Uncertainty and the Embrace of Sacred Gifts
Close your eyes and you’ll picture him—a rail-thin boy running from his puppy, shrieking with laughter and fear. He’s still learning to work his stretched out limbs, and his voice has not yet settled on a tone after its pubescent free fall. Everything about him is in transition. Our boy is covered from head to toe with uncertainty.
The dog, in contrast, is small and much more at ease with herself. Sure, she looks like a shaggy plush toy—a walking blond carpet with little dark eyes—but there is a strange intentionality about her that I didn’t expect. When the smaller boys chase her, she chases back; when they play rough, she bares her teeth and takes aim. But she responds differently to the uncertain boy. She doesn’t bite him. And when he starts to scream, her movements slow, and she grows calm.
This bodes well for Jack, our boy with autism and fierce anxiety, because this dog is to be more than a pet. She’s a three-month old Labradoodle, and in two weeks, she will begin training to become his service dog.
When he sees her walking around the house by herself, he gets nervous. When the laughing shrieks begin, we have to remind him, “Jack, she’s not running after you. She’s being nice. You should pet her!” That’s been a tough sell for him. When the anxious switch is flipped on, all he can see is the uncertainty of the situation: when no one is holding the dog’s leash, there is much to fear.
Eleven months ago, I sat on a bench in my favorite town—Cannon Beach, Oregon—and watched the birds patrol the dawn. To say it was a perfect morning wouldn’t do justice to the way my heart felt. The truth is, I was full to bursting surrounded by that art—the purple skies behind Haystack Rock, and the seagulls playing tag with the unhurried waves.
It was an off-brand experience for me. I’m the guy who talks about the mingling of gladness and sorrow, after all. But that day there was no shadow, just light. There were no tears, just beauty. There was no sadness, just hope that there might be more days like it–that life might be more than aching joy.
The possibility brought me to tears. I felt like Lucy, discovering the magic of a wardrobe to another world.
Then, two weeks later, Janae got cancer, and the spell was broken.
Janae’s death has loomed large over our lives this year. I won’t bother you with the mundane details of mourning, because many of you mourned with us. It is pretty run-of-the-mill stuff anyway. We’ve cried until we thought we were done. Then, a new holiday comes, and we feel it all over again. Who knew grief would cycle with the seasonal sales at Walmart?
No, I won’t bother describing it all, but I will say this: her death felt to me like a Divine bait-and-switch. And maybe I was just too sentimental in the first place. Maybe I read too much into the magic of that morning. Maybe it’s on me. But for a handful of days, I took the experience as a promise that I might be able to switch joy off and on like a light switch. I thought it meant I had some control over my own inner world. But tragedy doesn’t work like that. When a storm comes, you don’t choose for the power to go out. It just goes out.
There’s a funny thing we’ve seen with Jack and his dog. All he has to do to relax is to pick up Leeli’s leash. He takes it in his hand, turns around, and starts to smile. And I think to myself, “You know she could still get you, right? You’re not any safer than you were three seconds ago.”
When I first saw this, I thought about how even the illusion of control can calm our fears. If we can convince ourselves that we’re the boss of something—anything, really—life can become suddenly manageable. The idea made me laugh.
I was wrong, though. This isn’t about Jack’s control over Leeli; it’s about his control over Jack. When he picks up the leash, he might not be any safer, but without question, he is braver. When he pulls the dog closer to him, he pulls his uncertainty closer, come what may. It is a posture both of surrender and of power: he is vulnerable, yes, but at least he is choosing his vulnerability. He is scrunching up his nose and letting his fears lick him in the face.
And I wonder if there isn’t something in this picture for me. For all of us. Because choosing joy will never be like flipping a switch. Not in a world where even good dogs turn on you. Not where cancer grows in secret, and doesn’t show its face until it’s too late. Some days, mourning overtakes us again, and the light switch will not work no matter how many times we flip it.
But even if we have little control over our circumstances, God has not left us powerless. Indeed, he has given us a choice: we can pick up the leash. We can choose to engage the uncertain days, even when our hearts are stuffed full of fear. If we do, we will cry sometimes, yes. But we will also find mornings of pure, unfiltered joy.
The perfect sky over Cannon Beach was not a promise that all will be well forever and always, or that I could henceforth amputate pain from laughter. Rather, it was a singular gift: a “sacred moment of delight,” as a friend called it. And I’ll be honest: I need more of such moments in this new decade. I need more sunrises; more rolling waves and dancing birds. I was not made to hide from such gifts; I was made to glory in them.
You were, too.
