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“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.” –CS Lewis

In his heartbreaking and life-giving memoir on grief, CS Lewis described it–grief, that is–as not a circle but a spiral. It may feel like you are revisiting the same spots over and over, but you are seeing them from a different vantage point each time. A point further along in the process, hopefully, which is progress, even though it may not seem to be.

This describes life, too, I think. It describes us.

Earlier this week, The Kid left his water bottle at his speech therapist’s office. We were a few blocks away, at Little Brother’s soccer practice, when we (I) realized this. Did I stop myself from rolling my eyes this time? No. Did I prevent the frustration from rising up within me like a volcano at this new multi-step problem thrown into our already-hectic afternoon? No, I did not.

But. I told him it was okay. And once LB was settled into practice, TK and I trotted over to the office to retrieve the bottle, and somehow we were both smiling.

(Then we got there, and his therapist–and the bottle–were shut in with another client, and we waited fifteen minutes before we had to leave to get back to LB so he wouldn’t notice we’d left, and TK and I both got lost in our own anxiety and definitely did not smile on our way back. So. Spirals.)

Last weekend I put on my heels and headed with a friend into the city, where we watched Hamilton. I’d seen it once more in person, on Broadway five years ago, back when I was a US resident and we were all allowed to travel around the world and theatre in America still existed. At the time, I was struggling through a stomach virus that was erupting from my rear and I had been reduced to simply hoping to get out of there without causing a scene, so my recollections beyond that are limited. But I do retain an overall feeling: of exhilaration at seeing the show with its (mostly) original cast, of watching this story come to life, of being a part of something bigger than myself, a part of our collective past and my own story.

This time, I (thankfully) was not encumbered by GI issues, just by a mandated mask that I pulled down to sip on beverages. This time, I sat next to a constant friend who didn’t exist to me a half-decade ago. This time, I watched this American story through the eyes of an Australian resident. I noticed that the audience missed the Sally Hemmings reference but not much else. That the cast was different but incredibly skilled. That the story was the same, but different. I was different.

I am different, and the same. I still fly off the handle, disappoint myself, get angry and irrational. But I also love more deeply, tell the truth more frequently, and ask for–and receive–forgiveness more readily. Spirals.

The only stories that remain static are the ones where we don’t tell the truth, where we skip the hard parts, where we elevate fear over love. I’ve just finished writing a middle-grade novel and in submitting it for publication, I’m finding that rejection (the one I’ve received so far, at least, though many more will come) hits the same, and different. I’m still offended, and I still battle shame, but now? I know something deeper than both. And that is the story where I live.

Yesterday morning I finally retrieved the water bottle. It was waiting in the car when the boys hopped in, these boys who have, through grace’s direction, shattered and remade me, who have lived the hard parts and told the truth with me. Who have lived and are living their own spirals–these stories where you can’t have bridges without barbed wire, or new life without grief, or an old cast without a new.