Tag: disillusioned

Whatever Is True…

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Yesterday is hard to explain. If you’ve been following my grief journey then you know two things: 1.) I am a Christian and know God is here for all of it. 2.) I’m very real in my writing about when it doesn’t feel like He is but knowing He hasn’t left me here alone.

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary. If I’m being honest, and I always am in my writing even when it sounds pitiful, I cried more and harder yesterday than I have since the first few weeks he was gone. More than at Thanksgiving or Christmas. More than birthdays. More than all of the everydays that have passed since he was here. Those days all belong to a lot of people. Even birthdays, many people celebrate birthdays with you. This day, it was all ours. It was the day that “til death do us part” was promised. In less than two months it will be one year since “til death do us part” became reality.

It is difficult having an anniversary without the one who created that special day with you through a shared covenant with God and each other. We should have been celebrating it together. My memories on Facebook showed posts both he and I had made over the years, declaring how thankful we were to have found each other, how in love we were, how we couldn’t wait to spend more years and years together. It was also filled with photos of prior anniversary activities. The memories yesterday, at least for this year, made me feel more bitter than sweet. I love that we made so many beautiful memories together but am angry and sad and feel cheated that there will be no more. I kept trying to remind myself to think of whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. I kept trying to praise and be grateful for the time we did have together. I kept trying, but it was hard to feel it. My mind fills with sorrow for what the rest of my life looks like without him. The loneliness. The lost laughter. The absence of arms wrapped around me when I’m sad, scared, frustrated, or happy, excited, and loved. I’ve made it through a lot of days without him so far, 316 as of yesterday to be exact.

316. My anniversary was 316 days after his forwarding address became Heaven. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

It was only this morning that I was pointed to this realization, the 316 days. God watched his son die, just as I had to watch my husband. After Jesus rose again, God took him to Heaven just as He did my husband. Because God willingly made that sacrifice, like I so unwillingly did with my husband, I will have the opportunity to see him again one day and also to spend the rest of my eternity in the presence of Jesus.

I’ll still always, always wish we had longer here together, in this life. I’ll spend the rest of my life not knowing why it ended so soon and in this way. But I’m trying again, today, to be grateful that it is not over. “Til death do us part” only means in this world, not the next. And, for me, my marriage didn’t end at death. People call me a widow but I am married. My husband is just on an extended remote assignment and currently has no way of communicating with family, just like when he was in the deserts of Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. This time, though, he won’t be the one coming home…we will.

For Auld Lang Syne

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I’m sitting here, expecting to hear fireworks any time now, and doing what people do on New Year’s Eve – thinking back over what the year has brought…and, more acutely, what it has taken away.

When the clock strikes midnight tonight, people will raise a glass, kiss, and then burst into the lyrics of the song “Auld Lang Syne” as they watch the ball drop in Times Square. Oh, what I’d give to have even one more chance, but better yet a lifetime, of this with my husband.

Roughly translated, the phrase means “old long since,” or, more understandably in English, “for old time’s sake.”

The U.S. Embassy in Italy maybe explained it best in a blog post: “The lyrics of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ pose the question: How do we best remember the memories, friends and experiences of this year and the years before? The answer, the songwriter tells us, is to ‘share a cup of kindness yet’ as we journey into the new year.”

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And the days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne

And surely you will buy your cup
And surely I’ll buy mine!
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne

We two have paddled in the stream
From morning sun till night
The seas between us Lord and swell
Since the days of auld lang syne”

From the original Scottish, it does not mean to question whether old acquaintances should be forgotten and never again brought to mind. My interpretation (or translation) of the intention of the song is to say “let’s drink a cup of kindness for the sake of those people we cherish, for old time’s sake.”

Because, for me, they are not and will never be forgotten, although I often fear the loss of the minutiae. I fight a daily battle to continue on, and yet to also hold onto every tiny detail I can possibly remember.

If you are making new memories with someone you love tonight, recognize in that moment that that’s exactly what you’re doing; you’re creating a memory to look back upon. Relish it. Cherish it. Protect it. More than anything, take a moment to be grateful for it.

I will not be making new memories tonight, but I will be cherishing and offering up gratitude for the ones I was able to make with Scott and with sweet Judah. Time is a thief and the devil is a liar. I will not let that steal my joy or my gratitude for the time I was able to love them. ♥️

Every Single Day is a Wake-Up Call

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I don’t want to cause hurt to anyone who may read this. Whether you’ve been through this before and you’re just further on in your journey than I (and I don’t know “how that works” as you get farther out from where I am now,) or whether you’re reading it going through the same now, or somewhere down the line, I’m farther out and you’re just beginning your journey, I don’t want to cause you pain so ask yourself now if you’re called to read more at this point.

