All part of the dance.

Our toddler, now 3, LOVES to dance. Much of her dancing consists of impromptu, brief interludes around the house, but every couple of days she expects us to sit down on the sofa while she takes to her “stage” (really just the archway between the dining room and living room). We put on some music and she treats us to a performance, often complete with costumes and props.

Of course, because she has just turned 3, she is also prone to being what we affectionately call “stumbly.” When not dancing, she runs everywhere she goes. Several times a day we hear loud thumps as she faceplants en route to her next destination. So, when she is putting on her dance performances, she is very likely to fall down during the routine. Many, many times. 

What’s remarkable about this is that every time she falls, she gets up quick, recovers her composure, and says cheerfully: “That was part of my dance.” Then returns to dancing unphased. Sometimes she even repeats the blunder a few times to make sure that we, her audience, truly believe that the whole thing was planned all along.

I love this more than words can say.

Because I have an older daughter too, moving into her tween years, I know how easily the experiences of daily life can erode this confidence and resilience as girls get older. Doubt and worry creep in, self-esteem wavers, and soon the dancer (or the writer, or the artist, or the singer, or the soccer player) starts to close in on herself. To curb her own innate, glorious, unabashed creative spirit. To see each stumble as a symbol of inadequacy. To begin to think that when she falls, she fails.

Oh, my dear little dancers.

I hope that my little one her resilient nature. I want her to always spring up, ready to dance again. Yet, I know as the dance gets harder and the audience grows to include people other than her loving parents, she will falter sometimes. I hope she can keep, tucked away in the corner of her heart, the spirit of “That was part of my dance,” a reserve that she can tap back into when she needs it later.

I hope, also, that as my tween grows she can find that part of herself again and use it to fuel her own fire. And heck… I want to remember and relive the days where I was an intrepid dancer. I myself need to remember that a fall is not a failure, that a stumble is not a stopping point. 

Maybe you do, too.  

Just love.

At the end of his life, my dad became so sick over the course of a few weeks that he was unable to talk. Unable to think. Barely able to move.

Yet in those final days and hours, I found that if I just sat by him, just breathed by him, if we just... were... together, there was a part of him that was not gone. There was still a relationship there, still communication between us. There was still love.

Our love created a connection that was tangible, that filled the room when words and gestures couldn't.

I've been thinking about this a lot this week, and I figure that once we strip everything else away...

Once we recognize that damn near everything else in this life is just window dressing...

...that this is the essence of what it means to be alive, what it means to connect with each other here on Earth.

It is our purpose and the light to our path.

I miss my dad terribly, but I feel so thankful to have had that brief time with him. It was the purest and the best time we ever had together. No fear of saying the wrong thing, no awkward pauses, no distance.

Just love.

Fear, Faith and the "Courageous" Movement.

Work, family, house, travel - these are all the horses on the carousel that is my life right now. Sometimes it's fun; often I feel dizzy and a little sick.

Lately I've been grappling with a spike in my anxiety and stress. This means in addition to being anxious about failing in the first place, I've got the added joy of feeling like a failure because I am so anxious all the time. I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to will away my anxiety, and kicking myself when I can't manage that feat. This, of course, creates more anxiety. The carousel keeps spinning.

I'm a person of faith, so I've tried lately to turn to my faith for comfort, but there has been something grating at me. Something nagging. Something not right. Every time I read that devotional or that Bible verse, I feel a sense that it's just adding to the weight, creating more of a burden instead of lifting it. And this has pained me greatly - the fact that turning to my faith, which normally centers and grounds me, now seems to be just pulling me deeper into the black. 


It struck me this weekend, what part of the problem is.


There's a bravery movement in modern-day Christian rhetoric. All the bloggers and the thinkers and the musicians are saying, be brave! Don't be afraid! Yesterday I read, "If you leap, either God will catch you, or He will teach you how to fly!" or something like that. Or you'll plummet to your death. Let's be real: it's an option in this world.

It's true, there are TONS of verses in the Bible that encourage us not to fear. I've heard a rumor there are 365, one for each day of the year, but I think that might be Christian urban legend. 
One of my favorites, that used to bring me a lot of comfort, is this one:

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Phil 4:6-7 NIV

It's a lovely one, isn't it? 


Just reading it right now? Doesn't work. Hmmm. 


