It’s a refuge for my weary head – the one with the spinning wheels and the constant babbling and the overthinking. I am myself in these words. I am becoming in these words. I am who I’d like to be in these words.
I am less me in these words, too. A little less clumsy than the 3D version. A little more refined (the way the words are placed, that is).
In conversation I often find myself apologizing for what I cannot articulate. “Ugh. I can’t put the words to the meaning. I’m sorry.” But there are few apologies here because if you can’t catch my drift here – in this, the river of my heart, the outpouring of my soul’s longing and hope, the place where letters and punctuation dance together to form Expression – than the current is probably dead. Or just too slow or too fast, but it is not unsaid. Here I don’t feel tangled. I don’t feel muted by my inability. Here, if I am misunderstood it is because I am misunderstood. Understand? 😉
These are the wings God gave me. I don’t really do resolutions, but in this time of societal contemplation over Starting Fresh, I cannot help but reexamine, too. I want to dedicate more to this. More time and more energy to something I have known for 20 years is… “my thing.”
I want to be truer in other areas, too. Maybe it’s approaching 30, but I have a kind of “over it” attitude toward trying to be what other people think is good or right (that doesn’t mean I’m closed to counsel – oh gosh, no). I want to be a fitting Daughter to an awe-some God who made Himself our friend. That is simple enough. I don’t want to be the “right” kind of wife and miss being the one Gabe needs. Or the “right” kind of mother and squander this precious, fleeting time. I want to be the wife and mother God looks at and smiles over. I want Him to know how damn grateful I am for this. I want that to be what my children remember, what my husband comes home to.
And I want to work on using the gifts and skills God gave me (I think we call them “talents” in churchyland) better, too. I have been rethinking the photography stuff and getting really excited about another direction. I want to get down to the things that make me feel like I’m doing something worthy here on this planet with this limited time. I have enjoyed almost every shoot, but there are certain things that get my heart pounding and my spirit soaring and I want to chase those things.
Am I describing a “quarter-life-crisis?” I heard that was a thing recently. If so I’m kind of digging it!
So here is to pursuing your wings. Let me be your Jiminy Cricket for a second and say Do It. Do that thing(s) that wake up your soul. Use the New Year as an excuse to plunge into your world and let it splash onto the rest of us. God makes every butterfly’s wings different. Butterflies. They live for a month. Don’t you think we should take a look at how He made ours?
What about you? What’s your thing?