i have had several really good blog posts swirling around my head over the past month or so, only to not get a chance to sit down at the computer and type them out. aw... thus is the life of having 6 kids. no time when i am inspired, and no inspiration on the chance i have a few minutes of time.
kids have changed me.
one kid? not so much. i brought him around everywhere with me, still doing pretty much what i did.
two kids? well, that hit me like a freight train, but slowly i pulled out of the wreckage and tried to piece back together a semblance of who i thought myself to formerly be. did i ever fully recover? the world, or i for that matter, may never know.
three kids? well, somehow i had the grace of God to step into a new season of me. former dreams that had been put way up high on the back shelf to collect dust were pulled back down, and i rediscovered a bit of me that i had forgotten. i found a new confidence and settled into myself. i discovered new parts i didn't know were there.
four kids? i entered into a letting go. be it for a short time or forever, i felt my hands release what i had tried to hold tight to.
five kids? my hands became so full, my heart even moreso, that i didn't have room for anything else. did i mean i didn't value other parts of me? no. i just realized that to be present with all i had, something had to give.
six kids? my life before is a fuzzy distant memory that only sometimes i get a small glimpse of, maybe in a dream in the night or being tagged in an old pic on facebook, and nostalgia and sentimentality come for a visit over a cup of tea late at night. then i wake up in the morning wishing i had gone to bed a bit earlier because of all i have to do on much too little sleep.
what is the point of this rambling? i went to a movie tonight that was a film version of a musical i was in during my college days. i felt a foggy memory of a person i was long ago, who i am pretty sure is in there somewhere. the memories triggered were happy ones. i smiled, i remembered, i looked up people on facebook that i haven't spoken to in years. i also sat and wondered who of my current friends and acquaintances know i was in theatre in a "previous life." who knows the parts of me that seem so hidden that i sometimes forget they are there? so much has changed. so much life lived, the road coming to forks where i had to make a choice, and other times taking a detour not of my own choosing.
but even in my musings and remembering, i don't regret taking the road i chose, and making the choices i did that have led me so far from those days. i may not have chosen detours that are now a part of my history, but even those have shaped me, grown me, matured me.
i love my life now. do i wish at times i could have parts of my past while living in my present? perhaps. but perhaps not. so much has happened since those times, and so much of it is all jumbled up in the mess of yarn that makes up who i am today. beautiful times. painful times. times i smile upon. times i would rather forget. and yet, none of it is in vain. somehow the Lord will take this tangled yarn and make a beautiful piece of art, and it will all count.
so as i go to sleep tonight i will remember and i will thank the Lord for the sum of the times He has given me, all the times that lie ahead, many or few, and whoever He is weaving me together to be. His plans are good. His ways are high. as i plunge ahead into a new year, i choose to trust, to love, to be present, and to give thanks for all i have rather than long for what i don't.
charis
