Not Easy

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Grey's Anatomy.  It's also no secret that over the last seven years that the show has been airing, God has regularly borrowed the characters voices, and especially the words of the opening and closing monologues to speak directly to my heart.

That happened again this week.

I was in a bad mood last night when I transcribed the monologue from the newest episode for posting on the Grey's Monologues blog that I also maintain as a sort of hobby.  This hasn't been the easiest of weeks, and yesterday was a day where the "not easyness" of the week was flaunting itself.  Everything from really crude fellow public transit passengers (on both modes of transit I took, in both directions), to generally crappy weather (it is, after all, January in Canada), to some health issues and just a generally funky sort of mood were making the challenges of the week that much harder to cope with, and I was mid pity party when I decided that the next thing on my "to do" list for the day would be to watch the latest episode of Grey's, and transcribe the monologue for the week.

This is the monologue that I transcribed:

People are really romantic about the beginnings of things.  Fresh start.  Clean slate.  A world of possibility.  But, no matter what new adventure you're embarking on, you're still you.  You bring you into every new beginning in your life, so how different can it possibly be?

It's all anybody wants, right?  Clean slate.  A new beginning.  Like that's going to be any easier.  Ask the guy pushing the boulder up the hill.  Nothing's easy about starting over.  

Huh.

I typed those words, and was struck by them.  I heard God repeating them as they began to rattle around inside of me, echoing in the aching spaces I'd been filling with a pity party only moments earlier.

"Nothing's easy about starting over."

I forgot that.

I forgot it in the two days since I wrote about the fact that I'd also forgotten that the process of healing is painful.

I bought into the very churchy lie I've ranted about in the past.  The one that says that if God is in it, how could it be anything but easy?

I bought into that ridiculous lie in the same week I've been reading the book of Job as part of my chronological trip through the Bible this year.  Job.  One of my favorite books in the Scriptures.  The one I love because it speaks to the parts of me that understand what it is to be depressed, and the parts of me that know what it is to see life deconstruct itself beneath you.  Job.  Because there's so much in that story that screams that new beginnings and life with God will be easy.

(I'm rolling my eyes here.)

It's kind of a bleak truth, that one that I forgot.  "Nothing's easy about starting over."

But last night it encouraged me.

Because I think I was expecting it to be easy - this year of healing and new beginnings.

This sorting out life after some major decisions.

This figuring out the whole being a student, but not yet in the arena I want thing.

This whole change careers and life directions thing.

The thing where I let the raw wounds be exposed so they can be healed.

I thought it was going to be easy, and I've been in a funk, feeling forgotten and disgusted and generally grouchy at the world because it hasn't been.

But somehow, that reminder, in Grey's last night, that was what it took.

It won't be easy.  But that doesn't mean I'm alone.

(I love that God speaks to me via a primetime soap opera.)

It won't be easy.  But I'm not alone.

God is with me, and, as a friend reminded me, when I emailed her the monologue, there are friends journeying with me too.