No Shortcut

From time to time something really awful will happen that won’t be your fault, but through the intricate absurdity of the universe, know that this will be the thing for which you blame yourself.

Thirteen years ago, I wrote:

1. Most of what goes wrong in your life is going to be your own fault. Don’t beat yourself up about it. You do the best you can with what you have at the time.

2. It’s like your life is a video game—it’s only after you clear a level that you realize there was a shortcut there the whole time. Don’t fret. Just remember it next time.

3. From time to time something really awful will happen that won’t be your fault, but through the intricate absurdity of the universe, know that this will be the thing for which you blame yourself. Try not to.

I wrote that in my thirties, as the starting words for a character named Mickey Madison, whom I still love, and who needs to find a place in the world. I wrote it with bold confidence because I’d just survived a dark night of the soul, was in between arcs in my life, and for once, the wilderness didn’t seem too bad. I owned nothing but my car, a Kindle, MacBook, and spent six months recuperating in a small room in my parent’s house with only my two dogs for company. It was when I accepted a job in New Jersey.

Later in the story, Mickey Madison said, “It’s a good thing you don’t know what’s going to happen because none of us would live at all.”

Mickey was a mess, but she was wise. Me? Well, the jury is still out.

At the time, I thought this list was about responsibility, maturity, and emotional hygiene. I thought it was a gentle corrective to self-pity, a reminder to stop catastrophizing, a way to keep moving forward without turning every mistake into a moral failure.

If I made the mess, I can fix it was my mantra.

What followed—then and since—has been the ongoing realization that I often know things intellectually long before my nervous system catches up. Since my nervous system has more impact on my day to day reality than my brain, this hasn’t always gone real well.

It’s as if there’s a highly rational upper floor in my brain calmly saying, This is what’s happening. Pay attention. It’s usually right. But down below—on the other floors—there’s a party, a panic attack, a doctor’s appointment, a work meeting, a Beth Hart song, and an inordinate amount of worry about a potentially infected hangnail. When is there time to pay attention?

So it’s strange, years later, to look back and realize how much insight I already had—and how thoroughly I ignored it. Not out of denial or stubbornness, but because knowing something and being able to live it are very different skills.

That third point? That one aged like a prophecy.

The worst things that happened later—the ones that cracked my life open, reordered my priorities, rearranged my faith, my body, my relationships—those were not things I caused. But they are the things I still interrogate myself over most relentlessly. What did I miss? What should I have seen sooner? Where did I fail to prevent the inevitable?

Turns out, my brain would rather indict me than accept the chaos. Self-blame feels like control. If it was my fault, then maybe I can stop it from happening again. Maybe suffering has rules. Maybe there’s a cheat code after all.

Spoiler: sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes there is no shortcut. Sometimes the level just hurts. Sometimes the lesson is not insight but endurance.

Why would we ever try to assume that suffering is deserved, proportional, or educational? That idea belongs to Job’s friends—and God explicitly tells them they’re wrong. They’d just spent days telling him those boils had to be his fault. Did he use a new detergent? Not wash his bed mat well enough? Job, in this moment, appreciated the back-up when God clapped back on it with thunder. Jesus did not take the shortcut. Could have called down legions of Angels, right? Didn’t. Remained. Died on the cross.

Because you see, the thing I’m finally learning is that the shortcut was never the point. RA welcomed me to incarnational spirituality at ground level. Mickey didn’t know it yet, because I didn’t, that the goal wasn’t understanding and philosophizing, but staying. Staying in the body. Staying in grief. Staying in love.

So this is me, almost fifteen years later, ground mostly under me. Not because I’ve mastered anything, but because I am still here. Still blaming myself sometimes. Still trying not to.

There may be no shortcut. But there is fidelity.

“Those who endure to the end will be saved.” — Matthew 24:13