there will come a day

one day, years from now, there will come a day when i no longer need to wake up at the crack of dawn to work out. when all of my babies are in school or capable of not getting themselves into giant scrapes while i squeeze in a sweat session. there will come a time when i can go back to waking up to savor my coffee and write instead of hurrying through bits and pieces of some of it and never making it to others. there will come a time when i don’t have to hurry home from the pool for the youngest to nap, and when i won’t have to set the structure for everyone’s day just because everyone is home.

and that also means that there will come a day when my babies are more adult than they are child. when their need for me wanes and some days looks like nothing more than the sliver of a new moon. it means there will come a day when they don’t fit in my lap, and i can’t pick them up and wrap them in a hug and hold them the same way i do now. i mean, my oldest is already within a foot of me - though i recognize that this isn’t terribly hard to do.

it doesn’t go in reverse if you forget to enjoy it. rewinding is not an option for life. 

our littlest turns two tomorrow. no more babies in this house. what felt like it would never come - babies, period, and then the finality of our “having kids” stage - is coming to an end. all of our kids are now in beds and not cribs. soon enough we’ll start working more on the whole potty-training thing and the last semblance of a baby will disappear on the wings of the last box of diapers delivered from amazon. {i’m hoping for sooner rather than later, but we’ll see.}

years feel like seconds in retrospect.

but the days can still be oh-so-long. the lack of alone time weighs on me by the end of the day every day these days. i want all of the good things in the world for my children, but there’s not enough time to do all of them. and there's not enough time in the day for me to do all of the things that i "should" do for my own self and health and yada yada yada. i'm struggling with the paradox of choice coupled with the lack of available time.

but over the last week or so i've also realized something crucial for me to understand about myself.

i don't like social media. not anymore. it has transitioned from something to help me keep track of what's going on in my friends' lives to a platform that showcases everyone's no-holds-barred opinions about everything. we've gotten so comfortable hiding behind our screens that we "say" things online that we would never dream of saying directly to another person. this is not new news, but it has dramatically increased thanks to the pandemic.

most of the time when i spend a bunch of time on instagram or facebook, i leave it feeling worse about myself, or worse about the world. 

sometimes both. 

ok, most of the time both.

but i digress. 

because all that is to say that i don't know what direction things are going as a whole right now. it mostly feels like my mental capacity is reeling while the rest of the world is at a stand-still. i have been struggling lately. 

s-t-r-u-g-g-l-i-n-g. 

i've been struggling to make sense of life.

i've been struggling to be a good mom. {some days i've struggled to be a pass-able mom}

i've been struggling with life direction.

i've been struggling with following a still small voice that seems to have grown silent.

big things are happening in our family's life despite this crazy virus that may or may not still be a pandemic. 

p's company is switching offices and moving to a property that they purchased after renting for years. baby girl's birthday is tomorrow. our big kids are starting school in less than three weeks, with our middle babe starting kindergarten. and our oldest is currently missing his two front teeth. 

so yeah. big. things. 

and i'm feeling off. 

and like i should be doing so much more than i am. 

and like i should be so much more than i am.

but i'm not. i'm not more than i am.

and what am i? 

not much.

does that help? 

no.

i didn't think so.

doesn't help me either.

because there's nothing wrong with "just" being a wife and mom. {just feels wrong there. but that's a separate discussion.} but i want more. 

the trouble is i don't know exactly what. but something else. something "too." 

i guess i feel like you can be good at what you do for work. but being a wife & mom? i fail at it every day. i don't measure up. i say and do the wrong things over and over. i fail my kids. i fail my husband.

and it's not that i wouldn't make mistakes if i went to work, but maybe those mistakes wouldn't impact lives in such a massive way. {clearly i'm not talking about going to seminary or med school or anything...}

i think all of this is compounded by the fact that despite living here for more than 14 years, charlotte still doesn't really feel like home. it might be because i'm a pittsburgh girl, and pittsburgh will always be home. it might be because traveling and visiting friends and family {or them visiting us} tends to remind me of all of the amazing and wonderful people i'd really like to be closer to geographically. 

but i don't know. i guess there's always just this underlying comparison game. it's bullsh*t, i know. comparison is the thief of joy. i know. i know all of the sayings. and they're true. but those thoughts still niggle at me in the back of my mind. 

all of that reminds me of c.s. lewis - if nothing in this world can satisfy then maybe it's because we were made for another world. 

this life isn't really about this life. but it's so easy to get side-swiped and sucked into the temporary of this world. 

it's easy to feel like you don't matter when you work at something and put it out there and it gets brushed aside. it feels like you're the one getting pushed to the side, and not the thing that you did.

and that's a whole other rabbit hole of my mind. maybe we'll save that one for a different day. after all, it's already late, alice.

xo