Photography by Lacy Camp
You know those days when you’re running late (almost always for me), and you remember that you left something at home before you get out of your neighborhood. Suddenly you have to backtrack and start all over again.
This is how my life has played out for about the last eight months. Once I get on track for a goal, something pulls me three steps (or more) behind. Whether it’s grief, sickness, impatience, too many funerals or just winter, I feel like I can’t gain any momentum, and my hope meter is plummeting south. The universe must have picked up on that because it’s been sending me some pretty clear messages.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge believer that if we pay attention to our surroundings, they will give us clues as to which paths we should take. All you have to do is watch and listen — closely. You can call it whatever you want, but this works for me so I’m sticking with it. That said, for the past week, the universe has been hitting me over the head with a perseverance theme. Don’t believe me? Check out the evidence.
Last Friday night we watched our high school’s women’s basketball team play in the conference championship. These girls can play ball, but they didn’t have a great first half. The chances for a victory didn’t look too certain when they hit the locker room at halftime, but when they came back out, things changed. They played beautiful basketball, and the best part was that you could tell they were enjoying it.
So many times with sports — or anything else for that matter — it’s just about winning. Yes, these girls ended up winning the conference championship, but they also had a great time doing it. Go Lady Spartans!
Margot loved watching the game, but she also gleaned confidence in her own basketball skills by seeing these girls persevere. On Saturday morning, she played her last basketball game of the season. The Raging Unicorns went into the game with a 1-11 record. Margot, the only girl on the team and one of four in the league, put up two good shots. They didn’t go in, but she finally had the confidence to try. Her team ended up winning by one point. Proud mama!
The theme continued at my desk, as my quote-of-the-day calendar handed me this gem, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it,” from Helen Keller, one of my heroes. Later at the Y, another quote hit me straight between the eyes, “If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow,” from Beyonce Knowles. Even XM got in on the action by playing that super annoying ’90s song by Chumbawamba, I Get Knocked Down. (Just try to get that out of your head now.)
These were powerful messages, but I kept resisting them, not trusting them, and the one thing the universe can’t stand is to be ignored.
Finally, two incidents worked together to pull me out of my pity pit. The first one involved my beloved husband. In the middle of an extraordinary meltdown Sunday night, I said I just wanted smooth water for a while. He looked straight into my eyes and told me that that’s not how life works.
In that instant, I realized he was right. The waves aren’t going to keep coming. I just need to learn how to surf. (That’s a variation of a Jon Kabat-Zinn quote, so don’t give me credit for it and don’t sue me.) Regardless, things began clicking.
The other prong of my comeback involved reading Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Beautifully written, this book is incredible in that it’s horrific and hopeful all at once. Last night I read a passage that struck me especially hard. It reads as follows:
“I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things that you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.
“All of the sudden, I felt stronger. I began thinking about what would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears.”
I thought about that before falling asleep, and I realized that it’s okay that I’m broken, but it’s not okay to lose hope. When I woke up this morning, I had a new energy about me. All I wanted to do was run, despite the drizzle outside. After I dropped the kids off at school, I parked my minivan and sent a couple of e-mails from my phone. By the time I finished, the rain stopped, and I ran my usual route.
During my fourth lap around the track at the college, I saw a bluebird flutter by me as if to say, “I’m glad you made it.” I smiled back at him, thinking how good it felt to be back on track.