The Golden Year

After Christmas last year, I bought a daytimer in a moment of nostalgia for a similar one I had in Oxford. My Oxford one was purple, but this one was gold, which I thought fitting because, in my mind, 2012 was going to be a golden year. I think I expected this because 2011 was a time of transition and stress in various ways. I suppose I was trying to predict how God would work, that a year of pruning is followed by one of growth.

Yet, here in November, I am tempted to characterize 2012 by a list of its tragedies. I'm not trying to trivialize them down to a list of life lessons or try to find redemption where tears are more appropriate. But it is a human impulse, I think, to see a story emerge from disconnected pieces, and to reconcile expectations with reality.

The year started crumbling one April morning when I called my mom to confirm the news I'd found in my inbox: my fifteen-year-old cousin had committed suicide the night before. Even as I fought nausea, I understood, a little, why he did it. I remembered a day when that despair flickered across my own mind.

A few months later, I drove home from work with ashes falling on my truck as the smoke from the Waldo Canyon wildfire clouded my mind with fear. My roommate and I threw some hastily chosen belongings in our vehicles and drove to her family's house on the north end of town, where we watched the flames engulf homes. Not sure where they would stop. Helpless.

As Colorado was still recovering from the fire, the Dark Knight shooting made me wonder when will it end. When will life go back to normal? I remember thinking that the arrival of cold weather would make it safer. After the lethal summer, the rain and snow would blanket us in security again. Yet the fall brought another blow.

There had been rumblings of what was happening, bits of news and conversations. But when my dad called and said the doctors thought he might have cancer, that was no comfort. Lung cancer. Asbestos. Aggressive chemotherapy. All words I now need in this golden year. Good news now comes in pieces I seize like life rings. News that the cancer has not spread. That the chemo is working. While my dad's cancer is not always the first thought I have when I wake up, it's there by the time I hit the shower. The new normal.

A few days after I got the news, I was flipping through a gift catalog and saw a plaque with a quote from Winston Churchill: "If you're going through hell, keep going." And while it sounds irreverent, I think that's what God would say. He doesn't tell me this year's events are not so bad. He doesn't wave them off and tell me they're all for a greater purpose (even though they may well be). They are hell. They are the work of Satan on earth.

So why should I keep going? Why is it so tragic when someone doesn't keep going? It's easier to stop waiting for the golden year, for Tolkien's eucatastrophe, the sudden and unexpected turn for good.

I suppose what I'm trying to understand is that the eucatastrophe has already happened. Every so often I'll catch the faintest hint of an almost mythical joy trying to break through. As if the most beautiful story in the world has been true all along. Tolkien wrote that "the Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy."

Why do we keep going through hell? Because Christ already did. And while there is certainly cause for grief, there is none for fear. None. "We do not lose heart...for this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:16-17).

I think I can still call 2012 a golden year (1 Peter 1:7).