A Cruel and Wise Friend

Gentle readers....

How goes your journey?  Are you feet tired from walking?  Are you running without tiring?  Is your heart heavy laden?  Are the best days upon you?

My heart is full but my pen is silent.  This happens every once in awhile.  I can't find a way to make the connection from heart to head to paper.  I guess some might call this "writers block." 

I've been trying to make some headway in my seven year itch.  I so desperately am stuck in a phase of, "Please help me get out of the state of New York in whatever means necessary and/or is/as required."   It's pretty bad, friends.  I'm trying so hard to be cool with it, but ick.  I have been so compressed and depressed by the current state of affairs.  I find I am almost no use in conversation because I have absolutely nothing to talk about.  I feel empty and quite void of expression which, for a writer, is like death.  It might sound like an exaggeration, but writers need to engage life, people, experience to find fulfillment, even if these experiences are not pleasant.  A day-to-day life of "get up, go to work, come home, rinse, repeat" is gray.  Writers write and experience in color.  Big, bold, beautiful, emotional colors. 

I've almost put myself in a strict "to do" list phase.  Each part of the day is really a list of things to cross off.  Seeking ways to improve myself, my parenting, my house, my health are all on a daily list.  I am legitimately  proud that I have almost consumed a bottle of vitamins.  I cannot actually say if I have ever done that before.  Prenatal vitamins, what?!  Forget it, they didn't stay down anyway.  If you follow me on social media you will note my exasperation that breakfast mostly contains vitamins and limited amounts of cereal.  But, in the ticking off of that item, I find great pleasure.   It's a mundane pleasure, but it gets me back on track.  It helps me to feel some emotion and that, my dear readers, is the key.  A writer can't live in a world without emotions.

I spent the last year of my life fully engaged outside of my home.  I was completely wrapped up in a world that had no bearing on anything of importance.  Completely wrapped up in it. And it held absolutely no value.  Not for the long term.  When the choice was made to return to myself and my family, I found myself really lost.  Grateful that I had chosen life.  But lost nonetheless. All my NY life was spent there.  Any acquaintances and friendships were left behind.  All my "being needed" was gone. 

This phase is rebuilding and that is mundane; it is not an exciting time for anyone.  Can I say, though, that deep inside I do feel much better about the progression of my life?  Can I say that these times truly are needed?  Being empty and alone, being without life as a runaway train?  Good for the soul.  Really good for the soul. Inventory and evaluation takes place like no other time in your life.  (It's not particularly fun.  I'm certainly not jumping up and down about it.)  But so good.

I am a better mother right in this space than I ever was last year.  That is the honest, discouraging truth.  I am in my kids' business.  I am putting them to work.  I am pushing them to learn. I'm getting them off electronic items and making them play games with me.  I'm encouraging them about life. I'm encouraging them in friendships.  When I can focus on my kids and check that off, I feel good.  I feel a deep joy when I share in their life.  I can still reach into their life, so far, and get us both a little farther down the road. It is increasingly difficult and I am grateful that I am in this space and time with them.  It might have been too late had I left it go farther.

I am working at being better, physically.  I put on a good 10-15 pounds in the last year and I'm just rolling my eyes about it.  It started by being so busy I only had time and effort for copious amounts of Mountain Dew and Reese Eggs and ended with a sitdown job where sluggish days are the thing and I just happen to like Mountain Dew and Reese Eggs.  When I can check off that I've focused on my health, and have done better in this area, I feel good.

Each day is mundane, full of checklists, and time for evaluation.  It isn't full of emotion, but is calculating.  I am in fact trying to decide and make the choice about the seven year itch.  To visualize the success and happiness of my children.  From here the next phase of my life is emptying my nest.  My focus is digging in and getting my kids from point A to point B.  If that means NY is it, then NY is it.  I can choose to be happy and reassert myself into culture.

I don't find after 5 years into New York that I have the same joy that I had 5 years into Utah.  But comparison is the thief of joy.  These are two separate seasons and phases; it is a disservice for me to continue to compare.  "Joy is always with us," as my son once said, "it is happiness that comes and goes."  Happiness is a decision. 

Happiness is something that I can check off, each day, because I have the focus I need.

It's an emotionless gift, for now, but it is a gift.  Not too much farther down the road, I will be giggling with friends and enjoying the sunny days and the grey season of comparison, evaluation and doubt will fall behind.

I hope I remember well the lessons it has taught.  It has been a cruel friend, but a wise one, nonetheless.

The March Fellowship

March has been nothing but snow.  So much snow.  Burying us in, storm after storm.

I'm still hunkered down, armed with all my precious scarves and heated blankets. 

It has been beautiful, though; the snow this time of year is the best.  It is heavy, thick and clings to everything it touches, then, as quickly as it swirled and blanketed, it's completely gone. This is winter and spring joyfully weaving and merging seasons with chaos and caucophony. It is certainly not the gentle passing of summer into fall, when you just can't tell exactly when summer has breathed its last for the year.

I enjoy watching HGTV while the snow falls.  I love to see the various transformations; it is amazing to see what time and lots of money can do.    I like to imagine what things I could or could not do in my own home.  I like to think and plan how to be better.

