What the Water Taught Me

Skyline of Cleveland, Ohio over Lake Erie

What the Water Taught Me

It is 4:11 on a Friday morning, and I can't sleep.

I'm exhausted.

Not the ordinary kind of tired that a good night's sleep can fix. I'm tired in a way that has accumulated over decades—layer upon layer of fighting, adapting, hoping, planning, sacrificing, rebuilding, and trying again.

Tonight, I reached for Zoe.

Her collar has hung from my bedpost since she left us thirteen years ago, but tonight I took it down and held it.

I don't know exactly what I was looking for.

Maybe her.

Maybe the woman I was when she was still here.

Maybe the feeling of being loved by someone who didn't require me to accomplish anything first.

Somehow, after all these years, her collar still carries a connection to hope and faith that I can't quite explain.

Maybe that's why I needed it tonight.

I've spent a lifetime believing in better days.

I've made plans. Big plans. Best-laid plans.

I've worked hard. I've contributed. I've sacrificed. I've believed that if I just kept going, kept learning, kept adapting, eventually the pieces would fall into place.

Sometimes they did.

Sometimes they didn't.

And sometimes I wasn't even capable of seeing what was right in front of me.

David Foster Wallace illustrated that kind of blindness beautifully in This Is Water.

Two young fish encounter an older fish swimming the opposite direction.

"Morning, boys. How's the water?"

They swim on for a while. Then one looks at the other and asks:

"What the hell is water?"

I've thought about that story a lot.

How often do any of us swim through something so completely we can't recognize it—the exhaustion, the striving, the quiet certainty that we're owed something for it all—until someone asks the simple question: what is this, exactly?

How many things have I mistaken for normal simply because they were familiar?

There is a difference between hope and denial.

I've learned that the hard way.

I've also learned that I am entitled to nothing.

That may sound harsh, but it is actually one of the most beautiful lessons I've ever been given.

I was in my early twenties, working at a bridal and formal boutique after suffering two miscarriages. I was bitter. I was married, while several of my unmarried friends were having babies, and I couldn't understand why God was allowing this to happen.

A colleague and spiritual mentor, Karen Pritchett, asked me to imagine that someone showed up at my door and handed me a dollar for no reason.

I'd be grateful.

Then imagine they came back the next day with another dollar.

And the next.

And the next.

Until one day, they didn't.

The dollar was never mine. It had always been a gift.

Karen gave me that wisdom more than thirty years ago, and I have carried it ever since.

Everything is on loan.

Our parents. Our friends. Our partners or spouses. Our children. Our homes. Our sources of income. Our health. Our animals.

We don't truly possess any of it.

We are entrusted with these gifts for a time.

To believe that we have earned them—that our work, sacrifice, or goodness somehow makes us entitled to keep them—is to misunderstand the very nature of a gift. It places us in the position of owner rather than steward, as though we are the masters of our own lives rather than recipients of what God, in His sovereignty, has chosen to place in our hands.

Everything is on loan.

And perhaps that is why gratitude matters so much.

We don't have to understand why a gift was given, or why it was taken away, to be grateful that we were given it at all.

That doesn't mean we don't grieve when something is gone.

It means we can grieve and still be grateful that we were given it at all.

I can say thank You for Zoe.

Thank You for the years.

Thank You for the people.

Thank You for the life I was given—even the parts I never would have chosen.

I've spent years battling un/misdiagnosed dystonia. Then came years of Long COVID, adding another layer of uncertainty, exhaustion, and loss. Since August of 2020, I've committed myself to a program of recovery—body, mind, and the relationships that hold me up. I've kept learning, growing, and waiting for more to be revealed.

Sometimes that journey has felt remarkably like Job.

When the explanations stop working.

When the neat answers disappear.

When you find yourself sitting in the ashes, wondering what the hell happened to the life you thought you were going to have.

I don't have a tidy answer tonight.

I'm tired.

Really tired.

It's now 5 a.m., and I'm still here.

Holding the collar of a dog who has been gone for thirteen years, I'm still here.

Zoe used to shake—physically shake—whenever one of us was upset, as if her whole small body needed to feel what we felt before she could settle. She taught my children and me more about emotional regulation than any book ever did, just by trembling through our storms until they passed.

Zoe and Me

And somehow, in that collar and the memories it carries, I can feel something I haven't completely lost.

Hope.

Faith.

Love.

Not the shiny, uncomplicated kind.

The kind that survives disappointment.

The kind that says, I don't know what happens next, but I don't have to know yet.

Maybe this is what I've been waiting to learn.

Recovery isn't necessarily getting back the life we've planned.

Faith isn't believing everything will turn out the way we want.

Hope isn't pretending reality isn't hard.

Sometimes hope is simply refusing to believe that the hardest chapter is the only chapter left.

Zoe can't come back.

The years can't come back.

Some things cannot be restored in the form I once imagined.

But love remains.

Lessons remain.

Faith remains.

Gratitude remains.

And I remain.

So when morning comes, I'll decide what to do with what I have now.

Not what I wish I had.

Not what I thought I would have by this age.

Not what my best-laid plans promised me.

What I have now.

Because maybe that is the real question:

What will I do with this now?

I'm tired.

But I can keep going.

Maybe not the way I once thought I would.

Maybe not as quickly.

Maybe not with the same certainty.

But I can keep going.

I'm still learning to recognize the water I've been swimming in.

Lake Mohawk, Ohio

And for tonight, that is enough.