Just Playing

"Close your eyes. Pretend you're ten years old again. Just playin'. You're just playing. I want to play football."
-Coach Eric Taylor, Friday Night Lights

I think living with intention and purpose is one of the hardest things, ever, despite what all of the self-help authors and super successful people in this world may think and tell us. Living this way, filled with intention and purpose, requires a kind of resolve that not much of us adults know because we are trying so hard to just keep it all together, to just keep the game of life moving forward. 

When I was sick, I had a purpose and an intention. My job was to get well. And while I, still, will always have medical issues - when half your body doesn’t work like it's supposed to, that's just the way life is - I hope and plan to live a life full of a purpose and intention. A purpose and intention that exists other than just achieving physical wellness. I want my heart and spirit to heal as much as my body heals. I want my soul to dance. And, more importantly, I want to serve my fellow seekers of the light.

I don’t really know how to get to this place of a purpose filled life, but I am willing to keep trying. We all want to anesthetize pain with what feels so good. Although, I believe, the grown up version of what feels good, isn’t always the catalyst to purpose. 

But, what I do know, though, when i was ten, I played house and I drew fake roads, with chalk, on my parents’ driveway so I could run pretend errands and rush my fake kids to pretend soccer practice. I was totally enveloped in my chalk drawing purpose. I know I danced with joy at the McGing Irish Dancers' studio. I know I played school in my basement. I know I was super into clothes and fashion and my mom always says, when she was nine months pregnant with my sister, I insisted she tuck her shirt in, despite her huge belly. I still love to play house and cook and clean and run errands and dance and teach and pick out the perfect clothes and mother everyone I know. Just like, when I was ten years old. 

Mary Oliver writes, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

We knew our plan. We knew when we were young. We knew this plan when we made forts out of blankets and played house in the woods and pretended sticks were forks. We just played. We didn’t have an agenda; we didn’t require perfection. We didn’t judge our play. We just played.

As hard as it is to live from this place, especially, in a world so filled with hurt and isolation and illness and heartbreak and bills to be paid and babies to be fed and who is right and who isn’t - we must still be brave enough to insist we live from this sacred and innocent place. We must find that child in our own lives so that we may see that innocent child in others' lives. We all just need to learn to play and believe and trust and most of all, just love. Just love the child. Loving, ultimately, is the way we live from the truest of all intention.

This plan, to just play and live from our ten-year-old-selves, may not be the answer, I have no idea. But, for all of the millions of dollars spent on therapy, wars, protection, politics, and perfection, self-help books, lectures, and all avenues to feel well again, it’s worth a try. Please, this holiday season, if you are grateful for nothing else, be grateful for the ten-year-old who lives inside of you. For she knows the answer because she is just playin'. "

High Expectations

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

-Albert Einstein

A few days ago someone told me my expectations of life were just too high and I have an all or nothing attitude sometimes.

I said, “Yup, I have high expectations and I do want it all or at least the possibility of it all.”

Because here’s the thing...I almost died a few times, and I learned this thing called life only comes around once. And when I woke up, on several occasions, from near death, I didn’t lie there and think my expectations were too high. I thought of all the times I soared. I thought of all the people that made my heart soar. I thought of all of the moments I reached for and grabbed my expectations. I have one shot to do all the things I want to do. I have one shot to be all the things I want to be. One shot. One time.

So, yeah, my expectations are high. I like them up there. There is where they should be. I learn to live from my imagination, just like some guy named Albert Einstein did. I am sure he, too, had some pretty high expectations.

To all of you dreamers and high expectationers - please keep it up. We ALL deserve it ALL. Every single one of us. 

You Are Amazing and Unamazing

I have a friend who often says, “You are an amazing person, Sarah.” 

I often reply, “Well that’s nice, but it’s not quite the whole story.”

Then he will list what he thinks is amazing about me. Like how I am very girly, but my hands are rough from pushing my wheelchair and cooking and doing dishes so much. He thinks I am amazing because I cook and eat so many vegetables. He notices and thinks it’s amazing I keep my house so clean. And how I light candles and make truffle popcorn while we watch TV, because these little things create a cozy atmosphere. I like hearing this list and I like feeling amazing for a minute. I am all for positive thinking and affirmations. Focus on the good parts and allow them to grow and all of that stuff. I am a big fan of and, constantly, practice building myself up and feeling worthy. I am also a big fan of building up others and making them feel worthy. I am all for the amazing.

