Refiner's Fire

Hello my dear friends. It's been a while. I never stopped writing, exactly, but I did need to take a break as the world inside of my head became very chaotic and convoluted. I feel a lot of regret at the things I wanted to write that I never did and have since forgotten, but I know that if I spend more time trying to recover all of that I will never write anything new. And I have a lot of new thoughts, a lot of things I feel the need to articulate at this point in time, where I am now. It is certainly a different place than I was a year ago; it's for the better that way.

I think like most people, the last year has been incredibly frustrating, scary, and at times, infuriating. I think I've felt overcome by sorrow and anger more in the last several months than I have in my entire life, which, as someone with very big emotions, is certainly saying a lot. Beyond the obvious struggles that I know we can all relate to, my own personal life has been rather tumultuous, with various mental and physical health issues, the stress of school and work, and the general existential terror that comes from being twenty one. As much as I'd like to say I have faced my trials with a stiff upper lip and stalwart determination, I haven't always. This last weekend I lost most of my time to an overwhelming feeling of defeat. In light of some recent events, I didn't want to be noble or to embody my pioneer and immigrant ancestors and keep pushing through, keep walking, find a new way to live. I was angry that after everything I had been through and overcome I was facing another wall that, shaking knees and bloody hands notwithstanding, I would need to climb over or tear down brick by brick to get through. 

In the midst of this, I was venting to a friend and generally falling to pieces in the face of everything. At one point, I asked something along the lines of "what was [I] now?" in the aftermath, facing yet another seemingly unfair and insurmountable trial. He very sincerely answered "Stronger."

And I was so angry. 

Not at him, and not because I thought he was wrong. I am stronger than I was a year ago. He wasn't wrong, and like so many others, it was one of the most sincere praises he could give me. I appreciated that. However, I was angry at my life, and in some ways, at God, because I never wanted to be stronger. I wanted to be safe. I wanted to be okay. I didn't want to go through the refiner's fire, certainly not again. I found myself pleading in prayer that night to not have to be burned again if the only thing I could confidently say on the other side was that I was stronger for it.

That might sound ridiculous. Certainly writing it out this way makes me feel a little silly. I mean, isn't that part of the purposes of life? To become stronger in the face of adversity, to be able to handle more, to become a little more like my Savior, who certainly possessed incredible strength to live His life in the way He did? 

In truth, I don't resent being stronger, not sincerely. I am grateful that I can handle more now.  I think what I, and so many others who have gone through far worse than me, can sometimes resent, however, is the idea that strength is holy. 

For me, the things that are sacred are the things I choose, the choices that shape me, and to a degree becoming stronger has never felt like a choice. In many of the circumstances of my life, the choice has been either get stronger, or die. Learn to adapt and live with new situations, or stop living at all. I can't continue as if these trials aren't happening, I can't ignore them and have them go away: I face them, or they kill me. I acknowledge that this choice isn't simple for many; for a long time, it wasn't simple for me. But at the end of the day, because I am determined to live, choosing to do what has to be done to make that happen doesn't feel noteworthy anymore. I struggle accepting praise for something that I have to do in order to be here. I struggle wanting to be praised for something is so painful. Developing strength, even on physiological level, requires being hurt and then healing. I am tired of hurting, and at times when my strength becomes the focus of my story, I feel like the pain I went through to get there becomes simply a stepping stone, when at times it is all consuming.

I don't want to be remembered simply for being strong, something that I only am because I have been hurt. I don't think that strength is the most outstanding ability I can possess, nor is it the way I want to most emulate my Savior. I didn't choose to live simply because it would make me stronger. 

I want to be happy. I want to make choices without having to weigh every option against what I live with and currently face. In all honesty, I want to be allowed to just be twenty one and have school and dating be the biggest sources of adversity in my life. I want things to be a little simpler. I worry that with each trip through the refiner's fire, I will simply become harder, more impervious to the world. I don't want that. I want to feel, and I want to enjoy feelings. I don't want to be stronger, I want to feel safe enough to be softer than I am, to not struggle so much with letting people into my life. I don't want my trials to feel like stumbling blocks in my path to become this way.

So how can I do that?

As I am wont to do, this is the part of my writing where I justify the existentialism and anger and borderline whining with the epiphany that makes it all worth it. As always however, here's my note that I am far from perfect at implementing this. The ideas I'm about to talk about are still very new to me. I think there is value in fully feeling and acknowledging feelings of anger, defeat, fear, and uncertainty. I could not be in the place to view things from this new lens now if I didn't give myself a significant amount of time to feel what I have often incorrectly termed "unproductive" emotions. They aren't unproductive, and they are not insignificant. I will yet have days where I am mostly consumed by these difficult emotions. However, having a next step when those feelings have run their course will hopefully allow me to bring my head above water again.

I realized, as I've been wrestling with these thoughts and feelings, that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of precisely what a "refiner's fire" actually is. Through my life, I had the mistaken impression that a refiner's fire operated similarly to a pottery kiln: turning something malleable into something more rigid, more solid. I imagined with each fire I became stronger in structure, but more brittle, hardened, unyielding. However, it's a far different process. 

When refining metal, the goal isn't to set or even shape the substance. Instead, the refining process removes the impurities. Each trip through a refining fire brings a metal closest to its purest form, free from everything else that got mixed in. Rather than smelting or calcining, which is more akin to my potter's kiln, the metal remains chemically the same in the aftermath, simply purer. Reading about that brought me a measure of peace--I haven't been able to avoid thoughts that I've gone through so much because of something fundamentally wrong about me as a person that I have to change. The thought that this (albeit painful) process will ultimately allow me to become more purely myself has offered me comfort in the face of resistance and strife. 

It's not necessarily simple. I don't like fire a ton. Going through trials is still a terrifying journey, because I can't help but worry something will go wrong and the same impurities will remain on the other side. But I do have more hope that something more peaceful is yet to come, that there will yet be a time where I emerge from a trial with time to discover and learn how to live with the things that make me truly myself. 

I have hope that I am yet able to shape myself and my life into what I want, with room for the vast multitude of things I hope for. While at times the trials that put me through the fire may feel like the very impurities I am hoping to expunge, I hope to find the optimism that will allow me to see even those in a different light, although I cannot say I'm there yet. 

It is a hard life. The fire burns brightly and intensely, and the fear of melting is real. But it is a good life, despite the heat, despite the impurities that are burned from all of us. It is good eventually, and it can be good now.