How Authenticity Awakens Wonder

On Living Lives that "Fit"

'Sewing Girl' by Carl Larsson

Recently while watching the film Supernova, I heard this quote: “We will not starve for lack of wonders, but from lack of wonder” (unattributed). I like to think of myself as someone attuned to wonder. Animals imbue my life with wonder—such as when young Eloise looks into my eyes and reaches to stroke my cheek. At times, I experience wonder over my marriage and the unlikelihood of Ed and I finding each other. At times, a certain light strikes me as wondrous, as does almost anything of profound beauty.  And on and on.

But as I reflected on wonder and it’s lifelong ebb and flow, I recognized that I have been most mystified, or most filled with wonder, at how the Great Spirit conspires to direct us to lives most authentic for each of us; how we are most struck with awe when we lean back, submit to the enlivening wind, and let spirit deliver us to those places where we “fit.” In my experience, it is in the moments when we trust this process and end up being set down in precisely the places and experiences where we belong, that wonder shudders and shimmers. The times of my life most charged with wonder have been times of surrender following times of stubborn refusal to be changed. Conversely, when we tarry along in lives that do not fit who we are, we often end up tired and lacking wonder.

This is true throughout life, and must be experienced over and over again, because we grow and change, and the world morphs around us. What once felt like a perfect fit, can begin to contort us. It can start to pinch. Then we are back to the place of surrender, change, and awaiting more wonder, awaiting lives more authentically our own.

In the past seven short years, almost everything in my life has changed and I find myself—once again—wrestling the angel of authenticity. Like Jacob with his angel, this angel wants to bless me, if I will only submit. The changes in my life have not been superficial or insignificant: new husband, new job, new town, new home, new church, new modes of service. I sold one treasured house and bought another. My closest friend died. Even my body has changed, with new conditions emerging, and others healing—and with the arrival of a new reality called menopause. The world around me has changed; in part because of political realities, and in part because of Covid and how it deepened shifts in our cultural collective.

Photo by Christine Yang for Scopio

Fortunately, while some of my relationships have changed, others have stayed much the same. The passel of close friends I had at the beginning of this period, I still have—some of whom I’ve known since I was an adolescent; several who befriended me in my thirties. It is a blessing, as we traverse the twists and turns of life, to have those around us who know us deeply and well, and who love us into the fullness of being who we are.

In an interview on a New York Times podcast, actor Andrew Garfield shared an idea that moved me. He proposed that when we come to the end of our lives, perhaps we will be asked if we have been who we are. In other words (as he proposed it), I would be asked: “Were you Tricia?” Andrew would be asked, “Were you Andrew?” This idea cut deep and impacted me for days. How much of my life have I been someone other than who I am?

Inauthenticity is being trapped in the skin of someone not ourselves. True authenticity, on the other hand, feels wondrous. It is a font of wonder. “We will not starve for lack of wonders, but from lack of wonder.” Being at home within ourselves (another way of expressing authenticity), gives us the spaciousness we need to inhabit wonder.

Wren, winner of a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal

Winner of the 2022 Independent Publisher Awards Bronze Medal for Regional Fiction; Finalist for the 2022 National Indie Excellence Awards. (2021) Paperback publication of Wren , a novel. “Insightful novel tackles questions of parenthood, marriage, and friendship with finesse and empathy … with striking descriptions of Oregon topography.” —Kirkus Reviews (2018) Audiobook publication of Wren.