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Trust the Fall
Seven years ago today, I backed a moving van into our driveway in Leesburg, VA. I remember the empty sound of my two oldest children playing in the back of the truck, shouting and laughing, listening to the echo of their own voices. It was 2009, my business had finally crumpled in on itself after the housing bubble burst, and Maile was upstairs with the two babies, putting our last remaining things into cardboard boxes. Maybe you read the story. We were leaving our friends and a community we loved, moving north into my parents' basement until we could regain our footing.
It felt like our entire world was caving in on itself. It felt like, after months of walking along the edge of a precipice, we had stepped out into the void and were falling.
Seven years ago. The journey we have been on since that moment has been amazing, unrelenting, surprising, scary, and incredible. We lived in my parents' basement (twice), took a four-month trip around the country, lived in the middle of a 40-acre wood, and bought our first house in the city. We had two more children. We've now lived in the same house for 29 months, the longest stretch of our 17-year marriage.
What am I trying to say? I'm not sure exactly, although there's something in me that says sometimes we have to trust the fall. Sometimes life will not only feel like it's out of our control - it will be completely and utterly out of our control.
And even in those moments, when it is impossible to figure out what is going on, we are invited to trust.
* * * * *
This new life Maile and I found, this life where I write for a living, this life that offers very little certainty or assurance from month to month...I'm realizing, this is how it feels to free fall. Trying to budget is a joke. Committing to anything that's further than six months out is almost impossible.
But when I look back over the seven years, the books I've been asked to write, the book you helped me publish on Kickstarter (the very same one that's been picked up by a publisher), the people we've met and the stories we've been part of, well, it helps me to realize that I can trust the fall. I can trust that I'm being guided by something bigger than myself. I can trust that these days we're living will, someday, hope beyond wildest hope, make sense.
* * * * *
Two years ago this week I took the step of self-publishing a novel with the help of Kickstarter. Many of you came through and helped that book become a reality. At the time, it felt both enormous and tiny: enormous because I was putting something I had created out into the world; tiny because I thought, at best, a few hundred people would read it.
Nearly two years later the book has been picked up by a publisher. Who knows where it go from here?
Who knows where the tiniest of steps will lead you?
* * * * *
What feels like failure is not always failure. What feels like a tiny step is not always a tiny step.
Do you feel like you're falling? Don't panic. You're right where you should be.
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