Embrace Your Almost
Each summer I find myself reaching for the same words. I didn’t realize it until today, when I put in my headphones and cued up the audio book version of Embrace Your Almost by Jordan Lee Dooley that I’d done this exact same ritual last summer.
I walk around our tiny town, sun beating down on my shoulders or wind whipping my hair, and I listen to the same words over again about what happens when you almost arrive.
Almost feels like a really heavy word. It’s so close, and not close enough.
It seems every year, like clockwork, as the calendar skips forward and the weather begins warming up, I collide face first into a giant ache. A wound that needs to be processed, an almost that needs to be surrendered to, dreams that never went according to plan and losses so devastating I thought they would derail me forever.
Last summer, I was in the trenches of infertility, waiting for a baby that never came, staring down the barrel of another surgery, and the entire thing clawed into me and left me feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I remember thinking “this has to be the worst thing. Out of all the terrible, horrible things that can happen to a person, this has to be the worst.”
(It wasn’t, and I know that now. And I don’t think my pain is anything special, or worse than anyone else’s. But in that moment, what I did need was someone to validate just how bad this hurt and how much it sucked. We all just need someone to witness and hold space for our pain)
The familiar ache returns like clockwork, a desire bubbling up in me to declare I hate summer, and I find myself once again lacing up my running shoes, putting in my headphones and slipping out the front door.
At times its felt like failure, returning to this place over and over again. Haven’t I figured it out by now? Why do I keep ending up right back here? And then I remember these roads I’ve walked, the hours I’ve spent wrestling with myself and with God, and how it is in these spaces of waiting, failure and shame, that I come closest to knowing who I was meant to be.
I’ve said before I wish I could be one of those people who grew best in joyful ease. Instead I think I’m one of those people who grows from wild unknowns, unpredictable hardships and heartbreaking setbacks. Maybe this is just a thing that is universally true about humans, or maybe its unique to me.
If life is hard for everyone, if no one is immune from hardships or devastating life events - why not me? Looking at my track record of survivorship and the ways in which my life has risen up to provide for me, recounting over and over again the promises made that I would be taken care of, why do I still find myself running holes into my shoes with the question of “Why me?”
I wonder if every almost, every moment of heartache and pain, every so close but not quite, every square inch of liminal space and hallowed ground, if its giving me something I didn’t know I needed? And one day, when I look back at a course of wild leaps into the unknown and decisions that at the time felt so off course and out of control, I’ll see a collection of perfected promises?
I lace up my shoes and I remember how, a few years ago, someone who was also attending a workshop I was at, a woman I did not know and never spoke to again after this moment, turned to me and said, “It’s not here again, you know. It's spirals, and each time we move up a level and come back around as a measurement of how much we’ve grown.”
Her words didn’t hold much merit for me then, but I can tell you now I’m sure as hell not the same person I was a few years ago. This time I’m making decisions from experiences. This time I’m falling back on promises, knowing that even if I don’t see now one day I will. This time I’m embracing my almost.
Because almost, as hard and heartbreaking as it can be, is also a signifier of an attempt. I tried for something, risked for something, insisted upon something. And that in and of itself is a legacy worth leaving.
