“Hey, Mom!” my John called over the phone in full excitement. The connection was choppy, but I could hear the smile on his face.

“I used the money you gave me for my birthday to rent a bike. I’m calling you on my cell phone as I’m riding over the Golden Gate Bridge!”

John, in San Francisco with a friend for the first time, had just celebrated his 35th birthday. While his friend was attending a conference, John was biking San Francisco, soaking in the experience and, joyously, wanting to share the moment with me.

This is a child who, 35 years ago, suffered grand mal seizures with every fever. This is a child who, in grammar school, had a learning disability and was scape-goated by classmates. This is a child who, after years of my begging him to “just get through high school,” went on to get his masters in business. This is a child who, after wandering the maze of the corporate world, has just started his own small business.

The image of my John riding solo on a bicycle across the Golden Gate Bridge on a clear, crisp morning, with the sun sparkling on those blue Bay waters, makes my heart sing. It is the perfect climactic metaphor for all those years I held my breath as he broke through yet another barrier to become the man he is today.

And while I was holding my breath, God’s breath was at work in John, in both his peak moments and in his bleak moments. This eternal breathing contained him long enough until he himself could come to the realization that the most important connection is his connection with John, with this divine energy in him, with nature, with life. No one woman, no one job was going to create the kind of meaning he needed, in both the chaos and the calm. 

John didn’t call to tell me where he was staying in San Francisco, where he ate, what he saw from his bike, but to let me know he was feeling fully alive and experiencing soul. Our conversation lasted three minutes at the most. He knew and I knew.

As Edna Saint Vincent Milay uttered in one of those moments, “Oh, World, I cannot hold thee close enough!”  All the pain and loss that goes with being human become, at those moments, harmonious background notes for the chords of joy pounding in us.

Then, when life looms heavy and nothing goes well, when we strain to make out the chords of  transformation at work in us, even on our knees, we sense ourselves connected to a larger whole. We are aware of God’s breathing in us from both sides of life’s up-and-down teeter-totter.

What nourishes me in both the highs and lows are the images and metaphors that provide spiritual energy. Just as the metaphor of John riding his bike solo over the Golden Gate Bridge brings healing to that place in me that grieves for the perfect childhood my children didn’t have, other metaphors heal other broken moments. I allow the metaphor to move deep into those dark places and open spaces for redemption and resolution.

Metaphors of healing abound in nature. Metaphors of steadfastness abound in relationships. Metaphors of bravery and integrity abound in our stories. We carry these in our soul. We can call on them when we need them. They allow us never to feel isolated, defeated, or singled out.

Synchronously, I was at Chastain Park the night before John called, third-row-center-seat, listening to Tony Bennett croon his “I left my heart in San . . . .” and filled with San Fran’s warm images. Next day, when the image of John riding over the bridge emerged out of those already uplifting images in my heart, I felt connected to a deep interior well that bathed my soul.