When the Tower Falls

By Virginia Underwood

No matter how attuned we think we are…
no matter how many signs, nudges, or intuitive whispers we receive—
some tower moments still crack us open in ways we never saw coming.

I’m in one right now.

I knew a collapse was approaching. I felt the pressure building, sensed the instability, and heard the quiet warnings. And still, when it came, it knocked me clean off my feet. The foundation didn’t just shake—it gave way. I can’t even see the bricks through the dust. I have no idea which pieces are salvageable and which were illusions dressed up as structure.

This is the part no one really talks about.
The after—when the rubble is fresh, the grief is raw, and the impulse to fix or flee is loud.

But this... this is the moment where the real work begins.

The Tower asks us:
How much have you truly let go of?
And, more importantly, what are you still gripping with white-knuckled fear?

I’ve been shown just how small I’ve made myself.
How unworthy I’ve felt beneath the surface, beneath the “doing.”
And the mirrors keep coming.

I keep hearing: you can’t take fear where you're headed.
But fear keeps pouring out of me like engine coolant overflowing on a mountain pass.

That happened, by the way—on my drive back from Colorado.
My intuition told me to pull over on Monarch Pass. I listened.
I stretched, took photos, and then saw fluid gushing from beneath my vehicle.

Panic.
But when I opened the hood, I realized it wasn’t a leak.
It was overflow.
I had overfilled the coolant. The pressure of the climb had nowhere to go—so it burst out.

Exactly what’s happening in my life.

I’ve been trying to do too much, hold too much, control too much.
And now?
All my internal reserves are spilling out.

My body is calling me to rest.
To surrender.
To stop performing emergency repairs and just be with the brokenness.

But it's hard.
There’s a voice screaming, You need to fix this. You need to figure it out. Yesterday.

And yet, Spirit whispers otherwise.
There is no urgency.
There is no clock.
There is only now.

There is only presence.

So I’m breathing through the ache.
Not trying to rebuild yet.
Not even sweeping the rubble.
Just standing barefoot in the dust, asking the deeper questions.

Who am I without the tower?
What was I building on fear?
And what might I create, someday, from love instead?

If you’re in a tower moment too—
you are not alone.

We’re in the ashes together,
and that too is holy.