Believing Bigger

I have spent a few weeks running many miles and each time I fight for 70 to 80 of them in a week, I seem to lose my stories, my 5 hours a week at the coffee shop writing.  Without watching characters evolve, my sense of self as a creator or maybe interpreter fly away. I feel like I am walking in a junk yard of bits and images covered in dust. The dark side of a hot August day without routine is that I dwell in the shadows of cluttered closets and unaccomplished tasks, without the will to do anything about them. My notebooks are full of to dos (or said another way, un-dones). I never researched schools for David, found a class for myself, paid taxes, completed community jobs, painted or sculpted something I envisioned in my head, or completed a story to the point of having it ready to submit.

I am finding that the only help for my malaise is in tiny acts. If I can clean one floor, that is something. To call one person or send one check, helps me get out of bed. Some of the weight of guilt lifts. If I determine a meal and make it, I can feel ok enough as a mom. Just like my two year old who claps at himself after banging on the trash can or blowing into his harmonica, I have to stop every few seconds and cheer myself forward. Look, you did it! I ran a slow 10 mile race, but finished. I called three people. I changed Isaac's sheets, diaper, wet shirt, etc. I took out smelly trash. I am so quick to want to write the opposite list of what I did not do, but will fight it. I can't fight it. I did not plant in my front garden or grocery shop or run yet today. My cousin is coming, I am leaving for a cabin tomorrow and I am responsible for the community picking it's jobs for the next four months.

All that aside, the psych challenge for this week is to figure out what the little girl inside me is like, to draw her picture and once visualized, to give her a present. I am just stunned by this idea and maybe terrified to. I sense that there is a person I ignore inside, because I am afraid to hear and then be unable to help her. I am the adult who avoids the basic needs of this little person. I am going to take a step towards listening to her, by just imaging what she looks like. I can't decide if she will be a tattered one eyed doll or some beautiful dimpled creature with long braids and outstretched arms, but I will attempt to see her.

How do I become whole?

And how do I listen to the three sets of neighborhood kids who for the past ten minutes, have kept knocking on my door asking for balloons. I hate that they want them from me and more that I am responsible for either taking care of or deny them their request. I feel like Scrooge, clutching anything of myself to protect it from evaporating into everything around me.

I just keep praying that God will reveal himself in a big way! I need big, like the taking over of Jericho with instruments or hopping in a boat filled with animals while it sits in the desert. I want to believe that God will do the work, if I can just hear him and respond.

Today I Write

Today is another day. Woke up feeling like a bus hit my head. Isaac ran in saying "need new diaper" (and he really did!). David scratched his belly button and needed a lot of pampering, lotions, Band-Aids an special shirts. He even suggested that a bath might help. 

My neighbor made us breakfast and we ate it on her back deck watching the corn grow before our eyes (it is over 6 feet tall). A man in a baseball cap walked through her garden with a dog and we had to tell him not to trample her melons. 

David's hard thing from yesterday was that I would be leaving all day today. On top of that, he woke in the night because he dreamed that Andrew and I left him. This morning when my neighbor suggested that I go and sit for a few minutes while she watched the kids, David said, "You don't really want to sit alone, do you? You want to be with me." I get emotional thinking about it. I want to want to always be a happy mom, to write, to run to live, but it all feels like either too little or too much. I can't win. 

I committed to 12 weeks of writing and completing 4 short stories. The weeks few by and I feel frantic at how much is not edited. I am sitting for 4 hours to finish four stories. As I sit in a working space, there are books on the wall and all I can think of is how I can avoid writing. I could eat lunch, buy coffee, run, or online shop. But the consequences of avoidance are sheer agony. My body is tense thinking about it all.

I am also doing a running plan where I should be at 78 miles this week. It is Thursday and I have 17.5 complete. I was short 8 last week. Each day I struggle to want to take the time, but also can't not run. I am in that incongruent space between action and stagnation, I suppose like a dog chasing it's tale or a swirl of leaves in a corner. So much energy is taken in just thinking about what to do and I know that if all was decided and I just went for it, I would feel major relief. For today its writing, left overs and a long run at twilight.