Life on the Edge...
But wait! How do we navigate the unknown?
The week before Tom and I loaded up the dog and drove from Dallas to Beaufort SC (for what we thought would be a four month sabbatical of research and writing), a friend tapped on my office door. She gave me a big smile, a warm hug, and a mug.
“I’m not sure if I’m worried about you, or envious – but I sure hope this works out for you two.” (She thought I’d lost my mind, but was too kind to say so.)
The “this” referred to leaving family, friends, and job security to cross the country and find out if I could write a book.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I googled How to write a novel. I’ve got this.”
She thought that was hilarious. Truth is, I actually did google How to write a novel. Turns out there are lots of resources online, lots of links to lots of workshops and tutorials and books and people.
For better or for worse, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I just dove in and started learning, started writing, started asking questions, started wondering if maybe I had indeed lost my mind with this crazy idea.
Tom was the believer. He had confidence in me from the start. He encouraged the endeavor with enthusiasm and energy.
And every morning he filled the “comfort zone” cup with caffeine and brought it to my writing chair.
Yep, I wrote from a chair, not a desk. (The chair has its own story, for another time. And, yes, I’m writing in it right now.)
The end of the comfort zone turned out to be the launch pad for a season of life I couldn’t have imagined.
We fell in love with the lowcountry and decided to make our home in Beaufort
We won the neighbor lottery
Tom found his tennis tribe and a birder’s paradise
I wrote the book and found my people
We found friends in the neighborhood, at the church, on the tennis courts, on the beach, at the Pat Conroy Literary Center….
Life! It just opened up to us, here at the edge of the comfort zone!
Then the hard stuff came along:
Really hard stuff: my sister’s death, covid, my dad’s decline and death, Tom’s long illness and then his death.
And for several years, I couldn’t drink from the Comfort Zone mug. I’d been to the end, and crossed over; I found myself trying to survive in the Discomfort Zone, trying to make sense of the losses and the pain. Trying to navigate out of the dark.
It’s been nearly four years since Tom got sick, and almost two since our last moments together.
A few weeks ago, I reached for the End of the Comfort Zone mug.
And I filled it. And I drank.
And you know what? These amazing neighbors are still the best, and the far-away friends and family are still only a heart-beat and a phone call away, and the local friends are still here loving me and letting me love them, and the birds are still flying and I’m still feeding them, and Tom is still present in so many tender ways, and there’s room for gratitude in the grief.
Maybe the end of the comfort zone opens to a more spacious place for all of us, maybe more gracious, somehow?
I don’t know what comes next…
Tom kept a book of quotes that he liked, and this one - from the movie Castaway - was one of his favorites:
I know what I have to do now. I've got to keep breathing because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?
And once again, I don’t know what I don’t know.
But I watched the sun rise this morning. And the tide ebbs and flows, always faithful.
I don’t know what’s next, but I trust that something important, something good, something spacious and welcoming is out there beyond the End of the Comfort Zone.
And I don’t want to miss that.
So, for now, a sip at a time, eyes and heart open… I’m just hanging out here at the end of the comfort zone.
Beautiful.