It’s Only Just A Moment

The past six days have been…a lot.

A sick, deliriously feverish mother already struggling with dementia.

A son with pink eye and the flu.

A dog now half blind from glaucoma and scheduled to have his eye removed.

Hackers that stole $$ from our accounts.

While everyone is healthy now, and everything has been positively resolved, these moments certainly haven’t been easy.

Now, I can handle more than most. I’m action-oriented by nature, a full-time single mother, and a healer by training and practice. Acute situations? I’ve walked through many of them, often alone. But the moment that shown brightest for me this week came two nights ago, while driving my oldest son to emergency;

A 200-pound barbell from a broken assisted bench press machine had fallen directly onto his chest.

The pain was real - but what upset him most wasn’t the pain.

My son has been training relentlessly for an upcoming physical fitness test required for a high-level contract and career path he’s aiming for in the US Navy. And that test is next week.

A fracture - any fracture - would mean a minimum four-month delay. Or worse, losing the opportunity altogether.

As we drove to the hospital, he was understandably furious.

“I am f*cked.”

“I can’t believe this is happening.”

Eventually, I asked him to pause.

I validated what he was feeling - because it was awful - but I reminded him of something deeper.

Our training doesn’t stop at the physical. Part of our training is what we do here - in the immediate moments that scare us, threaten our dreams, and test our faith.

I reminded him that Creator would never place something in his path that he wasn’t capable of handling.

It’s so easy, in moments like these, to leap ahead into imagined futures - predicting outcomes, bracing for loss - rather than staying right where we are.

When he said, “I wish this wasn’t happening,” I responded with a single sentence that stopped him cold:

“And yet it is.”

Our desire to escape pain is instinctual. We want to run from fear, hide from uncertainty, avoid the crushing possibility that our dreams might be delayed - or taken altogether.

I know that feeling well. I’ve lived it many times.

But the truth is this: it was happening. And there was nothing either of us could do to change that.

What we could do was accept it.

To allow the feelings without letting them consume us.

To hold fear in one hand and faith in the other.

To trust that sometimes what we need isn’t always what we want - and that the path to what we’re meant for may look different than we imagined.

That kind of acceptance creates space.

For peace.

For clarity.

For miracles we haven’t yet seen.

I reminded him that if this path is truly his - if it’s what his soul has been contracted to walk - then no setback, no delay, no moment of “suck” can take it away. Timelines may shift, but real purpose doesn’t disappear.

This was an invitation to train a different muscle: emotional mastery, focus, surrendering control. Skills that matter just as much as strength or endurance.

And then - grace occurred:

X-rays showed no fractures. He can continue training (with awareness and care) and complete his tests as scheduled.

On the drive home, he was messaging friends when I asked him to stop. To pause. To imagine how different that drive could have been had the outcome gone another way.

To really feel the gratitude. Not just for the result - but for the capacity to stay present, to endure the unknown, to let things unfold as they did.

There will be many more hard moments ahead. Many setbacks. Many days that test resolve. As they say in the Navy Seals “The only easy day was yesterday.”

But they are still just moments.

And moments always pass.

What holds us back isn’t the pain itself - it’s our resistance to it. Our refusal to accept what is. Our tendency to cling long after the lesson has arrived.

So today, I’m grateful.

For the lessons.

For the pause.

For the reminder that even in chaos, there is peace and there is meaning.

It’s only just a moment.

And like all moments -

It, too, will pass.