Finding Balance with an Upward Lean

Anyone who knows me even a little quickly discovers that I am comfortable being self-reliant. Self-sufficiency is the story of my life. By the time I was two, I had already begun navigating this world on a journey best traveled alone. While other children asked for a capable hand when they needed something to eat, I was busy calculating the height of the kitchen counters. In dragging over a chair to close the distance between the end of my reach and the thing I wanted, I needed no help. To me, asking for support was like putting on a heavy coat I didn’t want to wear.

In looking back on my childhood experiences, I remember incidents that shaped me into the independent person I am today. One such memory began with a little pullover hoodie. The article of clothing with the random spots of color was a hand-me-down from my older sister. Not only did it keep me warm, but putting it on felt like a hug. I remember the last time I saw that hoodie.

I was a toddler playing in the backyard with my sister. Shadows had overtaken the backyard late in the afternoon. The yellow cotton sundress I had on wasn’t appropriate for the falling temperatures. I wanted to stay outside for as long as possible and I needed to put on something that would keep me warm.

Heading for the back door that was propped open with a shoe, I climbed the wooden steps with care, balancing in the middle to avoid the exposed sides. There was no handrail or guardrail and I had learned the hard way to mind the edges after an accident occurred. Once, while managing the stairway, one foot slipped off and I tumbled over, landing on the hard concrete surface of our patio floor. A scraped-up elbow and bruised knee were the reminders of a painful lesson learned.

Now safely up the stairs and inside, I continued my mission, hoping we wouldn’t be called for dinner yet. Inside the house, I went to the tall dresser in my bedroom. Pulling the drawers out starting at the bottom up, I searched them, one at a time. I pulled each drawer out a little less so I could climb up the staircase I was building to reach the next.

image created using AI

Scurrying up the “ladder” I had created, I got to the last drawer and opened it just enough to slide my arm in. I rooted around, and when I got hold of the spotted garment, I slid it out and dropped it to the floor.

Determined to finish what I had started, and with the piece of furniture I had scaled now dangerously close to tipping over by the unbalanced weight of all the open drawers, I climbed down and began negotiating with the pullover. I knew how it was supposed to look when it was on, but I wasn’t clear on the process. When I put my head through the bottom of the garment, it got stuck trying to come out through a sleeve. That the hoodie was too small only made putting it on more difficult.

After wrestling with the garment for I don’t know how long, my mother came to fetch me and my sister for dinner. What started as an effort in self-care morphed into a lesson in frustration. I never made it back outside to play that day, and, having outgrown it, I never saw that little spotted sweatshirt again.

This was the beginning of a lifetime of incidents where things could have gone wrong but didn’t. I remember having been left alone and unsupervised on numerous occasions.

I was three years old when my mother left me on the couch listening to music while she slept. My sister had started kindergarten, and she was in the early daytime session. We walked her to school at dawn, strolling up the country road before the sun came up. Robins chirped and swooped down on the fields trying to be the early bird that catches the worm.

On the walk back, my mother told stories of how the woodland animals visited each other and gathered for harvest celebrations just like people do. The mice made their homes in burrows at the base of an old walnut tree and the squirrels that jumped in the branches came to visit.

As we walked along the fields and farms, my mom wove tales that were less about the content than they were about the telling. On a journey of the imagination, I forgot that we’d left my sister behind in a strange place. I hated leaving her alone, so my mother distracted my attention from my deep sorrow and fear for my sibling.

Once we got home, my mother, who was very fond of her sleep-time, would set a stack of LPs on the record player. With orders to stay put, my mom would set me on the couch and go back to bed. At this age, I had learned about the consequences of disobeying and wanted nothing to do with the punishments.

Alone, I sat, too scared to move as the music played. First, a soundtrack album from Disney’s SnowWhite, then Cinderella. There was the symphonic music from Peter and the Wolf and Peter Pan, and an audio version of the cartoon, Snagglepuss. Though they were stories and tunes I’d heard many times over, I didn’t dare get bored. I stayed put and waited.

By the time my mother resurfaced from her slumber, she sometimes had to wake me up. Often I had fallen asleep with dolls and stuffed toy dogs and a teddy bear all around me like a fortress. I was becoming an expert in self-comfort, too.

Though they didn’t neglect me, I didn’t get as much nurturing from my parents as other children. They also didn’t share their spirituality with me and my sister so I never learned how to seek comfort there. We rarely went to church, and there were no religious traditions practiced in the household. I never saw my parents praying, and they never talked to me about Jesus.