I don’t know who to talk to about this because I do know that people who know me and love me, my kids, my family, my closest friends, they’ll all hurt for me as they watch me hurt. Sometimes I just feel trapped by the need to let all of this pour out but also by the need to hold it in, behind a Hoover Dam type of internal apparatus that keeps anyone else from experiencing it.

Today my daughter-in-love left with my granddaughter, who stays with me during the day while her parents are working or schooling, to go home. My youngest son, who still lives at home, came home from work but left again (like teenagers do) and I sat down, like I always do, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do now, until bedtime.

Today it’s hitting me all over again that I’m alone today and that this is how I’m going to spend the rest of my life…just alone. I sat down to try to watch TV, just noise to fill my house and my mind, but this time it’s not filling anything, even partially. Today it just makes me feel even more empty.

My husband and I used to watch TV together. I mean, we didn’t watch a ton of TV but there are shows we always liked to sit down and watch together, discussing the events, the plots, what would happen next in the series. I still can’t watch any of those programs. But now, even trying to fill my mind with useless stories just feels fake, like even “reality TV” actually is.

It hurts so much to think that this is what I have to adapt to because there’s no going back…and he won’t be back. It’s been five months and my brain still cannot fathom the idea that this could possibly be forever. Even when he was away for work, he always came home. We always talked on the phone or FaceTime multiple times a day while he was gone. He’d have to be at work by 6:30 a.m. so I’d wake up just to talk to him as he got ready and was on his way to work. I haven’t had a day with any part of him except memories for over five months and I just still cannot make my mind accept the fact that he is gone from me until I see Heaven.

I’ve struggled through every 10th of the month since he transitioned to the other side. This month I made a conscious decision to try to be positive. To think of good memories, to honor who he was. I’m trying today to go back to that mindset but I just keep getting dragged back down into the muck. I MISS him terribly. I just miss who we were together and that feeling, that emotion of sadness and despair over never having that again refuses to be challenged.

I know that prayer should be my first decision during times like this but these times, the worst times, are when words to pray are least likely to surface. I do know that the Holy Spirit translates my agony into superfluous prayer, but it always takes time for the comfort to come. The amount of time varies but it is always agonizing until it arrives.

When it does come, I’m able to be grateful for the comfort and some level of peace so I do pray then, praising in the midst of the lighter rain of the storm. I guess I put it that way because it has rained for a lot more than forty days and forty nights here, but there are times now when it’s more like “sprinkling,” or at least less like a deluge.

I know God is here because, even in the sadness when I cannot stop myself from sobbing, I feel him here. He is here and yet the physical absence of my husband feels no less so I cannot resolve the coalescence of those two feelings. It is what feels like the tearing apart of the two that seem to undo me.

Often I feel like I’m not being “a good enough Christian” in how I’m handling this. Understand that, as I admit that, it is not anything I would ever judge anyone else of, only myself. I know fully-well that, if I were listening to someone else say the same, I would admonish anyone else for their overly harsh criticism of themselves. But I cannot escape the feeling that, if I were more faithful, I should just be trusting God to work it all out. Satan screams inside my head that I’m failing while God’s voice is always a calming whisper…if only I could fully interpret His words beyond the noise of the enemy. “You call yourself a Christian but you can’t even believe what you say you do! What a crock. Do you even believe what you keep telling everyone you do???”

Yes. I do. And I’m fortunate to be well-read on spiritual warfare and spiritual attacks. And yet, in the moment when it is I who am standing at the warfront of a barrage of enemy fire, still I fall victim, at times, to his relentless firepower. Even armed with the Word and speaking it aloud doesn’t immediately silence the battle cry.

I say this to you so that, if you, too, feel that you are being held captive, you will remember that Paul was arrested in Caesarea and imprisoned for two years, was shipwrecked, and then spent two more years imprisoned on house arrest in Rome. As a human, albeit a faithful one, he must have experienced spiritual attack because who would Satan have in his sights more than someone who would help write the New Testament. Paul had to have times when He felt alone, dejected, forgotten, and yet he still proclaimed his faith in the midst of it all. Remember that Paul was Saul, who persecuted Christians. Satan has to have screamed his unworthiness to him many times, but Paul persisted in faith.

Persistence is never easy. It means that, despite difficulty, one continues on their original path. Paul continued. While I have no inclination to be compared to Paul’s level of dedication and faithfulness, I am choosing to continue on a path of trust. A friend said to me this week, “faith is easy because it’s specific; trust is harder because it is in the dark.” That has been a resounding message for me this week. Faith, for me, is easy because I have seen evidence in my own life of what it has already done. Trusting that God still has a plan for my future when it feels interminably bleak is harder, but His faithfulness has been true to me in the past.

