This is just temporary

  

     Before bed last night, I felt I had a moment of clarity - so much of my life is out of my control and I'm feeling a little lost and confused. Due to some big changes that are amidst in my life, I have been eating emotionally and gained some weight over the last couple of months. I'm the kind of gal who eats when I'm stressed, bored, fearful, or sometimes just because. This caught up with me and I've found myself pretty unhappy with my body. I've spent the better part of the last 2 weeks feeling awful, being very mean to myself, cursing my bad habits and weakness with food as pair after pair of pants refused to fit. There seems to be nothing worse at the moment then when you are already feeling down and stressed and zero pairs of your "real pants" (aka not yoga or jogging pants) fit!
    So this supposed moment of clarity hit me last night when I realized that maybe I can control what I put in my body and how much I move it since I can't control or predict other areas of my life that seem out of reach (like the status of my marriage, my imminent return to work after being a stay-at-home mom for 6+ years, where my kids will go to school, where I'll be living). Since I can't control those things, then surely I can control my own body - right? I set a plan of what I'd eat the next day, how I'd work out and which workout I'd do, and even wrote myself a little loving and inspirational note to kick some butt.
   Fast forward a few hours and it is 4:45am and my energetic son has awoken me, insisting I get up and go to the living room with him. This comes after a late bedtime as I like/need to take advantage of the quiet time after the kids go to bed or else I don't get any time for me, and a 2am interruption by said son who had a terrible dream about ladybugs. I was not happy, not ready to eat the appropriate foods in the appropriate portions, and I was definitely not going to be working out anytime soon. All I wanted was to climb back into my warm bed that I seem to never spend enough time in. My head ached, my back and hips were sore from inadequate rest, my mood was low and dark, and my will power was shot.
     I spent the first couple of hours of my day in this low place but then lightness came - not in the form of setting up another diet shift and regimented workout routine that I'd likely fail to stick with yet again, but in the form of acceptance that this is where I'm at right now. This is just temporary. I gained weight, yup it's true. I accept it. Honestly, I'm happy it wasn't more than this and I'm even happier that I'm unhappy with the weight gain. If I'm unhappy, then likely, in the near future, I will do something about it. I accept that I am not a size 6, or 8, or heck, even a 10 right now. I do not look like a lot of my beautiful friends who seem to have more will power, energy and commitment than I have at the present moment. But I'm not supposed to. I'm just supposed to be me.
     Thinking about this reminds me of the clever saying that we plan and God laughs. I feel this is very true when it comes to motherhood. We might have a plan for how our mornings will unfold and all the things we'll get done...but then life happens. Kids wake you up too early, start fighting with one another and seem to whine all day. You wake up to a gloomy rainy day and your energy vanishes. You wake up to a sick kid who needs your attention more than the treadmill. Or you find yourself full of energy and a plan and then life sends you a really hard and fast message to just slow down.
      I feel this is what happened to me. Life sent me a message, one I didn't know I needed to hear. One I'm still figuring out why I needed to hear it...but I'm starting to listen. I'm starting to listen to myself, to God, to the inner knowing of why I'm here and what is most important. While wearing a size 6 really would make me happy, it won't solve my problems that need to tended to. What I need more than anything else is to make time for myself, take care of myself and my family, and live a simple life of servitude. Easier said than done, but I'm going to start with step 1 - make time for myself.
     I like working out, I like doing yoga, and I like cooking and eating whole, healthy foods. Of course, I also like to indulge in the not-so-healthy foods while I veg and watch netflix:) I like room and flux in my days to do what I am feeling like doing at that moment. I don't like regimented programs or sticking to a hard and fast schedule. I feel like I need to strike a balance here because working on me will involve some sort of rhythmic schedule. So step 1 is finding a responsible, loving and affordable sitter who can help me get out of the house to workout or just have some "me time" to recoup. This time, to reset, is vital for me as I'm no good to anyone if I don't care for me first. And I really want to be of service for others.
     So I've got a new plan for today. It involves working on me, giving to me, first and that feels good. I know that this weight is just temporary. I know that these feelings of feeling lost and confused about life are also just temporary. I know that if I don't let go of blame and shame I won't get anywhere. I also know that all of this is part of some grander plan that seems crazy at the moment. All I can really control is what I do in this moment. So, in this moment, I'm going to take the time to look in the mirror, see myself just as I am and tell myself, "I am beautiful." Go on, you do it too. 

