Why Learning the Next Step Could Allow it to Be the Best One.
As I walked down the stairs and stepped off the final step, all I felt was water. Every step sloshed and squished in my toes. I was middle school age at this time. My sister slept in the bed in our downstairs bedroom. In the middle of the night, she woke up to the entire downstairs of our house flooded. The washing machine hose busted in the middle of the night and ruined the entire bottom floor of our house.
For the next few weeks, the floors in our house were bare bones; I mean, down to the concrete of the foundation. I can distinctly remember seeing measurements for the new carpet to be laid and my brother taking chalk and completing the measurements like they were math problems.
What I think about today is the fact that we had been exposed to the foundation of our home. The foundation that was holding our family together in a moment when we lost some unfortunate, costly artifacts. This was back in the 90s when the full wall-sized built-ins were all the rage. The entire back wall of our living room was floor-to-ceiling built-ins. On the bottom shelf, my mom had photo albums stored. Among them were the baby albums of my sister and I. For most, it would've been cute pictures of hospital stay and chunky baby swaddled in a blanket. My sister and I have pictures of our remarkably tiny human bodies at just two pounds.
Yup, you read that correctly, two pounds. Our start was rough and tenacious. We were challenged from the start, or you could say I was impatient and pulled my sister into the world a bit early. Thirteen weeks early, to be exact. Some might say I'm still a little impatient.
As I reflect on the foundation in our house at that time and the precious keepsakes of our humble beginnings, I remember my mother being so upset about losing them in the flooding of our house. I want to say we had almost six different albums, and she was only able to salvage one. The rest were ruined.
In my tweenaged brain, I remember thinking, "Mom, what are you so upset about? They're just pictures." At the time, I had not fully understood the intensity that surrounded my birth until much later, when I had my own babies. That's a whole other blog post.
What strikes me now is the loss my mother felt in the memories and the foundation of our fight to be in this world. The sheer miracle we are to this day, being born mostly healthy at 27 weeks. You see, our foundation, just like my own house at the time, is not something we often pay much attention to. It's not flashy or the most attractive part of who we are or what we share with people. Yet, our foundation is the core of what holds us together.
Much like a home, our foundation shapes who we become and how we move forward in this world. It is one of the key elements we often overlook when searching for the next step. I'm tenacious and impatient, stubborn, and rarely quit anything. Maybe that has more to do with my foundation than I realize. Just like the foundation in our home had to be exposed, for us to be reminded of what really held our house together and why a foundation truly is the strongest part, even if we don't always know it's there.
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