"The watch is…beautiful, but the trouble is it’s been in that box too long—it’s stopped working. Sometimes, you’ve got to shake it up again to get it moving. Too many opportunities out there to spend your life in a box, no matter how nice that box is."

– Dolphin Tale

 I wandered in to the kids' movie the other day as the older gentleman was explaining his going away gift (an heirloom watch which required a good shake to get started) to the young man who was so very apprehensive about the whole "going away" thing.  I am not young anymore and have done a good deal of going away myself.  And going towards and going forward.  

It doesn't get easier. 

We have had some wonderful and wrenching goodbye's.  We have had some sleepless nights wondering what we are going towards.  I have shared before the moments of fear over the not knowing.  When I wandered in during this clip, however cheesy, it did remind me about boxes, however nicely I may make them up.  They still contain and confine. They aren't meant to hold in a life.  Staying inside lends a certain dependability, predictability to life.  And it eliminates all new possibilities. 

The shaking up part can be a little disconcerting. Or a lot. Still, there are too many opportunities waiting to be embraced and only one way to reach them. 

I remind myself again that it is ok to be afraid, it just isn't ok to let that stop you.

"The spirit and practice of simplicity in dress, in food, and in furniture, the practical and continual self-denial which we have laid down as the very soul of womanly virtue – as indeed they are the soul of Christian life – must be made the groundwork of the education you give (your children). It will be for them as it must have been for yourselves, health of body as well as health of soul; it will be for the men and women of whom God destines them to be the (parent), the principle of strength of limb and energy of will, of clearness of intellect and purity of life; these are the the men and women for which America and the whole of Christendom are yearning and praying."

– Msgr. Bernard O'Reilly (likeminded readers, you want this book!)

It is a good thing, now and then, to articulate your vision to yourself, particularly when your life journey takes you along a road riddled with potholes.  (as it often does)  It seems to never fail that I when hit a bumpy stretch something falls open in my lap and does that for me, as this passage did in my morning meditation.  

There is the child balking at chores or studies, the unexpected diagnoses, the failed inspections, the appointments than run longer than planned, the disappointments that strike deeply in the heart, to the boiler that breaks down at odd hours.  It isn't usually the one big thing we struggle with, but the hundred smaller things that peck away at our resolve. (you know – that whole 'being pecked to death by baby chickens' thing) And sometimes both big and smaller challenges stack up together. 

We have had such a month. 

It reinforces to us the need for good healthy margins, given how quickly those fill up. It also reinforces to us the need to cultivate those four core virtues in ourselves and our children:

strength of limb

energy of will

clearness of intellect

purity of life

Coincidentally I had just read similar exhortations here.  

"You get to choose: either the Pain of Discipline or the Pain ofDisappointment. Nothing happens without discipline. No music gets played without discipline. No games get won. No finish lines get crossed. No freedom gets tasted. And you want that."

These are the conversations we have had with our kids, with ourselves. So we press on to:

clean up that thing,
study for that thing,
sweat on that thing,
or do that big thing that feels like an impossible thing —
You can bravely do the next thing, because God’s got this thing.

 While we are more than what we DO, we are still nonetheless given important things to do. We do those better when we lean into them versus slinking back. That's the theme right now, leaning into the curve.