During The Fallout

by: Elexis Penner

 

Here’s what I get for trying to be a good person…

 

It finally hit me. I actually figured out how to keep the tub clean. I put a container of Comet on the shelf in the tub. Then while conditioning or whatever, I can do a quick, 30-second scrub in one area each day or so and, voila!! My tub will always be clean. I’m sure there’s some skin contact involved and it does have that little skully hand symbol on the container, but doesn’t everything these days?

 

I guess maaaaaybe part of the problem was that I neglected to label the container, because I thought – it’s Comet. One day at supper, my husband asks, “What’s that container of blue stuff in the tub?” I told him it was bathroom cleaner and I use it for quick cleans while I’m showering.

 

My oldest son looks up from his burger and says, “I thought that was a body scrub. I used it a few times.”

 

Needless to say no one was especially impressed. My husband in particular, gave me ‘the look’ until I was like, “OKAY!! Maybe it was a bad idea...” I mean aren’t Comet and Fast Orange practically the same thing?

 

We’re laughing about it now. Mostly.

 

But what about when you’ve done something that you can’t quite look back and laugh about? What about those mistakes with actual repercussions? Where maybe the fallout hasn’t totally settled and you’re not really sure where everyone will land.

 

During the fallout, I tend to go into a full on panic about everything I’ve ruined. And when I let myself go far enough along this path, it doesn’t even matter what the outcome is anymore – bad, or less bad – if it isn’t actually ruined, I pre-ruin it with apprehension and negativity. My husband bears the brunt of most of this – I try to look like a nice, normal person to the rest of polite society.

 

I read a quote on the interwebs that said, “Being ashamed of your past is absolutely insane. Learn from it. Don’t let it debilitate you. New Day. New Love. New Mind. Every morning.”

 

This is not to trivialize our past; minimizing the effects of our choices is not the same thing as not being ashamed. I love this quote, BUUUUUTTTTTTTTT… in the moment, it’s soooo hard to remember it.

 

Subconsciously, I thought that if I didn’t punish myself for my sins, it’s like I’m getting off too easy. Maybe deep down it’s our way of ‘making it up’ to everyone. As though, if we punish ourselves it’ll be a quicker road back to being right with the world. No one wants to feel bad. No one wants to face the reality of what we’re capable of. Maybe punishing ourselves is how we do our time in order to get back into right and good society.

 

And yet, this is not how God operates. Yes, we are capable of terrible things. Everyone is. Philip Yancey writes that, “Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.” If we can catch a glimpse of even a tiny bit of that, it’s a game changer. Especially at the lowest part, and especially when the game seems like it might be over.

 

Self-punishment does nothing to transform us; it only serves as a made-up story about how awful we are. And how can we learn from the terrible things if we are in a constant state of debilitating shame? Seriously. It’s an almost fail-safe way of getting history to repeat itself. I know this.

 

The path of shame runs from the pain of the situation, and turns to self-made pain – which has no end date. And invariably requires some type of self-medication. But the path of learning means that while we will have to wade into the pain of the situation, there is also the tiny little proviso that maybe we might actually get through it.

 

In her book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott writes, “But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you want is clarity and resolution, what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on.”

 

Sometimes in the middle of the fallout, I get so I can barely breathe. But if I have either of my wits about me, I stop everything else and do only that. Breathe. I breathe the prayer of Help. No frantic scrambling to fix everything. No contingency plans if this happens vs. that happens.

 

And I’d like to say that when I breathe this prayer that a cosmic magic wand sweeps over my life and fixes all the things. But what usually happens is nothing. Well not nothing, exactly. But to be fair, even the ability to stop and have a single honest and rational thought is sometimes a small miracle.

 

And this is enough to keep going.