This is a hard season, I will not lie. I would say dark, but that sounds a bit ominous, so let’s just leave it at really hard. So what do I do with that? To be honest, for a long time I have been trudging through this season waiting for things to resolve, and I have my trudging face on. It’s no fun. It hurts. And I am not having a good time. And by golly, everyone on the inside of my life knows it.

Every time I get in trouble in life it is when I expect someone to come in and make it better – – or circumstances to change to fit my picture. At a certain point, I have to just own my own life, independent of everyone around me, independent of circumstances – – and decide whether I am going to make it good or not. Really if I dumb it down, (which helps me sometimes) the question I would ask is do I want to be that bitter, disappointed woman or do I want to enjoy my life and those in it who want to enjoy it with me?

What if joy was a choice? What if my circumstances are not going to change and all those things that are not as I would hope they would be – – even those things that are hopelessly missing the mark, what if I just put those things on the back burner and took every moment as it came – -as a gift from God, and fought to find the joy in it?

Who says life is easy? Really? What if I didn’t count on the people in my life to make me happy or validate me but just took the moments as they came and found the joy in them, found the beauty in them, found what good there was and held onto that. What if I didn’t expect life’s reward to be found in what others gave to me but what I could bring to each moment, what I could bring to others, all while staving off any expectation of return?

Expectation does a number on me every time. Every time I go into a circumstance with expectation, I am disappointed. And I think that just because I invest my own expectations on things that “should” happen – – or are the “right things” to happen, I then feel justified in being disappointed – – but life is not there to please me or to be fair to me. Where I got that notion, I don’t know. But deep in me there is this place that expects life to be fair. And it’s just not. Not for me or for anyone else. So reacting to life not being fair, or as I would like it to be is like me banging my spoon on my high chair. No matter how justified I may be…When I pick up that spoon and start hitting it against my tray, It will make a racquet, it will make me cry, but it won’t change a thing.

One of the wisest people I know used to be a photographer in New York, and she had this hard edged sensibility, but also a depth and understanding of the human condition that she lavished upon her friends. I was lucky enough to be one in the years I lived and worked in Manhattan. Her love was always delivered face-to-face, unminced and salt-laced. There was never any doubt when Allison wanted to make a point. I still hear her heavily accented voice saying, “Everything you get in life is a gift….It’s just sometimes, you don’t like the wrapper…” And in some of my most difficult moments, after patiently listening to me unload, she would take me by the shoulders, look me directly in the eyes and say in the most convincing way, “I know exactly how to make this better….”

I only fell for that the first time, because at the time I was young and was sure the world was crumbling in, and equally certain Allison had the answer – – because in her homespun New York way, she almost always did. She was certainly older and wiser, so when she told me to meet her later that evening at the Westside Restaurant, I thought great, this would be wisdom worth waiting for…so I spent the afternoon anticipating just what advice she would give me to resolve my situation and move forward. We sat down in a windowed booth looking out over the corner of 69^th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, and I could barely contain my curiosity.

“Hold on, let’s get some food in you.” She said before I could start in on my agenda.

The Westside Restaurant is one of the most wonderful places in New York. For diner food it was a 4 out of 10, but for soulful staff,a neighborhood feel, and never ending coffee, you just couldn’t beat it. It was one of those wonderful Greek-owned diners in which you could get everything from Souvlaki to Creamed Chipped Beef, with a menu so long and comprehensive you almost always ordered something as an act of surrender rather than preference. I had never before made it through the entire menu before I cried uncle and inevitably defaulted to one of my three or four favorites. And if all else failed, you could just ask for a dish of your own invention and the staff would always accommodate. I really loved that place.

That night as I lifted up the menu, Allison gave a wave of her hand and said, “Just go for the burger and a shake. And get a side of fries….I’ll help.” So I ordered and we ate, and even dunked the fries in my malted shake. Every time I started to broach the conversation, Allison would wave me down and say something like, “Eat, eat. Then we’ll talk.”

The waitress was threatening to clear and I was still hungry for whatever direction and clarity Allison could offer. But all I got was the hand. So I ate, and I ate, and as I slowed down and breathed deeper, as the pile of fries diminished and the shake got low, I found myself settling back into the booth, my neck unhinging from my shoulders and my eyes wandering to the window that looked out toward the stream people moving uptown to repopulate the Upper West Side after a long day at work. So when the waitress came back with coffee, Allison was the one who leaned in first. Her advice came while I was still lost in thought – – still looking out the window.

