Crossing Life's Thresholds
“If I take one more step, it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.”
- Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
In storytelling, crossing the threshold is essential for character development. It is the protagonist saying “yes” to the journey ahead as they leave their comfort zones to venture off into the unknown. As Bilbo Baggins himself puts it in this same scene from the Fellowship of the Ring, “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
When crossing thresholds in our lives, we have a few options before us.
Option 1: We can avoid it and cling to our comforts and stability.
Option 2: We can try to rush through it as if it's a normal routine.
There is a third option, however. To really understand that, let me shed some light on threshold crossing.
For those that are unaware, I moved across the country back in November of last year. The purpose: to be closer to my fiancée, Hope, prior to our wedding and eventual move. Before all this, I originally thought California would be the best option. I could have had Hope move out to the west coast, stayed in SoCal, stayed close to my friends, St. Matthew’s, and much more. Great, right? The reality was that deep down, I was trying to do option 1. I was so uncomfortable with the idea of leaving everything behind that I nearly took the easy way out which, in the long run, would have been much harder. When I came to realize that California just wasn’t feasible financially given our job situations and the cost of living, I had an emotional breakdown knowing I would have to face an inevitable move and say goodbye.
For months, I prepared for one of the biggest decisions of my life. I knew I would have to endure the grief of loss while adjusting to a new life in a place I did not know. I had all the time to prepare and say goodbye when the time came. After four days of driving halfway across the country with Hope, we made it to Ohio. The grief was before me and with the Advent season around the corner, it was going to be even harder. The irony about all of this happening around Advent and Christmas was that we celebrated the coming of our Lord through Mother Mary with St. Joseph, a couple who left their homes for God’s calling in Bethlehem. Rather than doing what they did though, I then tried to do option 2.
I was feeling so many things in and out that I didn’t know were there, which was exhausting emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. It was not merely the 3-hour time difference that got me (those first two weeks of sleep were the worst), it was everything. New house, new streets, new church, new relationships, and especially new weather. Not to mention all the new DMV and government paperwork I had to fill out. In just one move, everything changed. I was exhausted. I was tired. I was lonely. I was afraid. I was grieving. In some cases, I still am.
Recommended by Lisa Mairon from St. Matthew’s, I began reading To Pause at the Threshold: Reflection on Living on the Border by E. de Waal, a well-known Anglican scholar in the Benedictine and Celtic traditions. It was here where I realized that I was going about this wrong. I embraced this change as if I could withstand it without faltering. I was determined just to get through it all until the wedding day. But God, as always, has something to teach during times of change and hardship.
De Waal points out the difference between crossing a border and a frontier.
“A frontier…is designed to exclude the other. It is the product of hostility, aggression, and power. But my experience is of the Welsh Marches, neither boundary nor frontier, but a borderland that marks…the point where the lands of two people run alongside one another. So I see borderlands as places where different cultures and histories meet and mix, perhaps challenge one another from which the new can open up.”
The more I read this book, the more I sat in the grief of living on the border, away from family, away from St. Matthew’s, away from all my familiarities. I almost viewed my move as an obstacle where I had to keep my guard up constantly while clinging to whatever comforts I had. But God, one-by-one, stripped each one away as I met Him where I was.
When it comes to threshold crossing, we just want to get through it as much as possible without pain or struggle, especially if it’s inevitable. Let’s face it, we like our comforts. No one, by choice, wants to abandon comforts to experience deep change at their core. And yet, this is exactly what the Apostles and Prophets did when God called them to do the unthinkable: Leave everything and follow Him. As De Waal puts it:
“In the Gospels we watch a Christ, in dismissing certainties, shows us what freedom might mean. We watch the way in which he enters into people’s lives and dissolves an existing situation…The likelihood was that condition had promised security, safety, but now Christ challenges the people to leave their nets, or to leave a nice safe booth, and follow him. He says to Peter, James, and John, ‘Come’ and to Matthew, ‘Stand up, move, walk, come with me.’”
This brings us to the third option of crossing the threshold.
Option 3: Facing it head on.
Everything about option three is hard as it sounds. If you’re a gamer like myself, the best metaphor I can put into words is the feeling you get right before walking into an isolated room to defeat the boss before moving forward in the game. You cannot complete the game without defeating it, let alone get whatever reward afterwards. So it is with the crossing of the threshold. You can try to avoid it. You can try to push through to just get it over with without any change. Or, you can take a deep breath and say “yes” to God as He strips away your comforts and pleasures to invite you into something new. Something that will make you stronger as you grow deeper with Him.
Lent is around the corner and we will be crossing the threshold into Lent the moment we receive the ashes on our foreheads as we hear the words, “Rember, o man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.” We could do option 1 and ignore participating in Lent as we cling to our comforts. We could also do option 2 and pick something easy to fast from and just go through the motions. Or we can do option 3, recognize the importance of Lent, and face it head on, all while holding steadfast to God as He walks with us into the unknown. As de Waal summarizes it:
“Our God is a God who moves and he invites us to move with him. He wants to pry us away from anything that might hold us too securely: our careers, our family systems, our money making. We must be ready to disconnect. There comes a time when the things that were undoubtedly good and right in the past must be left behind, for there is always the danger that they might hinder us from moving forward and connecting with the one necessary thing, Christ himself.”