The Space In Between

Welcome to The Jolly Heart; Beach Week Edition! It’s a week of travel, family time, and seeing good friends. Routines will be upended, unanticipated challenges will come, cooking will be for multitudes, and new memories will be made. It’s a vacation, but it also has moments of chaos.

I have been thinking of chaos lately. It might be because I live with young adult children, my job can keep me on my toes, and the news has never been newsier. It all leads to days of feeling unsettled. I try to pay attention to getting movement and eating well, but I also tend to something I call The-Space-In-Between to get some relief.

I had a mentor tell me once to draw a circle around my feet and look down. This is what I could control. This was the space I was in charge of managing. It contained my own body and mind, but, I also realized that circle encompasses the space in between my feet and yours.

If I was New Age I might call it my Aura, but Lifestyle Medicine doctors call it “Social Connection”. It is a very important contributor to our health and as important as not smoking to our longevity.

When I first started paying attention to The Space In Between I went after low hanging fruit. Not using my middle finger while driving meant a successful day for me. It’s important, I believe, to realize when we put our frustration and exhaustion into The Space In Between. It affects those around us and we have no idea of fully knowing what’s going on in their circle and at their feet. Snapping at my husband after a long day at work, barking at my kids to clean up, sarcasm, eye rolling, denigrating another behind their back or on social media; these are all examples of how I can, unthinkingly, pollute up their space with my own fear, my own frustration at the clunkiness of life, my own desire to have it all the way I like it. It can hurt worse than a slap to the face and it creates a divide: not only between me and them, but also between me and others witnessing. There are no bridges and connections being built. And without these connections, research tells us, we are taking years off our own life.

After controlling for pollution, I started to challenge myself in The Space In Between to try some beautification. Small things like eye contact and a smile with a cashier, sending emails with gratitude folded around the business needing done, thanking my family for their own acts of kindness, bringing curiosity and grace to other’s anger and frustration. I started to sprinkle those beautification seeds everywhere I went and I felt different. I felt happier regardless of what others around me were doing in their space. I was tending my space and it made me feel healthy and strong in a world full of chaos.

On our beach-bound road trip we stopped in a Wendy’s. While my family ordered the food, I noticed the straw/napkin/utensil station was a mess. Trash overflowing on the counter around the trash holes, no napkins, low on utensils, etc. “Sheesh, Wendy’s,” I thought, “my grandpa, a man with an eye for details and the original lover of the Wendy’s Frosty would be disappointed.”

I went up to the counter to ask for some napkins- because road trips can never have too many napkins-and the gentleman sighed in a kind and tired way and grabbed at a large wrapped brown paper package. As he ripped open the big package of napkins, he muttered as much to himself as me, “Everyone called in today…I was on my way to replace these..”. He offered me as many napkins as I needed before he was called by another customer to ring up an order. I looked at my feet and imagined that circle…all of it…and I grabbed a few fist-fulls of napkins and put them in the napkin dispensers best that I could. (I obviously missed the employee training session about Wendy’s napkin dispensers.) I hoped it bought our guy a few more minutes to do the job himself. My husband chuckled and said, “You’re hired!” and my teen just looked slightly embarrassed, but there it was: The Space In Between.

Just like my garden, I don’t always get it right, I never get it perfect, but it’s where I see magic and holiness happen, and for me, where I see my God at work: The Space In Between your feet and mine -in a world full of chaos- is important.