The Calm of the Ocean

There is just something about the ocean.  It has this amazing calming effect in spite of all its power.  This morning while running a beautiful path in sunny Florida, I just had to stray and find the ocean.  While it was a harbor and lacked the gentle roar of the waves I so love, it was still so peaceful and calming to my soul.  I love how different it feels and is here.  I definitely understand why people come here to retire.  I love how everyone is drawn to the water.  I love how the trees are bigger than some of the homes they loom over with moss dripping from their limbs.    I love how you can pass a beach bungalow, a plantation style mansion and double wide all in the same block.  Everyone is drawn to the water.  I even passed a mobile home community that had boat slips right out the front door.  It doesn't matter to them what their house looks like because they live life on the water.   No cookie cutter homes, no rules saying what style your house must be, and your boat is your life.  I must say I did feel a little out of place as the majority of people I greeted were definitely retired, however, they were still out there living.  Roller blading, biking, walking, I even met a cute couple who had to of been late 70s jogging.  They were nice enough to direct me to the beach. 

I could get used to this daily dose of vitamin D and skip the winter blues I get at home.  There's just something about the ocean that makes me feel free.  I love nature, I miss being outside in the winter so much and I think that is the majority of my winter blues.  I love being surrounded by mountains and the glorious views I live by, but someday, perhaps the ocean's call will pull me to live coastal.  Maybe when life is a bit simpler, and my babies are a little more grown, the ocean just might win me over.  

Holy Christmas Batman ...

Wow, it has been a whirlwind of a monthish.  Life is always a bit crazy, but there is something about from the time school starts until spring.  I know that is a huge chunk of time, but there is so much packed in there!  Well I just survived phase let's see, six I think, Christmas.  I. Love. Christmas.  I truly do.  I have always loved Christmas and I still love the magic I feel.  This year was no different, but it felt different because it was rushed and gone too soon.  Despite half of our kids and myself getting sick, I think we still managed to have a fun magical Christmas, but it was over in what felt like two blinks.  

I know I talk about my hubs traveling a lot, but sadly it happens a lot.  He was gone the first two weeks of December and I felt a little robbed as did he in that he wasn't here for half of the season. So we smashed Christmas parties and his birthday and finishing all the prep into two very short weeks.  I did get him for a whole month however, which right now is huge and I loved it!  Now, as I lie here half a day after dropping him off at the airport yet again, unable to sleep (like always), waiting for my baby Enzo to wake up, I'm feeling empty and ungrateful.  

I just finished reading a friend from high schools blog about her journey after discovering a brain tumor.  Through it all she is positive and grateful and hopeful and my pessimistic self can't seem to believe it.  How is she feeling so great when she has this huge burden?  I try not to complain about life, but I feel stuck in a gloom that I can't shake.  Maybe I am just tired from the burdens this life has given me, but I am ready for easy.  Then I remember the scripture quoting Christ, "I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it."  And I instantly feel like I am failing because I don't want worth it, well I do, but I want a little easy mixed in with the hard.  Thus the ungrateful.  Yes, life isn't easy right now, but it could be worse, and it really isn't that hard.   So, why does it feel so heavy? 

I am not sure when life started feeling too hard.  I am not sure when I started feeling too overwhelmed and tired to feel more joy in my life than stress.  I am not sure when looking around me at the constant undoing of everything I do started to break me.  

I think there are two types of people, those that like to and must make their bed every day and those who don't because it will merely be slept in again a few short hours later.  I'm type number two.  I don't like being type number two.  I want to be type number 1, but I'm simply not.  I want everything I do and all the hard work I put in to last, to stay done and making the bed is like a constant metaphor for life with little kids (lots of little kids).  I had a fun breakdown this week as I walked into what looked like a massive disaster.  Surely, an earthquake or tornado had somehow found its way into my children's rooms. I literally have to avoid my boy's rooms sometimes or I will breakdown from the undoing.  This week it brought me to tears.  I am a very organized person, insomuch that I have to sort my laundry before folding it, and my children simply do not follow suit.  However, when things simply don't stay in my controlled organized state, I want to just give up on them altogether, which just makes it all that much more frustrating and overwhelming.  I don't like to get behind in anything, but at this stage of life, I simply can't keep up.  And so I fall into the type two where instead of getting frustrated at the undoing I just don't want to "do" anymore because there is little to no gratification when everything gets undone so quickly.  It physically hurts my brain and makes me tired when such chaos exists around me.  (Just to clarify, I haven't stopped cleaning my house, although often you can't tell and  it is just causing me far more stress than normal.)

Sadly, I think this has become a bit of a mental and emotional fog for me.  I think I am waiting for life to be undone, so I've stopped making it each morning.  I find myself waiting for the day my husband leaves again, dreading the challenges that brings, that I don't make the most of the days he is here.  Then I spend the days he is gone just surviving so I don't absorb much of the joy that is around me. I trudge through the weekly routine of homework and life waiting for the weekend.   I'm not sure when I became this person, maybe I've always been and I have merely been living in denial.  

To quote Will Smith, I need to start, "wak(ing) up everyday as if on purpose."  Sometimes, this thing called life and motherhood can get redundant.  Sometimes the routine gets to be too much.  Sometimes re-doing the undone can make you feel like a crazy person.  Well at least for me.  So it's time that I start making my bed again, even if it will just be undone again.  It's time for me to find the things I want to wake up on purpose for.  Of course I always want to wake for my children and my husband.  I just want my purpose to be more.  More than cleaning and cooking and laundry.  More than homework.  More than breaking up fights.  More than the undone.  

I wish this wasn't a constant battle, but here I am writing again when I should be sleeping.  Here I am resolving to find more of me than meets the mom label.  Here I am hoping to get out of this overwhelmed rut and find more order and organization so that I can pack some joy into the mundane.  I've found the joy before, I know it's there, and I'm ready for it to be here again.  Everyday.  

Call it a New Years resolution, call it self awareness, whatever it is, I've got to find me in all of this mess we call life before I'm lost in my gloom forever.  I know I'm strong, it's time to let go of the weak in me.  There's something no one tells you about surviving a tragedy, it's very lonely once it's over.  You are carried in so many ways while in the midst of the trauma and the true test is when you're left to stand on your own two feet.  Even God and Angels seem to go quiet.  Although I still believe they are there, it's like when you step back and watch how you're toddler will react after a minor stumble.  You want to see how they handle this fall on their own, to help them grow.  I know God is watching me.  I know the Angels are there.  I'm just not sure if I'm confident in their distance.  I'm just not sure I won't fall too hard to pick up my own pieces with them feeling so far away.  I pray my failures won't stick too long.  I pray my strength will return instead of fade completely.  I pray they won't stay too far for too much longer.  I don't think I'm as strong as they believe.  Tomorrow, however, I will wake as if on purpose and do something that makes me feel joy.