So, as you may have heard recently, I missed my son's school registration and failed to get him signed up for his sophomore year of high school. It wasn't just a one-day thing. I missed the entire two-week period of online registration. And when I was done missing that, I missed the day of make-up walk-in registration.
It's not that I wasn't paying attention. I knew he needed to register for school. It's just that I had a lot of other things going on. His older brother was starting college this fall. I was trying to manage housing assignments, book lists, dorm furnishings, parking permits, financial aid, and all the other things that go along with starting that new venture. Plus, on another front, there were all the things involved in moving a child out of your home. The packing. The cleaning. The organizing. For that whole two weeks, it looked like another house threw up inside of my house. And then there are the normal things that go along with starting school for everyone--haircuts, doctor appointments, new glasses, clothes shopping. Every day, high school registration was on my list. And every day, I thought that in another day or another couple of days I would have the time and money to take care of it. And then it was over.
Moms are supposed to be great at multi-tasking, and most of the time we are. One reason, I think, is because we seem to have been gifted with a brain that is laser-focused on everything that needs to be done. You've heard that saying, "Keep your eye on the ball?" Moms are some of the best people I know at keeping our eyes on the ball, even when there is more than one.
But what happens when there are just too many balls in the air? That saying seems like good and necessary advice if you want to hit it out of the park, which is why it's so often used, but let's face it, folks--it's a BASEBALL analogy. And in baseball there is only one ball. I don't know about you, but I have significantly more than one ball in play at any given time.
All the things I listed above are just the extra things that are happening at a snapshot in time. I haven't even addressed all the balls that have to be kept moving every day, just as a part of living. The house, which has to be cleaned, repaired, maintained. The meals that have to be cooked, the groceries that have to be bought, the dishes that have to be washed and dried and put away. The bills that have to be paid, and paid, and paid. The car that needs fuel and insurance and tags and oil changes and new wipers, tires, brakes.
Oh, and then there's work. Just a minor detail.
And while we are doing all this, there are the children, who need more, so much more, than just being housed and clothed and fed. They need someone to encourage them and comfort them. They need opportunities to have and solve problems, to learn how to have strong, healthy relationships, to find their power and their voice as they increasingly step out into the world. They need to be led, launched, listened to. They need to be loved.
So all these balls I have to juggle are not just the trivia and logistics of living, but also the stuff which makes a life. They are the tasks on my to-do list, plus all the things I need to teach, and model, and pass on. And therefore, of course, all the things I need to learn, understand, improve, and heal--all the ways that I myself need to grow. The spinning, flying, rising and dropping balls represent everything I have yet to do and everything I have yet to do better. So where, I ask you, am I supposed to keep my eye?
It's no wonder the school registration ball was dropped.
I don't know if you've ever tried juggling in real life. I have made a couple of half-hearted efforts at it, just for entertainment, and based on them, I can assure you, I'm not a juggler. But I've recently learned from someone who actually possesses this skill what is required to do it successfully. It turns out you have to take your eyes off the ball.
No one, apparently, can actually simultaneously watch that many moving objects. If you try to keep your eye on all of them, monitor them, catch them and release them all at just the right time, you will inevitably lose track of one, then more than one, then try to go back and catch the ones you have lost, and the whole operation will come crashing down and they will fall.
The secret, it seems, is to pick a focal point beyond the balls.
When you focus your eye on a distant point, rather than trying to watch each individual ball, you're able to see the big picture--it lets you pay attention to all the balls at once. You can know where your hands need to be for each one, the perfect time to catch and to release, because you can see them moving together, making up a coordinated whole.
In my life then, with all the many balls that I have in the air, what is the thing I can keep my eyes focused on?
It can't be the house or the finances or my work. They are still all just balls. It can't even be kids or family or all the people, places, and causes I love, even though those are the things that I live and serve for and that motivate me daily. None of these things are significant enough, beyond enough, to bring order to the whole picture. I am too close to all of them. And "what is essential," Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince reminds us, "is invisible to the eye."
Being the Beloved, it turns out, is the focal point.
I've written often in these pages about knowing ourselves as the Beloved of God, and about the writings of theologian Henri Nouwen that expound on this idea as the core truth on which everything turns. I've talked about how understanding this idea will impact all our relationships and all our actions, how it will change the way we see ourselves and all the others in our lives. So it should come as no surprise that it is also the key to the juggling. Knowing you're the Beloved, Henri says, "you can handle an enormous amount of success and an enormous amount of failure." This is true because your acceptance, your value, your Beloved-ness, will never rest on whether you keep all the balls in the air or you drop some. And, strangely, just knowing this will make it easier to keep them in the air. You can forgive yourself (and others) for the failure to love perfectly, or to do perfectly, and just go ahead and love. You can celebrate what matters, and let go of what doesn't. You can focus on being there for others, just being with them; you can stop experiencing them as another thing on your list of things to do. You can even let go of the list from time to time, and just put all those balls down for a minute--if your worth is not measured by your success as a juggler.
In a photo, bringing one object into focus will make the other things fade into the background, blurry and indistinguishable. Focusing on our Beloved-ness will not work that way. Instead of making all the other things unclear and hard to make out, it will let you see them better, more clearly. Looking beyond will sharpen your vision to see things as they really are. You will be able to know where you really need to be, and what you really need to be doing there, what to catch and what to release; you will see the big picture, the coordinated whole. Some balls might still drop. But they will be the ones that did not belong in the first place, the ones that never mattered.
Tomorrow is a Monday, and Mondays are often the hardest day, when all the things I have to do seem to pelt me unmercifully from every direction, demanding to be held and caught, to be coordinated and managed, challenging me to prove my mastery of them or be beaten down to a shameful defeat. I just hope I can remember, even once the onslaught has begun, to keep my eyes off the ball.
