The Return to Progress

"When suddenly you seem to lose all that you thought you had gained, do not despair. Your healing is not a straight line. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself, "All is lost. I have to start all over again." This is not true. What you have gained, you have gained. Sometimes little things build up and make you lose ground for a moment. Fatigue, a seemingly cold remark, someone's inability to hear you, someone's innocent forgetfulness, which feels like rejection--when all these come together, they can make you feel as if you are right back where you started. But try to think about it instead as being pulled off the road for a while. When you return to the road, you return to the place where you left it, not to where you started."

--Henri J.M. Nouwen

Multiple times a day, every single day, I lament that I have lost ground in my struggle for spiritual and emotional growth. It is like when I was losing weight back in high school, and I would stick to my rigid diet for a month, completely faithfully, only to devour a piece of chocolate cake or an oversized bowl of ice cream, giving into ridiculous temptation and then saying to myself "look at all the ground I have lost." But that one piece of cake did not ruin my progress; it did not defeat the previous month's worth of work. It was merely a relapse into old, bad behavior. Kipling reminds us

The dog returns to his vomit
and the sow returns to her mire,
And the burnt fool's bandaged finger
goes wobbling back to the fire.

I can usually feel it coming on, that temptation to pry a little too much into somebody else's life, as the outflow of my own low self esteem and insecurity. Or perhaps it manifests itself in my anxious behavior, seeking immediate reassurance to satisfy my own craving for recognition and affection. What is most difficult about these times when I feel like I have obliterated months worth of work is that it most directly affects the lives of people for whom I care the most. Sometimes it takes an even more insidious pathway, where I will intentionally make negative comments about myself knowing that the other person will respond by praising or complementing me. I feel so guilty that I manipulate people to boost my own self-esteem.

Or perhaps I will make myself better by keeping a record of other people's wrongs or missteps, by thinking to myself when they criticize me "Well I remember this and that time when you did this." But this is not loving behavior either. The Apostle Paul reminds us in his first letter to the Church at Corinth that "love...keeps no record of wrongs." This is a particularly difficult admonition by which to live. We are not naturally prone to forgetful forgiveness.

Yet, even though these things happen on a daily basis, I cannot discount the miles I have traveled. Like Nouwen says, it is not so much that I have to start over, but just return to the road on which I was traveling. It is more a matter of focus and diligence than reconstructing a path.

We all have those things with which we struggle. Perhaps we are trying to get rid of a particular part of our past, but we find ourselves letting it once again rule our lives. We cannot ignore the progress we have made, for perhaps we have kept that out of our lives for quite some time, but it rears its head for a day. That is not regress, it merely shows that there is more progress to be made. Or perhaps our struggle is in being kinder and more longsuffering with our co-workers or family, and we lash out or snap at them reflexively. The list of things we could be working on is endless, but we must not be wearied by the struggle, however wearying it is. For the result, if we persist, will be a peaceful and loving interraction with our fellow man, meaningful, mature relationships with friends, family, and significant other, and a cessation not of conflict or stress, but anger and anxiety.

Conflict and stress are natural parts of every life and every relationship, but when healthfully handled and managed, do not produce anger and anxiety. Let us continue to return to progress toward that end, even if there are setbacks along the way.