Random

Do you ever sit and stare?

/ Jaimie / 2 Comments

It’s been a week! I got sick, probably just a severe cold or flu, but it banned me from humanity in the current Covid climate, despite my negative test results. So I tried to rest, amidst my endless household to do list and everything I fight for and against on the daily. I often wonder if anyone could possibly know what the machinations of my daily life are…then I settle into a firm, “no” and go to bed.

So a week home of sickness, from work, has brought WAY too much time for watching home improvement shows and realizing my inadequacies. Maybe my organization style is actually, “modern mother seeking to survive life with chaos”? Who knows, but I don’t think I fit the mold. So I await the HGTV genie crew to come in and save me from myself and make my house a palace, but I think I’ll be waiting a long time.

And at the end of the day, it’s me….it rests on my shoulders to make light from darkness and order from chaos. I don’t think that I’m equipped and I know I won’t be gracing the world with appearances on (insert home show here.com), but I know that this is my life…this is my rodeo and I will fight to make it beautiful!

We can strive for HGTV “perfect” or we can rest in “our best” and if I have to choose, my instinct goes to “perfect” while my reality goes to “just breathe”. I may not be perfect, but God gave me these kids and He knows best. So I need to learn to suck it up and deal and fight another day. I am me. I am trying. I am who I’m meant to be this is me. (Okay got carried away and quoted a song, but somewhere someone was singing it! Or maybe that was just me) Either way, we are human, trying to get through the daily. We are warriors. Represent! Or am I the only one staring blankly at the end of the night? I hope I’m not alone! I sit and stare at the clock until it swallows me whole and then regret knowing the definition of time.

365 Days

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Today marks 365 days around the sun since you joined us here. I remember the call. You were gone. I miss you more than I can say but I know it’s okay (I swear I didn’t mean for that to rhyme).

In my heart, I see clearly the serenity of the place you last walked. In my head, I want to call you and tell you about my day, my week, the weather, the sound my car is making, the dinner I cooked tonight…the stupid, little things.

I miss you! I wish you were here to run home to. I wish you were here to remind me it’s all okay. But I’ll have to wait until we meet again. “Remember who you are”, comes to mind.

I hope this year has been your best! I hope you’ve done your “special daddy dance” (which I demonstrate for my kids often) around the streets of heaven. I hope you’ve looked down on us and smiled. I smile for you daily!

One year, 365 days and everything has changed and everything is the same. Without you…

A hole in the center filled with light.

I miss you Daddy but I know it’s alright. (Oops with the rhyming again…whatever…I’m leaving it.)

On Six and Legacy

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I remember six.

What it was to go down to my grandfather’s basement and sing at the top of my lungs while he played guitar.

I remember chords and burning and the life and longing that only comes with a great song.

I remember faces beaming and proud looks screaming “legacy”. I remember the look in his eye…the song in his fingers….the bliss of a guitar fully freed.

I remember.

Tonight my five year old wrote a song. I haven’t taught him the language of music yet. I haven’t showed him. Yet he brings me this.

I’m transported back in time to notes played freely and voices ringing loudly…to no inhibitions. Just me and my voice and the voice of one who believed in me.

And I wonder…can legacy exist when no one is looking?

But I am looking. I remember. So tonight I stare at the random notes written on unseen bar.

I flail at the night and remember who I am. And in that, I find my children and see the light.

It travels freely through the darkness, unhindered.

Because legacy is greater than us. It sweeps through the fragments of the soul and finds a home in the unhindered.

So tonight I write, I dream, I awake in the morning in memory and hope. Because the future is brighter and God is working.

I am a puzzle piece groping for truth. I hold life and I, only, know how to let it out with word and song so I keep going.

Light and life are worth the effort.

Who are you?

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Do you ever think about who’s out there listening

I write this blog, throw these ideas into the air

But I’ll never know who hears them.

Who sees beyond the void…

I think of the words that have changed my life

The moments I stumbled across something that shook me to my soul.

There are words I’ve read that laced up my fighting boots to endure another day.

There are songs I’ve heard that became my anthem for a time.

There is greatness in the smallest of phrases that gave me the strength to keep going.

So who are you dear friend, that I’ve probably never met?

Are there melodies playing in your heart, singing sweetness and moving your feet to the rhythm of tomorrow?

Are there words hanging in the air around you waiting to be plucked, like fruit from the vine to nourish you as you march forward?

Do you know you are loved?

Can you see the romance?

The holy one calling softly, through the noise to find your ears and whisper His promise.

Can you see it?

Can I help?

I will never know. But I’ll continue to throw some words into the void to remind you.

You are seen. You are valuable. You have been created for purpose.

Listen carefully until you hear it.

Listening

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The dark can be so daunting

The light can seem so dim

Still, from heaven, you are calling.

Can I hear your voice again?

No fear in death or life, though all of hell presses in

Your voice, the roaring lion, shatters mountains and hangs on the wind.

Still small voice, speak to me. I’m listening!





Missing

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Tomorrow is a glass half full.

Tonight is a memory.

I exhale with baited breath to find myself on my knees.

And I know it’s “worth it” if I die another day.

And I know there’s purpose in the things I choose not to say.

