A quiet reflection of
looking back before moving ahead
looking back before moving ahead
1. I do have time to read!
I was an avid reader pre-motherhood and while I tried to remain as such during those years of mothering, I was not as successful as I hoped. When a long commute to work kept me in the car, I discovered the joy of audio books and my love was rekindled. But the commute stopped a few years ago and along with it, the endless flow of audio. In April, I signed up for an online, group, book study. We had 5 weeks to read 11 chapters. I set out to mark my book with post-it flags so I knew how much I had to read each day and I accomplished it. I'm now on my second book since then and it too is flagged with post-its and my life now has reading time scheduled in. The flags seem to make all the difference because now I don't have 'a whole book' to read, which produces all sorts of overwhelming feelings within me, I just have to read to the next flag. A task that seems very doable, and desirable, in my life.
2. Being a long distance Mimi really is as hard as I thought it would be.
Our first grandchild was born in November last year. She lives with her momma and daddy on an island 1,600 miles away. To my credit and blessing, I have been there 3 times to visit already, but I know that financially, I can't keep that up. I miss her everyday. I miss her everyday life. I miss what I'm missing. I even miss what I don't know I'm missing. She has 2 teeth now, I've seen the pictures. They popped up a few days after I left from my last visit. I missed her rolling over. I saw the video. She had her second swim lesson... Island life you know... I was there for the first one. I will witness a few firsts but I will miss a lot more. I am grateful for the technology that brings us closer but I still long for the way she touches my face with her tiny hand.
3. It's never too late to go back and correct a mistake.
My girls watched me be a wife all their years in our home. They still watch me be a wife, just not as daily. I do the best I know how, the best I am capable of. We all do. But time brings about more wisdom and understanding and if we're willing to listen, it will show us where we could do better. If we're humble, we confess our weaknesses to those who could have been hurt by them. This spring, I presented both my girls with 2 books. Keep Showing Up, by Karen Ehman (the aforementioned online book study), and, Love And Respect, by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. No matter how long you did something incorrectly or just not quite as good as you could have, it's never to late to say, "This is the way; walk in it." Isaiah 30:21
4. I love snowshoeing.
I know, this is a spring reflection, but... this is also northern Michigan and sometimes it still snows in May! Not snowshoe worthy snow, but in March for sure. Winter is not my favorite season and honestly, I don't like the cold and all the effort it takes to put on all the gear required to go out in it. But once I talk myself into it, or get bribed into it with the promise of dinner afterward, I'm always glad I did it. An afternoon trek uphill, a big hill, with my husband, led to a beautiful, sunny view and a hidden fairy home. Breathless as I may have been, I couldn't help but smile.
5. False bottoms really do exist.
I have been at a low point in my life for some time now. Actually, that's a gross understatement. My life has been flat out unbelievably hard for the last couple years. Even amidst the highlights and the cute baby smiles, the joys and the pleasures, I am dying inside. Or rather, I am fighting to live. The reasons are varied. My mother died, my step-dad's a perv, my friend is no longer my friend, my sister overdosed, the most stable and reliable thing in all of my life fell apart ... I could go on but I won't. It has been winter in my life since the summer of 2017.
I was standing on the Rock, or at least I thought I was. And maybe I was. I was in God's word everyday by choice, by desire. I'd committed to being there daily 3 years earlier, and I. was. there. But now, there are days the rock feels like quicksand and I fall through, crash landing on the next solid surface. I think I've reached the bottom only to feel it give way again.
I can feel like I'm on solid ground for or a couple of weeks, or sometime's, only a couple of hours. I can truly believe that everything will be alright one moment, and then be in a spiraling, free fall the next. There are days when I know without a doubt that God has got this... has got me. Then there are days when I'm sure he's the one knocking me off the rock into the black abyss. This I have learned though. Beneath every hard landing is the potential for another hard landing. However, I don't think the actual bottom will be a hard landing at all. I think it will be like falling into the loving arms of Jesus. A safe and secure landing. Until then, I am amassing many bruises and scars on my way down.
6. Destruction begets destruction.
I've am currently living through the aftermath of someone destroying something beautiful in my life... something beautiful in me. It was not my choice but I was powerless to stop it. Powerlessness is an awful thing. I have come to a degree of greater understanding for those who are marginalized and objectified by others who marginalize and objectify them simply because they can.
One becomes hopeless at times, as I surely have been... And angry beyond belief. In the face of my hopelessness and anger, I have also caused destruction. I have shredded canvases of my art; ripped them to pieces in my rage. I have burned my most precious journal; all the words of my heart I tossed into the fire like a dirty tissue. I will regret that moment forever I think. I took a lawnmower to my most prized flower garden last Sunday.
This garden was a rebirth of all that remained of my larger garden when our barn burned down 9 years ago. This part of the garden had survived tremendous heat and flames and had risen from the ashes to produce something beautiful. To me, it was a representation of my own life, having survived the fiery trials of my childhood only to rise and live strong. So like the beautiful rebirth in my life that was suddenly cut down, I mowed down my garden in a fit of despair. Giant tears spilling out of me as the leaves and petals spilled out of the mower. Both of us emanating the guttural sounds of distress at being asked to endure something we were not built to endure. I mowed down all but a Wisteria that I could not drive the mower over, a Morning Glory that I could not untangle from its' iron trellis, and a beautiful, tiny, white rose bush from my beautiful, Rosie girl. That I can not mow down no matter how distraught I might get.
Some things I have done seem utterly crazy to me. This one might look like the craziest but I believe our souls are aware of things we can not necessarily comprehend in the moment. Did I remember in the moments of my mowing frenzy that I've watched this garden rise above its' circumstances before? No I did not. But now that it has been taken down again I am fully aware that the aftermath will eventually have to submit to the strength of what remains. In this I find hope.
Some winters seem so long but every winter ends eventually. I checked on another one of my gardens Sunday. Not to mow it down but to see what had happened during the winter, under the snow. This garden has all manner of creepers and spreaders. They work hard in the winter, underground... in the dark and quiet place. When spring comes you see the fruits of all their labor. You see how they have grown all the while they looked like they were dying. Just like the seasons in northern Michigan, the calendar has no say. Spring will not arrive until winter has had its' full measure. So it will be in my season of winter; spring will come when the hard and silent work of winter is done...
If you would like to know more about this pause and reflect concept, you can join me, along with a number of other reflectors, and our mentor, Emily P. Freeman for What We Learned.
