The Açaí Bowl and The Ocean
I am writing this from a hammock on my patio; Jack tucked away calmly in his room “just chillin, Mom”.
I am wearing silky pajamas in the West Texas heat because September has no intention of acknowledging that fall is coming. There is just enough gray in the sky to suggest rain, although whether it actually intends to rain is another matter entirely.
And for the first time in several days, I am still.
This week was hard.
There are parts of it that belong to my son and therefore aren’t mine to tell. What I can tell is what happens to a mother when someone she loves is struggling and she cannot immediately make it better.
I get real quiet.
People who know me may find that difficult to believe because quiet is not exactly my defining personality trait. But when life gets hard enough, something in me turns inward. My world gets very small. I stop reaching out. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to explain what is happening because I am using all of it to figure out the next thing.
What does he need? Who do I need to call? What did the doctor say? What do we try next? What am I missing?
Eat. Sleep. Work. Research. Pray. Repeat.
Except sometimes I forget the eat and sleep parts.
There is a version of me that exists in survival mode who is quieter than the woman most people know. My personality dampens. The parts of me that normally reach outward retreat inward because there simply isn’t anything left to give.
This week, I finally sent a message to a group of friends. I didn’t have the energy to explain everything beautifully. I just needed people to know enough to pray.
And then Vanessa brought me an açaí bowl at work.
An açaí bowl.
This sounds dramatic, but I am fairly certain that açaí bowl changed the trajectory of my week.
I hadn’t been eating much. Distress does that to me. Hunger disappears beneath the adrenaline, and my body becomes one more thing I am asking to please just cooperate while I attend to something more urgent.
And suddenly there was this cold, colorful bowl sitting in front of me. Food I hadn’t ordered. Nourishment I hadn’t thought to provide for myself. Something cold and refreshing when my nervous system had spent days running hot.
And, more importantly, evidence that somebody had realized a need. Somewhere between the fruit and granola and whatever magical substance they put in those things, I felt myself come back online a little. Not because açaí cures exhaustion or fear or the complicated things we are still working through. Because somebody remembered me when I had temporarily forgotten how to remember myself.
Then I saw a quote from St. Teresa of Calcutta:
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
Her feast day is tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s first reading asks a question I cannot stop thinking about:
“What do you possess that you have not received?”
What do I possess that I have not received?
Very little, it turns out.
Even the strength I like to think of as mine has so often arrived through somebody else.
Through a text. A prayer. Friends who don’t need all the details before they start praying. A coworker who quietly picks up something I cannot carry that day. A husband who absorbs some of what has become too heavy.
Through a friend walking into my workplace carrying an açaí bowl. That is what it means to belong to one another.
Not that we can fix one another’s suffering. We can’t. Vanessa couldn’t fix what was happening with my son. My friends couldn’t either. There are things I desperately want to control that are simply outside my reach.
But they could make sure I didn’t disappear inside of it.
And they did.
Tomorrow’s Gospel is about hunger, too.
The disciples walk through a field on the Sabbath, plucking heads of grain and eating them. The Pharisees see a violation. Jesus sees hungry men. He reminds them of David, who once ate the bread of offering when he and his companions were hungry.
I keep thinking about that. Sometimes holiness looks like noticing that somebody needs to eat.
St. Teresa understood that perhaps better than most. Her Christianity was profoundly physical. Feed someone. Wash someone. Hold someone. Look at the person the rest of the world has learned not to see.
Love is not merely something we feel toward one another.
Love notices. Love moves toward. Love feeds.
And sometimes love shows up at work carrying an açaí bowl.
There is another line in this week’s readings that feels different to me now. On Wednesday, St. Paul wrote, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.”
There is some freedom in remembering that too.
I am very good at believing that if I research enough, advocate hard enough, watch closely enough, pray correctly enough, and stay vigilant enough, I can somehow force the growth.
I cannot.
I can plant. I can water. I can love my child ferociously. I can learn everything I can learn, ask good questions, make careful decisions, advocate, pray, and show up again tomorrow.
But God causes the growth.
And while I am busy tending the people entrusted to me, He sometimes sends other people to tend to me. Because we belong to each other.
So tonight I am lying in a hammock in silky pajamas while the air smells vaguely like rain.
Nothing about the situation that made this week difficult has magically disappeared. There are still questions to answer and things to watch and decisions ahead.
But I ate today. I laughed today. I noticed the sky. I am writing. I feel a little more like myself. Peace isn’t always the absence of the thing that frightened us. Sometimes peace is discovering, right in the middle of it, that we were never carrying it alone.
Tomorrow the Church will pray:
“The Lord is near to all who call upon him.”
This week, He was. He was near in prayer and Scripture and medicine and wisdom and people who love my son.
And, because God knows exactly how to get my attention, He was near in a cold açaí bowl delivered by a friend who remembered that I needed to eat.
He is also already waiting for me a few weeks from now, beside the ocean.
My husband knows me well enough to know what water does for me. My engagement ring was chosen because it reminded him of water and the peace it brings me. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, while my brain was occupied with medications and research and questions and the next right thing, he started working out how to get me away for a few days. His plan, in his words, is to get me somewhere I can “take a nap by the water.”
He cannot fix what made this week hard either. The beach won’t fix it. Rest is not a cure for circumstances that remain complicated. But rest is not nothing.
I am learning that being cared for sometimes means allowing someone else to recognize when I have reached the edge of myself and then trusting them when they say it is time to eat, time to sleep, time to stop carrying for a minute.
An açaí bowl now. An ocean in a few weeks.
Different kinds of nourishment. All love.
People noticing. People moving toward. People tending to me while I am busy tending to someone else.
We belong to each other.
St. Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us.
Teach us to notice.
Teach us to feed each other.
Teach us to make room for one another to rest.
Teach us to remember:
We belong to each other.
And there it is.
At this exact moment as I write, the cool breeze. The small drops.
The rain is coming.
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