Is the ground under you a bit shaky today? Not feeling as sure-footed as you’d like? Is uncertainty the path you’re walking on right now? Are the plates shifting?

If so, I’m with you.

Uncertainty creates an energy that we have to address. Otherwise, that energy takes on forms that aren’t always so helpful. Grasps at any kind of control. Plunging lunges at anything and everything we think will make us feel safer. Pulling up a chair to the refrigerator. Manic cleaning. Blaming the husband, loudly. (You know, so I’ve heard.)

As a Navy family, we have been through more uncertainty than certainty. And, after some quiet time here in the Middle East, it seems as though the winds are shifting toward uncertainty again.

So I’m trying to remember some truth that has come to me recently . . .

I’m going to take all the sideways energy that’s sitting right under the surface, and I’m going to try to focus it on one of the above three.

I’m going to try to be a companion to myself instead of a critic. I’m going to try to offer myself the kind of care I would offer a dear friend.

I’m going to try to channel that anxious energy into playing with my kids. Focus on small kindnesses for my husband. Call a friend for a fun outing.

Most of all, I’m going to try to stop—especially when I feel squeezed—and ask God to sit with me in the squeeze and bring a bit of breathing room to the situation. A bit of spaciousness.

I’m going to fail at all this. Obviously. So then, I’m going to get up and try again. Not in a striving-got-to-be-a-better-person way. In a breathe-in-and-out way. Because I have been offered such broad grace. Because I can choose to walk in that broad grace instead of the herky-jerky.

This is how we will get through.

After all, you never really know what’s behind those doors you’ve become so worried about. Sometimes the thing we feared the most was actually a portal to a whole new world.