As I aged, I knew of God and Jesus Christ but didn’t know any of the history. There was Christmas, Easter, and I had friends who were Mormons and Christians. On a couple of occasions, a friend invited me to their church for kids’ activities and Bible studies, and I tagged along.

The adults made me feel at ease, and I loved the creative activities. I also embraced the singing and still remember a few of the Bible songs. But all this remained in the background as I got older and continued down my path towards independence.

Since then I have learned that the Bible warns against prideful self-reliance: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5). 

My earliest memory of church was at around age four. I remember sitting in the pews of a Catholic sanctuary while things were happening around me. My eyes wandered as I took in the surroundings.

The expressions on some statues’ faces seemed frightened, and some looked like they were crying out in pain. The colorful stained-glass windows depicted violent scenes of people in agony. From observing these scenarios, I decided I could believe in God, but I’d do things my way. I intended to avoid the trouble the statues and the people in the glass windows were having. My misunderstanding about religion and God and Jesus stayed with me.

As a child, choosing self-reliance came out of necessity. It served me well, and as I grew up, it suited me more and more. Though it was my chosen modus operandi, deep down I knew there was something I was missing. I was aware of this force, this energy, an entity I couldn’t see looking out for me.

As a young teen learning to drive, I often pushed the speed limit. I drove a spirited little vessel, a 1967 Mustang. With drum brakes and no power steering, I had to learn to feel the road and coax out every drop of performance from that machine. But with my lack of experience, I also took many foolish chances.

In my hometown, we had no freeways or boulevards and only one stoplight. I longed to develop my skills on the open road. I took my Mustang on a back road between my town and the next one over. It was a narrow and curvy stretch, with blind corners, no shoulders, and deep drop-offs just beyond the pavement. Flying down a steep grade, I knew there was a sharp turn at the bottom.

I had driven this road many times, but this time I underestimated the centrifugal force because of my rate of speed. Veering to the left to follow the road, I realized the turn was too sharp. The back end of the car was ready to spin out, but I had no pavement left for correction. My right-side tires caught the edge, and I was about to end up in the ditch.

Image created using AI

Everything about the situation pointed to severe damage to the car, and injury to me, but just when the car should have rolled onto its side, it stayed level. As if lifted from underneath, like a boat on water, my car floated along, slowly returning to the flat surface of the pavement, and I continued safely down the road.

I pulled over when I found a wide spot, needing a minute to process my experience. My heartbeat slowed, and I remembered to breathe. With my knees threatening to buckle under my weight, I got out and walked around to inspect the car. There should have been dents along the entire passenger side of the car, but there was not even a scratch.

I tilted my head to the side in disbelief. How did I go from crashing off the side of the road to rolling along as if nothing was wrong? I got down on my hands and knees to take a look at the undercarriage. The car must have bottomed out when the passenger-side tires dropped off the pavement. Surely there would be scuffs and damage underneath. Nothing was out of place under there, either.

Still on my hands and knees, I looked up to heaven but couldn’t form any words of gratitude. If there had ever been a time for prayers of thanks, this was it.

There were times before this event, and many since, where God’s mercy has saved me though I wouldn’t have thought it at the time. I have benefited personally through God’s grace, and He has saved me from the adverse effects of some of the bad choices I made. God has forgiven me when I haven’t been so generous about forgiveness towards others who have done me wrong.

Having taken God’s blessings for granted throughout life, to this day, He blesses me, but I’m learning it has been an unbalanced relationship. I never acknowledged His sovereignty. Having never understood that God had plans for me all along, I now accept that knowing and understanding isn’t everything. But having faith is.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Since opening my heart to Jesus, God is near me now, in my soul, and in my mind. I read the Bible, study it with other readers and have learned a lot in a short time. In Proverbs 3:5 it says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

It’s taken a while for me to reach this point, but now I know Jesus is my path to God. His way is the only way.

“In all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:6)

I pray daily for continued wisdom to seek God’s guidance, for knowledge to dispel misunderstandings, and for patience to listen, not with my ears but from inside.

I can still be the proud, independent person I was born to be, who trusts her own intuition, while I also recognize a distinct new voice in my head. The voice I now hear when all other thoughts are quiet. Having always had with me that guiding force, I acknowledge and appreciate it for the genuine gift it is.