Patience Grasshopper

Anyone who knows anything about me or has seen any of my social media knows that I am constantly on a search to better myself.  My children would probably tell you that I am NOT doing a good job with it.  I am inclined to agree with them.  As much as I try to better myself as a person, I know there is ONE thing that I cannot seem to get under control. That thing is my reaction to any and all stress factors.  And in that reaction usually comes my mouth.  I need a lot of work on my mouth.  I am very, very guilty of snap reactions and I can promise that no one could ever accuse me of being patient. I am not a patient person.  This, unfortunately, is reflected in my everyday life and my relationships with people, though I am considerably more patient with my friends than I am with my family.  I struggle with this greatly.  As I get more involved in my church and on a better path in a lot of other ways, this is one path I can’t seem to stay on.  Believe it or not, I work very hard to try and control this and the guilt is something I feel every single day.  I am very good at justifying my behavior, even when I know I am doing it. Well the kid has now been told 8 times to do something and hasn’t done it.  I just wanted this one little thing to get done and it hasn’t been.  I’m sick of listening to his or her excuses.  They just aren’t moving fast enough (most often in the morning, trying to get out the door).

Patience is a daily struggle. I’ve been tested on it many times and came out with my sanity somewhat intact, so I guess I consider that a win, but it isn’t necessarily a victory.  I have a poster on my wall of the Great Wall of China and under it is the quote by Lao-tzu “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  I know that, better than a lot of people.  My weight loss journey, for example, is certainly a thousand miles. I’m only a little more than half way there and it’s already taken me several years.  Believe me when I say that my impatience has to be violently shoved back down my throat when I meet people who lost twice as much in just a matter of months.  How unfair is that!  But it’s not. It’s not unfair.  Maybe those people were blessed with rapid weight loss, but maybe they don’t have a big (could be beautiful) house like I do or maybe those people were blessed with unexpected money but they don’t have the kind of friends that I have.  Everyone has a story and that is something I do remind myself of when patience takes a hike.  I guess I have improved my patience a little then (who knew!), because years ago I certainly didn’t care about another person’s story.  But overall, my patience is something I seek to change daily.  So be patient with me (the hypocrite) as I try to work on that, and don’t be afraid to give me little nudges to let me know when I am overreacting. I can’t promise that I won’t overreact then to your nudge, but I CAN promise that it will give me food for thought later on.

We can light 'em up, up, up

Life is short. And so worth living.  But are we living it to the fullest?  I know I’m not.  I try to, I really do, but I am not.  There are only a handful of things that I am doing that I really WANT to be doing.  I am hugging my kids and my husband. I am dancing.  I think that really ends the list.  Everything else in my life is far too tight and scheduled and I don’t get the opportunity to kick back and enjoy.  A blog post I read recently talked about the things you save until some unknown time later, like the good candles or lotions or soaps.  I’ve thought about that before.  When is ‘later’?  When will you burn that good candle that Aunt Cindy gave you or use that really nice lotion you just picked up at Bath and Body?  I am guilty of this.  This is how my life seems to go as well.  I save the ‘good’ things for later.  Why?  Why do I do that?  I don’t want to do that. I want to burn the candles now. I want to live life. Now. Not later, not at some unknown time, but now.

This is something that is on my mind at the beginning of nearly every year. How can I laugh more this year?  How can my children and husband laugh more? How can I be a better wife and mother to them? How can we enjoy our time together more? How can we grow closer?  How can I show them faith and build my own?  How can I spend more time with my friends and cultivate those relationships more? How can I bond more with my family? How can I change all of these things in the upcoming year? How can I live life to the fullest this year?  I don’t have the answers.  All I have is my willingness to keep trying.

New Year, New You?

