This Night Last Year I Wore a Pink Dress

Last night while brushing my teeth I recalled how the same night last year I wore a pink dress. It was the night after Thunder Over Louisville. I enjoyed the music of a friend in the afternoon (I remember the songs), finished my paper, ate chicken cashew ding at Cafe Memosa, and took food over to a friend who gave me a souvenir from Korea. My to-go box leaked juice onto my dress, leaving  a nasty, brown stain near the rear, I fell down a couple steps on my way to Cefiore, and accidentally hit a friend in the face--all full of laughter and apologies. I remember these things and more with ease. The major circumstances (confidential) that surrounded that day changed my life. The minor details I've mentioned have stuck with me because of their proximity to the dramatic. As I continued brushing my teeth, I wondered, as I am in the midst of ongoing family trial with a grim prognosis, what will stick with me after the traumatic? What moments will be etched on my mind, particularly the ones with my dad? How will my life change? We'll see. I think the deepest valleys are yet to come. But I do know this: It will be good. Not pleasant, but good. (See previous post for clarification.)

Good Does Not Equal Pleasant

[Disclaimer: I recognize that good can function as a noun while pleasant cannot, but I think my point still stands.]

Languages are dynamic. Like living organisms, they change over time. Some develop, others die along with their people groups, and still others morph due to societal factors and the influence of other languages. The English language is no exception. For example, the progress of technology has decreased the demand for words like rewind, cassette, and darkroom. Another example: In the 1980s, the word cool became popular to say for all kinds of uses. Those of us born in that decade probably still use it as slang, but as its popularity seems to fade, it may not be as cool to use it anymore.

Beyond the flux of idioms and clichés, I have observed communication confusion due to semantic breakdown. Situations supply connotations for words that eventually adapt to a manipulated range of meaning as people confuse denotation with connotation. To be plain, a person will ascribe a meaning to a word beyond its “original” range of meaning because of the idea or feeling the word invokes. It seems to me that as more people do this to the same word, the word’s semantic range expands. Expansion, however, can lead to near replacement in meaning, which causes the communication confusion.

I faced this phenomenon over the winter while on the backside of a family crisis. My mom nearly died from sepsis; my dad was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, underwent major colon surgery, and began chemotherapy; my uncle was diagnosed with incurable bone cancer the same week as my dad; I was sick five times with five different illnesses in one month; a good friend moved to South Korea for a year while I was out of state with my parents, a different friendship ended after returning home, and another friend temporarily abandoned me; and a week after my return I started a new seminary semester and resumed my service to my church family. All this happened in the span of two months. The question was inevitable: “How are you?” My response: “I don’t know.” Another inevitable question: “How are your parents?” I would try to answer positively.

What is the common response to such questions? “Good.” I struggled to know how to answer because, as the Lord sustained me, sometimes my inner being was in a good state though the circumstances were grim. If I answered “good,” however, the person would likely interpret me to mean that I feel no pain or am unaffected by the circumstances, as if they were pleasant. For me to say that things were pleasant would be a lie, but to say that I was good (which grammatically should be well) would not be. Do you see the dilemma? Good does not equal pleasant.

Since the Bible is my ultimate authority, it shapes much of my understanding of the word good. Scriptures like Romans 8:28-29, Hebrews 12:10, Deuteronomy 7:24, and Genesis 50:20, in their contexts, present a different “good” from how we often understand it today—very different. Someone tells us how an event went, and we say, “Oh, that’s good.” I am not saying that this use of good is wrong. I think it is appropriate to associate good with favorable circumstances. On the other hand, I am saying that using the word very liberally cheapens its greater use.

Throughout the winter I was often crushed in spirit. Even when the darkness would lift a little, I felt the deep inner wound. I thought much of Jeremiah 15:18-19. When I returned to Louisville, I asked Frodo’s question, “How do you pick up the pieces of an old life?” I know that now, if I try to recount all that God has done for me to carry me through and begin healing, my reflections would be incomplete. Let me just say that I have indeed tasted and seen that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:4). A sweet and intimate knowledge of him such as I have now I would not have otherwise known. Toward the end of my time in Missouri, I was thankful for sharing in Christ’s sufferings. I did not maintain this thanksgiving consistently in the days following, but to know it for a moment is worth it all. That is good. And the goodness does not stop there. Like in Genesis 50:20, what God did and is still doing is bringing about good for other people, not just my family and me.

The catch in the disparity I have observed between good and pleasant is that within this good I have put forward is pleasantness. It is just not pleasantness seen from the outside. It is not the sort of pleasant we naturally conceive. We must be retrained in order to grasp the greater use of good. From all this we see that sometimes good is misunderstood because of its association with pleasant, and the confusion spreads as its frequency increases so that they are sometimes considered equivalents. Do they overlap? Yes, but not entirely. I tell you, good does not equal pleasant.