Freefall to Fly

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Contents

Chapter One

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

VIKTOR FRANKL

OUR MANHATTAN APARTMENT looked more like a war zone than a home. Cheerios dotted the floor downstairs next to a conspicuous pool of milk. Couch pillows were strewn on the rug; shoes nestled between couch cushions. Unopened cardboard moving boxes marked "Fragile" were stacked high. And I—well, I was upstairs crawling back under the sheets for a moment alone. With the door propped open to listen in on my children downstairs, I rested in solitude.

The digital clock glowed 9:13 a.m. as sunlight peeked through the cracks of blinds drawn tight. Three children chattered downstairs. Lord knows what they were getting into. Good Luck Charlie lasts only twenty-eight minutes, so my default electronic babysitter would soon be off duty. And there I was. Alone. Surrounded by more than eight million strangers just beyond the 140-year-old walls. The isolation I feared would set in at that farewell evening weeks ago at Barnsley Gardens had come on fast and strong.

Sleep evaded me as my morning coffee kicked in. I let out a deep sigh, and my mind wandered, spinning like the ceiling fan that held my gaze overhead. As the day's mental task list faded, the daydreams flooded in. I was transported back to days of living wild and free.

A young girl spinning round and round, trying not to lose my balance. My earliest memory, set in Lawton, Oklahoma. Four-year-old eyes stared straight overhead, blinking in wonder as the snowflakes swirled like dancing fairies, kissing my cheeks as they descended with their electric touch.

I asked my dad to build a snowman with me, and after some begging, he relented. I ran inside to prepare. My mom tugged not one but two pairs of my pants on top of each other. Together we squeezed on layers of socks and shoes and shoved a pair of white rubber boots over everything else, secured with an elastic band wrapped around a periwinkle button. A plaid coat, navy gloves, and headgear completed the outfit. I was ready to face the snowy wilderness, though I couldn't raise my arms and was barely able to move.

I waddled next to my dad in our front yard late into the dusk, rolling snowballs bigger and bigger until our snowman stood tall. Dad and I stepped back to survey our work. Proud. A true team. If only we had some magic dust to bring our distinguished gentleman to life. Then this moonlit snowscape would be perfect.

When our family moved to Florida, we traded winter snowstorms for sweltering summers. By fourth grade I'd grown into an avid bookworm, even earning the family nickname Beka-Book because my nose was always buried in pages. Each day after school, I retrieved a new Nancy Drew book from the library. I loved Nancy. A fearless detective. My competitive spirit would try to solve the mystery before she did. I also fancied Ned. I would skim ahead, looking for scenes where Ned and Nancy might fall in love. They kept it more professional than I preferred. Many late afternoons, I waited for my mother, a teacher, to finish her work. Books provided escape from the dreariness of a school emptied of friends. These hardcovers followed me home, too. We didn't have a TV until I was in middle school, so I spent my formative years escaping into stories printed on a page.

Once the school year was over, my siblings and I kept the St. Petersburg Public Library in business. Actually, not really, since we weren't paying based on the number of books checked out. We returned weekly to fill cloth sacks with as many volumes as our backs could sustain. Bursting into our kitchen, I'd dump a pile of books on the table and determine the first one to crack open.

One summer I entered a contest at the library to guess how many jelly beans were in a large glass jar sitting in the entryway of the children's section. Brilliant. Lure the kids in with candy and competition. The winner received a collection of his or her favorite books and a fancy dinner out with the family (and, of course, the entire jar of jelly beans). Turns out, I won. I was giddy with delight at my first competitive victory as I scooped up my loot: a pile of Encyclopedia Brown books—the ones where you try to solve the mystery on your own and then verify your guess in the back of the book.

The grand prize didn't stop there. My family of five was treated to a fancy candlelit dinner beneath the Golden Arches. That's right—a table covered with linens and china ... and Big Macs, Filet-o-Fish sandwiches, french fries, and hot fudge sundaes. We ordered anything we wanted from a menu brought to us by a friendly server. Quite a contrast from our usual Sunday-night splurge for twenty-five-cent ice-cream cones. our family was stuffed and happy, thanks to my expert guessing skills. I still have a picture of us sitting together at dinner. That was a shining moment, one that confirmed my choice hobby had been a good one.

