Updraft
I was once asked if I died tomorrow, would I have any feeling like I missed something? I thought for a moment, reflecting on the sound of water lapping on a shore while bacon sizzles early in the morning, holding my babies in my arms for the first time, watching my child overcome the impossible, loving so deep it often hurt, magical evenings at the table with people I love the most, the anticipation of Christmas, caring for my mother, fighting for my family and what I believed for them in this world, standing backstage at the Broadway show I was working on, spending hot nights in Venice with friends drinking Aperol Spritz to keep cool, watching the heron I named Henry glide down the creek early in the morning while the coffee perked, and I reply no, my life for the most part has exceeded my wildest expectations. but maybe, just maybe…….thats where it begins.
I think we spend the first half of our lives building our big dreams and then one day as easy as a bird drafts on the current of air, it changes. You stop leaning into the proving of life, to yourself or others and start actually standing in it. The voices quiet down, the take take take slows and daring begins. It’s a powerful thing, that kind of of satisfaction. It moves your vision. I have plans, and they no longer involve perfect abs or a large bank account. (Although if either of those actually showed up I wouldn’t complain.) I simply don’t care anymore. I don’t need them. I have been humiliated and called enough names in the last year to make your head spin, so why not reach beyond myself and do something scary or loud. It baffled me why anyone would spend time and money trying to humiliate, hurt, isolate family, destroy character, break friendships, and out me for something I was clearly not ashamed of anyway. But you know what? IF that is what they need, then try. What they can’t take, because it is the only thing entirely in my control, is my grace.
We have responsibility to our greatest challenges and that is to pass on something richer. You don’t get to walk away. It would be so easy to just stand in the peace and relief of hard things ending……… but sometimes peace comes because we don’t. It’s what I think about now, leaving something better, teaching what I know from walking the fire. I have already lived, so now I live without fear. Our ultimate calling hiding beneath our worldly calling.
I have had to say goodbye to some dreams of my younger self lately, and it hurt, but that just adds to the color of my story, to the power of my being, to my satisfaction. I dared to dream them in the first place. I lived into them and now I live beyond them and they become energy. I kept the important thing, the love. We are after all, only here to love one another, so why get distracted by the rest. We are here to be gentle with the hearts of others, to listen to the wisdom of the natural world and the heartbeat of God inside us. IMAGINE if we put the rest down. We might just have what the old man on the side of the road did. Remember him? For in the spring, through the mud and left over gravel tossed by snowy days gone by, green shoots sprang up and a quarter mile of daffodils appeared, a swath of yellow so bright you had to smile. He did not do this for himself. There was no house near by, no place to sit comfortably and enjoy them. He dug in the mud and cold for you and me. He sat on his knees for hours to bring you joy. And he doesn’t even know you.
I want to Be the old man on the side of the road.
Updraft