April 20th, 2022
I want to write more. Writing is just thinking, basically. It’s a little more challenging and probably a little more important to me right now because it requires organizing my thoughts instead of stringing them together in my head with the word “like.”
I want to be intentional with my thoughts and words. I know what I think about shapes my worldview and has a profound affect on my daily life. My thoughts are the difference between a train-wreck of a Tuesday between the dirty diapers, load of dishes, and ever piling laundry. Like seriously, what is with the laundry? or a sweet day of joy because I have the privilege of loving the babies God gave me, I have the opportunity to stay home and be the person feeding them, reading to them, doing the ordinary things that make up a life. I love - have learned to love - those things.
I wondered often as a teenager when my life would begin. I kept thinking it was just around the corner, just beyond that next big thing that would happen to me. You know how the movies we all watched growing up have the moment, then it ends with dramatic music and a beautiful montage of the person living their dream… ahhh, everything’s right, real life, the good life happened to them. No more ordinary, just magic.
Do you hear it? I hear it now. The lie I was believing that the magic wouldn’t be in, couldn’t be in, the ordinary, now.
But life isn’t really like that. In fact, it’s so obvious to me now that the magic that I thought was someday, has always been here, I just was looking over my shoulder or too far into the future to notice what was happening in front of my eyes.
The person I’m becoming is just the person I am today plus the decisions I make between now and tomorrow. The many many times I’ve fallen into the someday trap, I’ve done things like putting off tasks, decisions, life til tomorrow. Because I could. Because my moment hadn’t happened. Because there wasn’t magic or a reason to do the right things, right now. This wasn’t really my life, not yet.
Thankfully through mentors, mostly writers, people I’ve never met, will probably never meet, I was nudged, woken up. Here, now, it’s happening, it’s beautiful, if you’ll pay attention, be present. This is your life. It’s not going to happen, it IS happening.
So how do I want to feel about it? I want to feel joy, I want to feel peace, I want to be the wife that dances in the kitchen, the mom that plays imaginative games with her toddlers, the woman who takes time to clean the house on Sunday’s because it makes all of our weeks better when we start off fresh.
I want to live now. For years I’ve thought about the garden I wanted to start. It felt like the thing the next version of me would do, it took me so long to finally decide I am that person, now. I feel a bit silly even writing about it, I’m probably 6 weeks into my journey and have grown exactly zero things.
My flowers are still seedlings, my vegetables were just planted, most of them still doing their work under the surface of the soil. But I can’t help but talk about it makes me feel. Because beginning this work has made me have to cultivate new things in my heart.
Gardening, here, for me, is growing more than food and flowers. I’m growing presence and patience, willingness to do work that doesn’t yield quick results. I’ve had to pay attention and tune into the weather, learn about and tend to soil, get my hands dirty, literally.
All things I’ve always wanted for myself, but for some reason I thought I had to become that person, to be… that person. Well, I’m realizing right now that might not make sense, so so much for using writing to clarify thought.
What I’m saying is, I thought someday I’d be that person, then I’d start. But instead, I had to start. And now I’m growing those things in myself.
Cheers to living now. I hope you go out today and do that. Show up in your ordinary. Begin the thing you’ve always imagined would be someday.
