Heritage Makers Yearbook

As I sit here in my living room, listening to my three boys playing Lego Star Wars on their computers, I am watching snow blowing and whirling outside my window. Again. Every time I think spring has arrived, my hopes are dashed by the arrival of another tempest.

These storms seem to mirror the ones within my heart. I spent last night in a complete dither. I allowed myself to get horribly, hysterically, out-of-proportionally upset about a seemingly small thing. You know how sometimes it only takes one small trigger to set off a maelstrom of emotion? Releasing weeks or months or years of frustrations or hurts? These outbursts make me feel like a completely ridiculous, hysterical woman. They make me feel like a failure.

I absolutely loathe being that woman. I try to deal with things as they come along and congratulate myself on being so in touch with my emotions and keeping things fresh and renewed. I like to think that I am mature enough that I don't allow past hurts to colour my present. I am a grown-up, don't you know? I am beyond that sort of thing. Most of the time.

I was hurt last night. I felt neglected and that I was viewed as being unworthy of the love and affection I so craved. This isn't a new feeling, but one that comes and goes with circumstance and resolve. At the time I wanted to feel justified in my hurt, so my heart dug deep to remember all the other times those feelings surfaced. It wasn't that hard to do. It fueled my despair and created a desire to lash out and throw barbs poisoned with remembrances of every slight I had received.

I am ashamed. I made the entire situation impossible. Impossible for me to come out of unscathed. I manufactured a situation where I was sure to be hurt in the same way again, 'proving' that I was right, that I was unloved. Lately I seem to go down this path and be unable to stop myself, my heart is black and blue within my chest and I seem intent on pushing on the bruises, instead of letting love bathe them and heal them.

I realize that a huge part of my extreme emotions are hormonally fueled. I am particularly sensitive to my hormonal fluctuations. I am knocked insensible by them every menstrual cycle and during and after every pregnancy. Maybe that is why I become practically hysterical over some seemingly small thing and am so overwhelmed by circumstance and life.

But I think also that this is a time of great change in our lives and I have always been resistant to change. I realize with my head that the future holds wonderful things, but going through the present and letting go of the past is proving more difficult (although easier in some ways) than I imagined. Parts of me want to hold onto the past, good and the bad as well. But the future cannot come to fruition without letting go. Without forgiving myself my missteps big and small, what should have or could have been. The time for making those choices has past, they were made and now I am here. I have new choices to make, new adventures to embark upon, new dreams to dream and some old dreams to reawaken.

Today I feel amazingly content and calm. When I am feeling hurt I have the need to hang onto that and not let everyone off too easy. I want it to be known that I won't be tread upon any longer. I seem to think that if I forgive too easily, even when the hurt is really my own fault, the other person will feel that it is okay to repeat it.

Well, once I was able to relax a bit this morning and let go and even give a bit of love, I felt so amazingly better. I have been able to just be present to my babies and relish every cuddle and kiss, every word spoken by beautiful little lips, every storybook brought to me by eager hands and ears.

Even with a storm raging outside I feel content in this moment. I want the spring to come, I eagerly await its warmth and promise, but with my Savior's help I can be content even in the middle of a tempest.

And contentment is not something that I have experienced much in my life, I have never allowed it. I do think that I believed contentment to be equal to settling. And settling equal to defeat. And I do not want to settle, I want to strive, I want to soar.
I have always had so many aspirations swirling around in my breast and have always been a bit afraid to let them out into the sunshine to look at them too closely. What if they never come to fruition? What if I try and fail? What if it is impossible? What if I am looked upon with laughter or pity or scorn? What if my partner won't dream with me? What if I am just not good enough? What if I am not enough?
I am not enough. Only God is enough. And he didn't give me a heart filled with dreams so that I can talk myself out of dreaming them and making plans to make them come true. He didn't give me a partner who shared my dreams at one point and then would never dream them with me again. The time may not be now for many of my hopes and aspirations, but the time I am in is now.
I have many good things in my life right now, I have a God-given purpose to fulfill right now. I can be content here and now in fulfilling my purpose to the best of my ability through him. And to make plans for the future without despair and fear of failure. He gives me hope and a place. I am here now. I can be content here, I really can. Why have I not seen this before?

I am so thankful for a place where I can let my heart and mind wander and race, where I can just hammer it all out on my keyboard and watch it unfold before me. It is often so much easier to see through a thing when you can write it all down and follow each thought through. Writing makes it so much easier to be logical somehow, often my head is so clouded with emotion that I can't follow my own thoughts, I just stop thinking.
I keep thinking that one day I will write posts with a plan and purpose, that I will read and edit and make them all logical and grammatically correct, but for now I will keep recording my thoughts and hope that they are not too difficult to follow. And I will one day look back upon my writings and see what a silly girl I was once but how that girl was growing and moving towards something better. Sometimes racing, sometimes crawling, but slowly and surely becoming the woman that God intended her to be.