I picked up my Bountiful Basket yesterday morning and it had kale in it! As soon as I laid eyes on it, I started craving this soup I used to make with kale, kielbasa, cannelloni and tortellini in it. So tonight I set about to fulfill my craving. The smell of onion, garlic and thyme filled my kitchen. My cutting board was loaded up with green, leafy kale. Sausage sizzled and popped in the bottom of my pot as it mingled with other flavors. I had butter and eggs coming to room temperature on the counter to make cookies afterwards. Then Justin called to say he was on his way home after being gone most of the week at an event. It just felt right.
What it felt like was normal; which is a fleeting feeling for me as of late. And by as of late I mean since about 2007. I have had this struggle over the past several years, amidst life events and craziness, to feel normal. To feel like me. To feel like the happenings of my day have anything to do with me or my interests. To take the time to feel inspired, even if it is just from the smells of garlic, onion and thyme sizzling in a pot, or think about something besides time management and crisis prevention.
In my mind I always revert back to when I feel like I last "had it together". This unfair standard I hold myself to because honestly, my life was different then. I had two children instead of four, (all of which my world would not be complete without), my full-time job was being a mother and running a home instead of working a full-time job AND being a mother and running a home. Life had not yet made me face some of my scariest fears and I had the ignorance of youth on my side.
I was talking to my dear friend Angie, whom I just love, after church today. She asked me how I was doing and said she had been thinking about me. I told her I felt like I was kind of coming out of a valley I had been in mentally, but was doing okay. She shared with me her own thoughts and struggles on motherhood, life, spirituality and keeping it together. I was so grateful for those big, blue-green eyes staring back at me with nothing but pure honesty and realness filling them to the brim.
I have found that people love for you to see their best, but it takes a true friend to honestly share their struggles to help you feel and see, no matter who you used to be, that you are still "normal". That it is going to be okay and that even if recapturing our ideal seems a long distant destination, it's not a road we travel alone. Even when it feels like you are the only one who has lost their footing on the gerbil wheel of life and are being thrown about mercilessly on it. Others are tha-thunking around right on with you, battling their own struggles or losses.
My goal is to work towards being at peace with the pace of my life. To be more deliberate about taking the time to connect with me. To let things go. To stop worrying so much about making sure I don't disappoint anyone in the fifty million different aspects of my life. To be okay with not being everything to everyone. But to have the courage to keep showing up and trying.
My goal is for my mental ideal to not be some unachievable point in history, but wherever I am currently at in life. To measure myself by who I am now and the victories I am achieving currently. Even if they are as small as not throwing a DiGiorno in the oven for dinner.
To embrace being a work in progress and taking things one day at a time.
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