“This is why we do the hard days.”
I felt a certain lightness coming on immediately after Robyn said this, on our lazy walk back from the neighborhood coffee shop, her Au Lait in hand. We haven’t done this Saturday ritual in months, but today - warm, autumnal, and with nowhere else to be - is the perfect day for it.
“Tell me more,” I said with intrigue, with as much tenderness and charm as I could muster.
“I’m just here, basking in this beautiful family. I’m so happy and at peace. We’re all together. We’re outside and it’s beautiful. And the leaves are peak color. This is literally the dream.”
I want to remember days like these. Days when we can just bask in the simplest, most unremarkable, pleasures. Days when it easy to see that our family is not beautiful because it’s particularly different or special, but because it’s ours.
When Robyn asks me how I’m doing, I pause. And then I have what feels like a revelation.
I don’t have to justify being here.
My whole life I’ve been doing things to try proving that I deserve to be alive. But I don’t. God gave me this life as a gift, and even though he will take me from this world he will not erase the life that I had. He brought me here and I don’t have to pay him back.
Anything I do here is not an obligation, at least to God, I think. He gave me the entirety of the gift up front, with no takebacks. The pressure is off, in a way. I don’t have to do things to earn my life.
What I do with this life, I realize, has always been a choice. Whether I pay it forward is a choice. What I do for a job or what I choose to learn is a choice. What I choose to contribute is a choice. How I choose to treat others is a choice. And I know that if I choose to pay it forward, it will require sacrifices. Paying it forward will not be easy. Paying it forward is an acceptance that there will be extremely hard days. Paying it forward is a choice and realizing this after years of feeling guilty and inadequate is liberating.
I try, extra hard, to remember days like these, precisely because they’re not particularly noteworthy. I would forget them if I didn’t write about them. But days like these, where we’re just here, are the most profound I think. These days are ones where God sends a couple little winks - whether it’s the sunshine, the feeling of love and attachment to my family, or sound of leaves crunching under paws and little feet - that remind me that his gift has already been given.
“I’m good. Really good.” I say to Robyn. I look at her and I realize that I’ve started smiling.
She really did put it perfectly. This is why we do the hard days.
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