I am sitting on our deck in Hawaii only because it is raining today, otherwise we would be at the ocean which is my favourite place in the world to be. Later we will head to the pool rain or not because my kids are Canadian and a little rain is not going to stop them from swimming. Haven-Kate who is our baby but isn't a baby because we've already soaked up three and a half years of her would spend all day there, were it solely up to her. I'm thinking about how she's learning how to swim, but frankly, she's already swimming. Two days ago Aaron posted an instagram of her in the pool swimming about half its width stopping to tread water part way through and now with forty-eight hours more experience she's clearing the width of the pool all by herself.

She has always loved the water, she was the baby who at the beach while still crawling would crawl into the water with zero regard for her personal safety, fall under the water and laugh as you brought her up to the surface. During a summer camping trip we were at an outdoor pool, swimming several days in a row. This pool had a small outdoor slide and each time she went to the top Haven would seek clarity. 'Okay mom (or dad) don't catch me. Don't catch me mom. Don't catch me I can to do it by myself.' She wouldn't leave the top till we'd agreed that we wouldn't catch her. We'd watch her slip down the slide and splash under the water (heaven forbid we caught her). She would kick herself back up to the surface, a giant smile on her face, at which point we would catch her least she drown herself. Again we'd be told, 'No don't help me' and she'd half dogpaddle, half have us 'not help' her to the edge of the pool. Determination and joy.

Yesterday morning she jumped from the edge over and over and over, swam as far as she was able. One of us would hold her for a few seconds and she'd flip around and swim back to the edge. She was interspersing her jumps with calls of 'yahoo' or 'cannonball' and I couldn't help be inspired.

Not on her swimming ability (although that is pretty fun too!) but at her joy and zest and drive. Her confidence and her (from my perspective) calculated risk taking. Her fearlessness and the security that must be there to buoy that up. Her effortless ability to be present to the feel of the air rushing around her and the water washing over her and the work of moving her body in a new medium. Her repeated work over and over on something that could be seen as challenging but she only sees as pleasure. Her momentary freedom from anything else going on anywhere.

Thanks for teaching me Haven-Kate.

You know this time we live in is a funny one isn't it. We have the internet and social media and most of us know way more wonderful people than we actually have time for. We have contact with more beautiful people that we can actually know. I'm talking about the real kind of knowing here, the kind where you know what's breaking their soul and what's saving them right now. The kind where you know where they are finding abundance and if they are feeling beloved or broken.

And I can't stop thinking about this of late. It may be because I find, (a change from the twenties to the thirties) is it so often seems all one or the other. On one hand, we see so many hard things are happening. People have struggles, fiscal, relational, with health and the stakes are high. On the other, we can sometimes only see someone who knows all the right answers and does all the right things, has healthy kids and lots of help.

We can forget, with our vision filtered through casual encounters, through instagram and through those sometimes irritating facebook updates and comments. We can forget that everyone goes through hard things. We can forget that no one has their shit together. We can forget that everyone has good too, mixed with their hard.

Even here where I try to keep things balanced I wrote about rocking my baby under the stars but I didn't write about holding her down for a medical procedure while she screamed for help at such intensity that she popped blood vessels in her eyes and all over her face. Some things are just too hard, too raw, too painful that they don't belong to anyone other than me and maybe my most beloved, at least right away.

In the same way that some things are too good, too cherished, too abundant for words. I have yet to write about fifteen years of marriage and as my kids get older I hold most of their stories for just between us.

We can lose our places to be real, because part of our life is too out there and not meant to be shared that way. We can lose our places to be whole, because so much of what we see is just a piece of a whole.

We can forget that crucial piece to wholeness. We need to love each other well and we need to be loved well. We need love to get through the hard and to celebrate the joy.

It's through this love we can know others and be known. It's through love that some sense of wholeness starts to shift into place.

So I wrote myself a reminder. Life is hard and abundant. We have broken parts yet we are beloved. We need to love and we need to let ourselves be loved.