Earthquakes.

Written at the beginning of 2023 while going through some tectonic shifts.

Many of us go through earthquakes in life. It feels like the very earth we try to ground ourselves on has betrayed us and removed every foundation our lives are built on. The walls we thought would protect those parts of ourselves we wished to shelter have now become rubble. The debris of distrust has covered what may have been a home.

And there you stand. In the flattened wasteland of a city you tried to build. No place to lay your head, no place to turn to for a moment of peace.

If, by the power of God, you still have strength, you may think, “Now I have no choice but to rebuild.” But there is a process to rebuilding.

First, you must mourn and grieve. There are parts of you that will not survive. Parts of you that were crushed by your neatly constructed, plastered, and painted walls of lies and deceit. Parts of you that may have been possible to save, had you only heard their pleading cries in time. Those parts of you must be pulled from the ash, and given a proper burial. They must be recognized, but they cannot stay. For a house built on the bodies of those lost is not a home, but a tomb. This is not to say these parts of you should be buried in some deep and unmarked mass grave but rather handled with care, wearing their Sunday best, and marked with a tombstone honoring their service. They can be visited and respected, but you can no longer live in a graveyard.

Then you must clean up, recover what you can, and discard the rest. You cannot rebuild a city on the broken and scattered foundations of the one before. You need to painfully but diligently pull the chunks of what is no longer useful to the side. They are heavy, you will be tired, and it will take time. You may even notice scars on your hands from tearing down the rebar pillars that once held up your quaint and comfortable home. But these scars will callus. They will become stronger and hardened so that when the construction begins, it won’t hurt your hands nearly as much. Scars heal. Calluses don’t mean the hands can’t still feel, but when the work is necessary, the hands are ready.

Then you can rebuild. Having mourned, and having cleaned up, now you are ready for what’s next. And because you took the time to clean up, you noticed some of the structural insecurities that caused some of those homes to collapse. You notice certain cracks that weren’t addressed but merely painted over. You notice some of the materials were weak and could not hold up against the forces that life threw at them. You noticed, and you took notes. The blueprints are more thorough, the materials are solid and dependable. You took additional care to make sure that when the reconstruction takes place, it will last longer than before.

This is not to say your newly built city will last forever, or even last the next earthquake. But at least you will know that the previous foundational issues will not be the cause. You can rest knowing that you did what needed to be done, and if it happens again, your callused hands will be ready to rebuild.