You Can Only Get So High, a song by Richie Sambora, former guitarist for Bon Jovi, is a melancholic song about redemption. There comes a point in life when we can no longer outrun our demons, and we are left with the truth of who we are and what we are trying to avoid.

The music seems dismally pessimistic, but I hear hope in his lyrics. I hear a poetic story of salvation. He ends the song by singing:

You can only hurt so many times
Before the truth falls from the lie . . .

It took me a lifetime to realize
You can only get so high . . .

Then you got a come down.

I like to think this is the moment when he meets Jesus.

The first verse says:

Hard time waking up this morning
Closed the blinds so I can see
First light came without a warning
And the sunrise scared the daylight out of me

When the song’s character closed himself off from the world outside, that was the moment when he could finally see the light – and the truth terrified him.

I mean, seriously, how many of us needed to go through something like this before we could see?

The song has the line, “You give yourself ten second chances.” I love this line. It suggests being stuck in a loop that we can’t escape. It’s what happens when we are the problem and the one trying to fix it. It’s a vicious cycle – a ride we cannot get off of until we address the root cause.

There’s another song by Christian artist Megan Woods called The Truth. It’s a great song, but I get stuck on one line:

“He looks at me and wouldn’t change a thing.”

I understand her meaning, but every time I hear that line, I say to myself, “Wrong!” The literal words are just bad theology. What good parent would want their child to stay just as they are?

A just and loving God would never want the character in the Richie Sambora song to stay in that never-ending inescapable loop of suffering.

Yes, he loves that character – just as he loves each and every one of us – just as he is, but he does not want him (or us) to stay there. He wants something more. He wants something better. He wants that character (and us) to get off that terrible, soul-sucking ride. He wants to take all that poison from us and replace it with everything good that only He has to offer:

What do we get in exchange for our lives when we invite the Holy Spirit to live in us?

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. – Galatians 5:22-23.

Who in their right mind would rather live in the muck and mire described in Sambora’s song?

Not this girl . . . and I know MY GOD never wants that for me, either.

Thank God that God wants better for me. Thank God He is the one giving me 10 second chances and that I don’t have to rely on myself to futilely attempt to get out of whatever vicious cycle I find myself in.

The hope, as I see it, is that once we get to the root cause AND invite God into the story of our lives, then we can get off the ride.

But it may not be as simple as coming to a complete stop and stepping off the ride. Anyone ever feel dizzy, nauseous, and disoriented after coming off a roller coaster, tilt-a-whirl, or the Gravitron? Oftentimes, changing direction in life feels more like that.

There’s a concept in education called the chaotic funnel or Learning Spiral. Instead of learning being linear, it looks more like a chaotic, swirling, nonlinear funnel.

Most of us don’t remember a concept the first time we hear it. The more frequently we return to a concept, the deeper and more complex our understanding becomes.

On the other end of that, there is the saying that the more we learn, the less we understand, which adds to the feeling of chaos and disorientation.

So, that line about 10 more second chances becomes a prayer of thanksgiving because it’s God who gives us chance after chance after chance. He doesn’t leave us where we are, and he consistently forgives us for our mistakes and invites us back on the path with him the moment we repent and ask to return.

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Today is my birthday – a big one – 50!

Turning 50 didn’t feel like that big of a deal until I received a letter in the mail from AARP congratulating me on joining the 50s club and inviting me to join. Am I really old enough to be considered old? I suppose, considering that one gift I want to give myself for the big 5-0 is a complete physical workup to make sure all my parts are still behaving. As my nephew told my sister after she gifted herself car parts for her birthday, “Wow! What old people appreciate is weird!”

Never one to make explicit New Year’s Resolutions, I do see the new year as a good time to hit the reset button. For me, my reset happens on my birthday, not on New Year’s Day. This year, the word that came to mind was discipline. I want to be more disciplined in certain areas of my life.

As I thought of what this could look like, I first thought, “How many times can I try again and keep failing?” Hence, why the Richie Sambora song speaks to me, especially now.

It is easy to see myself as a failure because of my seemingly cyclical pattern, but if I look closely at my life, I see that it’s been more like a Learning Spiral. The fact of the matter is that I have changed. I have made progress. I am not the same scared girl, too afraid to try, too afraid to ask questions, too afraid of looking foolish or stupid.

A few days after New Year’s Day, I was thinking about something that happened in my high school freshman English class. Our assignment involved interviewing a classmate. The details are lacking, but what I do remember is that my interview partner asked me about pet peeves. I had no idea what that meant, and I assumed she was asking something about my pets.

Instead of asking what that meant, and instead of telling her how many pets I had and possibly looking like an idiot, I responded, “Too many to count.” When it was our turn to share with the class what we learned about one another, she gave my answer aloud to the class, an answer that turned out to be wrong. I’m not sure when I really discovered what that phrase meant, but the point of the memory is that I was frightfully timid back then, too afraid of looking foolish or sounding dumb to ask clarifying questions. The me today would not have hesitated to ask.

I wasted a lot of time in my life because I allowed fear to sideline me. The same fear kept me from playing drums for our school’s symphony band or seeking more opportunities to play with other bands outside of school.

That same fear kept me from trusting too many people to read my poems and short stories.

That fear kept me from sticking with that play after all my friends quit.

Fear kept me from trying harder in certain subjects in school.

That childhood memory led me to think about something that happened early in my chaplaincy career: the first time I heard the term “cabbage” to describe a patient. The only cabbage I knew was the vegetable, and I had no idea how that related to a patient. So, I asked. The ICU team laughed and got a kick out of it, but I never once felt dumb or foolish for asking. And they took the time to explain what it was – a medical term meaning Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG), not a vegetable.

I often think about how life would have been different had I had the confidence I have now when I was a kid. Would I have made it as a professional drummer? Who knows? Regardless, I would have likely played more with others instead of only when I was sure no one was listening or after having a drink or two for courage.

Would I have sought more opportunities to share my writing?

Would I have participated in other plays?

Would I be fluent in Spanish by now?

I can’t go back and change who I was as a child. As a therapist once told me, I did the best I could for who I was then. The me I was then is not the me I am now. I have changed. It took a while, but I am a better version of myself today.

It took that incident with Brad to shake me awake. It took cancer to help me truly let others in, to be vulnerable. It took COVID to give me courage.

So, the truth is not that I am incapable of change. It may not be linear and easy, but change is possible. Change has happened and can and will happen again.
So, today I am turning 50 and hitting my reset button once again.

Will this be the year that I finally break through and the lesson sticks? Perhaps. Either way, I bet I improve and will be one more step closer than I was last year.

I’m not dead yet, and until God calls me home, I will continue to be a work in progress.

The thing Richie’s song and those memories show me is that God alone is my change agent. I cannot do it on my own. I will fail on my own, but with Him – He and I together – I can – we can do this.

“Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.” – Matthew 19:26