However, I also feel pretty unamazing, sometimes. I do pretty unamazing things, too. I cuss like a sailor. So much so, Ashlea warns me not to drop certain words as she drives through preschool car line. I am sad, a lot. Like, really, really sad. I am happy to eat salt and vinegar chips and truffle popcorn for dinner, even though I know it is not healthy and is a pretty unamazing dinner. My depression can take over and make me feel withdrawn and lonely and disposable and abandoned and I find solace in too much TV. I can have an incredible and spectacularly unamazing emotional breakdown that involves gut-wrenching cries and a wrath of anger so unamazing I struggle to forgive the moment. And in that moment, I can say words I don’t mean. Words that tear down and make others feel unworthy. I feel pretty unamazing and like a failure in these moments. And all I can muster up to say is, what is wrong with me?

Nothing. Nothing is really wrong with me. I am a person. A person who struggles. A person who gets it right sometimes. A person who is both, amazing and unamazing. And just as much as I celebrate and water the amazing parts, I can work to take tender care of and forgive the not so amazing parts - except the bad words, I lost the use of my legs, I get bad words. Most of these unamazing parts are our wounds. These are the parts that need just as much care and nurturing as the other parts. Anger isn’t as much as an attack, as it is a cry for help. Even Jesus got a little angry. Feeling lonely or depressed or abandoned aren’t unlovable qualities - they are symptoms of our hurt and places where we need more understanding and compassion. This is the crux of this whole love thing. We must forgive what is worst in us, and in another, to truly love. We don’t have to love the bad stuff, we just have to forgive it, and love anyway, in addition to, and because the wounds even exist. 

No one is amazing all of the time. We each possess a true story that lives inside of us. This recognition that the truth - the amazing and unamazing - is the best version of the story is scary to face. It’s hard to recognize that the hurt is still there, yet choose to keep living and healing anyway. We must understand this balance of, hurt yet still living, can get out of whack sometimes. It takes time to see the hurt and mistakes and transform them into moments of forgiveness and calls for more love. This kind of understanding is hard to offer a friend, but it is hardest to offer to ourselves. But, we can’t give away what we don’t have. 

So, yes, l still look in the mirror and tell the person looking back she is worthy and lovable. But, I am not worthy and lovable because I am amazing. I am worthy and lovable because of all of my parts, just as I am - amazing and unamazing. And so are you. 

Hayden Charles

ACT II: The middle space. The part of the story where the main character is lost and struggling. S/he tries to find the way forward by taking every path except the ones that require VULNERABILITY. The struggle continues until s/he finally realizes that the only way home is through uncertainty and total vulnerability. Into the dark. I hate ACT II. I love ACT II. The middle is messy. But it’s where the magic happens. We live in the rumble. 

-Brene Brown

Hayden Charles entered this world. Ashlea had her fourth and final baby, naturally. Like, no drugs at all. Afterwards, she said, “It was amazing to feel it, but it hurts like a bitch.”

Giving birth hurts. Ashlea said it’s like a burning sensation that takes over the entire body and you aren’t sure if you will vomit or pass out or die from so much pain. She said you hold on to the guard rails for dear life and scream. And then the baby is born. The messiness isn’t over, but there is a peace that fills the room. He is alive and well and resting on his mother’s chest. She is exhausted, hands to her side, head tilted, and eyes slightly closed. He is born.

This is the magic of ACT II that Brene Brown writes about. That feeling when we think we just can’t take it anymore and we can’t see a single light or even lighthouse, but, instead of giving up, we clutch the side of the boat and enter the darkness of the night, trusting we will be guided. And it is in this trust, this vulnerability, that we find our way. 

Babies remind us of new beginnings and total forgiveness. They are vulnerable and trusting. They are open to love and they embody hope. We comfort and forgive their cries. We don't see their needs as weakness. They represent a fresh start. Magic is alive in their impending arrival, their actual breakthrough into this world, and this same magic breathes through their tiny bodies. This kind of magic, though, doesn’t come from certainty. There isn’t a guarantee with babies or with life. We just hold on to the guard rails for dear life and scream and hope, against all odds, that all will be well. And just like Ashlea said about birth, we say about life, “It’s amazing to feel it, but it hurts like a bitch.”

Welcome to the world, Hayden Charles. You give us so much light and hope and you've only been here for a moment. Thank you for blessing us with your presence.