Trenches Blessed

Updated:  I've hit publish and then as quickly unpublished this post SEVERAL times, over and over again because I really hate feeling like a whiner.  But I know.  I KNOW for a fact that many of you who read can relate to this and I know you'll understand and perhaps feel less alone.  Honestly, I felt much better the minute I finished writing it.  Sometimes spelling it out pushes the pendulum just enough to get me back to a better state of mind.  I hope some of you will read this and feel relieved to hear that someone else gets into these places, just like you do.  And I hope in recognizing that, you can feel your pendulum swing, too.

I have big thoughts and feelings my fingers long to write out, my voice longs to speak, it's just that at the end of most days I've spent all my words reminding about shoes off at the back door and coats hung on hooks and repeating keep all four chair legs on the floor and put your behind in your seat and answering what letter spells cherry and explaining why we can't swim in the fitness center's outdoor pool during the coldest week of January. And I've shelled out the last dime of my emotional cash listening and asking questions to try to understand why classmates repeating her name three times fast makes her feel so picked-on or staying calm when he has another of his famous shirt-tantrums.

Right now, most of the moments I'd spend pondering life's big questions and working out my answers or just being, I don't know, of me or for me, get spent tucking the Take Home folder back into her backpack while wiping up crumbs (again) while timing the roar of bath-tub-filling and remembering that all-important call up the stairs to turn off the water before the bathroom floods while sorting today's mail stack into the wheat and the chaff.

And the thing is it's all still in here (or I really hope it is), but many days I haven't the breath or stamina to stir it fluid again and tip the heavy jar to pour it out into meaningful sentences. Not even to mumble it out to Al. Sometimes I feel so boring and invisible in this world, just a big old washed out, forgotten Ho-Hum Mom with the keys in her hand and the ketchup on her jeans and the greys showing around her hairline, and I wish I could just scream out, "BUT! I'M STILL IN HERE! I HAVE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AND DREAMS! I'M NOT AS VACANT AND VACUOUS AS I SEEM. JUST BELIEVE ME, OKAY? I'M TOO WEARY TO PROVE IT RIGHT NOW BUT I'M STILL IN HERE."

And it's not that I'm complaining or ungrateful or feel like it's all wrong and someone should rescue me from my terrible life. It's just ... I'm being sincere. The kind of sincere we should all be free to be when we're not rocking our skinniest jeans or feeling like we've got it all, or got most of it, anyway. It's the sincerity I speak in the spaces between congratulating myself and thanking God. I guess these days I'm just another kind of blessed, the not-so-epic blessed, just humble, everyday, emptied-the-dishwasher-made-the-beds, got-mad-and-said-stuff-I-shouldn't-have, kids-in-a-bad-mood, pour-me-another-coffee-please blessed.

It's trenches blessed. And it's good, too. I just hope when I get out of the trenches, my big thoughts and feelings are all still there waiting, and it doesn't take too long to fire myself back up.



Like the FriedOkra Facebook page.  Subscribe.  Get my updates in your in-box by subscribing via email using the link on my right sidebar. Find me on Twitter and Instagram.  There, as anywhere, I'm simply 'FriedOkra.'