Monday, October 5, 2009

Drifting

Like the butterfly pictured above, I am drifting on the currents of life and occasionally landing on random flowers. I am hoping and praying that this is just a phase, even though it is something that I've battled my whole life...I'm optimistic enough to believe that the "phase" will pass and I will become a normal person.

There is absolutely no direction in my life. Aren't you glad you visited my blog today? No direction I'm telling you. It is easy for me to blame my state-of-confusion on A.D.D. and I've often used this excuse. Truth is, I don't allow, nor have I ever allowed, Kyle to use this as an excuse. "You're just going to have to work harder than everybody else, but in turn you will appreciate your accomplishments more because it didn't come easy for you." Yep, I have spoken these words to my son while I myself am battling to merely keep my head above water.

I feel as if I stumbled into a marriage, tripped into motherhood and fell head first into farming. Looking around me now, I wonder how in the world I got here. I know I love me life, I know I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world but boy would I love a little structure.

Those people like Martha Stewart, who so many of us love to hate, have always enticed me with their organized (or seemingly organized) lives. How do they do that? How do they have all of these things to do and do it so gracefully and efficiently? Why can't I be like that?

I know what my creative capabilities are, but I have no idea how to put them to use. I think I need some therapy, or one of those professional organizers to give me a plan, or maybe a drill sergeant to whip me into shape. Although a drill sergeant would just make me cry and want my mommy. Am I the only person that feels this way? Please say it ain't so.

What I am hoping for is that this "low point" in my little life will spur me on to grow and be better. I want to grow into one of those women that is up early, making breakfast in a CLEAN kitchen, who sends her family off for their day with bellies full and with kisses on their cheeks and a song in their heart. To go about my day with fully structured chores, feeding animals, making soap, taking photos, paying bills, fixing fence, mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, preparing meals, visiting sick people, working in the garden, buying groceries, filling prescriptions, helping my parents, building cabinets and on and on. Now, mind you, I DO all of these things...but I do it more like the tasmanian devil leaving a path of destruction in my wake. Clumsy, crazy, completely unstructured little me, trying to be ethereal and light and methodical.

So, I am pondering what to do with all of this insanity that is in my lap. Do I wrap it up in a tight little ball and embrace it? Or do I pull myself up by my boot straps and "get with the program"? Maybe that drill sergeant isn't such a bad idea...does anybody know where I can find one of those? One thing is for sure, no matter how crooked and winding my path may be...I AM moving forward (or falling forward). There is no stopping the train I'm on and that baby keeps going faster and faster. Perhaps I'll find a little peace along the way maybe even a glimpse of order and structure and figure out what in the heck I'm doing.



2 comments:

TLDR1440 said...

Hi Lovely Jenni,

Reading this makes me feel such gratitude. In it, I hear my own voices to myself, asking why I can't be more like the successes I see around me. And in response to what you write, in spite of those voices to myself, I want to throw my arms around you and lift you up to the clouds in a huge exuberant hug, and somehow wrap a rainbow all around you to show you what a fantastic person you are. Your journey that occasionally lands you on random flowers is part of the whimsical, delightful way that God created you, and it's a joy to be on this journey with you. We around you enjoy the "clumsy, crazy, completely unstructured" way you are, and it utterly blesses us.

I think it's amazing that we have a word, "perfect," for something that none of us have ever actually seen, outside of those few who met Jesus when He was here on earth with them. The rest of us use this word as if we're acquainted with it. But we're not. We're using it to describe something we've never experienced. And yet we still use it to beat up on ourselves.

So my new view is this: We can conceive of "perfection" only because we're made in God's image. Only because of that can we conceptualize something for which we have no actual proof. Taken further, this means that our ideas of "perfection" are probably equally out-of-touch. So, . . . we are now released from that bondage, from striving toward some ideal. Instead, we now have permission to be the person God created, fully alive in expressing the in's and out's of who we are, even if that looks nothing at all like anyone else we admire.

I trust that God is an ARTIST. And just as no one understood or appreciated Vincent Van Gogh's work while he was alive, but today we marvel at "Sunflowers" --- http://www.wikiwak.com/image/VanGogh-starry+night+ballance1.jpg --- I can trust that I may not be able to see the artistry in me yet. But God does. And God does in you too, my friend.

Love,
Martine

TLDR1440 said...

I meant "Starry Night", not "Sunflowers".