I’m clinging to that. The future will mimic God’s faithfulness of my past because He never changes. That’s what I’m counting on today.

What is “Real?” Pain Surely is.

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I look at the picture of him that I put on his nightstand and I still can’t believe that he isn’t going to be here, that he’s not coming back. And I don’t mean that like “Oh, wow…I can’t believe it…”

I mean it like, I cannot fathom the idea. My brain still says it doesn’t make sense. I watched him not breathing as people poured into the room with the crash cart but I still literally (yes, I literally mean literally) cannot believe this is truly real.

I understand that, unless you have ever experienced a sudden, extremely traumatic loss in a devastatingly traumatic manner, this probably doesn’t make sense to anyone else. It doesn’t make sense to me that this whole thing doesn’t make sense.

It should because I was there. I watched it all play out while trying to find a way to make it stop, to change the outcome, to flip the script. I fully remember pacing and praying, begging, pleading that despite what was already happening, it would all be turned around and we’d go home together. I recall fully real but seemingly crazy details about being told he was gone.

So I don’t know how it is possible that I just cannot make myself believe it.

I keep thinking that, if I can come to terms with the fact that this whole thing isn’t some crazy comatose nightmare that I’m having, I will be able to start whatever healing is even possible after this. I feel like I have to wake up to know if it is really this way or if I was dreaming it.

No, I’ve never had a dream this long and this detailed before. That’s what I keep telling myself. So it must be real, right? But my mind refuses to accept that reality. Refuses. Utter refusal.

At the same time, I’m terrified of when that happens. I already feel like I’m clinging to the shreds that are left at the bottom of a very fine rope.

God’s the only thread left in our strand of three cords because I’m not even sure I’m really still here. What is this existence if I am living it alone? So I’m grasping desperately at His piece of the rope because it’s the only one dangling stretched taut by the weight of my pain here.

I always saw adventure in our future because our present (now our past) was filled with them. I can’t see adventure for the life of me now. I see terror.

The last month has been drastically different from the previous few because now I feel panic at the drop of a hat. I mean, I’ve had actual panic attacks since the beginning sometimes but now the panic focuses on the ones I have left. All of my kids, my granddaughter, my parents, my siblings, my nieces and nephews, my close friends.

It takes almost nothing to be terrified something is going to happen to one of them. I know who the author of fear is (and it is NOT God) and I know that I am instructed to take my thoughts captive but, for now, strategically ensuring their captivity eludes me when the intrusive thoughts begin to take over. My mind goes blank except for raw fear. Raw, with ragged claws ripping at the exposed meat of my body.

My heart feels as if it stands as still as his. It feels like as much weight lies upon my chest as the pounds and pounds of dirt that lie packed over him now. It becomes difficult to breathe, as if it takes effort to inhale or exhale, either one, even though my actual lungs still have the same capacity as before. And I hurt everywhere. It feels sometimes as if my bones ache within me and my head pounds with the strength of a jackhammer on concrete.

These days, I don’t want to move. I don’t want to get out of bed, but I do. I don’t want to rise from my chair, but sometimes I do. I don’t want to get groceries, but I do. I don’t want to talk to people, but I do. I sleep and sometimes I have nightmares with images of him in his last moments, but sometimes I don’t dream at all so I go to bed yearning for that sleep of absence and dreading the morning when I will wake to a photograph of him instead of his arm draped across me, moving it gently and quietly so that I can go make him coffee before he wakes up.

I’ve gotten pretty good, again, about wearing a face that looks like “okay-ness.” All signs point to gentle healing and a fictitious facade of blossoming hope. Or maybe I’m just imagining that it looks that way and everyone can see right through it; I can’t always tell.

In six days it will have been six months since he left me here, albeit not of his own choosing. How have I survived half of a year…a year…without him here? “You’re so strong,” people say. But I’m not strong; I’m surviving. Maybe I’m brave to keep trying it, day after day, but strong is not an adjective that I can feel within me. It’s a direct contrast to that, in reality. I feel so weak and incapable of living this life without him. I feel lost in so many situations. I feel like I’m drowning in my own incompetence often. There were things he did, things he provided to me, that I can never properly recreate. He was half of my life and, while I cherish the parts of my life that I still have without him (namely, my family,) I feel like I am trying to live without half of my body, like a stroke victim. Nothing works right without him here. I’m one half of a whole.

