Celebrating A New Normal

"Celebrating A New Normal"
Job 1


What’s a normal day for you?  Think about that question for a minute.  What is normal?  When I asked myself that question this week, it was hard for me to come up with how I was defining normal.  Maybe following a certain routine.  But my days are all different.  There is no set routine.

What’s strange is that even though I have never sat down and written out the parameters and boundaries of what’s normal for me and my days, I still feel like I have some vague idea of what it is in my head.  I kind of know what my expectations are of how a normal day would unwind itself before me.

In my musings and meditations this week, I wandered back to the book of Job.  I read and reread the first chapter.  And I thought about what’s normal and how normal gets shifted every now and then in our lives.

In the opening lines of Job’s story we find out what’s normal for him.  In terms of material wealth, Job had a lot of stuff.  Basically he had a huge feed lot full of animals:  7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 oxen, and 500 donkeys.  His normal day must have been filled with a bad chorus of animal noises; and a bad mixture of animal smells.  The story says he had a lot of servants, and I would guess most of them were feeding all those animals all day long.

There were children in Job’s normal day.  Seven sons and three daughters.  The story says that part of this family’s normal routine was to take turns holding feasts for each other’s families.

But then all that shifted dramatically.  A very abnormal set of events disrupted their normal day.  First, all Job’s oxen were stolen and the servants watching over them were killed.  Then lightening started a range fire burning up all the sheep and the servants tending them.  Then the camels were stolen, and all the servants tending them were killed by thieves.  And last, and most painful, Job’s sons and daughters were in the middle of one of their family feasts when a desert storm hit the house they were in, sweeping it clean away, killing all within its walls.

What was normal for Job before, was not normal for him any longer.  There was no warning his normal would change, and there didn’t seem to be any hope for restoring any sense of previous normalcy.  It was all gone in a sweeping string of unmerciful events.

That seems to me to be one of main ingredients of grief:  the loss of what is normal.  The transition from the old normal to a new normal is a roller coaster ride that disrupts every part of your life.  How do you ride that out smoothly?  You’re on the ride whether you want to ride or not.

Using the story of Job, let’s figure out how to get through those times in life when normal isn’t normal anymore, and a new normal must be created and celebrated.

First, when normal is taking a drastic turn, let yourself be human.  Abnormal times either bring out or create painful human feelings.  Most people don’t know what do do with all those feelings, some of which may be new to your experience.  It’s normal to think you have to apologize for feelings or ventilating emotions that you are experiencing.  You don’t have to apologize to anyone for being human.

Here’s what Job did, after his whole life was disrupted in loss--he cursed the day he was born.  Why did he curse the day he was born?  Because in birth we gain our humanity.  And being human, as Job saw it, meant you had to experience pain and trouble.  Later on in the book he will tell his so-called friends, “Man is born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward” (5:7)

We are human.  We aren’t superhuman.  Bullets don’t bounce off.  Especially the emotional bullets.  We wish they would, but they don’t.  They pierce the toughest armor.  They make it through the thickest parts of our self-protection.  We need to accept that, as human beings, we are fairly fragile creatures.  Let yourself be human--accept the imperfections and mysteries of life and death.  Some times there are no good answers, solutions or assurances other than, we are human.  If we think we’re something else, we will end up being frustrated, bitter and angry most of the time.

Secondly, when we move from one type of normal to another, a lot of loose ends get left behind that we can never make neat again.  So part of making the transition between what was normal to what will become normal is to let some of the puzzles go unfinished.  Sometimes there is no solution.  Most of the time pieces are lost and won’t be found.

We can’t fix everything.  So things, some situations, refuse to be fixed.  A lot of the time, especially in the early part of the transitions away from what was normal, we think we can’t go on if we can’t find the answers we think we need, or solve the problems that loom so darkly.  All we are trying to do is get it back to the way it was.  But the new normal will only be found by relaxing from trying to find impossible answers and solutions, so that other directions can be pursued.

Job ranted and raved, and demanded a hearing with God.  He wanted answers to his questions.  He wanted God to answer them.  He wanted God to put the lost pieces of his tragic puzzle in place so he could make sense of what happened.  It wasn’t until Job finally relaxed, stopped all his shouting and foot stomping, that God finally spoke.

What God told Job, towards the end of the story, is that God is a God who created, creates and recreates.  In other words, if Job wanted to see what God was up to, it wasn’t going to be by looking in the past and trying to find answers.  It was going to be by looking to the future to see what God was going to create and recreate:  a new normal for Job.  Even God can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.  But God can make the new.  In order for Job to accept God’s new, he was going to have to let go of all the puzzles and questions from the past that were never going to be solved or complete.

