Jump in the River

The first time I was ever thrown into the river, I didn’t jump. I was pushed.

It was the day we found out about my kids’ special needs. And I don’t know how to describe that day to someone who hasn’t had one like it, except to say it’s the kind of news that hits you the way a cancer diagnosis hits you — it smacks you upside the head so hard that life simply cannot continue along the same lines. You wake up the next morning, and you’re in a different place. Not a different house. A different reality. And all the old routines, all the plans, the whole picture you’d been carrying of how your life was going to go — none of it applies anymore. It just doesn’t fit the world you woke up in.

There’s no preparing for that. There’s no jumping in on your own terms, testing the water with your toe. One day you’re standing on the bank with a plan, and the next you’re in the current, moving fast, and you did not choose it.

And there, in the water, you have exactly one decision to make. Not whether you’re in the river — that’s decided. The only thing left to choose is which way you’re going to face.

I want to tell you what the river did with me after it took me, because I could not have predicted a single turn of it.

We’ve moved twelve times. 9 of the moves were with the 5 kids and me following a nasty divorce. There have been more twists in this journey than I could ever have scripted, and here’s the strange truth about all of it: the experiences I would never wish on another human being have been the ones that carried me somewhere most profound. The current took me places my careful plans never would have. Not around the pain — through it. And out the other side into a life, and a purpose, I didn’t know existed when I was standing on the bank.

That’s the first thing the river teaches. You are not in charge of the route. You never were. The bends, the rocks, the speed, the places it slows and the places it drops out from under you — that’s the river’s business, not yours.

Which raises the question I still wrestle with, and I’m going to be honest with you that I haven’t fully “solved” it, because I don’t think it’s meant to be solved. It’s meant to be lived.

The question is: so do I just let go completely? Do I stop planning, stop trying, and drift?

Here is what I currently do:

I still plan. I wake up, and I set intentions and priorities. I map my week. I try to stay on a path toward what I want to create. And some part of me is always quietly asking: is this planning going against life that is moving through me— or going with it? Am I gripping when I should be flowing?

There was a spiritual teacher named Robert Adams — an American who spent time among the great Indian sages — and the people around him described a man who planned nothing. He’d simply wake up and let life pull him wherever it was going. No calendar. No objectives. Just flow.

And for a long time I held that up as the goal — the enlightened man who’s let go so completely he doesn’t need a plan. Next to him, my weekly objectives felt like a spiritual failure. Like proof I was still gripping.

But here’s where I’ve landed, at least for now, and I think it’s the real teaching of this chapter:

You point the boat. You surrender the current.

You are allowed to choose a direction. You’re allowed to want things — the home, the mission, the healing, the life. You get to face downstream and say that’s where I’m headed. That’s the planning. That’s the creating. That’s you, pointing the boat.

And then you let go of controlling how the river gets you there. You stop fighting every bend. You stop trying to paddle upstream when the current’s carrying you somewhere you didn’t expect. You hold your direction with an open hand instead of a clenched fist — loosely enough that when the river offers you something better than your plan, you’re able to take it.

There are small decisions you can influence while flowing down the river. You may be able to swim over to the bank or a sand bar to rest. There may be trees that you can seek shade from the sun. You may have an opportunity to meet other people along the way. But overall, the river is the force driving the experience.

That’s the resolution to “planning versus flowing.” It was never either/or. You plan the direction, and you surrender the route. You can still go after the house, the money, the goal — you just carry a little more flow, a little more acceptance, a little more letting go, so the river has room to do its work. And somewhere along the way, if you’re paying attention, you start to notice that where it’s taking you is better than where you were trying to force it to go.

I’m not telling you your pain isn’t real. Let me be clear about that, because I don’t ever want to be one more voice telling a struggling parent to just think positive. The anxiety is real. The overwhelm is real. Those things have a physical grip on the body, and I would never wave them away.

But I’ll tell you something direct, because I think you can handle it and because I think you’re hungry for someone to stop tiptoeing: pain is inevitable, and suffering is optional. An enormous amount of the suffering you’re carrying is being generated in here — in the mind, in the story, in the fight against a current that was never yours to control. Not out there. In here.

And I don’t say that to blame you. I say it because it’s the best news I know. If the suffering was coming purely from the outside, you’d be helpless — stuck waiting for the world to change before you could breathe. But if it is being generated because there is a difference between where you are and where you want to be or think you should be, then the power was never out there with the circumstances. It’s been in here, with you, the whole time.

You’ve been painting this life without realizing you were the one holding the brush. That’s not an accusation. That’s the moment you get the brush back.

Most people go their whole lives without ever realizing they’re holding it. You’re finding out now. And once you know — once you stop fighting the river and start choosing your direction within it — what becomes possible for you?

Do you know that you are a being with unlimited potential? Sit with this a moment and find out where you truly stand on it. If you are a light being with unlimited potential who doesn’t have any blind spots, faulty unconscious programming running your life, free from the illusion of separation, scarcity, disease, and some made-up recipe about what life is supposed to look like if you are successful, then what becomes possible for you?

Anything.

I’ll leave you with where this is all heading, though we’re not there yet on this journey, and I won’t pretend you can shortcut to it.

The people I’ve watched come through the most profound transformations — the ones who got the thing they were sure they needed — almost never describe it the way you’d expect. They don’t come back talking about the thing. They come back talking about a feeling. I felt fulfilled. I felt loved. I felt whole. It turns out the fix they were chasing was never really the point. Underneath every single thing we think we’re paddling toward is the same quiet destination: to feel whole, and to let life flow through us instead of fighting our way upstream, alone, against a current we were always part of.

You don’t have to get there today. You just have to stop fighting the river long enough to notice which way it’s carrying you. Or at least find a sandbar so you can rest. When you wake up…….

Check the current.

Point the boat.

Then let go.

I’ll see you next week.

If this landed, follow along — I write every Monday, for the parent carrying more than anyone sees.