“Everything looks a little better on the other side of a cheeseburger, doesn’t it.”

That was Allison’s version of “This too Shall Pass…” Her notion that you cannot stop living your life just because there are parts of it not going according to plan – – or even parts of it that are just this side of crash and burn. You cannot focus on those flames to the exclusion of what else life demands – – or offers. Life isn’t about making everything better. It’s about eating cheeseburgers in the midst of the mess. Life doesn’t stop. I cannot live well or fully only when things are going right. I have to get out there and trust God with the what-if’s. Trust God with the direction of hard things.

I will forever love Allison. She was ornery and loud and cared more about you than your feelings. She was a rare friend who wasn’t going to waste any time coddling anyone. That kind of friendship is a rare gift. She was grateful for everything she got, she really was. And somewhere along the line I stopped living like that. I got focused on what was missing. And even when those things are big and important to me, I didn’t trust that God could take those in hand if I just focused on showing up. And even if it never turns out “good” or “o.k.” there is always something to be grateful for and there are always places in life to stop in for a burger and engage with the people around me in love. And because I didn’t do that, I became a part of the problem. I am not the woman I want to be. But if I take life in very small chunks, like “the rest of today….” I can be. I actually can.

So joy is a choice. And I don’t mean the kind of choice I feel obligated to make – – I have to be ready to find those moments – – recklessly pursue those moments of joy, even if they are small, like flax seed scattered in a field. This is not an easy season for me, and there are big things that I wish were different. But all my best efforts have done nothing to make those areas better, so perhaps it is time to just leave them to God. And carry on focused on what I CAN do, what joy I can find, what kind of woman I do want to be. Maybe it’s time to live grateful for what there is, not what there isn’t.

I know this is true in my life, but I think it is safe to say that most lives, as they mature, move further and further away from some age old and original expectation of how they might have “turned out.” – – it’s just the nature of life. Sometimes that movement is in a good direction, and other times, not so much. But either way, the delta between expectation and reality is, at my stage of life at least, broader than the horizon itself. And in the areas in which my life has increasingly veered from what I had hoped it might have been, I have fought that distance, rather than simply accepted it. God is taking me somewhere, and the sooner I realize it is not to the destination I had preordained, the better off I will be. The reason this is a hard season is because I have chosen to examine the delta instead of looking to that horizon in which all the possibilities of God still await.

Buckminster Fuller said, “The minute you begin to do what you really want to do, it’s a different kind of life.” I think the way I translate that is that it’s really hard to live a good life, leaning away from the parts that don’t work. It’s time I began to live leaning toward what does and follow that trajectory to its logical end. Like toward the burger, fries and shake rather than toward the ever present and ubiquitous “issues.” God has a way of working the issues out – – he really does. And I suppose it’s my choice if I want to enjoy a burger while he does, or whether I want to hem and haw, wring my hands or bemoan my fate while my life works itself out, anyway, and far beyond my control.

I have a friend who is going through enormous challenges right now. Today on her Instagram account were pictures of her beautiful girls playing in the snow. That’s what I am talking about. All is never well, but you might as well eat burgers and build igloos when you can. Here’s to moving toward something, not fighting against anything anymore.

God bless the Westside Restaurant – – such a wonderful shelter in the storm, and God bless the possibilities God gives me today to move into the light, make good choices, and focus on what’s right while He cooks up the rest of the story.

The summer I turned 10, my father taught me how to water ski. He was always fit and ready for a challenge, so for as long as I could remember I had watched him jump from wake to wake behind the boat, balancing on his varnished, slalom ski, arms outstretched, body leaned back into the sun, a rooster tail wake behind him and the plume of the Johnson 60 making his face glisten until he would shake his head, water and sunshine spraying on either side of his enormous smile.

I remember the day he signaled for me to throw him the other ski from the back of the boat. In the water he struggled to adjust both boots down to the smallest size. And then he looked up from the river and nodded for me to come and join him. “Your turn,” he said.

