A Season of Surprising Shifts
- Dr. CK Bray
- 15 hours ago
- 4 min read
There are seasons in life when the world tilts, almost imperceptibly at first, and suddenly the familiar landscape looks different. You wake up in the same bed, eat your same morning breakfast, wave to the same neighbors across the cul de sac, yet something inside you has shifted. These past weeks have been that kind of season for me.
It began with my neighbors, Todd and Heidi, and their two young children. They are the sort of neighbors you hope for but rarely get. The kind you can text while on vacation, asking them to rescue a package from your porch or borrow three eggs so the Sunday night chocolate chip cookies can go on as planned.
Three weeks ago, Heidi’s mother passed away after fighting cancer for five years. I always liked her parents. Every summer, grandpa and grandma would rumble out of the neighborhood in their RV, grandchildren piled inside, bound for places most kids would only tolerate with a promise of ice cream at the end. Yellowstone. Mount Rushmore. The Smoky Mountains.
I love walking over when they return and are cleaning out the RV, always full of stories. I soon realized the places they went did not matter half as much as the people they went with. These are the kinds of bonds you can feel even standing on the driveway. The kind that outlasts trips, summers, and now, even loss.
I talked with Todd and Heidi as they put up their Christmas decorations this year, lights wrapped around grief like a thin blanket. I could feel it as we talked, that ache of the season arriving with one chair now empty. Watching the whole family together reminded me of the kind of grandparent I hope to be someday.
Which brings me to the second moment, the one that arrived less than a month ago, wrapped in a hospital blanket and weighing barely seven pounds. Our eldest daughter and son-in-law welcomed their little girl, Celine. Our first grandchild. A new branch on the family tree, and she was so fragile and fierce (I can already tell because all Bray women are!). That girl does not like a dirty diaper!
I volunteered for the late-night shift so the new parents could sleep. I imagined I would fill the hours with podcasts, books, or a movie playing in the background. But none of that happened. Instead, I sat there holding her, studying her tiny face, the rising and falling of her breath, the way her fingers curled around my finger.
I felt something I have never felt before. A kind of uncomplicated joy that does not need plans, no search for meaning, no demand to produce or achieve. She was enough. And somehow, through her, life felt enough too. All the things I have always been chasing, organizing, optimizing, suddenly seemed like faint echoes compared to this little miracle blinking up at me. It was like the world was perfect. For our family it was! But for others life was anything but perfect.
A week later, the world shifted again in the opposite direction. A neighbor I go to church with was diagnosed with Brain cancer and passed away about a month later. Fast. Unforgiving. I still can barely reconcile the timeline.
Evan and I had become friends years before. A mutual friend invited us to the Indian Wells tennis tournament, offering us extra seats in an executive suite. I learned that he coached the local high school boys’ tennis team and dreamed of building a great tennis program for our city. Arizona seems like a perfect place with perfect weather, where children would grow up with rackets in their hands, but opportunities are surprisingly thin here. He wanted to change that. He asked that all his friends donate to get lights installed on the high school courts so his players could practice after sunset. That was his last wish.
So in one month, I held new life, mourned two losses, and stood in the space between them. Pure joy and then grief and sadness. Beginning and ending. Presence and absence. They arrived like unexpected guests, each teaching me something I needed to learn.
Maybe it is my age. Maybe it is simply paying attention. But the message has become unmistakable.
Life is about people. It is about noticing people and making their journey a bit easier.It has never been about things.
We spend so much time chasing the urgent, the shiny, the likes, the loud, the impressive. And then something happens that strips life down to its beams, and we remember. The greatest gifts we have are the ones already in the room with us. The neighbor who shows up. The grandchild who fits perfectly in the crook of your arm. The friend whose hardships you carry when they can no longer can.
As we step into the holidays, maybe this is the year to slow down. To notice. To reach out. To understand the most extraordinary parts of our lives are not bought, scheduled, or wrapped. They are lived. They are shared. They are loved.
And if we are paying attention, they change us.
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