Balance

My adopted mom from college came to visit. Laurie and I were paired together during my college days in what was basically an "adopt-a-college-student" program at our church. She taught me how to "layer" (clothing not cakes), make paste papers and choose butter over margarine (because at least your body knows what to do with it.) We've not done a very good job keeping in touch through the years, and yet she understands me in "shorthand", a way that no one else does. She knows both the Singaporean me when I first arrived in the US, and the Americanized me, now 12 years here and counting. She held my hand when I was a terrified, bewildered freshman, a naive college graduate, a newlywed and now as a new mother. We share unbreakable bonds in the Lord, as mother and daughter, as friends and as artists. She is Greyson's "Grandma Laurie."

We spent a lovely time together yesterday. She gave me a couple of sewing lessons in the morning on my new machine, and then we took a walk on China beach and she taught me how to balance rocks. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever experienced. Laurie says the trick is to be willing to let them fall as you graze one rock's surface on another until you "feel" it's resting place, then you let go. Laurie says the best thing about balancing rocks is that you can't make a science out of it, you just have to "feel" it. When you finally succeed and it stands, if the wind blows and knocks it down, you're supposed to say, "oh well, so be it." It was exhilarating every time I successfully balanced one. There are so many life lessons to be drawn from this exercise, I don't know where to begin. The most poignant one for me right now is this: if I allow myself the freedom to fall as a mother, I will find the delicate balance of parenthood. Every time I have a down day, I will bring my son down to China beach, park his stroller by the water and balance some rocks. It will remind me how the Maker of sea and sky will reveal the impossible when I allow the friction of my will and His to lead me to His resting place.



I did this, seriously I did!