A blogger I am not. And I writer, I will never pretend to be.
But I journaler, I am.
While the past eighteen
months have quiet blog months, almost three whole journals have been filled
with my ramblings. Ranting. Raving.
Thinking. Dreaming. Questioning.
Digging. Musing. Meandering.
That’s a lot of writing.
But the past fifty-four days
have been a writing frenzy . . . I’ve devoured a whole journal.
Excavating.
Excavating the soul.
Excavating MY soul.
"Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you
look back everything is different . . . " ~ C. S. Lewis
I came across this quote yesterday.
I liked it.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized why I liked
it. It is the essence of my last two
months.
Recently, I decided that I needed to get serious about cleaning
out stuff that P and I have accumulated during the past twenty-one years of
being a family.
At no time in my life have Lewis’ words rang more true for
me:
. . . finding a love note from my three year old daughter and
looking up to see her ten-year-old self.
. . . unfolding a letter from my sweet cousin and realizing that
she’s been dead for twenty-five years.
. . . opening a box full of my kindergartener’s papers and
knowing that in 10 short months she will be a high school graduate.
. . . uncovering my husband’s first pay stub as a salaried
employee, remembering how much money we thought that was, and then wondering how
on earth we managed on that small sum.
I didn’t realize I would be walking through so many
long-forgotten memories.
It’s been emotional.
It’s been hard.
But it’s been good.
Cathartic.
While I didn’t read every page of my journals and family calendars
of the past many years, I did flip though them and made an important
discovery.
Overwhelm and overscheduling is a recurring theme.
The consequences, numerous and painful to admit:
. . . distracted conversations and unkind words.
. . . too few meals around the dinner table.
. . . joys becoming burdens.
I’m out to change that.
I’m on a quest for white space . . . space and time to fully
engage in what life has to offer.
It means saying “no” to a lot of good things.
It means not filling my calendar up months in advance.
It means becoming comfortable with staying put.
It means getting reacquainted with my family and rediscovering
just how much I love them because the next time I look back, I don't want to be so surprised by how different everything is.