Happy 2015.  It's a brand new year.  Okay, the calendar may say 2015, but let's face it, everything is the same.  I, along with most people, get the sense of being able to start anew, a fresh new year to  begin again.  In truth, I'm not beginning again.  That thing I was upset about on December 31st was still there when the clock struck midnight.  Nothing changed.  The only things that really happen when midnight hits is we will continue to write 2014 for the first 3 months of the year and we will feel like we have just been given a new timeline to accomplish the things we have not accomplished prior to now.  For example, we can now say, by the end of this year, I will lose x-number of pounds, I will do x-hours of charity work or give a charity x-amount of money. All by the end of the year, all by that timeline we now feel we have. I am not going to say I've imposed this "timeline" on myself, but it seems as good as any. In reality, my timeline is 'as soon as possible.'  

The one thing that does happen for me with the changing of the year is that it forces me to reflect on the last year. Was I as kind as I wanted to be? Did I help to create some more good memories for my children? Did I better myself as a person? I can honestly say that this last year I did make more strides toward all of that than I ever have before, BUT I'm still not where I'd hoped to be.  I know I will always be a work in progress, I know I can never be finished, but I had hoped to be a bit better.  I did learn quite a bit in the last year though, which hasn't happened in quite some time. This Christmas, as I was opening gifts, gifts I had personally asked for, I was not excited.  I was just not feeling it.  I was disappointed that there wasn't more family time, I was disappointed that life got so busy that we missed our annual tradition of watching The Polar Express. I was disappointed that we weren't curled up on a couch together watching some cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie or sitting in our church service listening to 3000 people sing Silent Night.  I was disappointed about the lack of intimacy and warmth rather than what gifts I did or didn't receive. That feeling of dissatisfaction and emptiness has been culminating for several years, but it was particularly strong this year. 

That being said, is it a New Year?  Yes.  Are things different because it's a new year?  Nope.  But they will be.  I want to use this time to reconnect to the people I care about and continue working on myself and my faith and my marriage. Always a work in progress.

Changing My Story

In the apartment that I used to share with my family, I would frequently get bored with the rooms and would make my husband rearrange them.  A lot.  Now, in our house, the hubby mounted the TV to the wall as soon as I’d let him, locking it into place.  It pains me a little to not be able to rearrange that room.  I constantly find myself wanting to change things, make them better.  If I move this room that way, then it will look more open, cleaner, efficient, stylish, etc, etc.  I am very much this way with my own life as well.  I am forever rearranging things, changing behaviors and attitudes, trying to make them better, more acceptable, easier, open, cleaner, etc.  I am always striving for more patience, more faith, more energy, more ideas.  I certainly haven’t perfected any one of these yet, but I do have a lot of great ideas.  As each day passes, I am keenly aware of how fast my children are growing.  I am also aware that they are my life and I would take a bullet for any one of them.  I work hard to try and make things better for them, even if it’s something simple like rearranging THEIR rooms (something I also do a lot). 

Someone wise once said, in talking about their own life, “I’m changing my story.”  Well so am I.  I am changing it bit by bit.  

Gathering Around the Table

I recently read Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table by Shauna Niequist.  While I have been a big fan of Shauna’s books, this one is the one that really made me think.  It made me consider what I have going on around the table.  I realized that my table life is both a little sad and a little blessed.  It is sad because my friends and I never spend time there.  We have never been the ‘gathering around the table’ sort (and I think I might actually be the only one with a table big enough to accomplish this).  That makes me sad because I long for summer gatherings and pot lucks.  It’s the kind of life I always wished I had.  But I am also blessed, because every night, I get to sit at the table with my family.  I can lean to my left and give my baby girl a kiss or to my right and hug my slightly older baby girl.  I can listen to them bicker and play with each other.   I can hear about their school days or the newest plot to ‘Shake It Up’.    I love those moments.  But I do wish for more gatherings, more friends, more family.  As Shauna states in her book, we should "stop running from thing to thing to thing, and to sit down at the table, to offer the people you love something humble and nourishing...".  Just the very idea sounds warm and inviting and promising of good times and laughter. As usual, Shauna uses eloquent words to invite you in to her own table with the promise of food and comfort.  She involves you in intimate stories while nourishing your soul and mind.  I highly recommend this book (as well as her other two – Bittersweet and Cold Tangerines).  They are each like a breath of fresh, faithful air.

P.S. Make sure to try out some of the recipes, they are superb!

I Like to Move It, Move It

Another light in the dark for me lately has been exercise.  I recently started P90X.  Now, just a quick background on me.  I am a relatively non-moving person.  I was exercising, or trying to, every day, but it was the same exercise, over and over and over.  Now, I have gone from that to P90X.  If you don’t know, the “X” part of that stands for extreme.  And they are NOT kidding!  Extreme indeed!  But after only 3 days, I found myself really enjoying and a little proud of the few things I actually could get through (as if that was some indication that I might have had some kind of muscle mass before I even started).  On day three, one exercise plan was called Ab Ripper X.  I found that I physically was not able to do these things.  It wasn’t because I wasn’t strong enough or I was too muscularly sore, but because I had actually sprained my ab muscle and didn’t realize it.  Really?  Life’s good way of knocking me down a peg and saying yeah, you aren’t that good.  So grudgingly I took yesterday off of the exercising.  I went shopping with the hubs and then came home and watched some TV while I was bitterly nibbling on cheese, wishing it were a big bowl of ice cream instead.  But tonight I will do my next sequence of exercises.  I might have to modify in order to avoid injuring myself further until this is healed, but I will do it nonetheless (I am excellent at pressing my luck, just ask my mother). 

So now I feel like the ab is healed and I pushed forward.  A couple days after that, Yoga X.  I learned the hard way that my body does NOT do what it used to be able to.  I learned that when I was coming out of a difficult move (a move that was NOT difficult when I was 10) and felt the (giant) muscle in my back go.  Oh that was pain.  I made it the rest of the way through the yoga gingerly however.  I did have the skip the next day’s workout, but not because of the injury, but because I was literally home for one hour so there was no way to get through one and have time to take a shower before the next activity.  So yesterday I moved on to Kenpo X.  THAT was a lot of fun!  I know I looked very sloppy and clumsy and not capable of landing a punch on anything, but it was still fun and I look forward to doing more! 

First ray of light

I am starting this blog for a little positivity.  My original blog, Small Wonders, was started with the hopes of sharing accomplishments and such with the people I love.  As time went on, it became more of an outlet for my own personal verbal vomit.  It may stay that way, I have not decided that yet.  So now I have created my own ‘Light in the the dark’ because even when I am angry and bitter, there is something good happening in my life, whether it’s a quick cuddle from one of my girls or the chance to soak in the tub or an unexpected surprise from my guy, there is always something good and this blog will (hopefully) celebrate those things. 

One thing that always gives me a little light in the dark is my church.  Now this is not to say I am some religious fanatic or I’m going to start preaching anytime you see me.  Most of you know that is not at all the case and when I say my church, I am not talking on a faith end (though that is nice too).  I am talking about the place itself.  I started going there in 4^th grade when my big brother introduced me to it.  I was in small groups, I made friends, I had sleepovers there.  I met my first serious boyfriend there, made a couple lifelong friends there and now I work there.  The place has grown by leaps and bounds since I started attending, but despite all the changes, it still has this smell, this feeling, that hits me as soon as soon I walk in the door.  When I am waiting for a service to start, I can just breathe it in and it instantly calms my nerves.  Sometimes that calm comes with a sadness that I can’t share this feeling with the people I love, but sometimes it just comes with a moment of much-needed peace.  I can never quite put my finger on why it feels that way, but the best way I can describe it is it’s like coming home.  The people I work with, both as a volunteer and on staff, are the best group of people in the world.  They never judge you or look down on you. They accept you as you are and they do so with open arms and warm hearts.  It is rare to see such a great group of people anywhere else.  They truly feel like my extended family.

So there, that is my light in the dark for today.  There will be plenty more to come!