Looking back, my infatuation with reading was probably the first clue to my calling. Books brought me life. Stories were portals to other worlds. Had anyone told me that one day I might pen one myself, my heart would have leaped from my chest. But I didn't recognize that inclination as something deeper. And neither did those around me. I never considered exploring the possibility of writing the types of stories I was reading. When I turned thirty-three, my mom commented while pushing my son on a swing at the playground, "I'd always thought you'd write." She spoke the words nonchalantly as if these passions and gifts had been apparent all along, but I had never heard them before. Childhood delight becoming an adult profession seems out of grasp for most of us while we're growing up.

I never made the connection. Until I left home.

* * *

I attended a liberal arts college in Virginia fifteen hours away. I met my match in my would-be husband there just as my sense of purpose surfaced. on a late-night date, we scribbled our passions and dreams on paper napkins at Billy Joe's ice-cream parlor. Hints of something more beckoned us even then. We shared an urge toward something greater that never quite subsided. An elusive longing, anchored in our faith, to make a difference in the world. We didn't have a clue how, but our pulses quickened when we shared our hearts with others. Like minded, Gabe and I were doing our best with the tools we'd been given. Holding a deep-rooted conviction that we should dream big, we began our journey. But would we be willing to jump on that terrifying ride?

When we moved to Georgia after getting married, I grew comfortable in my skin. Gabe found an ambitious job marketing national events that equipped leaders, and I landed my dream job at North Point Community Church. Our napkin dreams seemed to be materializing. Maybe we had both found our niches.

Then life happened.

our first son, Cade—now the oldest of three—was born with Down syndrome. My doll baby. He never really cried. We played dress up, and he tolerated it with a gooey grin. But within months, his physical, speech, and occupational therapies increased to eight hours per week. I confessed to my boss that I was failing on both ends. As a team player and as a mom, I needed to dive deep into the role only I could fill.

So home I went, to long days in a house swollen with silence. Days full of light and despair. How do both emotions coexist?

Despair from a fantasy undone of a blond boy singing and chatting with me from the backseat. Light from the long tears shed and comforted when faith became mandatory.

I sat with my girlfriends in a circle on the floor as we watched our kids crawl all over us and each other—grabbing toys, slapping each other, and planting snotty kisses. We compared notes on plastic nipples, real-life nipples, and what constitutes GERD. As the months flew by, I watched the other babies turn into crawling, teetering toddlers. But for my little Cade and me, time stood still. He would hang in my lap or inch nearby while the others wobbled after each other around the room or were told "no touch" by their mommies.

When it came time to leave, I'd nearly barrel over those toddlers in my mad dash for the car to strap Cade into his car seat. The ride that followed was my escape from reality. I would blare whatever song moved me on the car stereo and cry for reasons I couldn't put words to at the time. I knew Cade and I would always have each other. We would keep each other broken and whole at the same time.

The afternoon before his first birthday, Cade napped as I methodically iced a huge lion face on a cake, made from scratch and complete with piped ribbons reflecting sugary oranges and browns. Armed with mad decorating skills I'd learned in a baking class years earlier, my steady hands crafted matching cupcakes.

Everything needs to be perfect. Look perfect. Taste perfect.

The same way I want Cade to be perfect.

Tears welled, and my eyelids gave way as a drop landed on the counter. Another and then another until saline crushed the dam of my resolve. Hot tears surged for more than an hour. My human attempt to find perfection. How was I still missing it? When would this pain subside? When would I be whole again? When would I shed the guilt I harbored for asking these questions and the crippling numbness when God didn't seem to answer?

I told a friend one day we were praying for Cade to be "whole." She responded, "Maybe your version of wholeness and God's version of wholeness look different." Reeling. What does she know? She doesn't even have babies yet.

A decade later. She was right.

My hang-up with wholeness was my issue, not Cade's. Not God's. In all the conversations during my first year as a mom, that is the only one I remember. But I wouldn't embrace it for years to come.

Perhaps that's why I kept Mead notebooks chock full of lists. Oh, the lists. They turned into volumes. When I was up all night with a newborn, they said things like "Wash hair" and "Buy food." Days turned into weeks as I found my groove (and some sleep), and my tasks turned into lofty things like "Drive car through the car wash," "Pay someone else to paint my nails," and "Slap some baby pictures in a book with a glue stick." Crazy went full throttle when they said, "Mail Christmas photo cards with pretend candid awkward pose," "Try out Zumba," and "Make pantry look pretty."

Each item I added made me feel as though I had purpose.

The longer the list, the greater the purpose. I became a rote, hollow version of my once-creative self. Success was measured by accomplishments each day. I went through mental gymnastics in bed each night, compulsively adding new things to my list. Tasking was my way of healing. But it was a lie. More like my distraction from grieving. My ability to keep things under control.

