#12 Bonfires in the Night

Today I have been reflecting a lot on music. Is a coping mechanism that doesn’t lead to dark places a bad thing? Is it bad to be reserved, leaving an isolated place for your feelings? And is it wrong to rely on that place to lick your wounds, when your wounds just keep on coming? Or should we be looking for a better way to face the oncoming storms of winter? I’m not sure. 

To reiterate, I’m trying to extrapolate from my own experience with music. Growing up, it was where I lived and breathed. It was a source of life for me. Honestly, it was probably my only source of life. Everything else was dark and dreary, but music was there to create rhythmic release from my everyday world. 

And with all this talk of cold and bonfires and frostbite and fireplaces, I can’t help but wonder: where do these two ideas meet? Music was my bonfire, my source of warmth when growing up was frost-bittenly cold. And yet, I still have nightmares about my time overseas. I still have angry feelings at certain memories surrounding where I grew up. All those feelings are still there, but so was my fireplace. Where do these two puzzle pieces connect? 

I know I said in one of the first entries that having a bonfire doesn’t make winter any less cold. You’re still plenty exposed to the elements, sometimes more than you’d like (or perhaps, even ought to be.) As the winds swirl around you and the bonfire you’ve built wages war against mother nature’s relentless fury, you still get caught up in the crossfire and suffer near-permanent damage. Damage that must be treated, or else you may not survive. 

Alright, that sounded a little dramatic. Calm down, calm down, nobody’s dying here. But I think the point is that coping mechanisms are still just that. They’re ways to keep from dwelling in the pain, protecting us from over-hurting. But the tragic reminder is that we all must un-hurt at some point in our lives. We have to break open those wounds and heal them properly. Whatever the cold experience is, we have to learn to thaw out properly, or else we’ll make a mess, and possibly even get in even more trouble. 

It kind of reminds me of going to a chiropractor. I recently started going to one because I work on my feet all day. On the one hand, I feel great. I used to wake up stiff as a board, praying with all my heart that today doesn’t wind up being the day that my back inevitably gives out. Now I wake up ready to rock and roll. Sure, I get a little tense during the day, but that’s the normal wear-and-tear of the body, and I know that full-well. 

But I also feel a new sense of pain that I wasn’t having before. Muscles that used to have it easy are now being asked to carry their weight (literally,) and they don’t like it. I’m sore in places I haven’t been sore in for years, and some tasks were actually more difficult for a while. I can’t say that the entire process has been fun, but it has been very good. 

Why am I telling you all of this? I think it’s the perfect analogy to describe the cold. Going into the cold, we find our coping mechanisms. We hit the gym, listen to music, maybe even isolate a little. And as we make it through the harsh winter, we start to get kind of comfortable in our rhythm. It may not be perfect, but at least it’s safe, and it works. 

But we need to come back out and sometimes that actually hurts more than staying in place. But deep down, something in all of us knows that there’s something more real out there for us. That there’s more that we’re hiding from. That we have to deal with. And we need to take wise steps to sort ourselves out properly or we may make a mess, possibly even finding ourselves worse off than where we started.

So think about your life and begin to tweak the balance between your situation and your coping mechanisms. Try to examine what you’re coping with and see if you can’t change some of it. But not just externally, but internally as well. Vent those feelings that have been eating away inside. Find a friend to talk to, cry if you dare. Do whatever you have to so that you can get up and live again. 

I pray that God provides you with the guidance you need, and that His mighty hand carries you to wherever you need to be.

Until Next Time

May Peace be your Guide.