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.