“No way,” I thought as I hurtled my little body into the water arms churning in the air, and heart beating out of my chest at the opportunity. I came up sputtering to his smiling face. I strapped on the enormous orange life jacket, tying the front two straps over my flat chest and clipping the black belt around my waist. My dad swam up and pulled the significant excess until the belt was actually tight. Bobbing on my back, he gave me the basics for take-off…. “Knees bent, arms straight,” he said pulling my knees up to my chest, and wrapping my arms around them so they came together in front of my shins, hands holding the handle attached to the neon tow rope. The waves knocked me sideways and I kept having to bob back into position. Weighing so little, there was only so much I could do to keep my balance in the incoming tide, and the water kept swelling into my nose and eyes.

Sooner than I thought, my Dad surprised me with, “Ready?” I didn’t know what ready felt like, so when I caught a moment of balance I nodded my head so vigorously it made my father laugh at the same time he tomahawked his hand forward toward the boat, signaling the driver to take off. And take off I did. Like nothing I had ever felt before. The boat literally launched me from the water. I came up and broke the surface so fast it was like losing 300 pounds in an instant, and for a split second, there I was, on top of my skis, careening across the water so fast I couldn’t believe it. It was like magic – – exhilarating and like absolutely nothing I had ever felt before. I looked down at my legs, my knees knocked inward but remarkably held me aloft as if I were flying. Water shot out from under the skis below me, and the bright yellow tow line splayed out, taught as a tight rope in front of me. I was skiing….almost.

The moment I had the sensation of actually being upright, I felt my body tipping forward and then toppling over, right back down into the water. But the boat didn’t stop. And as my body hit the water I gained all that weight back and fought and struggled to reposition myself to launch back out of the water and find the surface once more. With the forward motion of the boat, my entire body simply flattened out and I found myself skipping like a stone. Nevertheless, I hung on and as the boat slowed, I managed to twist my dragging body into a feet forward position. The tips of my skis popped out of the water at an angle and for a moment I thought I was going back up when the skis crashed together, with my fingers between them. At this point the driver thought I had let go. He sped up and turned, coming around to get me, but I was relentlessly hanging on behind him. I was now flying like Superman…well, underwater superman. O.k., I was flying like Aquaman, my head plowing a deep furrow in the water. I furiously battled to raise my head, anything to get a breath. But eventually the boat won. And I finally let go of the rope, sputtering and choking and looking around desperately for my Dad. By the time he swam to where I had landed, I had stopped coughing and wiped my face clean, and I was inspecting my smashed finger. My father was laughing that wonderful laugh of his and in his infinite wisdom he asked, “Why didn’t you just let go?”

I remember the answer I gave him. “I didn’t want to give up.” I wish I had learned right then and there that sometimes in life, you have to surrender to win. Sometimes giving up is the first, not the last line of defense…and really the only way to go. And here I am at 50. So tired of trying to hold on, make it happen, get up and out of the water. And if my Dad were still here, we would be having a heart to heart about where I am in life and he would laugh that exact same laugh, the one that sees I have just learned a lesson worth the pain it took to get me there, and he would ask me the same question… “Why don’t you just let go?”

Dad, I will. I promise. God I will. I promise. Just make the onslaught stop. Help me breathe. Promise you will pull me up.

Just like it was behind that boat, the opposite of letting go is trying to control outcomes – – trying to make-it-happen. I am so very tired of trying so hard to make everything o.k., for everyone. First of all I need to swallow my pride and admit that is an incredibly arrogant premise to start with. It assumes I know what’s best for everyone. Really it assumes an omniscience of sorts. (I only put “of sorts” to make myself sound a little better, but really it just plain assumes omniscience….) How did I get here? Is it just my nature to choose my way as THE way? Good intentions, I was told don’t count for much when they ultimately hurt the people around me. And I get that. But it was never for lack of caring. Never for lack of love. Never for lack of wanting the best. But that’s just it. I don’t know what’s best.

In the midst of getting dragged by the boat, letting go didn’t seem like a good idea, but it was actually the only way to ever eventually get up. Sometimes I just have to start over, or wait, or take another turn, instead of trying to make my first attempt work. Never give up and surrender to win are antithetical. Sometimes I HAVE to give up to win. I am so tired of being so invested in how things turn out. Because as often as I tell myself I do, I have NO IDEA what the “right way” is. I am so tired of caring about all the wrong things. All the things I cannot make happen, all the answers to the conundrums that only God is capable of unraveling.

