Unbuttoning

I spent Thanksgiving week with a cold, which was maybe not as bad as you think. We didn’t travel, and what plans we cancelled were minimal and easily rescheduled. I just had to spend a few nights sleeping on the couch and coughing way more than I’d like. It’s not forever, and was in some ways relaxing.

The best thing about having a cold, I think, is the lowered expectations. When I have a cold, I don’t wake up thinking about how much I can accomplish. Rather, I gauge how I feel and adjust accordingly. Last week, I read one novel (Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger) and half of another (Anthony Marra’s Mercury Pictures Presents). I got caught up on two Prime Video series (The Peripheral and Outer Range). And I didn't feel guilty about wasting time or not being productive.

So there’s that.

Still, though.

On the other hand, the worst part of having a cold for me is the brain fog that inevitably descends on my consciousness. I am normally a quick and vigorous thinker, and when my cranial processor isn’t up to speed, I feel it like I imagine an athlete feels an injury. I could function, just not as well as I know I should.

This time around, the struggle manifested itself with buttons.

Fall, as any good Midwesterner knows, is flannel season—too cold for short sleeves, but not yet chilly enough for sweaters. The key to comfort is layers, and the outer shell might as well be the soft, comforting plaids of a quality flannel.

Turns out, though, that buttoning said flannels is no easy task when cold viruses shut down portions of one’s brain. More than once last week, I reached the top button on my shirt, only to realize that I had misaligned the buttons and buttonholes way back at the bottom. So buttoned, a shirt is wrong in every way—the way it hangs, the way it feels, the ridicule from family and friends that it invites. It’s an intolerable state, one that must be undone.

I realize that we’re talking about a thoroughly minimal loss of time here. I realize that an mis-buttoned shirt is an everyday hassle that, by any measure, is no big deal. I know this. And yet having a cold inevitably blows everything about of proportion. About the third time I realized that I’d gotten off in my buttoning, I felt a rage burning with an intensity far beyond what was justified in the moment. For a brief second, I considered trashing anything in my closet without a zipper, just so I wouldn’t have keep fighting through the same problem, day after day.

And that, my friends, is middle life in a nutshell.

As I write this, the calendar is speeding toward the end of my forty-eighth year on planet Earth. While there is much of my life that I’m happy with so far, I’m more aware than ever that time is running out to make any significant changes—particularly in terms of vocation. I have now spent 23 years as a pastor. Retiring at the traditional age of 65 would mean that I have 17 more years to work. I’m roughly two-thirds of the way through my professional life. In other words, the buttons are climbing. I’m not sure how well-aligned they are, and I’m not sure what can be done about that.

Surprising? Of course not. Cliche? Maybe a little. But real to me nonetheless.

The thing about a mis-buttoned shirt is that cannot simply be cast aside. It must be unbuttoned first, the entire thing undone before anything new—whether a fresh try at successful alignment or a rejection of the whole endeavor in favor of a hoodie—can happen.

The prospect of undoing is maybe the most frightening part of reconsidering your life in middle age. I have more invested in my professional life than I once did, and less time to make up ground—financially, yes, but in terms of meaning and purpose also. I am more sensitive than I used to be to what I have to lose, and more likely to view change in terms of potential loss rather than potential reward.

So where does all of this leave me? In this season of Hallmark movies, I know the answer should be that I’m at the beginning of the plot, looking for that inciting incident that will move the story forward in (by Hallmark standards, anyhow) unexpected ways. The truth is more complicated. I can’t see how all this searching will turn out.

Why bring it up then?

Because these last few months I’ve had so many conversations—soooooo many!— with people in the same boat that I am. Friends who are facing down the loss of a job or the dissolution of a family or the death of a dream. For a lot of them, the death of a loved one would be easier to explain. Almost every adult can empathize with that kind of loss. The pain of these other losses is different, however, and maybe unique to each of us. It feels terribly lonely.

So it’s worth naming isolation for what it is—the best weapon in the arsenal of whatever forces of darkness may be at work in our world. When we are alone, we are weak and vulnerable and unlikely to find our way. Being alone—or even feeling alone—is enough to keep us pinned in despair.

But it takes surprisingly little support for most of us to keep going. It’s not hard to feel depressed, even in a crowd. But it is very difficult to give up when at least one person is urging you on.

A reminder then. As we get deeper into life, making real change requires increasing degrees of unmaking, which produces more than its share of grief and desperate feelings. But unbuttoning is the necessary first step to something new. And however frustrating it may be to feel ourselves adrift, we are not alone.