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So much of life is entering and exiting

Every morning when I leave my apartment complex I have to cross into a busy flow of four lanes of traffic to go pick up my little princess Ingrid and take her to school.

Some mornings it is a daunting task crossing the incoming traffic and getting over to the other side going the opposite direction where I need to be. Most Dallas drivers are completely insane behind the wheel and morning rush hour only intensifies their frenzied irrational behavior. My particular morning start often feels like a scene out of Mad Max where Mel Gibson is being furiously chased by absolute maniacs.

To get it right without missing cars by inches and elevating my blood pressure into near unconsciousness it requires two things: timing and courage. I have to make sure there is plenty of space on both sides to safely move out into an open lane. That’s the timing part. The courage comes in getting the right feeling, seeing a clear way, and then moving the heck out into the quickly closing window of opportunity.

Most of life I am convinced operates pretty much the same way.

Relationships, marriage, parenting, work, career choices, lifestyle decisions, and so forth all require good timing and plenty of courage if we are to maneuver through them successfully.

There are hazards if we mess up any of that. You can’t be a good spouse or life partner or parent or friend if you do not care about managing your feelings and expectations, your needs and wants, your deepest longings and your honest wishes. There is timing to all of that which keeps us entering and exiting in a safe and healthy flow of interaction and care and love.

It requires courage and risk to enter into love with others. There are no guarantees our marriage will survive, our kids will stay away from destructive choices, or that our friends will be there for us. There are no divine promises that in moving emotionally into loving another person or persons that all will go well, that we will not lose them to illness or death, or that they will even return our love with their own.

We cannot know if the career we enter or the job we go for is going to be fulfilling and rewarding and add meaning to our days. We have to step into that with a certain amount of timing and courage and take the risk we are doing it right.

So much of life is entering and exiting. Going and coming. Crossing some immediate danger in order to get to a safer place. Moving into the flow of all that is around us and finding our way through to some necessary destination.

If we time it well and if we are not afraid it all seems to eventually work and we get to where we are supposed to be.

© 2012 Timothy Moody
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