Let God complete you, not other people. That’s how it should be, I’m sure, but God gave me this gift of someone and said “the two shall become one.” And we did. A therapist might call it codependency but it’s not; it’s marriage. It is how God intended it to be. We were no longer two me’s; we were a we and my mind doesn’t know how to digest the discrepancy now.

So for today I’m going to try to remember the words of a song that means so much to my heart now:

“God is in this story. God is in the details. even in the broken parts, He holds my heart. He never fails. When I’m at my weakest, I will trust in Jesus. Always in the highs and lows, the One who goes before me; God is in this story.”

Guilt Trips: Free Tickets Available

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About a week ago, I was standing in a local store with my mom and she’s talking to me about my boys, my three, thriving, growing, smart, amazing boys.  She says to me, out of the blue, “You need to start looking for…”  “STOP, Mom.  No, I don’t.”, I say.  Because I could already tell where she was going with this.  But she could not take the hint and I was already beginning to turn red.  This is always the way the conversation has to go for her.  “You are depriving them of…(and I stopped her again because I’m familiar with the pattern but I’ll finish it for you…’a positive male role model’).  “No, Mama.  I’m not.  They have him.”  And I point to my step-dad who was walking with us and who lives only one block away from me.  My boys have their dad but they also have someone who comes to my rescue when my house is broken into.  They have someone who comes immediately when they are in the E.R., and their dad does, too.   They still see someone who comes over to help me fix things that are broken at my house if it’s something that I haven’t learned how to fix yet.  And they do still have a Dad who goes to their soccer games, who hugs them and who tells them that he loves them when they’re at his house.  We just don’t all happen to live together as a big happy family anymore.  Besides all of that, I just so happen to have learned to be a pretty good XBOX fixer, I can change out broken toilet parts myself, fix leaky sinks, change tires and do many other boy things that quite a few moms haven’t had the joy of learning.  Just because they’re boys, do I not count; I’m the role model!  Hey, hey…look at me over here!  (Insert eye roll here…)

What an insult to say that I’m depriving them because I’m not out “looking” for a replacement dad.  First of all, I would never.  Second of all, WHA???   If I have learned one thing, one very important thing, from being married, divorced and single again, it is that I don’t NEED someone.  I remember thinking that life was all about finding someone to complete you.  As it turns out, I am the only one who can complete me.  I just had to figure out what all my pieces were and where to put them.  I’ve learned so much (and still am) about who I am and what I’m all about.  I know now that it was silly for me to ever think or expect someone else to be able to fill up the holes that I, myself, didn’t even have the pieces for, or didn’t know where to locate them.  I had to wait to understand the gaps myself and am much better equipped now to be a better, more whole person than I was when I was waiting around for someone to “complete me”.

Right now I am truly not looking for anyone.  I don’t even know that I’m really capable of a deep trust with people anymore anyway.  I care about people but I’ve come to understand that people will always let you down and that we just love them anyway, faults and all, because we’re all made that way.  We can’t even help it.  So, just don’t tell me to be on the lookout and don’t send me out looking, okay?  I’m good.  Image

But I like my head in the sand…what???

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Have you ever found yourself wanting to just drop away from reality for awhile?  Things get complicated or overwhelming or even downright frightening and you just want to disappear from that part of life while finding a tiny season of blissful forgetfulness and enjoyment?  Oh, brother, I have.

I love my children and, overall, my life, with wild abandon.  We deal with trying times (after all, I have a teen and preteen now) and difficult days  but, through it all, they are mine, this life is mine, and I will never cease seeking the answers to why it didn’t go a certain way or how it is “supposed to go” from this point forward.  I know there are times that I have done it all wrong.  Am I doing it right, now?  This is not purposed by self-denigration but, rather, by a yearning for self-discovery.  I think that, overall in my life, I have typically been in such a rush to be happy that I have taken enjoyable moments and made lifelong decisions based on temporary enchantment.  At some point, I look back at said resolutions (and revolutions) and think….”why didn’t I just slow down and try a little objectivity before that one?”  I can actually often look back and remember hearing a little voice inside my head saying “This is probably not the best decision but, well, you’re happy right now; feels good, right?…You can figure out how to be happy again after this happy wears off…”  Ughhhh.  I’m disgusted with the asinine absurdity of that whole idea and yet, yep, that’s been me.  Most euphoria is temporary but it’s circumstances can take much longer to be relinquished than originally embarked upon.

Take marriage for example.  A happy “honeymoon” period is like the teasing and tantalizing effect of a drug.  Exhilaration, euphoria, optimism, mirth and enchantment are your companion emotions at the start.  At some point after that, however, the desire to run away will surface.  Somewhere along the path to longevity, I think we all find ourselves in a spot saying…”what did I get myself into and how can I get out?”  Now, I’m not saying that everyone should get out at that point.  This is just the moment of truth at which you make a decision to stand and fight for it and for a better understanding of how it should work, sit and cower under the feelings of self-pity and self-loathing, or jump ship and run like hell to the nearest exit sign as the fire licks at your heels.  The “drug” wears off and the low kicks in.  Or the hangover, if that’s easier to understand.  And this doesn’t have to be about marriage.  Pick your own analogy and insert here: ________.  Chase high, escape low, ad nauseum with no completion.

I think I often want to spend too much of my time with my head in the sand.  I mean, ostriches are kind of cool birds.  Granted, they have the mental capability of a toddler in a peek-a-boo routine (if I can’t see you, you can’t see me) but they are still regal in their own way.  Or if I take a deep breath once in awhile and plunge my head beneath the water, it is quieter there.  The sunlight glitters across the bottom of the cerulean pool, chaotic noise is dramatically muffled and the weightless feel of the gentle rock, to and fro, of the water is calming.  If I didn’t need to breathe, I could live there…well, except that divas don’t actually like to get all pruny.  But we can choose to take a break from reality sometimes.  The “I need to run!” urge can be settled a little as long as the break is temporary and is not a way to avoid truths.

So, how does one decide whether the current longitude and latitude of life is the vacation spot or the permanent homestead?  I need to learn a long-sought ability to step back from a situation and to veritably see some kind of truth in it.  Is the run-and-hide instinct just a product of my miserable failings prior to this intersection of life or is it a visceral instinct, animalistic and primal in nature but necessary for survival?

(((sigh))) Just new…well, maybe not so new but resurfaced…points to ponder for the day…and night, as it would seem.  Somehow it feels as if a fairy princess dress and tiara with some rockin’ high kicks (sparkly ones, of course) should just fix things.  Diva dreams…

Someday My Prince Will Come

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Someday...“Hey…that guy over there…he’s checking you out…”  “Me?  How do you know he’s not checking you out?”  “Well, he just looks like he’s more your type.”  “Uh…okay…why couldn’t he be YOUR type?  What is wrong with him that he’s not your type, then, huh?”  “Geez…forget it.  He wasn’t looking at you.  He was probably checking me out.”  “Really?  Do you think so?  Well, is there some reason he wouldn’t have been looking at me?  Do you think these are Mom jeans?  I look too old, don’t I?  Is there toilet paper stuck to my shoe?…”

Why on earth can’t I just be normal?  Or, is this what normal is all about?  Is neurotic actually normal and everyone just thinks abnormal people are actually neurotic?

I am failing miserably at figuring out how to re-enter the atmosphere of dating.  Frankly, it terrifies me.  In high school, I had one boyfriend at a time (never “dating” as much as “going together”) and then met my ex-hasbeen at the tender age of 17.  I married him at 23 and then, well, the rest is history.  After divorce, I spent an entire year alone in my house, just waiting for my children to call saying they wanted to come back home from their Dad’s…and they often did.  I dedicated my life to my job (ugh), my children and my pathetic hobby of wallowing in self-pity.  This year, although a time of insight into the “supposed to be” of my life, was a pit of hell.  It was time to move on.

I then spent two years in an impossible relationship.  No big details here but suffice it to say that long distance relationships do not ultimately work when there is no reasonable hope to close the distance.  Love does not conquer all.  Love is actually depressing when it has no foreseeable future.  Meh.

Recently, a friend suggested I meet another friend.  Enter the “Facebook Friend Suggestion” and flirty instant messaging.  You know, I am much more verbose and witty in typeface than in face to face combat…I mean, conversation.  In real life, in emotional situations, I can be rather taciturn.  It would appear that the same is true for others sometimes.  Actually, no, this guy pulled out all the stops when it came to manners (opening car doors, pulling out chairs), flattery and literary quotes.  I was quite stuck between “this cannot be real” and “oh, my goodness…what if this is real?”.  Alas, I allowed myself to fall into the slippery slope of the latter belief and then, within three weeks, Romance Man turned into Stalker-Pushy-We-Should-Get-Married guy.  No, I’m not kidding…three weeks.  Gah!

And so, where does a girl like me find myself now?  In the middle of a gargantuan mud puddle of mistrust and disillusionment.  Love is not transparent; you cannot tell if it’s real or not, right off.  Love is not fair; if you actually find it, it may be impossibly rooted in soil in which you cannot be planted and flourish.  Love is not a promise of forever and of rocking in a porch swing with gray hair, holding hands with someone you share grandchildren with.  Love is maybe…just not.

And what does a fairy tale believing girl do with all of this information?  She puts on her high heels, pins her tiara snugly to her crown of curls, lines & shines her lips then kisses a napkin…and walks right back out into this world looking for the one and only Mr. Right.  You see, I refuse to be permanently disenchanted.  Someday, my prince will come…goodbye, froggies…

Where Am I & Who Took My Life?

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Now, where is it?Today I am struggling with the everyday living thing.  You know the thing.  It’s the part where you look around you and, although seeing beautiful areas of tremendous value (children, house to live in, car, ability to earn an income, extended family, fantastic friends) you still wonder how you ended up in this place, this particular reality.  And now, after listing all of my wonderful things above ^, I realized that there is one specific area that I must be pondering and wrestling with.  Funny how writing pulls the truth out from behind the curtain.

I remember being 22 years old and thinking, “This is ridiculous.  I want to have babies and I’m not even married.  I am running out of time.  I have got to get the ball rolling here.”  Now what’s ridiculous?  I’ll tell you what.  Ridiculous thing number one is that I thought I was running out of time when I was 22.  I had a plan.  I wanted to have all of my children (2-3) by the time I was 30 and be a young, fun mom.  Notice that no mention of career is made.  I do enjoy the work I have chosen and I believe God led me to my profession for a reason but I also know that, given the choice, I would have remained a stay-at-home-mom and been on every PTA, coached soccer every year, volunteered at every school and read stories in classrooms all while baking fresh cookies and fun, kid-oriented dinners.  The only job I ever remember growing up wanting to have was being a mommy.  Now, there are those of you who will understand this and, most definitely, those of you who think they would go crazy with that.  I respect both.

Ridiculous thing number two is that I am now pushing 40 (oh, how it hurts to type that), still want another baby and still feel my time slipping away.  And am unmarried again.  Another baby may never be an option for me and I come to terms with that (and then lose perspective again) on a regular basis.  I do struggle with what raising a child in your 40’s-60’s would mean versus what it has meant in my 20’s to 40’s.  I do not mean any disrespect to anyone reading this who is or has had their children at this time of their lives; it’s just a different concept for me and I’m sure would change my parenting to some degree.  Please do not take offense.

So this all leads to the realization that, although my heart still wants to carry another child underneath and my arms still want to hold another sweet, nursing baby, that may not be in the “cards” for me.  It may just be a yearning I carry forever.  Oddly enough, even as difficult as my pregnancies were (a 7 week hospital stay with one for placenta previa, a premature rupture of membranes with one at only 34 weeks and an emergency C-Section for a cord emergency with the last), I loved being pregnant, loved nursing my babies and loved every minute raising them up to even this moment.  There have been hard times and frustrations, sure.  I joke about how “boys are gross” or how they’re driving me crazy, like I think many people do, but I wouldn’t trade one second of any time I’ve ever had with them for all the money in the world.  They own my heart and carry it around with them wherever they go.  And I would do it all over again with a new one…crazy as some may think that would seem at my age.

All of that being said, I will not rush into the fray of scouting out relationship possibilities, in all of it’s danger, pitfalls, vicious weaponry, dragon-filled moats and flaming arrows and warning flares, to scurry irresponsibly and headlong into the possibly misleading comfort of a newfound castle.  I am a spontaneous girl and love the fun of an unplanned adventure but have also learned to be a wary one as it comes to potential love relationships.  I have three incredible boys to whom I owe my responsibility and my ultimate level of caution and protection.  I won’t thrust them into something that I, myself, am not doubly sure of…well, as sure as one can be of anything at all in this life.  And I also won’t commit myself, in front of God and everyone, to a relationship that I don’t feel like I know has an abiding, perpetual capability to succeed.  I did truly think that my first marriage had that quality and tried for a long time to turn it around but there are some life cycles that just don’t turn at the same speed of rotation, thus allowing two to be in the same stratum for a time but then cycling in such a way that they never reach the same point at the same time again.  You also cannot change other people.  They have to find that themselves, no matter how hard you pray or how much you want to make it happen.  If it ever happens, it will be on their terms and in their time, not in your own.