It's not that I wasn't paying attention. I knew he needed to register for school. It's just that I had a lot of other things going on. His older brother was starting college this fall. I was trying to manage housing assignments, book lists, dorm furnishings, parking permits, financial aid, and all the other things that go along with starting that new venture. Plus, on another front, there were all the things involved in moving a child out of your home. The packing. The cleaning. The organizing. For that whole two weeks, it looked like another house threw up inside of my house. And then there are the normal things that go along with starting school for everyone--haircuts, doctor appointments, new glasses, clothes shopping. Every day, high school registration was on my list. And every day, I thought that in another day or another couple of days I would have the time and money to take care of it. And then it was over.
Moms are supposed to be great at multi-tasking, and most of the time we are. One reason, I think, is because we seem to have been gifted with a brain that is laser-focused on everything that needs to be done. You've heard that saying, "Keep your eye on the ball?" Moms are some of the best people I know at keeping our eyes on the ball, even when there is more than one.
But what happens when there are just too many balls in the air? That saying seems like good and necessary advice if you want to hit it out of the park, which is why it's so often used, but let's face it, folks--it's a BASEBALL analogy. And in baseball there is only one ball. I don't know about you, but I have significantly more than one ball in play at any given time.
All the things I listed above are just the extra things that are happening at a snapshot in time. I haven't even addressed all the balls that have to be kept moving every day, just as a part of living. The house, which has to be cleaned, repaired, maintained. The meals that have to be cooked, the groceries that have to be bought, the dishes that have to be washed and dried and put away. The bills that have to be paid, and paid, and paid. The car that needs fuel and insurance and tags and oil changes and new wipers, tires, brakes.
Oh, and then there's work. Just a minor detail.
And while we are doing all this, there are the children, who need more, so much more, than just being housed and clothed and fed. They need someone to encourage them and comfort them. They need opportunities to have and solve problems, to learn how to have strong, healthy relationships, to find their power and their voice as they increasingly step out into the world. They need to be led, launched, listened to. They need to be loved.
So all these balls I have to juggle are not just the trivia and logistics of living, but also the stuff which makes a life. They are the tasks on my to-do list, plus all the things I need to teach, and model, and pass on. And therefore, of course, all the things I need to learn, understand, improve, and heal--all the ways that I myself need to grow. The spinning, flying, rising and dropping balls represent everything I have yet to do and everything I have yet to do better. So where, I ask you, am I supposed to keep my eye?
It's no wonder the school registration ball was dropped.
I don't know if you've ever tried juggling in real life. I have made a couple of half-hearted efforts at it, just for entertainment, and based on them, I can assure you, I'm not a juggler. But I've recently learned from someone who actually possesses this skill what is required to do it successfully. It turns out you have to take your eyes off the ball.
No one, apparently, can actually simultaneously watch that many moving objects. If you try to keep your eye on all of them, monitor them, catch them and release them all at just the right time, you will inevitably lose track of one, then more than one, then try to go back and catch the ones you have lost, and the whole operation will come crashing down and they will fall.
The secret, it seems, is to pick a focal point beyond the balls.
When you focus your eye on a distant point, rather than trying to watch each individual ball, you're able to see the big picture--it lets you pay attention to all the balls at once. You can know where your hands need to be for each one, the perfect time to catch and to release, because you can see them moving together, making up a coordinated whole.
In my life then, with all the many balls that I have in the air, what is the thing I can keep my eyes focused on?
It can't be the house or the finances or my work. They are still all just balls. It can't even be kids or family or all the people, places, and causes I love, even though those are the things that I live and serve for and that motivate me daily. None of these things are significant enough, beyond enough, to bring order to the whole picture. I am too close to all of them. And "what is essential," Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince reminds us, "is invisible to the eye."
Being the Beloved, it turns out, is the focal point.
I've written often in these pages about knowing ourselves as the Beloved of God, and about the writings of theologian Henri Nouwen that expound on this idea as the core truth on which everything turns. I've talked about how understanding this idea will impact all our relationships and all our actions, how it will change the way we see ourselves and all the others in our lives. So it should come as no surprise that it is also the key to the juggling. Knowing you're the Beloved, Henri says, "you can handle an enormous amount of success and an enormous amount of failure." This is true because your acceptance, your value, your Beloved-ness, will never rest on whether you keep all the balls in the air or you drop some. And, strangely, just knowing this will make it easier to keep them in the air. You can forgive yourself (and others) for the failure to love perfectly, or to do perfectly, and just go ahead and love. You can celebrate what matters, and let go of what doesn't. You can focus on being there for others, just being with them; you can stop experiencing them as another thing on your list of things to do. You can even let go of the list from time to time, and just put all those balls down for a minute--if your worth is not measured by your success as a juggler.
In a photo, bringing one object into focus will make the other things fade into the background, blurry and indistinguishable. Focusing on our Beloved-ness will not work that way. Instead of making all the other things unclear and hard to make out, it will let you see them better, more clearly. Looking beyond will sharpen your vision to see things as they really are. You will be able to know where you really need to be, and what you really need to be doing there, what to catch and what to release; you will see the big picture, the coordinated whole. Some balls might still drop. But they will be the ones that did not belong in the first place, the ones that never mattered.
Tomorrow is a Monday, and Mondays are often the hardest day, when all the things I have to do seem to pelt me unmercifully from every direction, demanding to be held and caught, to be coordinated and managed, challenging me to prove my mastery of them or be beaten down to a shameful defeat. I just hope I can remember, even once the onslaught has begun, to keep my eyes off the ball.
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