Journey Through Life

When my second child was born sixteen months after the first, my oldest son had not yet learned to walk. I remember pulling up to my home after a grocery store run during a snowy winter, carrying first one baby, then the other, and then all my grocery bags into the house in what felt like endless trips to and from the car. My friends’ children were toddling around while my son still happily crawled everywhere he went. As the pediatrician worked through the checklist of what my child “should” be doing at each visit, it would have been easy for me to feel anxious or wonder what was wrong with my child.

Nothing was wrong. Although my seventeen month old wasn’t yet walking, he crawled beautifully. He could pull himself up to standing and had recently started cruising while holding onto the furniture. He was moving steadily along in the process of learning to walk. Growth and development is a lifelong process, not a checklist and whether he could or couldn’t walk was not nearly as important as the fact that he was progressing forward through the steps that lead to walking.

Checklists are of limited value when dealing with human beings. A checklist can state whether a child can or can’t read, but what’s far more important is whether the child is progressing along the path to reading. Can he recognize more letters than last week? Is he trying to sound out “STOP” at every stop sign? Or, perhaps the trajectory is moving the other way and a child who last month was eagerly trying to read all the words around him is now avoiding all letters and text. Either way, the actual reading checklist isn’t nearly as important as understanding in which direction the child is moving.

This week’s Torah portion, (actually a double reading - Matos-Maasei, Numbers 30:2 - 36:13), lists the forty-two journeys the Jewish people made in the Wilderness on their way from Egypt to the Land of Israel. The Torah doesn’t merely record the campsites, but instead lists both the journeys and destinations for each trip. “And they journeyed from…. and they camped in…..” over and over and over. This list isn’t a mapping exercise or a lesson in historical geography. The essential message to each of us is that life’s journeys are just as important as the destinations.

During a particularly rough patch with one of my children, I started jotting down notes to record behaviors in the hope that I would discover patterns that would help me help my child. Months later, when we were still in the throes of challenges, I was grateful to be able to look back at my notes and realize that although life was still difficult for this child, I could clearly see progress. We weren’t dealing with the same issues with the same frequency or intensity as we had earlier. We were on a journey and although it wasn’t of my choosing, I could see that we were moving in the right direction.

As we near the end of shloshim (the first thirty day period after a close family member’s death) for my sister, many friends are reaching out with love to ask how we are doing. My answer is that we are on a journey. Whether you catch us at a rough moment or an easier moment, grief is part of the journey of life and I can confidently share with our dear friends that no matter where we are on the grief checklist, we are moving in the right direction.

It's tough to be in a hard place in life. It’s challenging for parents to watch a beloved child struggle. Switching our focus from the checklist to the journey allows us to relax and allow the process of growth to unfold. The only way our children will achieve the next milestone is through the journey of healthy development. Prioritize the journey, it’s the path towards your destination.