Forward March

I have a good author-friend named Fon James whose latest novel is titled Forward March. I remember doing editorial work on the novel for Fon last year, and when I read the title, I smiled. Each word in that title illustrates a movement, and every time I read the words, I think about my life and where it's going or not going and how, at the end of the day, it's about the Forward March.

Even when insanity brews in your life, you have to forward march. Yes, there is time to stand still, to deal with the insanity, to listen to God and have him aid you in your movement, but the result is always about the forward march.

It's funny how the mind works. I wasn't sure what I would mention here today. I wasn't sure I would mention anything. My life over the past week has been pretty uneventful, and to be honest, I've been having a fluctuating mood--moving from pure happiness or abysmal sadness in the matter of minutes, and I wasn't really in the mood to talk about it. Not because I didn't want to share. I'm all about sharing as those of you who have read this blog know. It was just that I didn't want to read my words on the screen. I didn't want those words to be read, to rechannel themselves into my psyche and affect my mood, a mood that is quite delicate these days.

I sat before my laptop, looking at the screen, wondering, What might I say today? I could talk about the day I went from the elation of reading a professor's evaluation of me to doubt in my abilities when I received news that made me question my intelligence. I could talk about the homesickness I still feel that keeps me from immersing myself into the semester like I know I should. I could talk about the growing feelings of "Don't care" that makes me just want to bury myself in my comforter and sleep for a really, really long time.

Yeah, I could talk, in detail, about those things, but as I opened up the blog space to write, I thought, Forward March, and I smiled.

Because even though right now, as I type these words, I have this mixture of anxiety/stress/sadness/pessimism brewing about me, I still get up, put on my clothes, grab my jacket and run my errands. I still do my school work. I still talk to people though I would prefer to be left alone. I still edit. I still write (well try!). I still do the million and one things I do because quite honestly, I don't know how to do anything but the forward march. It's been ingrained in me since childhood. Since I watched my grandparents work at the same place for more years than I've been alive. Since I watched my grandparents get up and move despite the illnesses that would eventually take their lives. Since I watched my mother take ill and almost die but recovered and went right back to work. Since I saw my mother do these things despite what she might have been feeling inside, in her heart, as she stayed in a marriage that had died decades ago. Since I watched my mother have to bury her parents within months from each other's death; she had a grace, a forward march about her that I know I will never be able to replicate.

I have been born into a long line of forward marchers: grandparents, mother, uncles, aunts, cousins...

And even when I think I can do no more, even when I don't want to do any more...

I do. Because I have to. And if I do more enough, I will get through the problems that beset me.