This morning my son, Ben, woke up early for his first day of 4th grade. When he walked downstairs, his hair looked like he had run our egg beater through it. I gently suggested that he may want to consider brushing it or wetting it before we walked to the bus. He replied, “no mama, it’s fine… my hair always settles down by midday.”
This was remarkably similar to my experience of walking a labyrinth early this evening. As I began my walk, like Ben’s bedhead, my mind was wild and unruly. At one point I even became slightly irritated with the design of the labyrinth that made the center appear so close only to spit me out farther away. Just as I started settling into prayer (forgetting the unmade dinner, the undone work, the child who needed to picked up from practice), I was at the center.
During my walk to the center, I prayed for balance. I prayed that I would be able to give from a spacious place of love and presence; I’m not a “check it off the list” sort of person. When I arrived at the center, I placed the shell my older son had handed me on my way out the door and anointed it with my Eucalyptus oil. I then spontaneously put a pebble in the shell for my people, the ones I was carrying painfully and wonderfully close this evening.
As I walked out of the labyrinth, I considered my heavy but beautiful shell. The word I heard was “perseverance.” By the time I found my way out I knew that I could leave the shell in the center and God would take care of it. For a few moments, as I walked to my car, I felt like a wise ten- year-old who knew deep in my soul that, despite my messy hair, everything would settle down by midday.
