FALLING UPWARD

small flowers and wild herbs

Photo by Yoann Boyer on Unsplash

Every once in a while, it feels like your world is falling apart.

It can happen in an instant, even one afternoon. Your mom finds a lump in her breast, the house is a mess and the kids are home early from school, complaining about the lunch you made and throwing socks at each other’s heads.

Your world isn’t actually falling apart, of course.

Your house is still standing and your legs work and your kids came home safe from school the last 168 days in a row, a tiny miracle. Your fridge is full and your husband still loves you and your children—while complaining and throwing socks—are laughing. Smiling.

Thriving.

They had a big year. They learned to read and won awards and made new friends and jumped through some sizable hoops, with minimal hiccups.

And—it’s not her first lump. You’ve been through this before.

It just that this feeling seems to roll around more frequently, now. It’s just that you don’t remember it being this way, before.

It might just be that a small cloud has rolled right over your house on this day, the first day of summer, and things aren’t as sparkly and warm as they should be.

Should be.

Maybe should be is the problem?

When I was a young mother—or—a new mother (we’re all still young, aren’t we?), the parenting books I devoured from my bedside, night after night, told me that if I expected children to act like children, I wouldn’t be disappointed.

They would cry. They would whine. They would fall. They would learn at their own pace and grow into their own people and it would all be ok.

They—the books—or their authors, were right. Whenever I leveled my expectations and stayed present, I was mostly delighted. With all of it. With my kids. Who they were, the way they grew, they way the played, what they said...

I was mostly delighted with our family, our jobs, our home, our friends, our life.

It was good. Very good.

And yes, it is still good.

It might just be that you haven’t been sleeping great the last few weeks, or that your fabulous part-time assistant got a fabulous new full-time job.

Maybe you’ve just lost your momentum.

Again. Temporarily.

Tomorrow the sun will shine and yes, yes, yes—it is all amazing and you are grateful. Pinching yourself, actually.

Is it just me, or is there a very fine line between good and great? Between living the dream and living your dream? Between coasting and thriving? Between enjoying your life, and igniting it?

Maybe it’s not a line, actually, but a crack—a crack that you could very easily fall down into if you learn over, staring at it too long. A crack, that if you dare to explore, could widen and heave, collapsing both sides—the good and the great, into a pile, lost, forgotten.

I’m not sure if COVID started the crack, or just exposed it. I didn’t see it there, not in the beginning.

But the crack is there now.

When I lived in the city (New York), I could walk for hours, with a destination or none, observing, weaving in and out of crowds, crossing the street and then back again as needed, to the sunnier side of the street. While my mind worked on the day’s problems, my eyes searched the cracks—in sidewalks, streets, abandoned buildings, entire lots.

Almost always, there was something growing from them—moss, ivy, small flowers, even wild herbs—wherever the light reached. It was a little game I played with myself. Reminders that God had not forgotten us. That out of cement and dirt and pollution, out of old buildings—plans and hopes and dreams long forgotten—there was beauty.

Promise.

The cracks, reader, are not where the story ends.

A couple of hours after the soured lunch and reckless sock throwing, I went upstairs to find my children together, playing quietly. Their rooms were clean, beds made (this wasn’t a small miracle, I bribed them). I took my daughter to the orthodontist, and on the long, windy drive we talked about her dream trip—to Greece. On the way home, she told me riddles that I couldn’t master and we laughed, endlessly. I looked into her face—beautiful, changing—shining.

Back home, my son came inside from swimming— drenched, grinning. I made a towel of my body and pulled him in my lap, his skin smooth and warm in my arms. We dipped spoons of peanut butter in melted chocolate and made tea and danced to U2 on the kitchen floor, still scattered with small, wet footprints.

We skipped dinner, curled up on our beds—windows splayed open against the falling rain.

Beauty.

Promise.

The cracks, reader, are just the beginning.