I had a student in my office who was falling apart. The weight of it all. The worry of it all. The homework and the grades and the mom expectations and the dad expectations and the teacher expectations and the friend expectations, and as if that wasn't enough, the beauty standards (what in the actual heck is up with the beauty standards?) and the economy and the environment and the politics and the social media and can you believe only 1 in 1,000 sea turtle babies survive to adulthood, many because they are trampled by beachgoers?!
It's all too much.
The everything everywhere all the time. As she sat there unraveling, I thought about one of those old-school coin funnels at the grocery store. Drop in a penny and watch it orbit around until before you know it, it's gone right down the tubes. One thing after another. Spinning, spinning, spinning. Doomed for darkness.
And then I had to break her heart, because I knew something that only makes it worse.
"Life is not going to get easier."
I continued, "All those problems? They aren't going away. Instead, new problems are going to join the old problems and then one day you wake up and there are problems, problems, problems, everywhere you turn. Just getting out of bed is a problem, with the grumpy hip and the plantar fasciitis and have you heard the one about the frozen shoulder? Well just you wait."
Her eyes got big. Her face went blank. I thought she might burst and I was going to have a Violet Beauregarde exploding blueberry moment, right there in the middle of my teeny tiny office with mostly white walls.
So I hurried, "Honey, it's true, life doesn't get easier the older you get. Quite the opposite, really. And so you have to change your focus. You have to stop obsessing over the hard and start looking for the good. You just must."
You have to change your focus.
It's really the only way.
If you've lived long enough, and for some, you don't have to live very long at all, then you know that life is full of hard. Twists and turns. Ups and downs. Big flops and little flops and full-body belly flops, and man do those sting.
It we aren't careful, all we see is the dark tunnel looming ahead.
But when we shift our focus, suddenly we see so much more.
We see the A- on the math test, all that homework finally paying off. We see a parent's proud smile when we make it and that same parent's compassionate open-arms when we don't. We see the strength and roundness that comes with changing and becoming. We see small steps forward and we celebrate. We see big steps backward and we meet the gift of mercy. We see laugh lines earned. We see grace.
We see grace.
And just like that sweet student, I, too, need the reminder.
Because some days it really does feel like too much. Heck, some days it really is too much.
The weight of it all. The worry of it all.
And then I remember. Change your focus.
Because the hard is telling me to fall apart.
But grace is always always there.
And it never lets us go.
It's all grace.
