It turns out the country shuts down and life goes on. I’ve been home a week from trip unlike any other. The rules are changing. You know the ones, the “have to’s, must do’s” that come ingrained in our thinking are beginning to be “might oughts, definitely nots, and perhaps another time.” We’re talking small permissions and big ones too. Peace of mind is an important thing to have. It takes courage to face whatever you face in life. For me it’s the courage to say at forty-nine that though I am so very appreciative of so many blessings in my life, this is not the life I intend to live the next forty years.
Yep, that one will wake you up to a new reality every morning.
The life I had built had become based on busy, focused on productivity, and founded on frantically trying to be enough. The truth is I just got past tired of trying, of striving, of supporting that which wouldn’t support itself. Guess what. When I began to stop heaving and shoving, many things stopped too. Folks who were involved in letting others like me do their work for them without committing financially or otherwise, dropped to the wayside. When I began protecting my head and heart in a more meaningful way, the resting spaces and quietness intentionally brought back to the day whispered other changes that were obvious when still enough to listen.
I’m not a person who has to be busy to be okay. However I had convinced myself that being busy would cure a world of hurts that were happening in my life. You get approval for financial, professional, and productive efforts and actions, for protecting your head and heart. Not so much. Approval mattered to me before I worked so long and too often too hard that I lost my own.
Disappointments can become so much more than they are when we do not allow ourselves the time to mourn, to experience the fullness of what happened, and to allow for hope to rebirth in forgiveness of self, others, and situations. My deal had to do with too many fires happening at once. A family member who is fighting for health, the national shutdown hitting directly at my budget, the loss of a cherished friend, the beginning of our nest emptying as our baby child enters her last year of childhood, the stress chart has about six more entries that put me off the chart on life changes, but I mustered on, forgiving, forging, and feigning that it would be alright. Right up to the moment it wasn’t.
My body gives up before my mind does. In May my heart was telling me that there was just too much going on.
The summer season did not heal my heart, nor my sadness. This fall I began to own that the disharmony in my heart had to be dealt with. A wise friend said that depression comes when our heart path and our life do not align. I agree. My raising kept whispering to me to “work harder” “stay the course” “choose to be solid” and I did, but my direction wasn’t me, isn’t me, and won’t work for me. I am a teacher, a leader, a writer, and problem solver and I work best with those who want to work together to develop solid, growing projects. Less than that isn’t me. I can’t do it for them, I can’t succeed on their behalf, I cannot see their dream, do their dream, and send home postcards of their success for them. We each have to do our own work, our own lives, our own successes. No one can do our lives for us.
Somedays I wish I could.
We each have to become who we are. We each have to create a life that supports our beliefs about God, actions that engage a life we wish to live, and forge a path that is our own. The one thing I know from this summer of sadness is that when we begin to be who we are, the rough, hardened skins that crackle and at first feel painful to move in begin to fall away. Becoming yourself doesn’t guarantee that the stresses will go away, but if your life is not working without being yourself and the depth of knowing you’re becoming who you are….then why would you do the double whammy of adding to the problems by not being yourself?
Yesterday I was in a Sunday School class of sixty plus year olds. We were talking spirit life. That which makes us alive. The resounding response to the candor was that our attitude has more impact than any action we are facing. I agree. My attitude has stunk this summer, try as I did to make it all go smoothly, I felt over and over again like it wouldn’t work. As an educator and mom, I know when my children or students are overwhelmed it’s time to get smaller with the actions/outcomes until success is found again. Our attitudes begin to lighten and focus more positively when we allow time to celebrate the actions and outcomes in our daily, sometimes hourly lives.
Have you wandered off the path of being who you are? Who are you? I am a passionate creative, a pragmatic problem solver, a romantic experience maker, a writer who writes for myself as much as for others, a get it done girl who cares more about people than things. A chocolate kiss girl who shares. I believe in loving others until they can love themselves…even when that’s hard. How do you define who you are?
Life IS an adventure, ours for the engaging…the good and the difficult…and as the fall leaves come off the trees, my life too is letting go of parts of it that are no longer growing or serving to bring shade to my life. It seems indeed a little bare right now, and perhaps breezy, but I believe it’s exactly the season it’s meant to be.
