Are You Sure?

Forming a Creative Response to Failure or Loss

The barn was empty, cleared down to its dirt floor, and ready for the year’s supply of hay that we would pick up across town later that day.  I watched Ruth as she raked a few remaining piles from last year’s load, and as I did an image flashed through my mind from this same week eight years before.

I saw the barn, filled almost to it’s rafters with water. And then I saw myself, nearly trapped in the boat underneath it, transfixed for a moment by the sight of all of the hay bales that had once been stacked so carefully, washing away in droves.

As that image rested in my mind, I considered the grueling work that awaited in the day ahead - all the lifting, loading, and stacking, in one-hundred-degree heat, and I as I did, I heard the question that memories like this tend to provoke…

Are you sure?

Are you sure you want to do this here again?

Are you sure you want to fill this place with value, investing of yourself and your time, energy, and resources in this place, in light of the risks inherent to it… again?

Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?

For a while my answer to that question was, no. No, I was not sure at all. In fact, what I was most sure of, for a good long while, was my desire to start over on higher ground. I was sure that I wanted a new place to live. I was sure that I wanted to cultivate a life and invest my energy and resources somewhere above the flood line. And so, I spent years looking for and praying for a place where we could do that. A place that I could be sure of once again.

But what I eventually came to realize about this farm, and what I learned (in time) to appreciate about it, is that by sitting in the place that it does, and being subjected to the vulnerabilities that it is, it is representative of the risk that is innate to all creative acts this side of heaven. As much as I would like to think otherwise, the stability of everything that we will build or cultivate in this lifetime, is never promised. Stuff breaks. Things fail and so do people. Wind blows. Water rises. Fires consume. And regardless of what we make or where we are making it, risk will always be innate to both the process and the produce of our creative efforts. The things that we pour ourselves into, the investments that we make of ourselves, our gifts, and our resources, it can always be swept away.  All that tragedy does is lift the veil on that reality in a way that enables us to see the potential for such loss, clearly.

What the question, Are you sure? is asking is - in light of your knowledge and memory of loss or failure, in light of what those experiences have revealed to you, how will you respond?

Will you stop? Or will you keep going?

And that question comes out a bit different for each one of us …

What does it sound like for you? How would you complete it based on the raw material of your own existence?

Are you sure…?

Are you sure you want to restore that storm torn house?

Are you sure you want to patch that hole, rebuild that bridge, or mend that fence?

Are you sure you want to try again? Or hope again? Or trust again? Or apply your whole self to that task or in pursuit of that dream, again?

Are you sure you want to get back up after being knocked down?

Are you sure you want to keep showing up? Keep making something where there is nothing? Keeping adding where life has subtracted? Keep building? Keep growing? Keep cultivating good and beautiful things in and on behalf of the places and people and communities that you are present to here on earth?

The reality is that everything we do is creative. From the tangible produce of our minds and hands, to our relationships with God and one another, it’s all forming something. Everything that we do, and every response that we will have in this life, gives shape to our inner being and the world around us.

Which is why our eventual response to this question is so important… Because it’s a question that can lead to either a deficit or an addition. If we stop creating in the places within and around ourselves where failures, loss, or disasters have left their mark, than death and destruction become permanent marks. And loss becomes the final word or the lasting image that will be left on that corner of the page of our existence. Leaving deformation where something of value could have been formed there once again.

To be clear, I’m never quite sure. I don’t know if anyone really is?At least not after a head on collision with failure or loss. The truth is that my movement is often slowed and my mind can still get pretty muddled by the images that I carry around in my heart. Images that insist that I pause to consider and then reconsider my actions at certain points along the way. Asking…

Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?

But what I do know is that my farm is my creative response to that question as it applies to the deficit of that flood. It’s my own statement of faith in a God who can and will make all things new again. And every day that I wake up and head back outside and tend the land in a way that is intentionally opposed to destruction, working to cultivate beauty and goodness where destruction did once reign, that is me stubbornly refusing to let it have the last word over my life and this place. Every flower, every tree, is me pushing back against that loss. It’s my way of smiting those looming reminders of the power of death with an expansive display of God’s glory, and refusing to let my fear of failure or future loss immobilize me into a place of smallness that would render me and this land marred by it instead.

I don’t know if this applies to you. Because I am me and you are you and we are all different. But I do think its helpful to search ourselves for the places where this question might be angling for a spot in the telling of the story that will become your life…

Are you sure?

And I also know that sometimes that question can sound as if it’s coming from the mouth of a trusted advisor or a concerned friend. Sometimes it even comes out sounding a bit like an invitation.

Can you hear it being spoken over your creative actions today? In your work? In your outlook on the future? In your relationships with other people or the earth?

And what might it look like for you to respond to it? What is one seed that you might plant in a place where you have experienced loss? What might it look like to plant a flower or a fruit tree in the place of a former failure? What is one small step that you could take to push back against a deficit that has been left on your heart and mind by death?

I would love to know what you come up with. And I would love to be able to pray for you as you join God in the cultivation of new life in the places and spaces where destruction may have left its mark on you in some way.  

Also, in case you were wondering… I got my hay.