Trust Fall

A year ago I sat in the sterile office of a specialist.

He told me tests I had taken revealed 80% of the hearing in my right ear was lost.

A silent virus had infiltrated.

A mistake at the urgent care meant weeks wasted on medication that never could have cured me. Time had been of the essence.

I was faced with the looming possibility of a lifetime of asking others to repeat their words.

In the midst of the tears I chuckled at God’s timing. No sooner had he given me six girls then he had rid me of my ability to hear them clearly!

I left with a high dose of steroids and a reality check.

Ten days later I returned and was told what I had already known to be true. The medication had worked and my hearing was “mostly” restored.

Leaving giddy, tucking away the specialists final warning- I would forever be prone to these types of inner ear infections. If left untreated the ear would go deaf.

Too many times to count during the previous months have I grown anxious.

When the ringing begins, when the world feels like it exists in a tunnel, I ponder the purpose of two ears.

I immediately feel selfish for fearing the possibility of such an insignificant inconvenience.

Such is the story of my life.

There is safety in the fear. Who am I without the worry?

Yet he calls me closer to the edge. He provides the possibility of the unexpected.

So I shall learn to trust in the timing of those things small and those things big.

And when he takes the moments to teach me, to lift me from my comfortable existence, it is then I will learn to fall completely into his arms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Broken

There was a midnight wake up call from a sick child, a husband away on a business trip and an eight year old in tears over the standardized testing taking place that morning. I was over the day before it had even begun.

A saint, my mother, arrived in the early hours to shepherd the six girls through their morning routine while I hopped in the car for a nearly three hour commute.

It was no wonder that fog filled my brain and I found myself on the road less traveled. Miscalculating my route meant no cell reception for a great portion of the drive rendering it impossible to join a 9am conference call. I had no choice but to watch the sunrise over the rolling hills.

I pondered the hard parts;

this journey of motherhood and career.

Feeling called to both I wondered why it could be so impossible at times.

And in that moment I came to realize that I will forever live in this space of in between.

There is no magic fix, no way to Maria Kondo my way into balance;

always there will be something off kilter.

The imbalance does not make me broken, it makes me real.

So I will feel sad that I miss the tooth falling out and ecstatic when a project I shepherd moves forward. I will hold the hurts and the happy all in one place.

There is beauty in the rising sun. This is where I want to be.