Move

As a veteran human being (I was born before 1980), I accept that to live is to move. It's how well we anticipate, relish, and sometimes recover from the push and draw of this motion that largely influences our quality of life.

I have two small-sized human beings living with me. They look like my husband and myself, but they are their own giant entities. They blow my mind with their creativity, fry my circuits with their energy and push me into the turbulent unknown. They are a daily tide that I’ve learned to anticipate, ride and recover from. Three cups of Peets coffee a day, baby.

Girl Seng, 4 months

Before they showed up, I had a long wait… like a surfer on a flat day. How long until the ride would take us in? A number of times, we had paddled out in the exhilaration of early pregnancy and watched as seven miscarriages in a row left us floundering in the foam. It was a pisser to stay on board. But then, with the help of many prayers supporting us, healing us, our little girl came. And then our boy. Life is movement. Things move on, change, and even for the good. It’s okay to borrow the faith of friends while you wait.

Driving with our two dogs from Oregon to Chicago. This car was totaled by a lovely 90 year old Greek driver in a Jersey diner a month before we moved back to Hawaii.

I’ve moved around the U.S. a lot. From island to coast to middle coast to far coast and back to island. In every place, I’ve rooted and grown… careers, friendships, houses, churches, basil and gardenias. And, like you, with every move, I’ve left a part of myself. Surprisingly, I am not smaller because of it. Dang. How does that work? When my grandmother left China in 1920, she never returned nor saw her own mother again, but her family has expanded across America over the last 100 years. Movement can taste like loss but actually cradles life.

The ship that carried Eng Fan Yeung, my grandmother, from Guang Dong to Mei Guo America in 1920.

If our literal oceans stop moving and the currents are stilled, we will know for certain that planetary life is over. So, with us, embrace the wind that pollinates, ride the mixing temperatures into the unknown. Be brave, carpe diem, and lean into the flow. We’re not alone, but are romanced, provoked, calmed and imbued by a great, encompassing force of energizing life. We breathe, doggie paddle, dive, and push up into steady and irresistible currents. I want to move with and through each wave of life, and leave a legacy that does the same.

“In him we live and move and have our being.” – Acts 17:28

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Featured image: “Tidal Break” by Katie Small