Here's another good one: 
"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9 NIV

I have this one up by my computer. Because, hey, it's a commandment! God told me I HAVE to stop being afraid. So just STOP, right? Should be easy enough. Some writers have intimated that being anxious is actually sinful, because if we are anxious we are not trusting God fully.

So even though bloggers have pointed me to verse after verse, even as my own study has directed me to passage after passage where God tells us we don't have to fear or worry... I have found that I can't just STOP, even as much as I might want to. And as I have reflected on this, I have started to feel broken, and sinful, and guilty. I have started to feel like I was wrong to be anxious. And that feeling of being fundamentally wrong has... you've guessed it... made me more anxious.

I don't think there's anything wrong with encouragement, just to be clear! And I think much of the recent push toward "courageous" thinking in the Christian thinkosphere is centered around encouragement. But I think there is a bit of a wrong message in the idea that we can just wish anxiety away by thinking cheery thoughts about God or forwarding along a picture of a flower with a Bible verse on it. A platitude on Pinterest, it turns out, can't fix my brain chemicals. And me feeling like a failure in life because I can't get it together after reading ten blithe FB posts? Not okay.

For those with anxiety, it's a lifelong struggle. I believe that turning to faith, to prayer, to meditation, is one way to support that struggle. I think things like cognitive behavioral therapy and medication are also solid paths toward better balance in certain situations.

I also think the first verse above still gets it right. It will take prayer. It will take petition. It will take turning, again and again, toward gratefulness. It's not easy; it's not a quick fix. It's a process, it's work. Just saying, "Well, I should feel OK because God is there" or "I shouldn't feel this way because I should be grateful" is not the magic cure.

As a culture, I think we need sensitivity (no matter what our faith or belief system) to the struggle that those who suffer from anxiety and depression face over time, and that it isn't a faucet that can be turned off if we try hard enough, if we're just stronger and braver, or if we just click "like" on enough happy Facebook posts. It's deeper and it's more difficult than that. Going deeper, enduring the difficult, eschewing the easy fix... I think this is what my faith journey is moving me toward.

Comfort in the finite.

Recently I noticed a pattern in my thinking that contributes to my stress and anxiety. Since I've noticed this way of thinking in one area of my life, I've begun to notice how pervasive it is. It's toxic, it makes me crazy... but now I see it, and I can talk myself out of it.

It's so simple it sounds silly, but I have found that it is incredibly useful to remind myself about how finite the stuff of life typically is.

This project I'm working on? I'm analyzing a mountain of qualitative data. What we call in the business a sh*t ton. (Yep, that's what the pros call it.) It feels massive, it feels overwhelming, it's everywhere, it's never going to end... (my heart rate is increasing!)

(Image credit: freeimages.com)

No. It isn't! It's blissfully finite. There are only so many journals to read through. Only so many quotes to gather. Only so many data points. They have an end. It's only so many days until the project is wrapped up. It does not stretch into infinity. I do not have to panic.

I'll give you a home example... I'm working on organizing our office supplies. Right now you can find a stash of them in many corners of our house. They feel like they are everywhere. There that thinking is again. But nope, they're not everywhere. They're finite. I could pack them all into a couple of large storage tubs and stick them in the garage if I wanted to. Completely corralled. Wrangled. Maybe not the solution I'm looking for, but... they have an end. 

I don't have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with the infinite. No human does! So when the tasks feel infinite, when the workload seems to stretch into eternity, when the laundry appears to flow toward the horizon, I feel completely maxed out.

The good news is, I don't have to be overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite stuff of life. The last t-shirt gets folded, the last email on that project gets sent. All things end, all things pass. Remembering this lately makes me feel less hopeless and less helpless.

In medias res.

One thing I'm struggling with as a "blogger" (such as it is) is the sense that by sharing my fleeting moments of joy and wonder, or the moments when I feel like I might have figured something out, I'm giving off the following impressions:

- I think I'm so smart and have it all figured out

- I'm happy and positive all the time (okay, just typing that made me say "hah!" inside)

- I'm trying to be something I'm not

Having written that out, the last one may be true. I am trying to be something I'm currently not - a happier, more grateful person. But y'all, it is HARD work for me. I do NOT have this figured out. I am grasping at these epiphanies, writing them down, highlighting them in rainbow colors, broadcasting them, to remind and reassure myself that they happen. That they are truth. That not everything is darkness and drudgery, that there are moments of clarity and light in this life. I also want to be able to offer that out to other people who are in what one of my friends has called "the pit" of depression (that image has stuck with me since I read it on my friend Ivory's blog years back), either for a season or as a more regular state of being in their lives. 

