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Thursday, August 30, 2018

i just...

This is where I am lately. I just...

I...I just...

I got nothing.

I've been playing the piano just now. I am kind of a hack. I pick out tunes. The girls and baby are delighted. I pick and peck and sing and it sounds very nice and all. But I am a hack. I can't read music, not fluently anyway. I can't play Chopin or Bach.

I can fake it.  That's it.

I feel like that is me in a lot of areas. Painting. I can do a decent little oil painting. It looks nice and all but, you know, nothing special.

Writing. I have had some nice ideas. Maybe one of them will sell one day. For now its a collection of words that make me laugh and smile and, yes, cry.

This blog is kinda the same space. Lately anyway. Some nice pictures. Some clever words. I think of something nice to point out. Or I say something sad, but relateable, or stressful, but something we all know.

But that isn't where I am right now.

Right now my world is falling apart. And I cant see the sky or the earth or anything solid except for four little beings who love me and need me to keep it together. And the days are very ordinary for a falling apart world. I lose my keys. I spill my coffee. I make mac and cheese and do laundry and pull dirty socks out of the toy bin and settle squabbles and answer phone calls and drive to the dentist and work and read Goodnight Moon three times in a row and say prayers and smooth tired brows and plaster on bandaids and "use your inside voice" and "can you please be kind to your sister" and "I said no more i-Pad today!"

And all of it. But yes. Right now I am in the sorting phase. Sorting out all the broken pieces. What goes where. What doesn't fit anymore. What needs sanded down and refinished. And yet still the mac and cheese and squabbles and lawn mowing and spilled coffee all still happens. Funny, that.

 Such a perplexing place to be in, at 41, with four kids. And yet. There you have it. It is what it is.

I just...

But the more I share, the more I let myself be vulnerable, the more I hear from others, in quiet messages and emails and texts. You too? Yes. Me too. And. Dammit it's hard.

Like Brene Brown has said though, it isn't some cliched midlife crisis we are all feeling, rather, it's an unraveling, a great pull toward authenticity. To live the life you were meant to live. To live in truth. To live without fear. To live in authenticity to the life you were called to live.

So. I look at my unraveled pieces of my past life. And I sit in the Midwestern late summer sunshine and pick tomatoes and try to figure it all out. And then, sometimes, I just put the pieces down, take the kids to the park, and think, maybe all the pieces are right here. And they are perfectly imperfect. And holy because of it. And someday I will rise again. Not new and shiny. Not like that. Ravaged. Survivor of the storm. In anticipation of the next one, for they will also come because, guys. THIS IS LIFE. Storms. Heart ache. Heart break. Over and over. There is no end of the rainbow perfection. That's a myth. And it sets us up for so much disappointment and resentment and anger at the world. But BUT BUT BUT there are moments of pure beauty in it all. Peace too. And all of it? Its all so damn worth it.

And we come out of that refining fire. And I will. Stronger. Wiser. More me.








5 comments:

  1. So beautiful, I don’t know what storms life has brought you but I’m praying for your dear family and thank you for these words. You are a wonderful mom and you bless others with this blog. Please keep wring!

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  2. Yes. All of this and then some. It looks so different from the thing I painted in my childhood head, all the pretty baby pastels and wedding whites with church bells in the distance. Instead it's a riot of colour, some angry slashes, some ridgid stripes, chaotic dots of mess and brilliance , not withstanding the joyful swirls of yellow and light. I couldn't have created this if I'd been taught how. It just happens when you give your brush up and relinquish all but the right to admire.. I'm so sorry you are walking through this. Im so willing to walk with you.

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  3. You are indeed a warrior. We are rooting for you from the sidelines, hang in there dear. You are, indeed, in the fire.

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  4. Thank you for this. I love this & I love you even though I *just* stumbled upon your blog tonight. You spoke to my soul.

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