I wish I'd known

I wish I'd known, at 16, that I had a lovely, healthy body and I really didn't need those herbal diet aids, or to work out like crazy to be thin and pretty...I already was.

I wish I'd known as a 26 year old single mother, working, and going to school, just holding it together, and eating fudgecicles for breakfast, lunch and dinner, that when my sociology teacher asked me what I was doing for stress relief and I told her I wasn't stressed, I was wrong.

I wish I'd known at 30, then 35, then 38 that my 30's were a wonderful decade and I didnt need to waste them fretting because life wasn't perfect, I wasn't perfect, my kids, my husband, my house wasn't perfect...they were all perfect enough, I just didn't recognize it. 

I wish I'd known that I needn't have starved myself to be thin, it never really worked anyway. 

I wish I'd known that pouring out the very essence of me to take care of everyone else would deplete me in ways I would never have imagined possible. That giving from an empty vessel is impossible and its not selfish to indulge in self-care. 

I wish I'd known how many mistakes I would make, yet things would turn out okay, despite of me. 

I wish I'd known that one day I'd wake up in my mid forties and wonder why I'd done so much wishing of my precious life away. That it would have been easier to just fix, to change paths, to right myself a decade ago. I wish I'd known that when you keep digging yourself in, the hole just gets bigger and the work harder to get yourself out. 

I wish I'd known, but I didn't. So I forgive my not knowing, my not paying attention and I move on, and start to fill the hole in little by little. I give myself grace, slow down, and breathe. 

More than just getting through

 Last year in late November, when I was in the shower (where I do all of my best thinking) I heard myself say that if I could just get through Thanksgiving, everything would be okay, I knew things had to change. *I* had to change. Thanksgiving. A time of thanks, time with family, time of joy. And I'm wishing it away. Wishing to "just get through". Wishing it over.

I found myself too often saying "as soon as I get through..." or "if I can just get through..." and thinking that if I could, things would be back to normal, or settled down, or just okay and I'd be able to rest.  I decided that I needed to live the hard, because sometimes even the joy days are hard. I needed to experience those days that seem too much. There is plenty to be grateful for, plenty to enjoy even in the midst of feeling like I "just can't". Because if I look to the past, I obviously can and have- I'm still here- so wouldn't life be better lived instead of wished away?

Being a mother of a grown child as well as two still doing some growing, I know time goes fast. I don't want to wish away my life. I don't want to wish away my short, precious time with my family. I don't want to turn around and find myself old, parents gone, friends gone or going, kids busy with their own lives, and me having wished it all away. I want to more than just get through...even if it's hard.

Starting

This journey has been a long time coming. A stripping down of sorts. A losing of parts and pieces that I've picked up along the way that I was never meant to carry. A decluttering of body, mind, spirit, and yes, physical space too. An un-becoming of who I never was.

This blog is my third attempt. I opened a blog 2008 that I called Un-dragoning, after the un-dragoning of Eustace in the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. I added quotes from the book and nothing else. Then I started a blog in 2014 called Coming Back into the Sun. I wrote two drafts that I never published. I wasn't ready. I hadn't been through the soul darkness needed to produce fruit. Like a seed in the depths of the soil, I needed time and nourishment before I could begin to break out of the ground.

I've been trying, trying to get back to ...something, someone that seems like me... to someone that would like the world again. I needed time in the soil, in the dark, before anything could sprout.

Somewhere along  the way I became unbecoming in body, mind, spirit, and yes, physical space too and now my focus is on un-becoming that person so I can live an intentional life, so I can live up to what God intended me to be.

It's time for a reemerging, a rebirth, a realizing that enough of the foundation has finally been laid in my soul to start an actual transformation. To break ground. To sprout. So even though I essentially started years ago in the dark recesses of my soul, I'm really starting now. Here's to breaking out of the darkness and into the light.

"They say the best men are born out of their faults and that they often improve later on, more than if they'd never done anything wrong." From A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman