The “I’m Sorry” Post.

If I wasn’t afraid, I would tell a bunch of people that I’m sorry… And I don’t know if I really want to or not. That is where some of the fear is rooted, but as I mentioned last week, why wait till I’m dead to let it out…

So here goes.

I’m sorry, truly sorry, for those relationships that I have disconnected over the last several years. I’m sorry for those that I’ve let slip, in just the last couple months. I have been so blessed and so lucky to have such wonderful friends and family and spiritual guides. Lately, I decide to wait to respond. I don’t make the call. I don’t even send back a ‘hello’ message, to someone who’s reached out to me, to check in. Ouch.

This is the beginning of Labor Day Weekend. Historically, it’s one of the most exciting and important weekends that I look forward to. Last year, it was my wedding weekend. Yeah! But truly, a former spark of excitement with camping and laking and hanging out, is dimmer. It’s hard to say when exactly this occurred, but it’s been a challenge ever since.

Having fun, in the way I used to have fun, just isn’t as much… well… fun, anymore. I was the one who ignited that kind of fun. I encouraged and threw gas on the fire (sometimes literally) and now I don’t want to.

Even these wonderful moments between client and coach, that I have enjoyed for the last year and a half, are far from my mind. I won’t pretend that it wasn’t discouraging when my coaching practice didn’t flourish. I didn’t do exactly what I needed to do, I didn’t choose to, and I judged myself for that too.

It’s about work now. It’s about hard work, and long. I sat many hours in this house, pretending to build a business. Now I do it for real, but not here. Play like the old days seems a whisper of a memory. A quiet laughter faded in the background of the mind. It’s been sooo long, since I really cut loose with friends. There were good times then.

This sobriety, this walk with Christ, this new gig as host to our customers and janitor and inventory’er and scheduler and other stuff, just has an entirely different composition than my olden days. Waaay different.

From in here, the answer is cloudy, as to whether or not it’s better sometimes. Fun? Smiling? Party times it isn’t. And back then it was all about the party…

But where ‘in here’ am I speaking from? In a place that flashes on the outside of the brain. In a place that satisfies rumbling hunger and soothes stressfull itchy-ness. In a place where I want to judge and bitch and connect through my complaints with another person, I am lost now. These things, that I used to fix so easy and quick and have a team to share life with, I have chosen to let go. I am sorry for that.

Special people, so special, so wonderful, right outside my grasp now, have lives moved on, have stuff without me. Have maybe some of what I’m missing, and I miss them.

There’s another place though. It’s deeper within. It’s a knowing place, if I will settle down there, behind the gut, a spiritual core… If I check in with that place, I get another answer. I love so much, the people I miss, that I will need to make this new life work out. I will entrench and abide and pray, just sometimes, that Christ’s victory will show thru me. If it does, then this change is worth something to those who knew me before.

God can use crooked sticks to make straight lines. I’m crooked. I’m sorry. I was bent that way, now this. I’m ugly in many places, broken too.

Out in Colorado, walking the aspens, you’ll see funny shapes. They are many; a beautiful stand of white speckled stems, but not all straight. Some grow a couple feet off the ground, and hit an obstacle. Maybe another tree, maybe a rock outcrop. They bend around it, they make a weird shape. Then straight again they climb. The tree can be straight on top and bottom, but with an obvious and permanent bend in the middle.

I was straight before. Straight as I could be. I wouldn’t give an inch. I wanted to be me. Those who knew me, knew that. Then an obstacle, then something impeding my growth, then I bent. Maybe I did choose that obstacle, it’s entirely possible. If that has hurt you, I’m sorry. I turned and bended and contorted things. It messed up a straight line. And I was hurt when the world didn’t turn with me. I was a Bitter-Betty tree…

The sideways growth and contortion still continues, doesn’t have the feeling of straightening out yet. Maybe it never will. Maybe I’m no beautiful Aspen. There are other trees I admire though. Those old bristlecones. Not one of them is pretty. They are solitary too. They have few virtues appreciated by the masses. They aren’t everyone’s friends. Look at the graphics on this screen, you can see the pictures I took among them. They have survived thousands of years through all kinds of history, not just the good times. Yes, individual trees, have lived thousands of years. They are the planets watchmen, perched upon the roof of the Sierra Nevada’s. A dry and lonely place, an amazing story to tell.

I admire them. I ‘get’ them. I miss them too. God has made all kinds of trees, all kinds of people, all kinds of lives in this place. Lucky we aren’t trees. We aren’t rooted in one place. We get to move and travel and transform. We are shape-shifters incarnate. I have shifted-shape, and God wants me to share that story. I want to go back sometimes and forget it ever happened.

Funny huh?

Without that sorrowful regret, this journey wouldn’t mean much. Without really giving up something you truly loved, then the sacrifice means nothing.

I’m sorry my friends. I miss you. I love you, always.

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols


6 thoughts on “The “I’m Sorry” Post.

  1. Aaron, thanks for putting words to the human condition and your state of being. We all have varying seasons of life. I am blessed and my life truly has been changed by meeting you a couple of years ago. In my forties, I sometimes agonizing think of all the friendships that have gone by the wayside in the past decade. I had a child, things changed and there just isn’t time to accomodate and foster and grow with everyone all the time. But there will be a special elect few that you stick to like glue. Your wife, your future children…and one or two men that keep ya growing spiritiually and challenge you regularly. Jesus hung around 12 guys for 3 years and still had his special 3 and of them it looks like he had his special “one” John. Keeping growing, even sideways, for there is beauty in that as well.

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