If only sufficiency was a panacea. Some radical potion we could take that would annihilate all the weapons of scarcity we breed. But, alas, sufficiency exists in fleeting moments of grace, until we take it on as a practice.
My latest practice event occurred in the context of moving. I have never moved a family of four, with two young children. It’s not exactly fun. But with some practices, I was actually able to experience some miracles.
Pause, Notice, Inquiry & Action, and it doesn’t matter in which order. I first noticed that I was using certain words to describe my experience: hard, harder than giving birth, harder than having a newborn, hardest thing ever, hard and no one told me how hard … And when I said these things to myself or out loud, I would feel tension, a constriction in my body. In that pause of noticing, I would wiggle a bit – shaking off the tension and ask myself: what is working here?
So much was working. We had so much help: four big guys – my brother, my father, my sister-in-law’s boyfriend, and a dear friend – helped unload four storage pods and a medium truck. Another friend stopped by with nourishment and a hug. Three different families came and picked up my children and cared for them all day. My father-in-law, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law spent a whole day with us, running errands, putting our entire kitchen together, helping us make design decisions. The same friend stopped by again to help. Many people checked in through text and voicemail; one friend has popped over several times to hang with my baby, folding our laundry on one visit.
Beyond the hardness, was gratitude, a lot of gratitude. Turns out I am pretty good at receiving help. I’m even grateful for that. What a testament to community.
Little miracles. When I couldn’t find the blankets for the baby, I found another set that was good enough. When I couldn’t find a spatula to make some eggs for dinner, I found a drawer the seller forgot to pack with a utensil that was good enough. Nothing was perfect. We were – and still are – sore, physically and emotionally. Our older daughter is regressing, needing extra attention during a time when we are giving less than usual. But then we look around, and outside at our yard and the green shoots of spring and the expanse of a playground and we know it’s all worth it. It’s worth it in the moment.
Here are some of the moment-to-moment practices I’ve used over this week to help support my sufficiency during a extraordinary time:
- Living in inquiry with questions such as
- What is working?
- What else will work?
- Can I surrender to the discomfort?
- What can I be grateful for?
- Pausing, taking breaks, looking for opportunities to slow down.
- Staying focused – allowing myself the privilege of doing house tasks and suspending my needs for socializing, working or tracking anything outside of the move for a couple of days.
- Keep some normalcy for my children – sleep routines, activities, etc.
- Keeping one of my morning practices – for me it was writing/scribbling simple daily intentions
- Laughing/finding the humor
- Looking outside and seeing green – good for the nervous system and remembering the point of all this work!
- Having some reward at the end of a long day
- Getting enough sleep – this proved to be quite a practice