The Furthest Two Inches
On Tuesday, September 27th I arrived in Florida in advance of Hurricane Ian.
My full-time job entails hurricane response functions that put Samson and me on a southbound highway, alongside first responders, power trucks, and tree trimmers, driving into a category 4 hurricane instead out of it.
It’s a pecking feeling to purposefully leave sunny skies for stormy ones.
After gas stations, highway food, and a less-than-entertaining audio book, I landed on a colleague’s floor, sharing an air mattress with my 150-pound ride-or-die.
He’s hairy, gassy, and he snores like a freight train.
People keep telling me he’s training me for marriage. That’s a terrifying thought.
What my gracious colleague and I were unaware of was the fact that the air mattress upon which I rested had the tiniest, most invisible, silent leak in it.
You’ve been there, haven’t you?
Between the weight of my body and a 150-pound animal moving on and off the mattress through the night, the air leaked faster and faster, and I got closer and closer to the floor. And around 12 a.m. the rise and fall of the mattress in response to Samson’s movements no longer held me off the hardwood. If Samson was on the mattress, I was resting on air. If Samson left the mattress, I hit the floor. It got to the point where if he was on the mattress, I knew he was going to leave again and when he did, I would fall the furthest two inches of my life – two angry inches down to the hardwood that awaited my tired bones.
Those two inches mocked me all night.
In my half-asleep state I wanted to coach Samson away from leaving, telling him to stay, but I couldn’t muster the energy. I could have moved myself to the living room couch. I could have turned on the light, found the leak, and fixed it.
But I didn’t.
I chose to stay inside the torture cycle instead of doing something about it.
Instead, I braced myself, knowing the fall was coming. Knowing the hardness would hit me again and cause me to wake. It would steal my sleep until Samson came back to float me back up those mocking two inches and then torture me with his inevitable departure yet again.
My knowledge of this impetuous cycle owned the night. I did not rest. I did not succeed. I did not thrive.
If only I would have chosen to get up, find the leak, and fix it. If only I would have found somewhere else to sleep. Or simply removed the mattress so the cycle would end. It would have been uncomfortable to remain on the hardwood floor, but at least I would have ended the torture cycle. I had so many choices. So many alternatives to staying where I was, but I did nothing.
I’ve been told many times that the hardest thing to do is usually the right thing to do.
It is the shortest distance from where you are to where you need to be, but it’s the hardest thing to consider. It’s the furthest two inches.
The consequences are too great. The divide too big. The choice, too controversial. Too many changes will happen. Too many upsets. Too many discomforts.
And so, we don’t. We don’t end the relationship we know we should. We don’t quit the job we know is stealing from our family. We don’t decline the opportunity we know is going to compromise our ethics. We don’t make the commitment that will limit our freedom. We don’t look that person in the eyes and apologize. We don’t set the boundaries we know we need. We don’t make the call we should have made seven years ago.
We don’t choose hard.
Oswald Chambers calls it ‘doing the thing that lies the nearest’. This is the thing you and everyone you love knows is the right choice for you. It’s the thing that is likely not glamorous. It’s not sexy. It’s not the choice that will garner applause or cause ‘likes’ to stack up. But it’s usually the most obvious choice. It’s the choice that comes to mind first. It’s the one you push out of your mind the fastest because you’re too afraid or too tired or too weary or too discouraged to face the fact that it’s the right one.
Can I be honest with you?
I don’t want you to be happy.
Streams in the Desert offers a visual that will help me explain:
You need to cross the ocean via ship. Two options for passage are available on two identical ships. The only difference is your choice of captain.
One ship offers a man in sailor’s uniform. He’s smiling brightly, with shiny white teeth and a twinkle in his eye. His broad shoulders and muscular build tell you of a man fit for duty. He stands with confidence and leans ever-so-casually against the gangway.
The other ship offers a man decades older than the first. Wrinkled, sun-drenched skin paints his face below whited hair. His eyes droop from above and a near-gone cigar stays ever-fixed to the corner of a scarred mouth. He doesn’t make eye contact with you. He’s running his hands over a rope tie fixed to the port side of the ship, too concentrated to notice your presence.
The difference between the captains is captured in one word: experience. And with experience, with living, comes inevitable trial, failure, mistake, and growth.
The sun-drenched sailor has journeyed through violent storms, uneven seas, and injuries to the ship. He’s made mistakes and troubleshot around them. He’s adjusted his approach. He’s lived through the worst of it, and the best of it. He’s learned.
Not only would I rather sail with that captain – I would also rather be that captain. I want to be able to sail through a hurricane. I want to be able to get up in middle of the night, find the leak, and fix it.
The inconvenient truth here is that one cannot learn how to sail treacherous seas without actually sailing treacherous seas.
We can’t both want the experience and deny the work.
So, said with the greatest love I have… I don’t want you to be happy. And I don’t want me to be happy either.
I want us to live enough to fail and make enough mistakes to find a new way. Even if it comes with pain (and it will), I want us to grow. I hope we are challenged and that we actively seek the discomfort that will morph us into the next, newest, better version of ourselves. I want us to be able to step onto our ships with the knowledge that there may be days when we are tossed to and fro like a rag doll, but we’ll know what to do. We won’t be rocked by emotion. We won’t be devastated by the waves that come because we’ll know how to manage them because we will have done it before. We will have built the tools not only to survive, but to ride the violence like surfers, with skill and precision, and most importantly – with joy (James 1).
So let me amend it: I don’t want you to just be happy. I want the absolute, undeniable, wearying, gritty, productive, profitable, best for you. Even if it comes with the tired smile of a well-traveled captain and the furious choice to drag the air mattress outside, soak it with gasoline, and light the bastard on fire.
It may be the shortest distance between where we are and what we have to do, but those are the two most productive inches of our lives.
Those are not the easy choices. They’re the hard ones. But they are the choices that will bring us closer to being the captains we want to be. The captains people choose to sail with, because they have confidence in our abilities to do hard things.
We are looking at the shortest distance to the greatest production, and I want in.
If you’re willing, share in the comments your ‘furthest two inches’ choice that broke (or will break) your torture cycle.
May we encourage each other to push aside our burning needs to be happy and instead choose to journey into the best, regardless of the storms that may come with it.