I've spent a lot of time surviving.  Do you know what it means to spend time surviving?  Getting by.  Dealing with the status quo.  Run the drills for each day.  I made it to work: check.  I made it to play practice: check.  I made it to Bible study: check.  I made it to band rehearsal: check.  I made dinner....uhh....McDonald's drive thru: check.   This is physical survival.  There is also mental and emotional survival.  Just doing.  Just getting by.  Survival is not a phase of actively planning, nor active growth.  It is the March phase, hunkered down, buried in deep, breathing. When I ponder the course of my life, I see March.  I see chaos, caucophony and swirling snow.  I see myself hunkered down, breathing from one phase to the next. 

I forget so much of the early days of motherhood.  Ryan recently asked which one of the kids was the babbler in the restaraunt.  I honestly can't remember.  I remember Noah eating allllll the lemons.  We'd keep him busy by ordering him lemon slices.  He had such a love/hate relationship and he couldn't help himself but to go back for more.  Various memories like that stick out to me, but sometimes you might ask me a specific question and I cannot answer. This might be why it takes a village to raise a child; a group effort to love and remember the details.  I don't discredit myself here because I know it happens to all parents.  You can't memorize everything.

Returning to work was its own phase of chaos.  Do you know the hardest job I ever had paid the least amount of money?  As a nursing assistant, lifting people who had a good 80 pounds on me, wiping diarrhea off bottoms and floors, sweating profusely and never having a minute to look at the clock, I made.....drum roll....eight dollars and fifty cents per hour.  Working and babies and beginning the elementary school years and a lack of sleep.  Chaos.  Sweet chaos.

Add in two cross country moves, military deployments and a million other large and small moments. What is it?  It's March.  Beautiful, exhausting, swirling phases of survival.  Phases where I did not actively plan to make myself better. Phases where I did not implement action plans to be skinny, well-hydrated, kind, compassionate, patient and godly.  I'm sure I talked about all that.  I'm sure I hoped it would be true.  I think this might be where the midlife crisis comes in.  You finally feel like winter has let go and spring has come.  You are entering May....  You have a chance to take off the scarf and breathe.  And you wonder where your life has disappeared.  I don't remember getting older.  I don't remember the long days and short years.  What happened?!

I think it can be scary.

I don't really want to just survive my life.  I want to see the swirling snow of chaos and caucophony and embrace it.  I want to walk through as though in slow motion, undetected like Scrooge, able to nod and recognize and enjoy.  I want to look into the eyes of my little people.  I want to see their happiness and joy and willingly lay mine down in exchange.  This is my beautiful life.  And there is nothing to be scared of.  Except maybe the knowledge that I will never be well-hydrated. 

Life is the sum of moments we did not record or plan.  It is watching a slippery, sour lemon being shoved into a mostly toothless mouth by a chunky blue eyed baby. It's not getting that job. It's eating dry cereal because there is no milk left.  It's staying up late talking with a friend.  It's all the moments that you do not remember that have contributed to making you, you.

I have spent so much of my life surviving and getting through "this situation."  I'm sure I've written about it before, but I am now in a slower phase of life.  Coming upon midlife crisis.  Deciding where my journey goes from here and finding those who go with me. I'm choosing my Fellowship. Based on my last post, I'm pretty sure I will not come up with nine.  But I know there are those out there that come to the secret council even when they have not been summoned.  I'm counting on you.  I'm counting on you for all the necessary hobbit stuff.  Eating. Drinking. Making merry. Epic journeys.  Friendship.

Midlife calls for friendship more than any other phase.  Except. When we get to middle age, we find we were so concentrated on surviving that we've run into coarse, dry, ground.

I'm choosing my Fellowship...  Deciding where my journey goes from here. And who goes with me.

I Have Cookies

I have an insatiable need to be with my people. My tribe. This week I've been grieving that hole in my life. It just bubbled up and I couldn't stop the tears. I have been blessed to know a lot of people in a lot of places. And my heart is scattered all over. I want to bring out the pop, pizza and brownies, turn up the music, bring out the games and laugh. Till I cry.  I do that so very little that I feel my life is currently misspent.

I would love to do that in my own home.  I would love it if I thought someone would come. But New Yorkers are a bit crusty.  It takes a lot of money to live here so everyone works and works and works to pay for life.  I get turned down or "redirected" a lot.

I miss you, dear loved ones everywhere.

My heart really aches today at the loss of you.  At the thought of never feeling like I am really at home here.

I just have to ask more. I have to spread my net farther.

I don't want to have to beg. But would someone drop by? Even right now when I haven't showered or brushed my teeth, I would be so giddy that someone felt comfortable enough with me to be my person.  The person who wants and needs your company. Who swings by for ten minutes of advice and a cookie.

I got Oreos and E L Fudge.  If you stay long enough, I got fresh Toll House....

I know I can do this.  I have confidence in my love of people.  But I'm losing confidence in the love of other people....  In their understanding of the importance of relationships and community.

I think it's going to have to start with me.  I'm going to have to embrace being told, "no."  I'm going to have to bake a lot.  I'm probably going to have to beg.

To my fun-loving tribe. To the people who give of themselves so naturally. You are beloved. You are deeply missed in places I can't explain. And there is a spot for you, right next to me. Always.