Tag Archives: brave

When I Grow Up I Want to Be Roy Kent From Ted Lasso

Leave a reply

When I Grow Up I Want to Be Roy Kent From Ted Lasso

Journal entry, March 2023

I don’t feel on top of things, but I also don’t feel run over by things. I feel alive, real, and less scared.

Feeling on top of things is always about ego. Feeling run over by things is also about ego, but it feels like depression and stress.

I’d like to be like Roy Kent in the TV show Ted Lasso—fully present, wise, honest, and not connected to people because I’m nice, but because we’re connected. I think that’s called “secure attachment.”

Papa God, thank You for inviting me to this place and waiting—for years—while I hesitated outside the door. Thank You for sitting there outside with me, and for keeping the door open. Thank You, Spirit, for intimacy.

Journal entry, May 2023

I feel lost again. Depressed, I guess. I notice myself trying harder in some areas, and not trying at all in others. My mental space feels foggy and disconnected. I want to stay present, but being present feels like one more thing I “should” do that I’m terrible at. As I showered this morning, my mind was sluggish, but restless, like a tired housefly. I told God I feel out of practice at being present, and I don’t know what to do.

God told me the present is safe. It’s safe to be with myself in this moment. The moment I’m in is exempt from evaluation. I don’t have to carry a ruler—dual purposes of measuring and punishing. Instead, I receive the “we’ve got this” look from my Father.

Until my shower-talk with God, I didn’t realize I live mentally in the past or the future because it feels safer than the present. The past is over; I can fret about it all I want, and my judgement and worry give me a sense of control. The future is coming; maybe if I plan it just right my life will be better.

If I’m thinking about what’s next I reduce the pain of knowing I’m not showing up how I want to right now.

The present is wobbly. It slips away like kite string, pulling, whimsical. It doesn’t behave, doesn’t let me nail it down. Qué será será? Not on my watch.

This awareness I’m afraid of the present, and God’s assurance it is safe to be present—these are my invitation to relax. Like a massage, the words “present is safe” loosen the tightness underneath and free me to move and breath. And who knows, maybe if I receive this moment and accept safety in being present, I’ll have less to fret about in the past and the future. Maybe it’s all okay, even when it’s not okay.

Like Roy Kent, I can be angry and pessimistic if that’s what I experience in the present, and I can also be generous, compassionate, and honest. All of these are safe experiences for me, and receiving them open-handed is what steadies me for the next moment. I don’t need to worry. It is both safe and brave to be present, and I have a growing appetite for safety and bravery. Now is where I belong.

Brave Birds

1 Reply

Brave Birds

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for the dove nest
hidden in the evergreen
by our front door.
Two white eggs
in a thin, flat bed of pine needles.
That nest looked too fragile
to hold anything.

Babies hatched—tiny,
bulbous, ugly—
but I said they were cute
and I meant it.

Blessed are You
for faithful mother and father,
sitting and sitting and sitting,
then feeding and feeding and feeding.
Babies are motionless,
so much so I worry they are dead.
But they grow.
I see mama come;
babies eagerly reach into her beak,
swallowing regurgitated seeds.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for this brave bird family,
risking life in a tenuous world.
In two months—egg to independence—
they do what took me 18 years.
Squabs are now so fat they fill the nest.
When my own two babies—ages 8 and 10—
begin summer vacation,
the doves will be sporting full feathers,
cooing loudly, and finding their own dinner.
Their bravery, my invitation to life.

When I think of baby birds, I think of robins: a sturdy, deep nest full of wide-open beaks, voraciously devouring worms and bugs. This spring I’ve learned that mourning doves are sloppy nest builders, and they feed their babies crop milk and partially digested seeds. There’s a nest right outside our front door, and this front-row seat has grown in me a new awareness of the hundreds of different birds and nests and babies, near and far, all busy participating in the circle of life this Spring.