As my fears of being a mediocre parent grew, my napkin dreams seemed to mock me. What more was I expecting? Roles of leadership I'd held in high school and college and my earlier jobs were now distant memories. The paradox between a young heart bulging with anticipation and the current days counting down to bedtime was more than I was able to bear. Delirious with exhaustion, I felt guilty for not loving the moments more. Each and every one. I grieved for not loving the messiness more. Try as I might, I could not manipulate those shining moments any more than I could pretend to cherish them.

Guilt, guilt, guilt.

Over time, the lists started losing their savor. They became less frequent. Days would sneak by without a glance. Tasking turned to turmoil. Am I living the life I always imagined? Is this what the rest of my days are destined to look like? Will I always be forced to abandon hope for duty?

* * *

My head snapped up from the pillow at the sound of my daughter calling my name from downstairs. Good Luck Charlie had ended, and my job needed to start again. More than fifteen years removed from my napkin dreams, I was running fast. I'd been given a front-row seat on a rickety wooden roller coaster motoring on a never-ending loop. Twisting, turning, backward, forward. Straining to find my bearings, but never slowing enough to compose myself. Going in circles, but never finding my dreams.

If we ignore the yearnings of our souls, we atrophy, and our dreams die. Sadly, many of us choose this descent because we believe it's safer. If we don't hope, we won't be let down. If we don't imagine, reality won't disappoint. Either way, we avoid pain.

These destructive tendencies seem to afflict women in particular. Since 1988, the use of antidepressant drugs has soared nearly 400 percent, and women are 2.5 times more likely than men to take them. Twenty-three percent of women ages forty to fifty-nine regularly take these drugs, more than in any other demographic.

Nearly one in four. A devastating statistic. Why the struggle? Why the heaviness?

As for me, I wondered, Is this just seasonal depression? Or will it linger? My faith was flailing. The gloom lifted by spring, but the lurking shadow reminded me that January would come again. I think perhaps the anticipation of the darkness returning was as precarious as when it settled.

A friend recently confessed through tears that she struggles with bitterness. Her life doesn't look the way she'd hoped it would. She couldn't reconcile how her life—looking so successful on the surface—disguised the aching void that brings her tears the moment she opens her balled fists.

Are we grieving because our lives don't look the way we imagined in our youth?

Do we pressure our children to reach their potential because we aren't living up to our own?

Are we spending every moment cultivating the lives of everyone ... but ourselves?

Women are stars fading behind the dark shadow of those we care for, and we often look a little worse for wear. Our light is dimmer than it used to be as we find ourselves unable to dream beyond our current reality.

So we compromise. My childhood dreams were just that—dreams. I should let them go. We push down any hope when we sense it emerging. The desire for change uncovers what terrifies us most: failure.

Then we go numb. We tell ourselves a quick fix will do just fine. Whatever will keep our heads above water—whatever will allow us to keep making lunches, paying the bills, getting through sex, doing the kids' carpool, working out, pursuing that career, and so on—will just have to do. We don't want to become the crazy lady at the bus stop, so we think to ourselves, Just give me the shortcut. Then I'll be okay.

Perhaps most alarming are the many women who don't see past their manicured lives—grasping for society's definition of being "put together." We have pretty ways of masking our lack of meaning, using all kinds of beauty products and retail therapy. We have homes to furnish and decorate, then redecorate once we tire of what we have. We keep up with fashion styles, throw and attend parties, and maintain a rigorous pace. While these are all delightful and beautiful and often worthy goals, using them to conceal our unfulfilled lives is dangerous.

Some women uncover their talents before having kids and then shelve them while raising their children. They've experienced a sense of fulfillment in living out their purpose but believe they must set aside their pursuits for the sake of motherhood. They've bought into the belief that their gifts and child rearing are disparate parts, unable to coexist. Instead of fighting to figure out the balance, they stuff their dreams in a box marked "Motherhood."

Other women never identify their purpose before having children. Parenthood sets in and can unknowingly become the excuse to stop cultivating their dreams. Instead, they place their quest for significance on the lives of their children (as we see played out on Facebook every day). But this suffocating pressure is too much for anyone to bear, much less a five-year-old.

In either case, the displacement of a mother's purpose (beyond child rearing) becomes a huge loss to our communities. If women aren't empowered to cultivate their uniqueness, we all suffer the loss of beauty, creativity, and resourcefulness they were meant to inject into the world.

Can a mother chase the dreams that stir her heart and simultaneously raise her children?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Freefall to Flyby REBEKAH LYONS Copyright © 2013 by Rebekah Lyons, The Arrow Group. Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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