Abundance

When Chris' beloved friend, Jon, married Shea, I scored an amazing friend myself. Though Jon and Chris are thick as thieves, Shea and I give them a run for their money on the soul-baring, dying-to-catch-up front, so every time we get to see them, it's a real treat.

We spent our last two day in Maine with Jon, Shea, and their two little girls. When we weren't gorging ourselves on Jon's delicious cooking, (he was a serious chef when they lived in Boston and just took over Rick's in York, Maine,) or doing laundry or chasing children, Shea and I managed to sneak in some solid and meandering meaning-of-life conversations.

Shea and I.

Chris and Jon

 

Jon at Rick's.

Shea's a life coach, which I heard her explain to Stella is 'a person who helps you when you're making big decisions.' Over the years, she's offered simple but mind-blowing alternate perspectives to me at key moments. When we were considering making our year-long move to Montana, I wondered aloud to her if we were just looking for a way to insert drama and insanity into our life, which just recently began to calm down, and she said something like, 'what if you just finally have enough strength to do something you've always wanted to do?'

Really, that was just what I needed to hear. I decided to adopt her proposed perspective because it felt true, though not something I could have articulated in the moment. Now that we're a few months into this Montana gig, I know she was right.

On this last trip to Maine, Shea talked a lot about scarcity, specifically about the powerful culture of scarcity that we live in. 'I don't have enough time,' has practically been my mantra these past years of working and parenting and carpooling and cleaning and scheduling and on and on. Not enough love, not enough money, not enough stuff — you can really take this scarcity stuff and go anywhere with it.

My motivation for our Montana adventure has a lot to do with convincing myself that we have enough. Enough strength, enough stability, and enough resources to pull this off. Over my summer sabbatical, I've experienced having enough time — endless stretches of time — for what feels like the first time in my life. It has been delicious. And despite my original intentions, I've gotten very little done. No huge paintings, no baby albums for the girls, no big nothing. Instead, I've watched clouds, sniffed bark, rolled around in the grass, read 'The Secret Garden' to Stella in a hammock in our garden, and stopped to enjoy whatever, wherever. I feel so much more human.

I have two more weeks of this sabbatical business, and I can feel scarcity trying to claw its way into my brain. I'm holding down the abundant fort.