Hello Again

What can I say that would be incredibly poignant and profound after such a long blogging hiatus? I always feel I should catch up on life as I know it after such a gap in writing. But why? Would you like to hear how wonderful my life is on the days that it is in fact wonderful? Or hear about how challenging it is on the days that challenging beats out wonderful? Basically, my life is exactly like yours. Moments of clarity and insanity all bundled up in a fragile human body seemingly too small to contain the range. I have my highs and lows. I am getting better at living. I think that is the best I can say about me at this stage of my life.

I suppose the thing I am consumed with these days is my life being something all together not mine. I have a husband, I have children, I have friends, I have aquaintances that I hope will become friends, I have parents, I have siblings. How do I live my life while being such an intregal part of so many others? That is what keeps me up at night. How do I be Heather and be Wife? How do I be Heather and be Mom?  How do I enroll for a summer writing class and make sure my family knows they are my priority? How do I go to my book club meeting and make sure my family knows I want to be with them after a long week of busy schedules? How do I balance me and my life? When I take a step back I am so much less than I want to be and have so much more than I ever thought I would have. I feel like a girl who always dreamed of juggling… and now have 35 beanbags to keep in the air.

I have a beautiful car. It is shiny and powerful and just awesome. I LOVE my car. It has a pretty powerful engine in it but it is a pretty big car.  So I suppose it kind of evens out. There are other cars, luxury sport cars, which have my same engine but in a fraction of the metal. They are furious and exciting and so cool. Something like a cannon to my slingshot. My car’s engine is well balanced to the sum of it’s load; while others have juice to spare. All in all, I feel like my car. I feel like I have the juice to match the sum of life as it is right now. I have the power under the hood to carry the load of only so much. I don’t have a luxury sport car kind of life: a paired down rocket with eons of power and no trunk space. If I tried to roll in a corvette with my family of 7, I would be ridiculous. I have a full life, in need of much cargo space which taps out the capacity of my Heather engine.

It relieves me when I think about my life having a measure to it. To think of my life as having a capacity. I love the thought! I have so long been bogged down by the challenge to do and be as much as humanly possible. When my ‘humanly possible’ is entirely different than yours. I have to believe I alone am perfectly matched to the load I carry. I believe God teaches us that. We have the faith, the resources, the gifts, the grace, to match OUR lives. It gives me great peace to know that I have a limit. It frees me from feeling less than you. It frees me from feeling more than you, too.

I am learning more and more about what peace looks like in real life. The kind of peace that is generated in your mind not your circumstances. Part of that for me is learning that it is ok to be at capacity in life; to hang a ‘no vacancy’ sign on it and be committed to serving the ones who are already here; to protect what God has given me instead of taking on the weight of a burden I wasn’t meant to carry. If you think about it, Jesus was the master at moderation and focus and selection. He lived on purpose in such a haphazard, nomad kind of way. I could go on, this is really just the jumping off point to what I am thinking on the subject. And it is late. And I have Bible Study in the morning.

I hope to blog more. I love writing these thoughts out. A great relief to the mind. Don’t hold your breath but for a week or two…