Death With Benefits

Reconstruction is complicated. The length of the process we’re in can sometimes leave us longing for simpler times, or at least more simplistic ways of seeing the world. Not so much in missing the ideas themselves that we used to hold, but in nostalgia for that sense of clarity we used to feel (or think we felt) while holding them.

It’s not the same for everyone, but there’s a particular tension which can exist when you find yourself A) no longer attached to these former certainties, and yet B) missing the confidence and sense of self they gave you. You can change or lose your theology all day long, but it’s the former sense of mission and identity and purpose going away that really tends to be more difficult. And the gravity of that is something that comes and goes in waves.

I guess the main point here is simple: Reconstruction is not all happy dances and lightness of being. Plenty of the process will take us into the shadows.

If we don’t deal with trauma, we will perpetuate the cycle of it, weaponize it, and even develop an unhealthy dependence on it for a new identity, living only from our pain… But even in dealing with it, trauma can have a way of fighting back. It can rebound, it can cling, it can trigger.

It can even leave you longing for those simpler days when the world was black and white.

The process of reconstruction is so worth it.
But it’s tough.
It can be frustrating.
And it’s hard work.