on a chain with the word "strength" etched onto it--a gift that never sat well with me from the moment I opened it.
But I was supposed to receive it and I was supposed to like it. So I even posted on social media about it, despite my internal conflict.
You're not supposed to question the wisdom of the dying. They receive saint status before they pass; every word from their lips, every gift from their hands should be revered and cherished.
But it is not so. A slow death is for sure an illuminating experience, but it doesn't mean (as much as everyone would assert) that the dysfunctional patterns that person was trapped in in life all disappear, or that they are right in all they do and say.
In many ways, the dysfunction not only continues, but exacerbates. But for those without a death sentence, we're supposed to hold our tongue. In "normal" circumstances, we might start to have confrontational conversations and/or set boundaries, or start to retreat from a relationship. But not when they're dying. You show up. You suck hard and swallow down all the bad and hurt feelings. You overlook the slights, the self-absorption. You no longer matter much more than bringing comfort and support. Your trials are trivial in light of theirs, your stories inconsequential.
And you never, ever say any of that out loud. (I hear the gasps, see the imaginary jaws dropping even now.)
So when such a gift is presented, you pretend that you like it and that you cherish it, instead of resenting it.
But over time, you realize that while nothing what said in words about what her expectations for you were after she passed, that this gift bore explicitly a command to be strong and implicitly a command to be strong for others, specific others.
A command I balk at, a command I refuse. Some of her loving gestures--and I of course could be wrong--were inconspicuous ways of controlling beyond the grave. We may have had to hold our tongues in those final months, but we can break free of that kind of control when she's no longer here to exert it.
We watched Encanto last night, and I loved it so much. It was so liberating. When the strong sister Luisa sings her solo, revealing the cracks in her gift of strength, it was like chains falling off my soul.
I have been feeling this same anthem rise in me over the last couple of years. I am expected to be the strong one. I have been told this for years. I have been bowing to everyone's requests to use my "gift of strength", just like Luisa, flitting about town lifting church buildings and everybody's asses (heh). And then I began to notice (like Luisa with the donkeys) that these things are heavy. And I am tired and need to rest sometimes and need other people to do the lifting sometimes.
This beautiful movie helped to liberate me and to bring me to the place of doing what I wanted to do for so long, getting rid of the necklace...the burden. As the movie teaches, we are not what we can do. We are not what our gifts are. We are the gift.
She was my gift and I was her gift...but for a limited time only. I don't think either of us understood that in life. Our expectations for each other were too high. We'd know better now. I know better now, because I was given the chance. And I won't carry the misunderstandings of what I was supposed to do into the time I have left.
We really don't understand legacy and we sentimentalize it. Just because someone dying expected something of you doesn't mean you can or will make your life about fulfilling their expectations. Sometimes they are desperate for someone else to take up the impossible yoke that they tried to carry during their life. They were never able to put it down and break free from it, so they see no other way than handing it off to someone else. It may even be the thing that broke them (we can't say, of course) and still, it has a hold. They can't let it go and they can't imagine it being let go.
It doesn't mean someone else should take it on. It means it should finally get broken and revealed for what it is.
And so I throw away the necklace and the explicit and implicit meaning, because it's what I need to do for myself and for my relationship to God and to people.
The Bible says that God's strength is made perfect in my weakness. That means that I am not the strong one. It means that I am the weak one and God is the strong one.
I am not the strong one and when people tell me (insist to me) that I am, it just means they're wanting me to carry them. I can't. At least not now, not any more. Maybe someday I will be stronger than I am now, but I will be running anyone's requests to carry them by the Holy Spirit for approval first.
For now, I'm saying a lot of no's. I have let go of many, many relationships. I am proceeding very carefully. I refuse to take on the adults that have been passed around as everyone's projects/burdens. I refuse to be the person that continues to allow the dysfunction.
That will not be the legacy that I carry out. I will not pass on the strength key to someone else (this is what I was supposed to do). I throw the key in the garbage and I will pass on telling people that they don't have to be the strong one either.
I am not the strong one and anytime I make myself the strong one for someone else means that they are avoiding God being the strong one for them. They need to learn how God's strength can be made perfect in their weakness, just like I am learning that. Me being the strong one just gets in the way of his work.
I admit my cracks. I admit my limitations. Sometimes I, like Luisa, need a hammock and to be served by someone else's ass (heh).
I will point people to God, the true Strong One. Any other direction will disappoint them anyway.
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