It was a moment our living room was left largely unfurnished for. The three of us, wrestling and rolling around the wide-open, carpeted space, tickling each other into hysterics. Then I was gasping for breath until the laughter turned to tears. And then I was just crying.
"Why's mama crying?" my son asked my husband. "She just needs to let go of some stress," he answered, stroking my hair.
And into that space, something unwound deep inside of me.
I often eagerly fill up that space with anything I can. Mostly busy-ness and fantasizing. Because doing and thinking all the time loads up that space with color and vibrance and noise. And "un-doing" makes us itchy. It thrusts us right into that great, grey, uncomfortable expanse of "I don't know."
Most days we catch little glimpses of that space, and run the other way, averting our gaze. It's an unformed space pregnant with possibility and empty of obligation that we often don't really explore with open eyes until we are thrust into it by circumstances.
And even then, caught in the tide of one of life's calamities, we flounder and grasp for some semblance of order. A firmness and clarity of direction and precedent that can take us by the hand and guide us to shallower waters.
But what if we chose to abide; to be patient enough to allow ourselves to be moved, rather than to Be Proactive, and Get Sh*t Done?
Before I had a child, I imagined that some separation existed between mundane, daily grind life and an exalted, transcendent, spiritual experience. But now I think that the work is here. Now. It's messy and it's frequently boring. Our human-ness lives in the space between. Between heart-throbbing expansive moments of ecstasy and wiping baby butts. Between a cancer diagnosis and the cure (or the not cure). Between falling apart and picking yourself back up. Between the inhale and the exhale.
I used to believe there was always something that could be done or said. Sometimes, backing away from a friend peering into that space, I would say: "Everything happens for a reason" in that all-knowing, humble/proud way that actually means "I have no friggin' idea what you're going through and, really, it's making me a bit uncomfortable. So I'm gonna distance myself from that mess."
Recently I sat with a group of beautiful women sharing stories and prayers under the stars. In such plain language and with such vulnerability, we pooled our pain and our gratitude and offered it all up to the fire.
Driving home that night, I wondered to myself, what bestowed that act with its profound power? And then I saw a vision of these women, side-by-side, peering together into the space between. Falling apart in front of each other, making the space for each other to do the same and calmly resisting any urge to fix anything. Bravely shouting "I don't know!" the whole time.
So this is a call for falling apart. For having no plan and for waiting to see and for keeping each other company on the way to I-Don't-Know.
Keeping it all together is for suckers.