Hidden Blessings

     As a tired, busy mama of three kids, six years and under, who often finds herself out of the present moment, it is easy for me to get caught up in what’s going wrong, what I’m not able to do, and how tough parenthood is. In these moments, I admit that sometimes life gets the best of me. Given all that life has handed me in the past two months, it would be understandable to throw in the towel, turn on the TV, and let the kids run amok (more to come on that in a bit). Yet, then a blessing occurs, a tiny miracle happens, and my perspective shifts from what I don’t have and what is “wrong” with my life to what I have right in front of me and all that God has blessed me with. It isn’t a picture-perfect life, but rather a perfectly imperfect one.
     In those moments my thoughts shift from “me” to “them” and I see my three beautiful angels in their truest sense – the little angels that not so long ago looked down from those heavenly clouds, pointed their sweet chubby fingers at me and said, “I pick her!”  This belief, that these purely amazing, yet crazy and tiring little beings looked down at an immense crowd of women, pushed the others aside and chose me to hold their growing bodies in mine, to deliver and guide them in this beautiful and cruel world blows me away.
     These shifts happen so subtly, so seemingly out-of-the-blue, and they continue to warm my heart each time and help me grow. Like this morning, when we were eating a late breakfast and I was critiquing myself for allowing them to watch a movie since I was exhausted after a hard night’s sleep and early rising, a shift happened. Something, someone helped me get out of my head and see my youngest daughter, Adella, now 3-½ years old, and notice how beautiful she is, how lovely her big eyes are, how much she has grown and I’m struck with awe of her. It almost brings me to tears. Or when I am just desperate to get housekeeping done and don’t want to be interrupted, my son, Lincoln, well, interrupts me, and tells me an amazing story to go along with his creative pictures of monsters and dragons and knights. I take a minute, set down my broom and dustpan and wonder how on earth these little creatures got so big. I reflect on how they came out of me, so tiny and needy, yet so strong and so already “themselves.”
     These hidden blessings come in another form too, one that is a bit dustier and grimier and harder to see. A couple of months ago, our lives took a turn I wasn’t prepared for that really shook up our home. For sake of privacy, I will keep the details to myself, but let’s just say life was really topsy turvy for a bit and I’m aware that there are more changes soon to come. Through this journey, I have seen myself fall hard and fail. I continue to make mistakes all the time, some days more than others. I feel awful in these times and I regret ways of talking or acting. But then I get back up, each and every time, and I apologize for my actions or words. I commit to trying harder while knowing that I’m going to fall again, and I’m going to have to get back up again and again. I find the bits of good hidden in these hard times. I find my strength. I reassess what is important and what I can let go of.      At the end of the day, I know I’m a good mom – albeit a messy and chaotic one – because I stay, I show up, I keep trying. My kids chose me and they chose each other. That belief keeps me going and trying and showing up each day.
     A good friend, my husband, God, and life guided me to LifeWays. The instructors taught me some of the indications of Rudolf Steiner and the one that sticks with me the most these days is how we see our lives from the heavens and choose our parents because of what we need to learn and accomplish in this life. Steiner wrote, “A soul on its way to incarnation knows, for example, that it will need a certain kind of education for its next earthly life, a certain kind of knowledge, which it must acquire at an early age. Now it realizes: yes, there and then I will be able to gain such knowledge” (excerpt from Unbornness, by Peter Selg). This idea that I saw my life unfold, that each of my kids saw theirs, and that we all chose each other not in spite of it, but because of what this life will teach us astonishes me. It has kept me going in some dark and seemingly hopeless moments. I am so thankful for this knowledge.
     In this season of going within and facing our inner work, and on the eve of Thanksgiving, I find both fear and peace lay within me. Fear spikes at times when I think of all the work I have yet to accomplish here on Earth, but it also seems to fade at times and in its place, I find a little peace. Peace seems to arrive in fleeting bits, but it makes room ever so slowly for hope. The peace is knowing that even when I wonder why life has to be so hard, an inner, deeper voice tells me I’m right where I need to be, that light will come again, and my work isn’t yet to come, it’s already being done each time I choose to show up. Peace comes in knowing there is no “right” way to live, to parent, to be a wife, to be, to look. The only thing we need to do is try hard and work at serving others. I’m sincerely thankful for all the people who showed up and continue to serve me – my own parents, my husband, my friend, my kids, my teachers in LifeWays.
     Happy Thanksgiving to you all – may we all be able to see our daily hidden blessings.