Thirdly, in order to move from one normal to a new normal after a life altering event, find a listening friend.  The times between normals are meant to be shared with those who can accept you and your situation without judgement.  Job had three good friends who showed up to try and bring comfort.  That is, until they opened their mouthes.

When they came to Job, and saw him huddled on the ash heap, covered with sores, they couldn’t believe their eyes.  They wept.  The tore their clothes in symbolic sorrow.  They threw dust on their heads.  They didn’t say a thing for seven days.  Then they started talking.

The conversation with Job makes up the whole rest of the story.  The gist of what they tell Job is that he must have done something terribly wrong for all that bad stuff to happen to him.  If he would only confess his wrong doing, God would let up on him.  But Job contended he was innocent and undeserving of what happened.  The three of them ended up being graceless and unhelpful friends.

Good friends, through healthy, non-judgmental conversation can support a person in Job-like circumstances diffuse their intense feelings of anger, fear and betrayal.  Those are just a few of the main feelings we feel when we are moving from old normal to new normal.  A friend can provide companionship rather than answers or platitudes or judgment through abnormal times.  They can make the transition bearable.

When I was serving a church in Nebraska, one of the pastors I knew got cancer.  He moved to Lincoln for treatment.  But it quickly became terminal.  His normal shifted in a matter of a couple of weeks.

The dying pastor wanted to see three of his friends, but they wouldn’t come.  They just couldn’t do it.  Finally one of the friends relented.  He said to the other two, “I’m going to Lincoln; I’m coming to pick you up before I leave town to drive you with me.”  One of them went.  The third just couldn’t bring himself to go see his dying friend.  The two who went had a great time.  They talked.  They laughed.  They ended up going back time and time again.  The first visit was all they needed to break through their reluctance.

Still the other friend wouldn’t go.  Finally he said he’d come see him when he got back from vacation.  The day before the friend left for vacation, their pastor buddy died.  Now the friend who held back was feeling guilty and sad and angry at himself.  When his friend needed a friend, he held back.

When normal has shifted dramatically in one of your friends life, GO!  Don’t wait.  Don’t hold back.  They need you to weep with them, to journey with them in a compassionate and understanding way as they begin the process of constructing something new in their lives--even when the new is terminal.

And lastly, pray.  This should be a given.  A no-brainer.  But many times when people are moving from one normal to another they let their fear and anger get in the way of their praying.  It’s hard for them, like Job, to simply accept things at the hands of God.  Or people think they should pray well ordered, flowery, happy prayers.  But “stumbling prayers,” honest feeling prayers are best.  They won’t be well-ordered or gushy.  They will be raw, incomplete sentence prayers that express to God your fears and worries.  This kind of stumbling, groaning prayer will help God understand how you are feeling.

Other times it’s hard to know what to pray for.  You have no idea where your life is headed.  You want to know what, and when normal will return.  In those times pray for patience..  Not everything will be brought to clarity immediately.  Maybe not even for several years.

Pray for hope.  Hope may be shown to you in a tiny glimpse of what is to come.  Hope gives you something to hold on to, something to move toward.

Pray for faith.  Don’t give up on God.  Prayer is, more than anything else, a reaching out to the Great Companion.  God will see you through.  I don’t say that as a platitude.  I know it’s true.  In the four years prior to coming here my life had taken one of those major shifts away from my once dearly held normal.  For four years I prayed, asking God what was to become of me.  I wondered out loud to God if church councils were more powerful than He.  A Jewish counselor I had as a spiritual director told me not to give up--that it was my faith in God that carried me through previous hard times--faith in my sense of call from God that threaded its way all the way back to junior high.

And then, all of a sudden I was here.  And it’s been utterly amazing from day one.  This place has been an affirmation and confirmation of God faithfulness over me.  The Pratt church has become the new normal that God has placed me in.  So I can say with the certainty of my own prayers and praying, that praying for faith helps open up new shifts in God’s new normal.


I titled this message, “Celebrating A New Normal.”  When what was once normal is changing drastically, and life as you once knew it is gone, it’s hard to see that there’s anything worth celebrating.  In one respect, the anxious transition helps you celebrate the normal days when you have one.  What a blessing a “normal” day is.  Don’t take it for granted.  Celebrate it!

And, though it’s hard, celebrate when the abrupt changes come.  It means God will be at work, helping create and recreate your life, albeit to a new set of definitions about what will become normal.  Look for God.  See where you find him in the shaping of what you are becoming.  And when you find God, celebrate!