But it was you and me against the world until you were gone.

Now it’s me and me to fight alone and I’ll sing some lonely song. Maybe I should just face the truth that you’re gone.

Maybe I was the “missing one” all along.

Unhinged

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I sit in silence for hours and days while the world passes by unhinged. I watch the clock dismantle and in haze because time no longer makes sense.

Then I breathe and remember that today will be gone in an instant and tomorrow will either repeat the same or be glorious.

Tonight I choose the latter.

Optimism

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I don’t want to be here. This place, my soul hates, this void of existence….but here I am. People talk from the outside about who I should be, who I am, the next moves I should make in this existence that is my life. What do they know?

This place is a place of pain, of heartache and grief. No one else knows the ache. Similar stories are of no relevance here. This moment is mine and I am alone in it.

So a word of advice from the depths of a bleeding soul…don’t say you understand. Don’t say it’s okay. Don’t try to minimize or trivialize. Just be there. A person with skin on who actually cares is all that’s required.

Grief takes many forms and actualizes for many reasons. You probably can’t fully understand so be someone to lean on. Empathy takes many forms. At the end of the day, we’re all different. We’ve had different histories, different struggles. What feels one way to you may feel entirely different to me.

Embrace the difference. Hold in your hand the willingness to not understand but care anyway. Humanity brings its own version of struggle and wholeness. Don’t try to assess mine based on yours. Just be there.

Tomorrow will be better and even if it’s not, life goes on. We grow. We learn. We change. Tonight I’m not settling. Tomorrow I may be a pool of self loathing. The next day, I might be a warrior. We are human.

God sees. He knows. He heals. He helps us grow. Don’t shirk from the hard things. Don’t minimize them in others. Be kind. Bring truth. Love without abandon. And just like that the world is a better place.

Sincerely, a broken hearted optimist.

Fear is a Terrible Driver

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It’s been a hard year. It seems like we’ve all said that so many times now, it’s become an anecdote. The reasons for its sting are different for everyone. I wish for me, it were simply the work of a pandemic and its’ resulting madness, but it’s been so much more than that. The darkness of all the broken parts of my story threatened to undo all of me, everything I’ve built, and the woman I’ve become. I am so grateful for the light I’ve found in spite of it, that lifts me.

The hand of God still reaches for me. His fingers lightly nudging the stony parts of my heart until it beats again with softness. I am slowly ambling my way out of the deep into the deeper, truer, reasonableness that is faith.

I read a quote this morning from Ann Voskamp, “He who is driven by fear delays the comfort of God.” I can see it so clearly now. I lost sight of truth for a time…of all the wonder and goodness. I let fear take the wheel and drive. It drove me in circles in a vacuum of sorts. I was unable to find the air that fear had stolen from me. I gave it away. I was just along for the ride until I remembered it’s my car and took back the keys.

Now the comforter is near, wrapping me up once again. He never left but I had kicked Him off when the room got too hot. I forgot that He alone is enough. Isn’t remembering the things we too often forget, one of the greatest things in life?

The hard stuff can either make us hard or draw us to Him. Choose wisely and don’t let fear anywhere near your car.

The Light

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When the light turns on, the darkness becomes inconsequential. The glory appears in the brilliance of the light. It’s all in your perspective.

I confess, I’ve been lost in the shadows for awhile. I can’t explain why I let the light hide. I can’t explain why I couldn’t find it, but I lost track of it somehow. I let my pen fall silent. The same pen, I’ve so often prayed to “be a pen in the hand of a ready writer”, as the Psalmist says (Psalm 45:1), I tucked away deep inside of myself. I soaked it in tears. I allowed my story to become a side plot in someone else’s book.

I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t know that we ever really possess that capability. We’re all walking through our journeys with different points of reference, different experiences, different packs strapped to our backs carrying the remnants of yesterday’s climb. That’s where empathy comes in. When our understanding falters, we can choose to hear. We can choose to dig deep with compassion and find the eternal spark in each other. The humanity veiling divine destiny in another person can lead us to love deeply even when we don’t get it. But I digress.

I feel like I’ve, too often, used the phrase, “It’s been a hard season.” It’s a great Christian cliché to hide behind. Mainly, because this time, I’m sick of it. I don’t want to say it all again. I don’t want to admit that I’ve been wandering around in the desert for forty years in the same shoes. Now I’m realizing that maybe I needed the desert to find the sun.

If the eye is the lamp of the body (Matthew 6:22) and Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12), and He lives in me, shouldn’t I be seeing things through His perspective and not my own limited one? Shouldn’t I be shining the same light to others instead of closing my eyes tight and thinking if I don’t look, maybe it will all disappear? Shouldn’t I be holding my head high in the middle of the struggles, knowing that He’s got me?

Maybe I can stand again, pull up my socks, lace up my boots, and continue walking. Maybe I need to stop and rest and breathe in the moments that make me human. Maybe I need to trust. I am surrounded by light.

So I throw these words into the air defying the silence. They may not mean anything to you, but to me, they mean I’m alive. To me, they mean I’m done wandering. To me they mean, I will fight for myself, strengthened in weakness, until I become who I really am. To me, that’s enough.