I don’t know what to hold onto.

Long ago, in grad school, a friend shared how taking risks and setting out on any adventure where you don’t see the outcome is like being out on a trapeze, swinging through the air, with no net beneath you. She described the feeling of the air against her face as she let go–and her body, tethered to nothing, stretching out to be caught by hands stronger than her own. 

I am stretching out. I am untethered. I have let go.

The laundry room walls are close on both sides, a tucked away room off the hall adjacent to my daughter’s where I can hear her singing. She is packing for her freshmen year in college, and the world I’ve known for 18 years feels shaky around me. Father, whom have I been, and what am I becoming?

There were seasons when turning my attention to God had a rhythm that was regular but anything but predictable. When the kids were at school, and the house was quiet for a few hours, I would lay on the floor, my hands pressed to the wood, my knees on the carpet. I’d place my journal near me because I found that transcribing our conversations–words too kind and intensely loving to be my own–helped me hear them. It became an exercise in discernment. I was learning the sound of his voice in my heart; I was learning to trust that the words weren’t just thoughts of my own.  

I will not tire of this—my fascination with people and my desire to understand what it means for them to feel alive, curious, and filled with wonder. People who live fully awake to the weight of their selves are irresistible. There is nothing more attractive, alluring, and captivating.

Can you think of someone in your life who feels the weight of their identity? They know who they are because they’ve let themselves feel it. They are not ashamed. They make no excuses about their personality–feeling neither insufficient nor too much. They know they are loved like they are, so shame has no hold on them.

It wasn’t easy to say the words, but it was even crazier to hear them.

My eyes locked on hers when she said them, sure and clear, like the most normal thing in the world. If I could pull each word apart, string it together like the most dangerous lasso, my neck could go right there, the rope threads just where they needed to be. “We’ve all had abortions,” she said. “We’ve all messed up.”

What if listening — truly listening — is what keeps us alive? Not just surviving, but moving in rhythm with the infinite. In the rush, in the noise, in the ache of the world, we forget. But we were made to listen. To breathe. To carry what is vital: love, wisdom, hope. To live fully, heart awake, spirit engaged, wholly his.