We used to have marionettes that we got in Germany for each of the girls. They were truly lovely and whimsical and a delight to see in motion. But as will happen with little girls, they would get them all knotted up and invariably they would bring them to Tim – – the puzzle master. With a level of patience I could never muster, he would sit in his chair, set his jaw in that particular way he does when working out something intricate, and never more than half an hour later would come back with an animate, free-hanging puppet and a huge smile on his face. We would all be amazed.

Life gets like that. When I try and control things in life, everything gets all tangled up – – and it feels like I am choking the life out of every situation in which I am playing the wrong part – – the God part.

I always think of Sarah in the Bible – – not trusting that God would actually be able to make her a mother at her advanced age, she orchestrated circumstances in which her husband would be able to father the child that God promised would make him the “Father of many nations.” She took God’s promise into her own hands and in her own timing, “made it happen.” Some might call it industrious. But it was premature and meddling. I prefer to think of myself as industrious…but perhaps I don’t trust God’s timing or ways enough to wait, just like Sarah.

I don’t let God’s plans cook long enough. Often I don’t even wait long enough to see what they are. I get in there and anticipate, turn up the heat, stir, add unnecessary ingredients and try to accelerate His process – – or what I think He is shooting for – – just like Sarah. Now I don’t for a second believe I can thwart God’s plans. Even with Sarah’s meddling, God was able to fulfil his promise – – and at 99 Sarah had Isaac. But because she took God’s plans into her own hands, she was left with a situation infinitely more complicated that the one God could have executed on His own.

How often do I do that? Where is my patience for the Divine plan to reveal itself in God’s time and design and not my own? I always think of when the girls were itty bitty and they used to come in the kitchen when I was fixing dinner and want to “help.” In the days when they were all so little, I was usually alone during the week and I would want my days to end so badly so I could just sit down and have them all pile on top of me to read stories and be still at the end of a long day. But they had more energy than I did almost every day, and when they wanted to help in the kitchen there was no dampening their enthusiasm. So I would let them help and dinner would take an hour longer to cook and an hour longer to clean up. Fun? Yes. Helpful? Absolutely not. Perhaps that’s what God thinks when I show up on the scene in the midst of His plans for me and say, “I want to help.”

When she was little, my daughter Phoebe used to say “You do the Mommy part and I will do the Phoebe part…” I wonder if we just let God do the God part and we did our parts, how much simpler things would be….how much more meaningful my relationships would be, and how much more clear my purpose in life might become.

So often so much of my energy is focused on where I am going, not where I am. But I don’t even know where I am going. God’s got all the big events, the turning points, the ah-ha moments. He’s got those in store for me – – manufactured by Him not me. What ah-ha is there in a moment I can create? None. All the best moments are God’s gifts.

I am so tired of acting as if I know something about life. Because I don’t. I don’t know anything. I know that now. All of my efforts to try and effect a specific outcome in life have been a waste of my time, attention and energy. I don’t know a darn thing. Nothing anymore. Nada. Zilch. I have spent my life wanting things a certain way – – and because I was shooting for a God-Centered, healthy, happy and otherwise well-adjusted life – – because I wanted to exemplify and teach good character, because I thought I was shooting straight and aiming high for all the “right stuff” I thought it was o.k..

But the point is, I WAS AIMING. I still am. God asks me to stop aiming for anything but Him.

God says Aim for Me. Abide in Me. Shoot for relationship with Me. And I will make your burden light, your paths straight, I will give you peace, an abundant life, joy, the fruit of the Spirit…strength to move mountains.

My burdens feel monumental sometimes. I have a head full of faith and a belly full of ‘make-it-happen-yourself.’ And it’s not working for me anymore. All my constructs are crumbling and I care so much, but I cannot do this in my own power and with my sights set on how things should go. It’s perhaps 50 years too late, but I am sensing a real opportunity to let go in a profound way.

It’s funny (kind of) that it has taken me nearly a lifetime to figure all of this out. But God’s timing is perfect, and I have to rest in that truth.

Trying to manage my life at this point is like trying to lasso a whale. I feel like I am going under. I know my Mom felt the same way when she was at this age and stage, but she didn’t let go. And for a time, it did take her under. But she is back. We all get to the point, I think, when we are trying to handle what is only God’s to handle. And He will wait patiently until we choose to let go – – or not. Until life drags us under- – and we have to come up for air with a single option remaining: surrender to win.

So why don’t I just let go?