Hold On!

TAA's lonely, empty campus today--missing its humans.

          April 6.  That’s today.  Six weeks from today, TAA’s seniors will be done with academy.  Seven weeks from today the rest of TAA’s students will finish classes and then take their finals the rest of the week.  None of us knows how we are going to finish this school year—whether it will be online or in person.  I, for one, hope we can have a few days together to finish up this strangest of school years.  Now, however, we are still in the middle of the 4^th quarter.  Because of the Corona complications, things are beginning to pile up.  All we knew about before, but put off and put off until the last minute—well, for some of us, that last minute has come and gone and we are just now waking up to find ourselves in deep sneakers, as a friend of mine is fond of saying.

            For me, fourth quarter is almost always like this.  I feel pushed to the limit with deadlines.  I often look at myself and marvel how I ever managed to get into such a mess (yes, again) and why I thought this time would be different.  I keep hoping that maybe, just once, I’d find myself perfectly organized and in full control of my comings and goings.  But, I looked my life over last night, and sadly, I came up floundering once again.

            Maybe it’s not this way for everyone.  Maybe it’s just me.  Somehow, though, I don’t think so.  Every day Mr. Reynolds and I get frantic emails or text from our students and colleagues asking for help with technology or clarification on an assignment as we try, and too often fail, to accomplish all we need and want to do.  There is almost no time to think.  And yet when I do think about it, I ache inside.  There seems to be no hope in sight.  And, knowing that I am not alone, doesn’t help. 

            And knowing that there is good reason for this despair doesn’t help either.  I mean, look at your life:  How many times a day lately, never mind a week, do you get discouraged about things that are going on in your life?  How many times do you wake up in the morning and want to go right back to sleep because life just doesn’t seem worth getting out of bed for?  Maybe you can’t find anything to wear that looks good on Zoom.  Or your hair is out of control.  Or you didn’t get your homework done last night and now you don’t want to think about facing class and having to find an excuse (which you really don’t have).  Or you had a fight with your parents about spending too much time on one of your devices.  Or you had a fight with your best friend.  Or . . .

            Maybe today you feel reconciled to life.  But I know for a fact that at almost any given time, at least one person among us is unhappy with their life-situation.  Sometimes, I think we even revel in our despair.  If we act growlly enough, we might get someone—anyone’s--attention—which is really all we wanted in the first place, right?

            I read a survey the other day taken among 3,000 7th-12th grade students from six Protestant denominations.  Of those students surveyed, about 50% of the boys and more than 60% of the girls “frequently felt very sad or depressed last year.”  The study explored how students dealt with these feelings, and the findings were a little disturbing to me.  As many as 54% of them had considered suicide as a way out.  Up to 37% tried to find acceptance through sec, 70% drank alcohol alone or with friends, and more than 70% cheated on a school test at least once last year.

            What was disturbing to me, among many things, was that this was a study conducted among young people with strong religious ties—maybe even with serious religious education going on in school as well as the home and church.  Young people like you and me.  Young people who supposedly know all the commandments, all the lessons, all the promises in the Bible.  Young people who should therefore know better, if we’ve heard it so often, right?

            Well, you know as well as I do that we’re not really all that different from anyone else in the world.  Most of us succumb as easily as the next person to all the trials and tribulations of growing up and maturing.  Our songwriters write about it.   We join with our favorite groups to sing about it.  And they turn around and give us good advice—the same good advice we turn deaf ears to in our religion classes or at church or at home interestingly enough.  They tell us that if we’d only step back and get a little perspective, if we’d just hold on, things will work out.

            The sad thing to me about all this is that more often than not, we choose to be miserable when we could just as easily choose to be happy and content.  WE HAVE THAT CHOICE!   It is within our scope, within our context and reach, to be happy and successful young people, with limitless opportunities and potential—if we’d only CHOOSE the course of action which will give us that happiness and success—the course we all keep hearing about.

            The group Wilson Phillips sang a song a several years back that is particularly blunt about these choices we are making.  This is their observation:

I know this pain.

Why do you lock yourself up in these chains?

No one can change your life except for you.

Don’t ever let anyone step all over you.

Just open your heart and your mind.

Is it really fair to feel this way inside?

You could sustain

Or are you comfortable with the pain?

You’ve got no one to blame for your unhappiness.

You got yourself into your own mess

Lettin’ your worries pass you by.

Don’t you think it’s worth your time

to change your mind?

Don’t you know?

Don’t you know things can change?

Things’ll go your way

If you hold on for one more day.

Can you hold on for one more day?

            Of course, it’s not quite as easy as all that.  It never is.  But it is, quite honestly, not as hard as we make it out to be either.  Thinking positively.  Choosing to do our best.  Making the best and the most of everything we’re given that day.  Looking for ways to help others, focusing on their pain instead of our own.  Being honest with ourselves about what is important and what is not.  Establishing priorities.  Working together with the people we live and breathe with.  Accepting responsibility for who and what we are.  Constantly striving to improve our life rather than complacently accepting wherever we are at the moment. 

            Starting each day with God.  Placing our destiny in His hand at the beginning of each day is easily the most responsible and necessary thing we can do for ourselves to guard against the malaise and despair that tempt us.

            A lot of things hit their low points in fourth quarter—things like scholastic courage and many people’s spiritual experiences.  It’s a month for asking “Why,” for re-evaluating all those things we’ve taken for granted since last year—things like mild weather, decent grades, and our relationship with Jesus Christ.  Maybe it’s the crunch of classes or this year the unrelenting solitude of the Corona quarantine, but somehow this 4^th quarter forces us to be more candid—with ourselves, with our friends, with our God.  And that, for me, makes this quarter the most hopeful time of the whole year instead of the most depressing, for when we resolve to take each day moment by moment, hour by hour, we find that it is possible to be happy, that it is possible to succeed.  That things do change.  That things do start going our way.

            As I look at this upcoming week and I see what ought to be an impossible load of responsibility ahead of me, I am reminded that even though I have a lot to deal with, it is not an impossible lot.  I am reminded that if I realign my thinking to possibility instead of impossibility, I will know success instead of failure.  I will know satisfaction instead of despair.  And, if I put my day in God’s hands from the beginning, I will know peace instead of chaos. 

            This morning, I choose to hold my head up high, I choose to hold on and walk on with hope in my heart, knowing beyond all doubt and uncertainty that I will not be alone in this journey.  My hand will be in the hand of the One who can take me safely through any dark and stormy night or day.   I will not only be able to hold on, I will be held.  And I will make it through this day.  And the next.  I invite you to make that same choice with me today—and every day.  You will not regret it.  And you, too, if you just hold on, will walk on.