So, if what I write comes off as Pollyanna Faithytimes, if I let my pendulum swing too far into the cliche and the trite and the twee, it's because I am trying so hard to find the sweet spot. My sense of humor is dark, I am fluent in sarcasm. In the day to day, I am quick to see the glass not only half empty, but containing poisonous bilge.

Yet.

Every time life has knocked me flat - and life tends to do that - I have found within myself the ability to get up again. Not only the ability, but the driving need to get up again. Because what else am I gonna do, lay there? So deep down inside of me there is a font of hope, somewhere, but I keep losing the directions, and my GPS is no dang help.

When I was about 25, that Jimmy Eat World song "In the Middle" came out. It was my anthem. I was confused, and stressed, and didn't know what I wanted to be, and work was hard and frustrating, and everything felt like a mess. 

Here I am ten years later, and guess what? I'm smarter and wiser, but I'm still very much "in the middle." I'm learning (slowly) that there will probably be no time in my life when I feel like I've gotten it all sorted and found my way. But if I can mark my trail by documenting moments of joy, I might start to feel like I'm not just wandering through this life.

Snapshots.

I started my week in an amazing way, and I'm still kind of on a high from it.

I got a new computer for work. I originally intended to keep my old computer for personal stuff, and keep the new Macbook for work stuff, but as soon as I saw the way iPhoto lets you organize pictures, I decided to move ALL my digital pictures onto the Mac so I could sort them easily.

That means that during my limited downtime during a hectic weekend, I spent time sorting through digital pictures from the last ten years. And even as I made breakfast for the girls on Monday morning, I was still stealing time to tag faces and group the pictures into events.

I still have a long ways to go in my sorting efforts, but I'm addicted to going through these pictures. Partially because I just love to organize, but also because the exercise is so calming and centering.

I realized as I looked through that I couldn't remember the work deadlines, the client headaches, the stressful late nights. I mean, I could remember them if I really tried. But I had to try. Those moments had evaporated. I looked through the moments I had captured and saw an entirely different timeline stretching back behind me. I saw my little daughter's birth and how impressively she has grown in 20 months. I saw my now eight-year-old daughter in her toddler days, playing at the park. I saw the first days of being in love with my sweet husband, the time when all I could wait to do at the end of a long workweek was look into his eyes. I saw my own sweet Daddy, alive and beaming with pride at the kids and grandkids surrounding him. There were visits with friends, trips to the beach, coolers of drinks... it sounds sappy and cliche, doesn't it? I know, Kodak moments and all that.

I realized that I really won't remember the stresses of today... probably not even a few weeks from now, let alone years into the future. The work problems that are crushing my brain are all temporary. The issues need to be dealt with; I need to do the best work I can right now. And then I need to let them go. I need to put them in their proper places and focus not on problems but on people.

Hello, I love you.

I am increasingly convinced that one of the best ways to learn how to live gratefully in the moment is to observe a toddler.

My daughter is 20 months old, and her sense of joy and wonder is amazing, and contagious.

At breakfast, she will remark to us over and over about what she is having for breakfast, with a tone of voice that belies pure happiness.

"Mama! I have yogurt in a bowl with a spoon! I have yogurt with a spoon! It's inna bowl!"

I commented on this phenomenon on Facebook recently and a friend said it sounded like she was "stoked on life." Indeed, this is what it is. And it is beautiful, and so far from where I am most days, but it's something I want to try.

When she's stoked on life, she'll talk to the things she likes. "Hello bowl! Hello yogurt inna bowl! I love you, bowl."

This sounds so simplistic and silly (or as she says, "So happy funny!") but can I tell you something? I tried it, and it felt pretty good.

This morning, I actually said, "Hello coffee! Hello coffee in my cup! I love you, coffee." It made me smile. On a Monday morning. I smiled on a Monday morning. This is nothing short of miraculous.

What else can I say, "Hello, I love you" to in my life - not like that creepy song by The Doors - but in a way that helps me fully enjoy and appreciate that moment?