The One Before She Started A Blog.
When God Uses the Ordinary to Begin Something New:
I’ve started to feel a bit like my Kate Spade dishes as of late. The day I brought them home, they filled a certain piece of me with pride. Elegant with bright pops of color. It was as if they understood me, the perfect balance of new adult maturity and youthful playfulness. A 19 year old bride often has to strike that balance to prove herself. One foot in the door as an adult and the other as a youth who still knows how to have a good time. I found a proud place to display them in our humble apartment, a focal point if you will. They were new, shiny, and full of personality, much like their owners.
Just your average 19 year old honeymooners.
Truth be told, I still love them, but the years have definitely taken their toll. The set is no longer complete with a few missing pieces from pregnancy induced clumsiness or dishwasher mishaps. Upon close examination they are striped with various scratches and chips. Some of the color has dulled along with that straight out of the box sparkle. Life has a way of doing that, doesn’t it? You start out shiny and new, full of promise, and somewhere along the way, you can lose pieces of yourself.
While my life is truly wonderful, I occasionally find myself a little worse for the wear. On one hand, I have a husband I adore, children I cherish, and a home I love and yet the person I find myself missing is me. I miss that shiny box feel and the youthful liveliness. It's sometimes as if I am a shell of the person I once was or even the person I could be. On the outside, I see the effects of carrying 9 lb babies. Now, while my body has given me three of the most amazing blessings of my life, I find I haven’t quite gotten over the negative effects it has had on my vanity.
In the same way, I can feel the wear in the deeper, more fragile parts of my heart, worn by life's trials and emotions. What once was talk of wedding plans and honeymoons has now evolved into conversations about parenting challenges and insurance rates. I've stood by loved ones as they struggle with loss, health battles, and the ups and downs of marriage and have walked similar roads myself. The funny thing is that I can look at all of this and recognize, I’m not alone in these experiences. My 19-year-old self would have been unprepared for the life I am currently living, and yet I find that life has not broken me. Instead, it shaped me. My Lord has seen to that. In many ways, I am better because of a lot of these trials, but worn nonetheless.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
I sometimes wonder if I have somehow lost myself in motherhood, albeit the dream I was always striving for. I try my best to care for my family well and yet they always seem to need more than I have to give. Somewhere along the way I must have stopped dancing and became less inclined to nonsensical mischief and easy laughter. I’m not exactly sure when I started recognizing all the reasons to be afraid of an adventure rather than dreaming of all the reasons to take one. While my husband is not as in tune with his emotions, I can see the wear in his eyes. A tiredness that doesn’t always go away with a good night's sleep.
We love each other and we love our babies and we love our life, but I can almost guarantee he misses himself as much as I miss me. How does one even get to the point of losing said self? We must have been so very concerned with making sure we didn’t lose any of the other important things to not notice our very selves slipping away, but this isn’t the end of the story. We are 30 years old. We have our whole life ahead of us and I do not plan to stand idly by as a shadow of what I could actually be.
I want to laugh and be obnoxious and write funny stories and play basketball on the driveway. I want to be excited about starting a new day with my entourage of little people. I want to date my husband. I want to travel even if that means going to the neighboring town for a bite to eat at a new restaurant. I want to dive into the Word and feel the all consuming presence of the Lord in my life. I want to serve with my husband and share a mutual love for ministry. I want to use my brain that I once thought was smart. I want to solve problems and learn something new. I want to feel confident in my purpose and at peace within the mundane.
Luckily for me, although I may share quite a bit in common with those silly dishes, I have a choice in the way I allow life to mold me. I may be sufficiently marked with dents and chips and stretchmarks, but given the opportunity they could make me a better me. I have a chance to find my lost self and introduce her to the wear that has the potential to create something timeless. A piece of originality and value. My old self may have been a bit less guarded, more optimistic, and innocent, but she was also less kind and more selfish. She hadn’t experienced how powerful God feels when life falls apart. She had yet to see the way He can bring beauty from the darkest ashes. The love for the Lord and your spouse and your children deepens and grows in fire to produce something so much richer than the love you felt once before. However, although I see the good things that have happened in me, I am ready to pair that with some of the energy, fun, and joyfulness of my youth. My family would be better as a result of it. My ministry would benefit as a result of it. I would be made better because of it. Afterall, I like the person the Lord created and intended for me to be and I’m done with allowing life to pass without truly getting to know her.
So here is to this next adventure… the scariest of kinds. Without knowing what exactly it looks like or where it will lead, I know that words carry power and I seem to be flush with many of them. I intend to find out where they can take me and if they will lead me back to the pieces of me I miss so dearly. If you find yourself in a similar boat today, join me on this adventure of finding sunshine in the mundane and let's become the us we were always created to be.
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
