A Song For When We're At the End of Our Rope

"Focus on what you can control" is easier said than done when *everything* feels out of our hands. Misterwives offers us a way to process that pressure.

Let’s open this week’s service with a confession.

I am running on empty.

This month has force-fed me a lesson I had resisted all my life: How to surrender when life feels like it’s spiraling out of control.

Let’s take a quick look at the tape from the past 25 days.

This stretch started on October 2, when the vet discovered a mass the size of my rescue dog’s chest during his annual visit. An ultrasound follow-up and a visit to an oncologist later, and the recommendation was what I feared it would be: To prioritize his quality of life in what are very likely his final three months on Planet Earth.

And in-between that discovery and eventual conclusion: After nine weekends on the market and 14 since we broke up, my ex-partner and I finally accepted an offer on the house we had hoped to make our longtime home — only for the buyer to back out a week later.

The sale falling through isn’t all bad, though: It means our dog gets to spend more of his final days where he’s most comfortable.

But if that, the breakup, and its house-sized collateral damage weren’t “enough” to make me feel like my back was against a wall, the company I’ve worked for since 2018 publicly reported this past Friday that it needs to find eight figures in cost savings before the end of the year — and that it will be doing so through “streamlining operations.”

Which is translation for: Like many of my very talented and beloved teammates, my job is now at risk.

The curious thing about when the cards feel this stacked against you is that sweating about the outcome or what comes next starts to feel like wasted energy — energy we’ll need as soon as the walls start to expand around us again.

And so, in the spirit of Focusing On Only What We Can Control, how can we put that lesson into practice when everything feels out of our control?

We can reflect. We can feel. We can process to minimize the wreckage inside our heads when the game starts again.

And for that, we’ll turn to the Misterwives.

“End of My Rope” is the penultimate track on their 2023 album Nosebleeds — which, as a quick aside, I cannot recommend enough for anyone going through a major breakup or who could otherwise benefit from unpacking the psychological baggage of voices that make us question our own value.

But even if you don’t check those boxes, this song has something for anyone whose felt like they’re at the end of their rope.

The combination of its message and the actual instrumentation reminds me of “Dance Yrself Clean” by LCD Soundsystem, in that the intended effect of “End of My Rope” is self-evident if you pay attention to the lyrics and surrender enough control to let your body move to the beat as it builds and drops.

That build starts at the chorus open, when singer-songwriter and front-woman Mandy Lee tells us exactly what to do when it drops:

When you find yourself just out of reach
Step into the light and go dance yourself free

But before it does drop, the beat builds for 30 more seconds as Lee repeats those final three words in a whisper-like chant:

Dance, dance, dance yourself free

And then finally, the beat drops, and if you’re doing this “right” — your body responds by dancing along to the next message:

I wanna go where the pressure cannot follow
Move out the way, give me space 'cause I'm losing control

Whether it’s the final countdown to the election, the short days, or any number of stressors this modern life throws our way — “End of My Rope” has the power to help us process what we cannot control by giving us a four-minute formula to completing a stress cycle.

Dancing and singing (or shouting) along highly encouraged.

I’ll see you next Sunday.