The Work pt. 1
It’s a rainy day here in Laguna. There’s a magic in the stillness that creeps in when the weather doesn’t attract so many people to our beaches. I’m sitting in the public library at my favorite table over looking the raging waves as they chop up the sea. Just around the corner is the first place I met her.
At the time she had blonde hair with a bluish-purple tint. She was in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, neutral colors. Pretty though you could tell she hadn’t slept much.
Stroller firmly in hand, I was making my way to the volleyball courts to cheer on our guys in the AA tournament when she stopped me.
“How is it being a mother?”
I turned and saw her for the first time. I remember radiating love as I told her “the best. It’s is the absolute best.”
I wish someone had spoken to me like that when I was pregnant and unsure. People tend to focus on the sacrifice. “Do what you want now cause it’s over when the baby comes!” and the like. There were a few people, maybe two throughout my pregnancy, who genuinely spoke with love around parenthood. I held on to those two.
“I’m pregnant,” she said. “The father doesn’t want me to keep it. I don’t know if I can be a mother.”
I looked at her sincerely, “Do you know God?”
“I’m making my way back there,” she had a bit of a nervous laugh.
“You can do anything with God.”
I meant it. I had watched Him transform my life over the last 6 months. I was almost nine months pregnant when I found out I was going to be a single mom. I was unemployed and had to move out of my home after being blindsided by the reality that the happy family was a fantasy. We had just picked out everything for the nursery. My parents were selling the house and that meant I had two months postpartum to figure out work and a place for Roman and I to live. It felt impossible.
Now, 6 months later, I was living in my perfect little place in downtown Laguna with a job that allowed me the flexibility to be with my son full time. I had a little yard and a parking spot (equivalent to solid gold here) and just for kicks, God gave me a wood burning fireplace and an ocean view and neighbors that felt like family.
“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears" -Rumi
That is the power in testimony. As I stood before this beautiful young woman as she shared her excitement and her doubts, I could speak from my heart with conviction and sincerity. From my lived experience. That God, the creator of you and I, can do things far beyond our circumstances.
She decided to keep the baby.
This set me on a path.
Before I met her, God quietly started planting the seed of being all in on something. I am someone who has ten eggs in ten baskets. My modus operandi has always been to do many things at once. I am interested in a wide variety of life’s offerings, from sports to business to the divine, and I tend to intermix them in varying degrees in my day to day.
As I began to sit in prayer day in and day out, God kept asking me: what would it be like to be all in on something?
It started to take over my thought process. If I can find relative success giving ten percent in all these different areas, what would it look like to give 80, 90, 100% to something? Was there something I was passionate about enough to dedicate myself to?
I had already run a successful business and weathered the nightmare of scaling it to a full operation. I learned quickly that money and validation were not motivators enough for me to give my all in that endeavor.
The job I had I could do sleeping with one hand tied behind my back.
I had started recording my music when I found out I was pregnant but now, as a single mother, being a musician seemed selfish and borderline impossible.
I could always finish my novel but betting on a book to support my son did not resonate with me.
Again and again, I came back to Roman. My little guy. My mr. man. He sat at the center of everything for me. For all my intelligence and trials and capabilities, at the end of all of it, that was what I wanted. To be a mother. To be home. To be present. To be with Roman.
I sat at coffee with my spiritual director who has become a dear friend and cried at the realization. Life is incredibly simple. Life is at home.
To be continued…
