You Can Do This

Confession: LIFE HURTS.

While we can walk around with smiles plastered to our faces, answering “fine” to all the questions, posting our plane rides and painted toes, the scraped-knees-raw-elbows-bits-of-gravel-jammed-deep-in-the-wound truth is that life fucking hurts. Over and over again. I remember being about eleven years old and wondering if I’d ever stop falling, crashing, bleeding, needing Bacitracin and Band-Aids. I figured when I grew up I’d be less clumsy, the cuts would stop and the wounds would heal. I was wrong. They just happen on the inside.

Another confession: LIFE HEALS… but you have to look for it.

Unlike the finger-caught-in-the-door surprise that’s waiting for us all the time and is never to be outrun, life also offers bits of healing through beauty, nature, friendship, Spirit. But this you’ve gotta work for. No one accidentally trips into a walk in the woods. Serendipity exists to give us a little shove, but it’s up to us to take it all the way.

LIFE has been a real shit lately. Big dreams disappeared. We are losing the fight. The inevitability of pain is hitting home. I’m doing my best to chase down life’s healing (refusing to engage with newsfeeds helps), but it takes constant vigilance and I am tired. Yet, I am equally grateful for the shoves: beloveds in snowfall, bursts of color and creativity, and re-awakening of friendships that should never have gone to sleep.

I wish these shoves for you. I hope they are too big and loud to ignore. And you take them, however they present themselves. They are the purposefully positioned swim docks as we make the swim across the lake. They are enough to sustain because something bigger than ourselves believes we can do this. You can do this.