Awhile back I was in conversation with a close friend over various things and stresses in my life and how it was making me feel. I recall at one point she indicated that my feelings were understandable because of “Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs”–she said something like, “Your basic needs are still not being consistently met.”
I do remember learning Maslow’s theory in college. If I were to sum it up (as I understand it) beyond the quick visual below, it would be that for humans to thrive they need a base of feeling secure in their most basic needs being met. There’s a lot of talk these days about thriving vs. surviving.
Both terms are relative, in my mind.
I think of manna in the bible. Were the Israelites simply “surviving” day to day as they wandered in the desert for forty years, hoping to get to the promised land? God was meeting their most basic needs for physical survival–and was teaching them many things–yet I think of their future when they came into a place of more stability. At least, for a time.
It was there that they flourished in different ways. It was there that Solomon penned many proverbs, and the book of Ecclesiastes, and King David wrote many beautiful psalms. One of my favorite psalms (oh, there are so many) has the lines:
“Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land, and cultivate faithfulness.” (Psalm 37:3)
When I was a young Christian in college, I put those words to an awkward tune, adding, “Only if you abide in Him, will you ever bear good fruit. So trust in the Lord…trust in the Lord.”
It was my attempt at Christian song-writing, with guitar in hand one late night during a semester break, back in my mother’s house in my old bedroom. I still remember the tune and rhythm changes.
I looked up the reference, I like the NIV:
“Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.”
In mid-December of this year, it will mark five years since my second divorce was finalized. These five years have not progressed as I envisioned them in a number of ways. If I were to review the five categories below, they go back and forth almost like the stages of grief, yet there are some consistent difficulties.
Progress sometimes can seem slow, and given my age, that feels difficult.
When I returned north from Alabama, my most immediate personal need was for healing from the deep emotional and psychological impact of the divorce and the related traumas of many sorts. I would say that today, I feel those things are mostly in their proper place. Sometimes I do think upon things from those eight years and find need to express or converse over them, but the rawness of it all has diminished. At this stage, it is more retroactive continued insights and deep laments of the harm those years did to my sons and to me, personally.
I think I do fairly well in the top area of “self-actualization” although, due to the issues in the bottom two tiers, I have been feeling less human, less thriving, having much less time for reflection and margin in my life for these human needs to be properly experienced.
The area of “love and belonging” is also fraught with various issues–there has been progress but this all is still not “right in my world.” There is a significant aspect to this that I feel could improve quite a lot, if I weren’t so mired down in those bottom two areas of need.
Again, I am somewhere between daily manna from God and Maslow’s theory. I am surviving in a number of areas of this “post-divorce” situation in terms of daily battles and daily telling myself, “I have what I need today” and trying to not worry about tomorrow, but to take “one day at a time…one hour at a time.” However, at the same time I am increasingly weary and exhausted by so much.
My heart’s cry is, “How long, Oh God?”
How long, before I will enter this hoped-for land of stability that enables a deeper thriving in every way–a deeper reaping of the rewards that many (not all) people experience or hope to experience in this season of life?
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