Vachon Imagined

There is a love and a life that doesn’t give up on you.

It’s different from when my son and I are doing math and he’s getting the answers wrong and I say, I’m not giving up on you, Jonah. You’ve got this. Just practice. Keep practicing.

Because that voice lives in everyone.

Not just between me and my son.

It is the life that makes it possible for Jonah to get hard on himself and for me to remind him:

You’ve got this.

Keep practicing.

And I make that possible as his parent because we practice every day.

But underneath that, something much bigger is happening.

We already live in life.

We already live in God.

Returning to that awareness takes a God who doesn’t give up on you.

And once you begin living in that life, you start to understand that nothing and no one is happening outside of it.

Not the teacher.

Not the kid who can do math.

Not the kid who can’t.

Not the one who gets it right.

Not the one who gets it wrong.

It’s all being allowed.

It’s all being lived.

It’s all life.

And how lucky we are to experience all of it.

Because the love that doesn’t give up on you isn’t waiting for you to get the answer right.

It isn’t waiting for you to become better before it stays.

It is already there.

When you are confused.

When you are frustrated.

When you are certain you’re failing.

When you are staring at a math problem wondering how on earth everyone else seems to understand it.

The love is still there.

You’ve got this.

Keep practicing.

And that is what it means to return to God, not to find something that was missing, but to become aware of what never left.

The life that kept allowing you to be here.

The love that never stopped being here.

The God who doesn’t give up on you.

Not because you finally got the answer right.

But because you were never outside of the answer.

You were always in the life that was allowing the question to be asked.