Uninvited and Unwanted and Unwelcomed

Uninvited and unwanted, the tiny, grey mouse -- no larger than a swollen, brown pecan from a backyard tree pumped full of fertilizer -- floated upside down in our beagle’s water bowl, an unwelcomed but necessary reminder that I needed to stop trying to control all uninvited, unwanted, and unwelcomed intrusions in my life. Because it wasn’t possible.

Our house is an ancestral home. It’s a relic, an antique, a remnant of history from over 100 years ago. It’s old by American standards, but it’s quaint and we love it. It’s been our home for 30 years, but it has its drawbacks. The mouse was one. For even though we built a new house inside the old one, there are holes in an old house only the microscopic can see for an old house rocks like a boat, cracking and lifting and sinking with the rain and the drought. And even though we have an exterminator four or five times a year, the mice find those cracks and visit from time to time. And even though we don’t want them to visit, they still come.

This time, that one mouse in Riley’s water bowl was all it took to frighten me -- not of him, but out of the past few months’ exhausting, time-wasting efforts to control what I had been unable to control.

And then the tornado in Dallas, where our youngest son and his wife live, reminded me of the same.  

A change had come over our lives, a change that was not invited or wanted or welcomed, but a change that was here to stay. And regardless of how hard “I raged against the dying of the light,” a time of rocking along easily through life had died for now, and a thorny time of more turbulence had come. And I couldn’t control it. And, believe me, I certainly tried.

Unfortunately, trying to stop the turbulent waves of change -- waves that washed away the comfortable rhythm of our lives and left, in their wake, exhaustion where there was once peace and discord where there had been harmony -- was exhausting everyone around me, too. Metaphorically, speaking that is. We’ve just finished reading Heart of Darkness in AP English, and I’m feeling quite Joseph Conradish at the moment. Regardless, some of us accept change easier than others; some of us need a mouse to jolt us out of whining for what once was and hoping for what still is to come.

I didn’t like this change in our lives. I wanted my old life back! And I was exhausted trying to accomplish just that.  Exhausted trying to regain the lovely, peaceful, rocking rhythm, the serenity that surrounded us each day,  I felt overpowered by gloom whose touch grew more profound, darkening our hopes and weighing us down. Or so it seemed. Metaphorically, of course. Hyperbolic, actually. Joseph Conradish. It’s hard to stop the Heart of Darkness once it starts.  

“Enough with the Conrad,” some of my seniors would say. And yes, they would be right – though not about Joseph Conrad as he is a brilliant writer. But it was time to stop trying to control the change. Time to stop the Heart of Darkness. Time to adjust to a new beat that goes on. And it was also time for me to get up. And get over it. And get on with it. And every other preposition I can think of.

All it took was a bloated mouse, a mouse that might not have run up the clock, but certainly called attention to the time I was wasting doing what I could not accomplish anyway. To remind me that I might not get my life back the way it was, but I can still move forward, enjoying each moment and living life one breath at a time -- not in control, but certainly alive. To remind me that change didn’t have to be “the horror, the horror” (that’s for you, dear AP students present and past), but can be…..

Who knows?

I’m waiting to see!

And maybe, God will teach me how to look at the devastating debris that can be left in the wake of change, not through the unflattering lens of lost time, but through the beneficial sight of gained wisdom.

Mmmm….guess I couldn’t stop the Conrad after all!

Thomas, Dylan. "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness.