Thursday Rummage Sale

It's going to be time to shed this old skin (blog) soon and bring to life something new.  I've recognized, through the years, that this blog has been a very real and helpful outlet for me.  But I actually want to start writing words that matter.  It's felt sometimes like more of a 'show and tell' than anything meaningful. 

My heart though is to do more than that.  I want to take what is intangible and make it tangible, in words.  I want to actually inspire and challenge, and bring to life what is unspoken behind the eyes of women in my generation. Bring meaning to the everyday.

Thank you for bearing with all my ramblings all these years.  I don't know how you've stuck with me. 

On that note, here are some thursday ramblings for you that might eventually become writing pieces but for now are going to be a bunch of scattered, inarticulate thoughts for pondering purposes.  They are a barrage of niggling thoughts, scattered on a page in one big blur.  Enjoy rummaging through them like a garage sale and see if there's anything worth sinking some cash into.  Or maybe it's all junk and is better left for junk.  But the fun is in the seeking, right?

Clouds.  What I know about God is dissipating, the longer I seek Him.  The neat confines I put Him in, and How He works are being demolished and I’m left with more mystery and cloud than graspable concepts.  Interesting to note that even Moses approached God in a cloud.  

Humility. Having to eat some humble pie.  It’s painful actually.  Truly listening to those around you and actually accepting that they know more than you, are a season ahead of you, actually have tried and tested the very ideas you are currently theorizing.  It’s painful because after so long trying to prove my competence, my abilities, I have to concede that I simply have not been there yet.  And it’s okay to lean into conversations, and areas of knowing that you have never been and ask the real questions and get the real answers.  Whether it’s raising children or being kind to my body, or forging family values, or making future plans there are others who have been there, done that, and are willing to share their hard-fought and earned lessons.  If I am willing to seek the answers.  And stop trying to convince them and myself that I have the right answers.  Truth is, I have fewer answers than yesterday.  Or maybe just new questions. 

Aging.  It is the strangest of garments. It feels like a garment.  Being piled on, year after year.  But really you are the same underneath that you always were.  Just heavier, weighed down in different ways.  

Pain.  My ego hurts lately.  It is painful to be in this middle territory.  This middle part of life.  Been around enough to know sorrow that is deep and habits that are unhelpful, and emotions that are unyielding.  Yet, not around enough to have mastered these annoying commanders of the flesh.  Not around long enough to be wise in the way I carry myself.  Not around long enough to know it will all ‘be okay’ in the end.  I often know too little, too late.

Contemplation. Falling into slow rhythms of life.  Somewhat refreshing in their simplicity, but then confounding in how they satisfy my usually preoccupied soul.  I used to dread an empty day at home.  Now I fumble and bumble around, barely ‘accomplish’ anything but there is room to breathe and sit.  And in the sitting, I am finding such beauty that it makes me ache.  "In rest and quietness is your strength and salvation."  Isaiah 30:15

Mindfulness. I am more in tune than ever to the voices I hear and how they affect me. Social media- ever inundating, ever giving me new opportunities to yearn, to desire, to regret, to seek, to be something I am not.  Wanting fame.  Wanting attention.  Wanting honour but knowing that it’s not a real thing, nor a worthy pursuit but yet wanting it anyways.  All of it, noise. 

Disappointments. Battling disappointments.  Disappointed I haven’t done 'it all.'   The voice of jealousy ever breathing down my back.  I see something, read something, and there it is hot on my collar again.  Stirring up despair and disappointment. But then I recognize that the only thing I can do is take one step at a time.  Be faithful in this small way, in this small moment, consistently.  That’s all I have.  Man, that’s disappointing.  Realizing those dreams are just the chorus that was heard upon the wind by many of my generation.  Marching to some unseen beat of ‘you can do it all’ ‘you can do anything,' ‘be a world changer’ etc.  But realizing that maybe that was actually the worst preparation for real life.  Cause real life is so incremental, so painfully slow moving that you can actually miss it in the pursuit of 'greatness.'