Everything at Once
On a road trip, a bad knee, and a life that holds more than you think
This morning we’re packing the minivan to the brim with suitcases and pillows and swim accessories, headed east for a few wild days at a family resort and water park. Our boys are bouncing off the walls at 8 am, earlier than usual for a summer Monday, and I’m finishing my first cup of coffee standing at the kitchen counter. The sky is dark, threatening rain for the drive. Soon, I’ll gather all of the still-beautiful flowers around my house and take them to my mother-in-law next door to enjoy while we’re gone.
My left knee is aching. I’m pretty sure I twisted it the wrong way on Friday at Pilates. Those sumo squat combination moves are coming back to haunt. Leading the 3 & 4 aged class at church yesterday probably made it worse–with the sheer physicality of playing on the floor for an hour and a half–but how can you know in the moment? How can you know when the precious faces of girls and boys with the very biggest imaginations and feelings are looking at you and repeating (tiny hands mimicking the related motion) that “God sees the heart”? When your body feels strong and capable, and you move with the pace of the class, and the music is good, how can you know a muscle or tendon deep behind the knee is straining too far? But this morning, my body has stored all of these experiences, and reminds me of them. With the rain starting to fall, we get in the van and drive.
I guess this is the year of road trips for us. Four days, countless roller coasters, a water park, and a hotel room with five people in it. On the drive home, Michael has Led Zeppelin going and the boys are deep into their video games, and I have my laptop open on my knees and my phone’s hotspot running. It’s almost a joke at this point that building spreadsheets counts as my introvert time. (It does, though. I’m serious.)
We set aside this trip to 1.) have fun and 2.) make memories, not necessarily to take a break from work or to rest. I’ve learned over the years that family vacations don’t usually allow for recuperation, although I will make a special effort at carving out moments of downtime while we are on the road–a way to keep the pace without losing our sanity. The lines between family time and work time, fun and frustration, energy spent and energy restored, are forever being blurred.
I’m less worried these days about keeping strict boundaries because I’ve figured something out: I used to manage my life by tasks. What’s done, what’s not, which domain I was supposed to be in at any given hour. That system produces a particular kind of guilt that’s hard to shake–the feeling that you’re always a little late to wherever you’re supposed to be present. I’ve mostly quit it. The question I ask now is simpler and harder: what do I actually want?
Not the polished answer, but the true and honest one. I want to be deeply present in my family’s life. I want vocational work that shifts things from chaos to clarity and that empowers people toward something. Those two wants are not at war with each other, but they don’t manage themselves either. They require ongoing discernment (and hard work, let’s be real) about what matters most in a given moment.
We’re back home and recalibrating to life again. I am grateful for our time together, for the ability to carve out memories that will hold for decades to come. I’m grateful to be back in a class this morning, the dull ache in my knee still present as my body gets stronger–all of it stored, none of it wasted. There is more work to do, problems demanding solutions, and ideas waiting to come to life. It’s not perfect, but perfection isn’t my desired outcome anyway.
Until next time,
SBL