The Day I Reached for Water and Touched Heaven

Daily writing prompt

How important is spirituality in your life?

When Thirst Is the Way Back Home

How important is spirituality in my life?
It’s not a podcast I play when I need to feel inspired.
Not a Sunday box to check.
Not a tool I keep on the shelf, waiting for things to fall apart.

It’s the air I breathe when I remember who I am.
It’s the thirst that reminds me I’m not the well.

Some days, I forget that.
I act like I’m supposed to know everything,
like I’m in charge of holding the world—and myself—together.

But then grace stumbles in.
Quiet. Undeserved.
And I remember.

Sometimes, it starts with a memory.

The Bubbler and the Priest

Or, How I Got Closer to God (by Standing on My Toes)

Third grade. St. John the Baptist Catholic School. Plymouth, Wisconsin.

Lunch was over. We’d eaten our twenty-minute feast on orange bench seats folded out like altars across the gym floor.

Now came the return:
a humming line of children—arms swinging, feet dragging—buzzing past brown doors and beige walls, beneath wooden crucifixes that never blinked.

The hallway smelled of waxed tile, soggy mittens, and effort.

I stopped at the bubbler.

Two of them, actually.
One low. One high.
Side by side, silver and cool to the touch, with that chalky crust where the water arced like time itself had left a mark.

I paused.
Then stepped toward the taller one.
Up on my toes.
Just barely reaching the stream.

That’s when Father Hilarian passed by.

He was young—tall, dark hair parted with priestly precision. Vestments on. Probably headed to chapel.
He had that new-priest energy. Serious but soft. Like someone still figuring out what kind of holy he wanted to be.

He smiled and said, in a voice half-tease, half-blessing:

“Moving up in the world, I see.”

I didn’t flinch.
Didn’t giggle.

I just looked at him and said:

“I thought getting closer to God was moving up in the world.”

He froze.
Not in shock—but in wonder.

His face shifted. Eyebrows lifted. His smile turned inward, like something ancient had just been remembered.

“You get it,” he said. “He gets it.”

And I don’t think he was talking to me anymore.

Maybe to God.
Maybe to himself.
Maybe to the saints in the unseen balcony.

I wasn’t trying to be wise. I just wanted a drink.

But if you’re going to drink, why not reach higher?

Kierkegaard Was Right

This week I came across a line that stuck with me.
From Four Upbuilding Discourses by Søren Kierkegaard, written in 1844 and addressed not to the crowd, but to “the single individual.”

He wrote:

“To need God is not a flaw, not a shortcoming, not an embarrassment.
It is a person’s highest perfection.”

I have been pondering this – deeply.

What if the moments we most want to hide—our blank stares, our cracked masks, our silent “I don’t knows”—aren’t shameful?

What if they are holy?

What if that thirst… is the way back home?

Thirst Is Not a Weakness

I didn’t have the words for it at age nine.
But I felt it in my calves, stretched to reach that stream.
Felt it in my chest, lifting toward something just out of reach.

A little moment.
A small drink.
But it echoed through the years.

That’s how spirituality works for me.
Not in lightning bolts or mountaintop revelations.
But in everyday toe-stands.
In a hallway.
At a bubbler.

And a priest who paused.

Because God doesn’t stop us when we reach—
He invites us to reach more.

A Thought

When did you last feel the ache of need—and let it draw you closer to God?
Who noticed you reaching?

The Day I Reached for Water and Touched Heaven