Monkey Bars

February 22, 2014

I recently began a crossfit program to optimize my health.  It’s challenging and I love it! But what I love even more is looking around at the equipment and the people doing things like rings and pull ups, it reminds me of how I used to play on playground equipment, long before I could ever appreciate the strength it takes to play in such a way. I loved the monkey bars, I never thought of them as work, it was just so much fun to swing from one rung to the next and every once in a while trying to see how many rungs I could skip or just swinging my legs up around a rung and  hanging out upside down for a moment or two.

I spent some time with a very dear friend last night, sipping wine by the fire place, a gentle ending to a cold week.  Our conversation evolved to us talking about our children, letting them grow up, and loss.  At some point I just blurted out, “Life is kinda like monkey bars.  A series of holding on and letting go.”  I realized as I began to break down the task, both take significant strength.  You can only hold on with strength, but you cannot let go without maintaining that strength or you may fall and need to start over.  To cross with grace, takes practice in learning to know when and how to let go and hold on from one rung to the next.  You cannot move forward if you don’t let go.  

But something a little more than just strength is required for letting go and I believe it’s faith.  Trusting there is another rung to hang onto and trusting that you have the strength you need to let go until you can reach and grab the next rung.  Similar to letting our children grow and reaching the time at which they may make their own decisions and take off on their own in life.  Trusting we held on long enough to give them what they need to embrace life and accept the challenges we know they will inevitably face on their journeys.  And then trusting when we let go not only will they not fall, but that we will be able to let go with the assurance that we taught them well and they are ready and strong enough to begin crossing their monkey bars on their own.

And for some of us letting go means accepting that we will never hear the voice of a loved one or see their smile at the end of the day or watch them blow out the birthday candles on their cake ever again – they finished their monkey bars gracefully letting go and holding on at all the right moments to make it across often so fast we may not have noticed and usually much faster than we wanted them to and then trusting that although all of that is invisible to us, somehow, they stay with us, just in a different way and because we cannot see,  we finalize it, saying good-bye.  As a friend of mine would say, “They’re just saving  seats in Heaven.”

And so what if you fall down?  Falling down in a safe way is learned as well. And it is in the falling down in which we learn to get up and correct the mistakes we made.  But why are we so often afraid to fall or fail?  And why do we trust our abilities and strength so little, that letting go has become a painful process filled with fear and doubt.

I teach a 3^rd grade religious education class and we frequently discuss the mustard seed story.  Today we spoke again of faith the size of a mustard seed and how we can nurture and nourish our faith seeds so they root and grow within us. The beauty of teaching is how much I learn from the children.  It’s all we need, just a drop of faith and trust to start believing we can let go and move forward one rung at a time.  And with time that seed will grow and flourish.  The best thing about things that grow is they have a way of being contagious.  Faith can be just as contagious as bacteria if we pay as much attention to hope as we do to germs. 

 So with faith and hope, let go and hold on and trust you’ve the strength and love you need within to move forward across the monkey bars as graceful as a young child filled with innocence because letting go and holding on at the right moments  only really takes faith the size of a mustard seed  … almost invisible,  but still there in all of us!