You Can’t Hold Up the World

(but it was sweet of you to try)

I don’t know about you, but there have been many times in my adult life where I’ve paused, usually after a big life change or surviving a trauma, to realize just how far I currently am from where I envisioned being at some point in the past. Similar to the way that forty sounds old to you when you’re ten years old, I have been continually surprised to find myself so far from what I expected for myself, say, five years before. Sometimes I was in a better place than I’d expected to be, sometimes a worse one, but what’s consistently been true is the difference between what I’d thought would be happening and what was happening. Partly that’s just the way life works.

In the last six years, people I know or my children know have been through every imaginable life change and challenge. My oldest son’s high school classmate died of cancer. A friend lost his brother in a car accident; he was about to become a father. I saw pictures of his beautiful baby when he was born, and I could tell this tiny, feisty boy is going to be epic. Friends have battled, and are battling, cancer, another friend gave birth to her second child. A friend had brain surgery. A soul sister of mine quit her job to pursue her passion and calling, and another soul sister decided to go to graduate school to pursue hers. My youngest son’s friend lost his…