So where am I?  At 22, I envisioned where my life should go and what I would do with it.  I have my three beautiful boys, although I was 31 when the last came along. 🙂 Where did this new longing come from that was not in the original plan?  Who replaced my first intentions with this new proposal?  If I was born to be a Mommy and being a nurse is just my secondary assignment as an answer to the need for income, what will I be when these babies are gone?  Who will be with me or will I then walk this path alone, still searching for some unreachable solitary “goal”?  I have friends and family who love me.  I have people who would give the roof over their head to cover the heads of myself and my boys.  I have people to turn to when I am sad, lonely, lost or broken.  And I am still an absurd distinction of broken, giving yet another reason that a male-female relationship would only flounder and fail until I figure myself out.  So, why do I feel the need to have that?  I have my people.  What is this level of altered reality in which I live that assumes I must have someone else in order to be a whole me?  Why must I feel like half when there is no missing piece to fill in the other side?

And so I struggle.  A very close friend, whom I dearly love, said to me, ” A sense of purpose is a big deal for us humans. But I wonder if sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves to ‘figure that out’. Maybe it isn’t actually that clear. Or even something tangible that you will be able to know about.  Maybe we just have to have faith. Faith that we are here for a reason, even if we never know it for ourselves. Having too rigid a purpose (i.e. I’m here to be a mom, I’m here to help people) doesn’t allow for a whole lot of flexibility or for you to have different sides to yourself.”  Oh, my dear T, you are a wise woman.  Maybe we’re not supposed to “fix” ourselves but wait for the days of our lives to fix us…and, of course, I don’t mean the soap opera.  Clearly, if one is standing on a pinpoint of a flat map, our overall position in the grand cartograph is invisible to ourselves, and even those standing close to us, due to it’s magnitude.  The “big picture” is an elusive Dumbo’s feather being whisked away by the wind each time we think we are just about to grab hold of it’s confidence-infusing magic.

Oh, to be an eye in the sky so I would know…where am I?

Ever-Changing Chameleon

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Chameleon...I am a chameleon.  I’ve been called that in the past but only recently accepted the title and it’s banner.  I change to suit different situations, different people, different locations.  What I’m finding is that it seems to have a negative connotation and I want to respectfully disagree.

Being ever changing is not necessarily a bad thing.  I can understand the concept that one may think of a human “chameleon” as someone who pretends to be something they’re not.  Again, I wholeheartedly disagree.  A chameleon does not pretend to be purple when it’s purple or green when it’s green; it changes.  It morphs into a different version of itself in order to be protected from the dangers of a vicious world; but that, in itself, is the explanation that tells me it’s not wrong.  It changes to a different version of itself.  It is still being true to it’s character, a character that few other species have.  It’s character just has varying faces of the same prism.  And a prism reflects light beautifully.

I am adaptable.  I admit to not wanting anyone not to like me.  Someone recently told me that I need to get over that because you have to turn your back on half of the world to survive.  I respectfully disagree.  I don’t want to turn my back until they force me to.  And even if I have to turn, in the interest of self-preservation, I will still be wishing they had been able to see the better side of me…a different color of the chameleon’s camouflage.  I will still wonder what it was that made our encounter in life one feasting on a bone of contention.  I do realize that people come into and go out of our lives for a reason but I would like to leave each one on good terms yet that is often impossible.

Why?  Because I am human, as are they.  I make mistakes.  I screw up.  I was born missing the critical filter between brain and mouth and I often say dumb things before I stop to realize they are hurtful.  I get angry.  I get hurt.  I say more dumb things.  I am human…hear me cry.  I am the first to admit to how imperfect I am and, trust me, I point said imperfections out to myself on a daily basis.  I often try to talk myself out of them…but some of them seem to be innate.  So, trying to go through life without hurting anyone, making someone angry or resentful or without losing someone who was only meant to stay for a brief while, well, that’s a losing battle.  But I digress…

As a chameleon, I am a different person as a mom, a nurse, a friend, a coworker…and so on.  We all have various hats that we must or choose to wear and we adjust our behavior and affect accordingly.  I’m not saying my character is different, just that I rely on differing aspects of the same character.  And I am a character.   Pretty sure none would deny me that little jewel of a title.

Likewise, in love or around different friends with different interests, I shine alternating sparkles of my complex personality.  With a friend who likes superheroes and “gets” my inner dork, I open up the part that lets my geek flag fly. I will talk about wanting to go to MegaCon and having a (not so) secret fascination with Wonder Woman or Mrs. Incredible.  With a friend who shares my enthusiasm for good wine, I will express my likes and dislikes of a plethora of varieties of libation and ask for opinions about what they enjoy consuming.  These things I do not see as character flaws.  Different people bring out contradistinctive  personality traits in each of us.  Each brings joy or wisdom or even sadness to our lives that individually serve to sculpt the clay of who we are.  And you see, I recall being the same chameleon in high school.

