The Vast and Endless Sea

You can tell by the way she carries herself, she’s tough. Not one to get vulnerable or cry. She walks in that way that lets you know she lifts heavy and boasts as a regular fixture at some local gym. Tattoos span across her upper right arm. Brown hair in space buns.

We’re passing around a basket with questions in it, everyone answering from the depths of their own lived experience. Some are bursting at the seams to share, some need a bit of coaxing to open up. One cuts strawberries on the floor of my living room to distract herself as she tentatively answers her question.

The basket comes around to the woman with the tattoos and space buns and she takes a deep breath as she reads it out loud.

“What’s weighing on you this week?”

She stares at the little folded paper a moment, weighing her answer.

“I don’t feel like I have the freedom to not be okay. Whenever I’m going through something, the people I love most seem to shut down and pull away.”

She’s quiet in the way she says it. The room matches her, holding its breath to allow her the space to continue.

“Especially my sister.” Her voice cracks.

“She’s my best friend but anytime I try to open up to her, she shuts down. It’s like I’m too much for her. Whenever I’m going through something, I have to put on a mask and it’s so lonely.” The tears finally fall. She cries softly as we all take in the truth beneath that pain. How we all share in it to some degree.

Another voice from across the room.

“My sister is my best friend,” tears roll down her cheeks too. “Even if I can’t always show up for her, there’s nothing she can do that would ever make me love her less.”

The room starts to chime in, sharing their own experiences being rejected by the ones they love most. How it changes the way we all move in the world.

I sit back. Observe. Allow the others to ebb and flow with one another before the basket is passed to the next person.

There are these moments in life that allow you to zoom out, that whisper to you “this is what you’re meant for.” This was one of those moments.

On one of the family nights, I had asked everyone to share something that was significant to them. One person brought a photo of his stepmother. She had passed away when he was young. He talked about who she was and how much she meant to him. How she was still the guiding voice in his head.

One person brought a painting, something that reflected his inner world. He walked us through the nuances and details that would have otherwise been missed. By the end of it, we were all enthralled with his talent and storytelling and how an inner world could be so creatively and secretly on display in this canvas.

One person showed photos of her roadtrip from Alabama to California. She was a single mother like me and made the leap to leave a corporate job and her family in her small hometown to move to Laguna Beach with her son. She showed us odd gas stations and fun rest stops and those oddities only the rural midwest could possibly offer.

One person brought paperwork. She walked us through the documents from the court case that put her father in jail. How at the age of fifteen she had saved herself and her eleven siblings from a monster. She showed her journals from that time and talked about how it felt like a different person when she reread them. How she was so scared and so alone and still persevered in a court system that was not set up for her to win.

This was another time when everything zoomed out and that voice whispered, “This. This is what it is all about.”

At this last family night, one guy pulled me aside and told me that he’s been sober since the first family night he’d attended. That he had tried to stop drinking a few times but couldn’t seem to make it stick. After experiencing the connection and the natural high from our meditation, he finally stopped. That he was on his journey and had started the nonprofit he talked about that first night.

There’s always a pendulum swing for me. I’ll have these incredible, serendipitous moments when it all feels aligned. When the skies are open and I see so clearly what I want to do with my life. Cultivate connection, hold space, love others the way God has loved me. Facilitate a place where people who don’t relate to church culture can come to a church of sorts. A place where we can heal together.

To allow others to be known. To be known myself, perhaps.

And then the doubt creeps in. The questions. How would I ever support myself and my son if I pursued this with my whole life? Is it something I can confine to the margins of my time? Will the ache for more clawing its way out of my chest ever subside that way?

The Saturday after family night was filled with doubt. My brother stopped by just long enough to solidify them. What’s my ten year plan? Have I filed my taxes? What’s my budget?

My head spun in circles as I tried to imagine a life pursuing this work. What if there comes a point where I need to jump and I don’t? What if I’m stuck in marketing for the rest of my life? What if I do jump and it doesn't work out?

The fears like to play against one another. On one hand, there is the fear of being the mother who gave everything up for her son. It is not a burden I ever want Roman to carry. I want to show him the life I want him to live, one filled with God and guts and going for it. Pursuing why you believe you are on this planet with abandon.

On the other hand, I want stability for him. I’ll do anything to provide a soft home and easy laughs. For him to have the kind of childhood that allows you to fully become yourself without fear. The childhood I wished for myself.

I was laying on the couch fighting these doubts and the conflicting fears when a phone call came in. A couple months ago, I told a friend to watch Jesus Revolution. It’s my favorite movie. This friend was looking to move to Pennsylvania from Canada and had just gotten back from looking at places over there.

“I just signed my lease in Laguna Niguel,” she said. “I’m moving back to California.”

She had gotten 15 minutes into the movie and had to call me.

“This is you Adrienne. This is what you’re meant for. And now that I’m moving to California, it’s what I’m meant for too. Let’s go into business together, build this ministry. I’m all in.”

I’m sitting on the phone, dumbfounded. She goes on about how we can make things profitable and how she’s taking these courses to get us a leg up. How we can do something really meaningful and still provide a life for ourselves. I’m just sitting there. Dumbfounded.

Another call comes in. I tell her to hold on a minute. It’s another good friend of mine, someone who’s a regular at these family nights.

“I know what I want to do with my life,” she starts.

This friend and I worked together 8 months back. She was the single mom who had left corporate America who I mentioned earlier. She had been trying for the last 8 months to figure out what she wanted to do with her business, how she wanted it to look. Most of our conversations involved her frustration of not finding a landing place with it. That as much as she ruminated and worked and tried to find herself, she couldn’t find something that felt right.

“I want to help you build whatever it is you’re working on,” she said. “This is why I came out here. This is the work I want to do.”

I’m speechless at this point. Tears are in my eyes as I type this. Two people calling at the same time to tell me, they’re all in on this too.

There’s this quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince:

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

God gives us exactly what we need, when we need it. My friend moves out here September first. I meet with my other friend on Wednesday to start to put this thing together, whatever it is. They have both decided it needs a new name, so Heal Laguna will be no more. They can name it. I don’t really care at this point, I’m just thrilled and grateful to have some compatriots in this wild endeavor.

Maybe I can do this. Maybe life will be more beautiful than I could ever imagine. Maybe I will be getting in that river after all.

And maybe that river looks less like a river and more like the vast and endless sea.