Identify Theft

Life is one big thief, always scheming about how to steal my identity. I turn around for a minute, and, when I look back, Can’t find the person I was yesterday. I breathe a deep breath. When the carbon dioxide explodes out of me, Who I Am goes along with it. 3 words in as many seconds change me irrevocably. Today everything I touch falls apart beneath my fingers; yesterday I felt like a master at fixing what other people broke. The Past stole my ability to comfort. Now is making me the one who needs comfort. Thinking I’m happy and secure and have a lot of faith leaves me susceptible to the hailstorm of paranoia that appears out of nowhere. 

I don’t like not knowing who I am. I don’t like being unable to predict how the things that happen to me will change me. My Identity needs to remain molten, fluid becoz, When I let it solidify, like lava turning to rock when the volcano finally stops erupting, it’s hard to let go of or hold on to anything. I’m just me. And I’m not in any position to change and grow. I don’t like accepting things, especially things like change, like growing, like needing to be an extension cord. A malleable, moveable, user friendly extension cord. 

Maybe this is all a tug of war between me and reality. Life happens. And it’s meant to change me. I might have to give in and let it. 

At least the sunset is the same every day, even if I’m not. 

What Does You Good?

What does me good?

Uninterrupted hours with my husband

Outside Air

Children to love

Tears, sometimes 

The often daily Post school-day shouted “Mrs. T****!” running to meet me, hi-5s and short chats from 2 precious small neighbour girlies who remind me of a different duo of small girlies I used to know ❤️💔

Cooking 

Letting go of thoughts and fears and ideas that try to control me 

10 minutes alone to relax and regroup after a busy school day 

Cleaning my house. meh who knew turning chaos into pristine was therapeutic

A quick prayer before diving into my day, a conversation, a worry

Not having the answer

Taking a moment to watch the sun set or say hello to the moon at night 

Silence 

What does you good? This slightly sarcastic question, hurled back in my face after I posed it to a friend, inspired a meandering thot pattern. What does me good? These are  things that do me good. I don’t have or do all of them every day but mostly they’re all within my reach every day. And when I do, they do me good. Maybe I should do them more. Maybe I’d be a happier, better person. What does you good? Do that. (SW)

Sunsets, Snowdrifts, Memories

So many things remind me of the Tiny Girls I’m no longer allowed to know. Yesterday it was the sunset. It reminded me of a time several years ago when I became obsessed with the span of vivid gorgeousness across the sky every night and made it my mission to take one moment every evening to appreciate it. S would often join me in my quiet moment of reverie on the front porch where the view was best and sometimes she’d even remind me to stop and peek at the sunset when I had forgotten. So when I looked at the sunset last night S came to my mind and sudden tears I didn’t know existed fell from my eyes. 

Today it’s a range of snow drift hills that make me think of her again. Two winters ago, while I was home for a few days in the middle of winter, I spent some time outside with her. Walking, climbing  tirelessly along hard packed snow drifts ranges, we pretended we were mountain climbers scaling sheer, difficult cliffs, giving each other a hand when we needed it, shouting encouragements, and pulling ourselves onto precarious ledges. That hour spent with her, imagining and playing like the child she was and I had once been  is one of my happy happy memories, and, perhaps, created one final lingering moment of my own childhood.

It’s the moments I think are gone forever that are really still happening. Only this time they’re not reality. They’re memory. But one thing I’ve learned from losing my precious sisters is that a memory, though not a current reality, is alive in the every day things that trigger it. 

Of Rainbows and Promises

“Do you know what rainbows mean ?” my little brother in law, just finished grade one, asked me. “They’re from God. It’s a promise that He’s never going to flood the world again.”

He said that two days in a row because we saw rainbows two days in a row. After the second time  I realized that Someone was trying to get that message through to me. 

The rain comes down so hard on my life. It’s pooling, congregating, flooding the land around me. I’ve swam for so long that I’m beginning to tire. But the rain keeps pouring. It certainly looks like He might flood me. I know God’s not going to flood the whole earth again, obliterate everything, everything. But more importantly, God is not going to flood me. He’s promised that too. He’s not going to send any more rain than I can swim in. He’s not going to make the puddles so deep that I can’t touch the bottom on tip toe occasionally, keeping my head above the water. 

It’s sometimes hard to believe that and that’s why the wiseChild’s words were like a hammer pounding it into my hard head. He had faith -God promised Noah so of course He wouldn’t flood the whole world again. I’m jealous of his faith. 

Missing the Messy

Summer stole my job (life of a teacher) and now my life is much less messy. It’s been a  nice week, easy, exhaustingly lazy, zero challenge, bordering on boring. That’s good. But

I’m not sure I like my life this pristine. 

My life isn’t perfect. have problems. I really do, big ones, overwhelming ones. And then I have my husband. He’s amazing. I love him a lot. But no relationship isn’t a little messy. My life isn’t perfect. But it’s me, and it’s normal, and mostly I’m in control of my mess So it’s relatively pristine. That’s why I teach school. Children are messy. People are messy. They trigger a lot of extreme emotional reactions -mostly love, sometimes worry, even frustration, much joy, confusion, discouragement, laughter. And you are entrusted with then care (and education) of a group of children, there is never a moment when you’re not hyper aware, of them, what they’re doing. And now it’s just me by myself all day and my eyes don’t need to be 5 different places at once and there’s not always someone waiting to tell a story or ask a question. 

And

Im realizing that my parents succeeded in teaching me at least one of the things they wanted to. That life is messy and that’s the way it should be and if it’s not very messy, then maybe you’re staying too close to you and too far from others.  

Who knows how the summer will go. Maybe it will stay pretty clean and uncomplicated. And if it does I will be happy. But if I end up getting my heart a little messy, I’ll be happy with that too because pristine gets a little dull. 

How about you ? Ready for some pristine?  Or do you like a little human involvement and the messiness it brings? 

It Is Real

I’m sorry for how I am today.. I’m sorry I’m so unreliable and tear stained. I’m sorry I’m acting  the way I am. Believe me. If I knew how to make myself stop feeling this way I would.  

I don’t even know how to tell you why and how I feel. 

FlowerGirl was in my arms and someone was coming toward me to take her away and she was saying “no no” and crying and holding on to me. And then I woke up with tears in my eyes which I tried to get rid of cause it’s not a good way to wake up. But I couldn’t. And so now it’s lasted all day. 

But it goes back farther than that. This isn’t the first time I’ve dreamed about her. And I don’t talk about it because I know I’m going to cry and be sad and because it’s Difficult to talk. 

So now you know a tiny bit. 

This was me one day, too many days, since August. I hope days like this are over. Sometime I imagine that healing has started and the grief won’t ever hit so hard again. But time will tell. 

Good Words

Later I thought of how ominous it sounded, and had I been feeling guilty that’s probably how I would have taken it to begin with. But instead, the words were comforting God is with you.                  

He is with me my heart echoed; I rejoiced in the feeling. I know that God is with me, I always know that. But I don’t often actively  remember that fact to delight in it and take comfort from the fact that God is with me.                                                            

But today I did and that was because of a vivid white and black sign set beside a busy highway unashamedly reminding me, God is with you.