Reaching

I remember being five years old, maybe younger, sitting on a church pew between my parents, my shiny Sunday shoes dangling in mid air while my legs fell asleep because my feet couldn't touch the floor.  I tried to sit with my legs crossed like my mama, but that didn't quite work either.  My legs were too short.  I wanted so badly for my feet to touch the floor.  I wanted to wear high heels like my big sisters, to sing in the choir like my daddy.  It seems as though from the moment I became aware of myself, I started yearning for things that waited outside my reach.

I witnessed that same reaching as I watched my own daughters grow.  When Hannah was three she reached my makeup bag that I thought I tucked safely away on the back of the bathroom sink.  By the time I found her, she was quietly and contentedly painting her entire face red with lipstick but she didn't stop there.  She smeared it on the sink in long broad strokes, painted the wall beside the sink in a spatter of little fingerprints.  I stood speechless as I stared down at her, wanting to feel angry (I just told her five minutes before not to touch my makeup bag) but unable to find anything more than deep admiration and amusement welling up inside me.  Always a creator, Hannah reached beyond herself from the moment she took her first breath.

It never ends--the reaching.  Something always lies just past the length of our arms.  Life gives us brief moments when we get to feel as though we have it all.  Inevitably though, something in the distance gets our attention and we stand caught up in our gaze at what lies out there awaiting discovery.

For four years I worked with new mothers.  I visited them in the hospital sometimes just moments after they gave birth, their new little bundles of life held close to their skin, their joy and pain and exhaustion shone through; the pride and incomparable love they felt needed not a word of description.  Underneath it all, the fear and self doubt nagged at them as well.  After a while I always knew which ones were first timers and which ones had already gone through the experience of caring for a newborn.  Watching them bond, it always struck me that even babies fresh from the womb are reaching.  A kiss on his cheek will send a little one rooting towards your face, seeking sustenance that only his mother can give.  No one teaches him how to find his mother's breast, he is born knowing.  Reaching for more than we already have is more than greed, more than ungratefulness for what we already possess.  It is survival.

The name of this blog is The Quest.  It seems abstract, random at times, but it symbolizes my own process.  These blogs are my testament to the ever-extending arm of survival.  It is the journey of one soul, constantly dreaming, falling, rising, stretching, shrinking, finding the courage to hope and believe and try again after every setback, every failure.  Oh, so many setbacks and failures plague my life from one year to the next; yet I sit now, this computer on my lap, heavy eyed and restless wondering which way to extend my arm this time.

Nothing lasts forever.  Life, relationships, jobs, friendships; all of it is temporary.  We do ourselves a favor when we remember this simple truth.  For in the knowing that all things come to an end, we find  courage to keep plodding forward, chin up, eyes to the sky, ready to embrace what life brings us next.

This day brought me through a trial of resilience.  It tested my ability to deliver the truth in love without holding back anything for the sake of saving myself from the suspicion of my character that was inevitable.  I found myself stripped to the bare bones emotionally, sharing my heart and a painful truth at the same time, all the while, resisting the urge to vie for approval or acceptance.  This day was not meant for my own desperate claw at redemption.  This day served me well though, as a reminder that although it is okay to always hold hope close, there are also times when my own needs pale in comparison to the needs of those I love.

All across Northern Greenville County elders whose presence sits close to my heart are watching TVs in dark living rooms, reading novels by lamp light, nodding off while they finish the day's crosswords.  Even they might never realize that the yearning for more never ceases, not even in our last hours on Earth.  I remember a year ago as my father lay dying, the tears that welled up in his eyes when we spoke of happy memories because as he said, "We can't go back and do it all over again."  Life gets lived up in a blur, the good times all muddled in with the bad until we find ourselves near the end, looking back at what we left behind and instead of reaching ahead, we find ourselves turning back, wishing we could grasp for one last moment, the sunny days on the lake or the family dinners on Sundays or even the long nights when we sat up with sick children, watching them breathe, cradling their little hands in ours.  Life is filled with yearning for more; more of the future, more of the past.

We yearn to keep the status quo; to never grow older or more infirm.  We deny our weaknesses until someone is forced to point them out to us in painstakingly honest yet tender ways and still we find ourselves wounded by the truth.  We give up one liberty after another, let go of a little dignity here and there until we find ourselves a shadow of what we once were.  It might come all too easily, that feeling of useless redundancy, especially if we dwell on what we've lost more than on what we experience, learn and grow from.  The reaching can become weary when the quest suddenly changes from finding joy in this life to reaching for another place altogether, where we believe those things we've lost await us.  Arms to greet us, somewhere beyond this reality begin to feel more real, more enticing than any Earthly delight.

In the days before his death my father held a photo of him and my mother on our last family vacation together.  He stared down at it, sometimes joking about how handsome he was, other times, seemingly lost in the gaze at my mother's face, as if he was trying to remember her every nuance, trying to make sure he would recognize her when he stepped across the threshold from this life to the next.  He told me once that as many people as he loved here on Earth, there were even more in that beyond; they were the seeds of a new kind of yearning for him to reach beyond Earthly experiences and the family that still surrounded him.  He sat in peace, listening to music about Heaven and the great reunion in which he so believed and though his heart ached at leaving us behind, he couldn't hide the joy he felt at the thought of greeting his mother and father again.  There was almost an excitement in his eyes as he talked about the Heavenly choir and seeing my mother again.

And so it is, we reach and reach until weary of never finding all we desire, we finally learn we had it all already.  Then we reach for what lies beyond what our eyes behold, into the unknown that for most of our lives seems so mysterious and frightening, but in the end, is our only true comfort.

Perhaps this is the Quest then, succinctly wrapped up in a lifetime of longing for more--no matter what we already hold in our hearts and hands.   We grapple for now, to hang onto whatever we've gotten for ourselves but before we find satisfaction, we find some other want.  Then, as life starts to draw the shades of tomorrow closer together and we see our immortality through clearer eyes, we yearn to go back, to move far beyond, to never live as we are here in this moment in time.

Life, wasted on thoughts of who we think we aught to be, what we think we aught to have, where we think we aught to go.  Isn't it a shame?

Really, all we have is now.  This moment.  This is life, with all its struggles and heartaches and tough choices.  The quest is now.  It is in every moment of every day, striking a fine balance between appreciating the present, honoring the past and maintaining our hope for the future.  Life is rolling with the punches, learning to accept change gracefully, meeting every day with an attitude and wonder of a child.  For every day has something new to teach us, and every night when we lie down, we take up our beds with hopeful hearts for what tomorrow will bring.

The lyrics to a song pop into my head right now:

We are reaching for the future,
We are reaching for the past.
And no matter what we have we reach for more.
We are desperate to discover
What is just beyond our grasp.
Maybe that's what Heaven is for.
--Carolyn Arends

The Quest continues, perhaps forevermore.