Look Up

My dad stood up from his seat at the end of the long wooden table at our vacation rental (with the chairs that were comically too short for said table, leading us all to look like hobbits with our chins practically resting on the table as we ate… I digress…). He wore nothing but his bathing suit, glass held high, and told us all how happy he was that we were all there. Together. That he felt blessed to be there with us.

We toasted, siblings passed side-eyed glances at each other, smiles half-cracked because we were waiting for the joke, the sarcasm. And when it didn’t come, our smiles became more somber. A few tears welled in the bottoms of my eyes as I realized the gift of this moment. All of us, once a family of five now a family of 13, amidst a pandemic, racial tension, and an upcoming election, sitting together despite our differences (there are many), our schedules, our obligations. In an era when family units are more and more broken apart by distance, divorce, and divisions of belief there I was sitting in a room with my whole family.

I don’t have a grand metaphor coming up, or a poetic analogy. This nice little lead-in of a story will also be the abrupt close of this post. Look up, friends.

Who and what is sitting right in front of you? Are you serving them well? Are they building you up? Do you have the grace to forgive when you’ve been hurt? The courage to do the next right thing for yourself, your family, your home, your neighbor?

We live in a place of abundant freedom — name it. When you read and hear all of the travesty happening globally and nationally I want you to look up from your damn phone and NAME what’s right in front you and realize your absolute power and privilege to change the world just by existing in that which is RIGHT in front of you.

Sharing a meme on social media is easy. It’s much harder to LOOK UP and LOOK IN but that’s where change actually happens. Change happens within your walls, at your table. Look up at those eyes across from you, next to you and first recognize the gift of this moment. The gift of this freedom. And then do the work.