I’d been living in everyplace but the present. And it had not been well with my soul.
For months, I lived with my eyes on the launch date for rooted (IN). September 26th. A very big day for celebration. Most of my waking hours were spent getting ready for the birth of this new baby book. Doing all the things authors do to share their baby, to bring their message to the world. Social media out the wazoo. Seriously, I was getting tired of me. And I was sure the world must be tired of me, too. The to-dos were endless. I was running hard toward the finish line, and I crossed it exhausted, thinking now I could rest. Now I could be present. Seriously, didn’t I just write a book about living rooted? And yet nothing in me felt rooted at all. Because I wasn’t present to myself or to God. In the midst of all the doing, I lost the gift of simply being.
So launch day came, as days tend to come, and all was poised. The launch team was ready to post their reviews on Amazon, because reviews on Amazon are crucial for a new book—or at least I’ve been told. With somewhere between 20 and 25 reviews (no one knows the magic number for sure) all the magical algorithms kick in, and Amazon begins to help promote your book. Hitting this number in the first few days, this was what I’d been running toward. And praying for. When I thought of it. Sort of. Did I mention I wasn’t living rooted?
The morning of the book launch, my team began to message me that they’d submitted their reviews. It was awesome. We were all excited. Then the messages changed. Amazon was rejecting some of the reviews. What? We’d done it all right, all according to the rules. To say I tanked emotionally at this point might be an understatement. It got pretty dark pretty fast.
For about two hours, I believed that Amazon held my future in its virtual hands. Without Amazon and their magical algorithms, all was lost. All this work, all this time, for nothing. It felt like a descent into hell. The hell that happens when we believe Amazon runs the world.
For all these months and days heading toward the launch, I’d been living in the future. In all the wait-ifs and just-wait-untils of a time and reality that didn’t actually exist. Fear reigns in space like this, in time ungrounded in the present.
Because here’s the thing. This present moment, the breath I’m taking now, is the only thing that’s real. While I still feel the effects of the past, the past itself is, well, past. And while I anticipate the future with a mix of hope and doubt, the future itself is unknowable. The only place I can know and be known, the only place I can live rooted in love, the only place I can experience God, is in this very messy moment. Rooted in the reality that there is enough, right here, right now. Me in God. God in me. In the now, there is enough.
I’ve written an entire book about living rooted. And I’m still, obviously, not very good at it. Because I forget all the time. Amazon does not hold my future. Love holds my future. I’m held in the high, wide, long, deep love of God. And in this present moment, in God, I find the invitation back to trust. And this trust is the way back to peace.
Maya Angelou said it beautifully: “If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is to be present in the present. Gratefully.” Jesus said it beautifully as well. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. (Or about your book, how it will sell.) Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Are you not much more valuable? Resting, trusting, listening, knowing we are valued, we are loved. This is the way to living in the present. And the present is the gift.
In case you’re wondering, we did ultimately hit the magic number on Amazon. But by then it didn’t matter. Because my soul had found the way home.