Because Maybe the Other Shoe Drops, Maybe it Doesn’t

You know what I’m learning? There’s no symphony that starts playing when the good stuff shows up.

And God answers prayers that I longed for, but never even knew how to pray.

The old songs and places won’t always break your heart; and there’s no such thing as too much love.

You also don’t have to balance all the good stuff with equal amounts of hard stuff. For every good thing you see in someone, you don’t have to find something wrong. And you should really stop expecting that on the other end of every conversation. Not everyone sitting across from you is finding things to fix (if they are, you should reevaluate where you’re sitting). 

Balance is a word that sounds so noble, healthy, mature, but has been a demon that’s kept me awake at night. You said too much. You should have said more. Whatever it is, balance has always tried to replace the word enough. But enough doesn’t mean equal and/or perfect.

Enough is just enough. Enough is what we are. There is freedom in enough. Enough is the love you can rest in when you don’t have to have all the right words, fill the silence, do anything other than just exist. Find that space and fight for it, even if it scares you.

And God? Well, He is the solo occupant of the space labeled perfect. To be called enough by the One in that chair? I’ll take that. To know that He’s got people in his corner who will also believe that about me? That tells me all the fear, the worry, the demons of balance, comparison, and insecurity are a waste of my God-given time.

I’m starting to think I’ve blamed a lot of my pain and anxiety on God, when the truth is that I am the one who makes this whole thing complicated. It’s like I’ve been waiting for some symphony, some permission slip, for God to pop out from behind a door and tell me it’s finally okay to celebrate the good. The truth is that the breath in my lungs is that permission slip. But that need to be balanced tells me to wait, to hold back, to see if another shoe is going to drop and to expect pain to show up on the other end of the scale.

But then there’s hope, she’s a fierce rival of balance. She knows just how to spin you freely into placing all your bets on the good stuff.

Because maybe the other shoe drops, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you rip off the other shoe you’re wearing and just realize that being barefoot but brave was always a better way to live anyway.