In high school, I attended an international school in which one could decipher no less than 8 different languages in conversations being carried on during one trek down the hallway.  I learned a little bit of Hebrew, conversational German, a good Brit accent (much to my children’s chagrin) and very basic Arabic, French and Spanish.  I would try to incorporate my weak language skills into conversations with varicolored friends in order to sharpen my intellect and, I confess, to cause the random burst of laughter when I brutally murdered phraseology from another tongue.  There was nothing wrong with my trying to blend in with them and incorporate myself into their lives in a meaningful way.  In fact, I daresay I think it was right.  If I change how I react and behave around you, because of your interests or likes vs. dislikes, then you know that you are important enough to me that I want to understand more about who you are.  I want to connect.  I desire to comprehend what makes you tick on a level different than what others have made effort to do.  If you see my character to be different around you than when you’ve seen me elsewhere, please, by all means, take that as a compliment.  You matter.

Being a chameleon, in the respect that I’m attempting to describe, is not the same as when they had a sale on faces at the Dollar Store and some chick bought more than a BOGO.  To those people I say, if you’re going to have two faces, honey, at least make one pretty.  Because in those changing appearances, neither is ever beautiful as they are both tainted by the overall integrity (or rather, lack thereof) of the individual.  No, being a chameleon, in the sense I want you to visualize and condone, is a trait of adaptation, a show of respect, an expression of praise.  I don’t just want to be able to be myself around you but I want to be able to be part of you, around you.  I will watch TV shows you recommend (at least trying on for size).  I will listen to your music; I have eclectic taste anyway.  I will ask how your life is going and will attempt to commune with quips and analogies from my own comical or dramatic history to let you know that you are not alone in the fight.

None of us ever is, no matter how lonely it sometimes feels to be a chameleon in the desert.

The Beginning of My Success

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It is always difficult to begin a new journal.  I stare at blank pages and wonder where to start.  In order to begin, there has to have been an ending.  What has ended?  How does one ever know what “endings” are temporary and what is truly over…completed?  This past year has been riddled with changes and yet I don’t know what of these are starts or finishes.  As odd as that seems, it is but a miniature diorama of life.  I have learned one thing well:  the only constant in life is change.

Even love is not constant and is ever-changing.  The only constant love exists between you and God, who loves as an eternal parent even when you misbehave, and the love between a parent – the worldly kind – and their own child(ren).  This love is one that never, ever goes away, always grows exponentially and never fades…even when you feel it is undeserved.  Children will one day grow to understand this parental love (I hope I see mine grow to know it.) and only then will God’s love make more sense.

All of that being said, I’m looking at this new year knowing that all of the yesterdays have gone and I am left with a pile of total gains and losses to try to place in some assemblage of order so that I can start with a new plan of action.  I am not good with order and organization, however much I would love to be.

Where to start?  I know a few things that I want to be solid foundation in this particular beginning.

1.) I am an independent and strong woman.  I don’t need a man and his affection or love or expectations in order to live, survive and even thrive.  I won’t deny wanting to have someone near to care about me…someone who is there by my side when I am lonely, sick, scared or just plain happy and wanting to share that with someone special who will understand and be happy that I’m happy.  I do not, however, need someone else to make me happy.  I have learned that I am capable of happiness and contentment all by myself.

2.) God is an integral and essential part of who I am, deep inside.  He must become, again, part of who I am on the outside.  I will face challenges of the opinions of others during this conversion of appearance.  I have walked far outside the path of where I believe I am supposed to be. This, it itself, is a personal recognition of need and is not open for speculation or criticism of others.  To stray from my current path in an attempt to traverse rough terrain while laboring to converge with a path on “higher ground” will mean facing sandspurs, sharp rocks and steep, overbearing hills.  The worst of these metaphorical pitfalls are actually other people who seem to love nothing more than to tear down another.  I will walk among them, around them and even right beside them if that is what it takes to reach my desired and, yes, necessary destination.

3.) I will bring my children on every essential leg of this journey.  I always know they are watching me closely; if they can see the struggle of my exploration, perhaps they will be able to avoid some of the difficulties in the trek that I have taken.  I wish for my boys to never have to traverse the thorny fields I have travelled these last years, even though I have learned much and still experienced some great joys in the pilgrimage.

I hold these things up not as resolutions which I believe, by design, are destined to be broken.  I lay them before myself as a map to a new place.  I seek a place of peace, contentment and self-respect.  I want my whole life to have the sensation that I feel while laying in my big, comfortable bed, surrounded by my three boys and fluffy comforters, with a funny movie on the television and their giggles erupting around me.  If my whole life could feel just like that moment, my life could be nothing but a total success.