Blue

On the one hand, I know who and what I am. I think I have come to grips with my human capacity for change. I say what I think and think the way I speak. But on the other hand, I am acutely aware of just how fluid the concept of “me” is right now. For my brand, I need to be conscious of me and who I am – but to write and create, I need to be unselfconscious. There are too many voices and too much to do.

I’ve been writing a lot this week, sorting things out, trying to clear my head.

Yesterday I made a decision and did something that needed to be done. As I drove home from it, I stepped into grace, laying my dust out to God, begging His compassion. There are just things in my life that I. Don’t. Know. The. Right. On.

I got a hard phone call yesterday, the sort of call that left me feeling powerless and angry. Why doesn’t God just fix some things? But that why doesn’t get an answer here – God just doesn’t fix some things, even when He could.

Last night, I finally submitted a 350-word article to an editor, after two weeks of work, writer’s block, and lack of inspiration. I am awaiting edits as I write, half-holding my breath, refusing vulnerability over the piece. Which probably means that I did not invest enough of myself in it.

Yesterday, I didn’t do anything I had planned to do. My whole life seems locked up in editing at the moment, and while I have been enjoying “the middle” ever so much, there are days that I feel kicked in the gut for whatever reason – barometric pressure, relationship issues, the messes my kids make – and I just. want. to. quit. EVERYTHING.

Which usually means that I need to STOP.

The writer’s retreat I attended didn’t really feel like a retreat – but then camps with travel and new experiences and staying up late have never been retreats for me. A bed-and-breakfast getaway on my own, with no schedule, no obligations – that’s a retreat. I’ve been on three of them. I think I need another.

Hours before daybreak on the last day of the retreat, I climbed into the car to go home, and I hard-slept the two and half hours from Laity Lodge to San Antonio. I never sleep in the car. I was sick. They checked my computer before I woke up enough to ask them to let me carry it on. I used my pillow on the flight. I slept again.

I returned exhausted, a bit defeated, and resigned. Where was the refreshment I’d hoped to find?

I learned after my first baby was born that the world stops for no one. Everybody just keeps going, regardless of how my personal world has been – or is being – turned upside down. And in a way, I keep going too; I move on before my heart is ready to stir from its shock. I came home sick, and I sit down and work through it because am I not always sick? And I have deadlines, and people need me to deliver.

What is it that drives us so that we barely look up at the sky when we walk outside? Why don’t I cry when I know I need to cry? What makes me hide my vulnerability away instead of living where I am, unashamed of my tears?

I don’t have a lot of white space in my life right now. I am pouring out so much in so many places that I don’t have time to put anything in that feeds my soul. So I stay up late reading after my computer is off and my family is asleep. Just to turn. it. all. off.

God is the one place I find grace. He’s not shouting His demands left and right, “DO, DO, DO!” He just says, “come, BE. I AM.”

I know that it is only in Him that I am able to be un-self-conscious. He is the quiet reality from which my creativity flows, the Life of my real life.

So I take a day off to hang out with Him. I play the piano, which is cathartic, even though my fingers stick to the keyboard in the humidity that sneaked into the house with this morning’s thunderstorms. I write me out, I don’t do a thing I HAVE to do. I rest. I send a real email, nothing business-related. I pick up a book. I look up at the sky, which came in blue with the sun after the storms cleared off. I don’t think anything but what I think. I don’t try to direct it, or to organize my thoughts, or to critique me.

I sigh. The exhaustion still lingers. The knowledge that I have much to do before I can resume the treatment I’ve temporarily suspended because I can’t just go to bed.

My world blurs around the edges. I drink tea. I hug my babies, glad for the opportunity they’ve given me after I shouted at them yesterday. I remember how Mom told me children forgive. I forget how to be a child. I should try today. Or don’t try. Which might be the point.

I might bake cookies. Just because.