Recovery Road
On the way down recovery you may be confronted with a tiny obstacle known as Ego; Anxiety is still there, of course, and if you are my kindred spirit, the constant neuroticism faced by those of us who cannot get out of our own heads. On the days when you feel you have to figure out your entire life plan in the next five minutes, try this: put your phone down, step away from your laptop, turn off CNN (or FOX depending) and see what’s left. See what is present to your life; what you have to give to the moment or maybe the tiny person in front of you.
On a particularly low day for me, after deciding I’d never figure out how to begin my next chapter in a meaningful and understandable way, I told Eli (still four) that I would sit outside with him but no, I could not actually play basketball with him right now. He walked out of my closet, where I realized later, I was still hiding. I turned my attention back to Anxiety and let her swallow me up.
“Look up,” Hope whispered.
I looked out the window and there he was, playing without me. Because he had found something he loves and while he invites me onto his court every day, he goes whether I go or not. I mustered the courage to tell Anxiety I was taking a break from her self-obsessive thoughts, threw on my tennis shoes, put my hair in a pony and got solidly beat in a game of HORSE and next in a close 14-13 game of one-on-one. Love and basketball. This was a familiar story; one my family had been writing for generations.
As I turned to look back at my house from the cul-de-sac, a little miracle peeped out. There beneath the dying tree, my azaleas were starting to bloom. Those little specs of pink dashing against the white bricks felt like a light show produced for me on the stage of my life. “Awake! Awake,” they breathed into the air.
I thought about my grandmother, Mimi, in Tyler where her home sits on the historical Azalea Trail. Until the onset of dementia, she hand trimmed those azaleas every year - over 1,000 of them. I’ve often felt distant from her as we lacked quality time together and I struggle to make deep connections without it. But as I was falling in love with my blooming azaleas, I wondered what was so meaningful about that to me. I thought about how after raising five kids, Mimi did not slow down for one second. About her azaleas and Bible studies and her exercise class and the cinnamon roll Christmas Coffee she put on for twenty or more years that I have hosted now for seven. And how she is part of me and I am part of her. We are linked by more than a bloodline but this legacy of flowers, church, dirt, faith, children, determination, a long obedience in the same direction. I’m part of her legacy and she is part of mine. I felt suddenly, inexplicably connected to her.
I added words to my notebook that night: People, Earth, Presence. What matters most is simple and readily available. But in our misguided efforts to build little kingdoms to ourselves we miss out on God’s love and grace pouring out of our front yards and onto our cul-de-sacs and into our hearts. People. Earth. Presence. Mind. Body. Spirit.
I picked up a new book that had been laying by the fireplace for a month, Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. I realize even the very idea of starting a new book is pointing me towards Hope. Books, ever my refuge.
I bought Vonda a copy, and Katherine, sent one to my girlfriend in California, and my mom and my sister. I thought we all needed Hope and could find her in this book, as we have in so many good books before. Yes, Vonda says, the author is her friend from Chicago, Ruth Haley Barton.
Of course she is.
Hope is always trying to give us little signals. She is friends with the Holy Spirit and together they whisper to us: this book, that neighbor, this way, that door, this idea, that thought, this depth, that height. Stop. Look. And Listen. Pay attention to what I’m showing you, child.