How to Rise Up When the World Brings Us Low

If I don’t recognize the number on the screen when my cell phone rings, I don’t answer. (Of course, I may not answer even if I do recognize it because I’m an introvert, and answering the phone is just awful sometimes. But that is beside the point.) Several weeks ago, though, an unknown number appeared three times in a row. I thought if I didn’t answer, the person might keep calling, so I picked up the phone.

“Hello?” I said.

“Gail?” said a woman’s voice.

“No, you have the wrong number.”

“Well,” she fired back, “I don’t think I do. Is this [here she read my phone number to me]?”

“Yes, it is. But I am not Gail.”

“Hmm. Well, I’ll just call back when she’s probably in. Thank you!”

Baffled, I stared at my phone after the woman hung up. My husband had received a call like this—when the person on the other end didn’t believe they called the wrong number—but I never had. It was odd.

The next day, another unknown number from the same area code popped up. Sighing, I readied myself to be not Gail once more.

“Hello?”

“Gail?” a man said.

“No, this is the wrong number. There is no Gail here.”

“Well, is this [here he read my number to me]?”

“Yes, it is. But I have had this phone number for over a decade.”

”Do you know when Gail will be back?”

”I do not now live, nor have I ever lived, with anyone named Gail. I am not Gail. I really mean this is not Gail’s number.”

“I will call back later, then.”

He hung up. No! I thought. She really is never going to be at this number. Please do not keep calling back later. I was getting frustrated just thinking about the inevitable daily calls ahead of me. At some point, would I just say, “Yes, Gail here,” to stop the madness? There was no telling how this would end.

Thinking of endless phone calls and conversations with strangers who wouldn’t believe what I said, I could feel the stress bubbling up inside me. But for once in my life, I did not choose to immediately jump to the worst, most anxiety-inducing conclusion. I decided I would laugh about it instead of giving in to my irrational fears. Perhaps if I could do that with something so insignificant, I could work up to doing it with more important things.

So I told the Gail story on Facebook.

Almost immediately my friends started trolling me in the best possible way: with memes about Gail. I got so many notifications from Facebook it seemed like my birthday. Over and over, friends from one group posted GIFs and pictures with big white block lettering, hashtagging #gailgate. Soon people from other circles got involved, and eventually my worlds were colliding left and right as my cousins commented on posts by my middle school friends in reaction to something someone I’d met the previous year said. Some people posted how much they appreciated something so joyful and purely silly taking over their news feed. A few days later, I even received personalized bookmarks with “Gail’s Book” on them.

I will never live it down—and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Our world is fraught with challenges right now, from awful, important things to small, mundane trials. Our lives are full of reasons to fear and reasons to despair, both personally and globally. Genuine tragedies and hardships surround us. Marriages fail. Children succumb to illness. Job opportunities aren’t available.

But then the last pair of clean socks has a hole in them. We realize we’ve accrued library fines.  The car won’t start. Someone spells your name wrong in an email. Introverts receive repeated wrong-number calls. In the midst of these momentary inconveniences, we have a choice. We can give in to eye rolls and frustrations, or we can decide to rise above them. We can live up to our calling to be in the world but not of it. We can keep a small thing from becoming a huge thing, a huge thing from becoming soul-crushing.

[Tweet “Even when life-altering crises occur, we can focus on the resurrection and the life.”]

We won’t always be able to do this at first blush because we are, after all, earth-bound creatures. But Christ has broken our chains so we remain in grace even when we fail.

May we allow Christ to raise us high when the world brings us low, in silliness and seriousness, in faith and doubt. May the resurrection color all we see and do.

Bethany Beams is an elementary school office manager and certified doula who can’t get enough of storytelling, which she pursues through website design, photography, and freelance editing. Her many loves include her son, napping, libraries, ice cream, singing, snow leopards, Bagel Bites, 75° weather, the color turquoise, and lists. She blogs very occasionally at bethanybeams.com and designs all sorts of pretty things for Bethany Creates.

Photograph © Luke Porter, used with permission