It’s the rest of the week. How about resting on our laurels for a moment?
Do you remember when you learned to walk?
Neither do I. But my parents remember—they can tell you exactly how old I was (in months) when I took my first staggering steps all by my self. And I can tell you at what age (in months) Daniel, finally (with much coaxing), abandoned speed crawling to risk the dangers of bipedal movement around the house.
In hindsight, it’s comical how walking at “later” fuels the public’s worried murmurings of possible developmental delay, while walking “earlier” is practically hailed as a prodigious feat (pun intended!).
Nevertheless, over 90% of us in the U.S. are privileged enough to master walking—after which we don’t give it a second thought.
If you are still walking around, how about pausing a moment to celebrate that important milestone that you achieved so many years ago?
And what about reading? Do you remember learning to read?
I have vagues memories of sounding out letters in a detective-like effort to discover a word and I certainly remember trying to interest our children in the sounds of those same letters.
However challenging it may have been, here you are—reading this. Can you imagine living in this world without being able to read?
Pause a moment and relish the achievement of literacy. I know some of you can also read some decidedly complicated foreign language scripts. Please pat yourselves on the back and celebrate!
We learn all kinds of things in this life—to feed ourselves, cook, ride a bike, swim, do a somersault, recite a poem, play an instrument, sing in public, drive a car, eat spicy food, hold our tongues, speak our minds, pilot an airplane, code, tell a joke, solve complicated problems, build a home, grow a garden, arrange flowers, save a life…
What are some milestones you hold dear to your heart?
What difficult thing are you wrestling with right now?
Maybe take a little rest on your laurels and then get back at it.
One hundred weeks ago, I started this newsletter. I am remembering how agonizingly difficult it felt (most of the time) to form words from what I had experienced during the week into an invitation to rest. I’m happy to report that around #70 it started getting a little easier.
Thank you so much for receiving this offering and for sharing this milestone with me. Writing each week has helped me be more intentional in everyday, ordinary life, and it is nice to know I’m not alone in this pursuit of rest.
May your rest be sweet,
Alicia
Something new—I’m going to start giving you a snapshot of where I’m writing from each week.
Hello from somewhere in West Virginia, enroute from North Carolina to Michigan where we will enjoy some good piano music performed by our very own Gabriel. Which reminds me of how impossible it seemed for him to tap out “mississippi-hot-dog” with finger 4 on G. Now his fingers fly all over the place, but there are still so many things to learn, ways to grow… which, I suppose, is why we call these celebrations milestones rather than arrival points.