The Return Is the Practice

This week has been full.

Lion’s Gate closed. We moved through a solar eclipse, a planet parade, and a meteor shower. I started coaching middle school volleyball five nights a week. My husband and I celebrated 25 years of marriage. My computer unexpectedly self-destructed last week, which meant this week included setting up a new one and rebuilding some of the systems I rely on every day.

Whew.

There have been moments when I’ve felt deeply grounded and others when life seemed to be rearranging itself faster than I could keep up.

And underneath all of it, one teaching keeps returning:

The return is the practice.

We often think our spiritual practice is about staying centered.

Staying peaceful.

Staying grounded.

Staying aligned.

Yet life doesn’t work that way.

There will always be something that moves us away from center. Sometimes it’s something enormous—an emergency, a loss, a major transition. Sometimes it’s a difficult conversation, a technology problem, a packed schedule, or simply waking up on the wrong side of ourselves.

And sometimes there are circumstances completely outside our control that seem to push and pull us around.

The practice isn’t never being moved.

The practice is noticing—and consciously choosing to return.

Twenty-Five Years of Returning

This week, as my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, I realized how beautifully marriage mirrors this teaching.

Twenty-five years of marriage is not twenty-five years of uninterrupted harmony.

We are very different people today than the two people who made those vows two and a half decades ago.

There have been seasons of tremendous ease and flow. There have also been seasons that asked much more of us.

There have been moments when I needed to trust him to support me and moments when he needed the same from me.

Again and again, marriage has asked us to return to a choice.

To a commitment.

To each other.

And perhaps most importantly, to the truth of who we each are becoming.

I am deeply committed to my husband and my marriage.

I am also deeply committed to living in alignment with my true self.

Those commitments are not opposites.

They continually ask me to listen more deeply, communicate more honestly, trust more fully, and remain willing to meet what is actually here rather than clinging to what used to be.

Maybe all meaningful commitments are like this.

We don’t make the choice once.

We make it again and again.

Returning to Yourself

The same is true in our relationship with ourselves.

Returning doesn’t mean trying to become the person you were before life interrupted you.

It isn’t about getting back on track.

Sometimes there is no old track to return to.

You have changed.

Your circumstances have changed.

Your family has changed.

Your body may have changed.

Your priorities may have changed.

The invitation is not necessarily to return to where you were.

It is to return to who you are now.

For me, one of those returns happens every morning.

I rise with the sun, without an alarm. I watch the sunrise. I make a cup of coffee. I breathe.

Sometimes I meditate.

Sometimes I practice yoga.

Sometimes I don’t.

The ritual does not need to look exactly the same every day to remain sacred.

The anchor isn’t the perfect routine.

The anchor is meeting myself before the world begins asking things of me.

And as my life changes, I’m learning to create structures that support the season I’m actually living rather than trying to force myself into an old version of my life.

I’ve created a new weekly workflow so I can intentionally choose where my energy belongs.

I’m protecting my weekends as much as possible for family.

I’m finding transition points between work, teaching, coaching, and home.

And when I walk through the door after a full evening, I can feel that natural exhale.

I’m home.

Perhaps that is what return feels like.

Not perfection.

Recognition.

When Life Moves You

There will be eclipses.

There will be work changes.

There will be emergencies and unexpected expenses and broken computers and difficult conversations and seasons that ask more of us than we anticipated.

We cannot arrange life so perfectly that nothing ever disrupts our center.

What we can practice is remembering the way home.

One conscious breath.

One honest check-in.

One boundary.

One conversation.

One walk outside.

One moment with your hand on your heart.

One choice that says:

Here I am. I’m coming back.

And then, when you wander again—as all of us will—you return again.

There is no shame in needing to return.

Returning means you noticed.

Returning means you remembered.

Returning means you chose.

Every Return Is a Recommitment

Maybe this is what I am learning most clearly in this season:

Every return is a recommitment.

To the breath.

To the body.

To your values.

To the people you love.

To the life you have chosen.

To the truth within you.

To the person you are still becoming.

So if life has moved you around lately, perhaps you don’t need to work so hard to “get back on track.”

Take one breath.

Listen.

Notice what is true now.

And ask yourself:

What am I ready to return to?

Not because you failed to stay there.

Because returning was always part of the practice.

What does your return look like? Leave a comment in the chat below.

All my love, Mindy