More life lessons to learn…

All week, I’ve been thinking that one of the major life lessons I have come to this planet to learn is patience.  I don’t think I’m doing a great job of it many days and fear I may have to repeat this lesson again!  Patience is one of those things that I strive for every day.  I used to pray for patience as a parent, but decided that maybe that wasn’t the best choice because I would be presented more instances to use it…and believe me my boys can present enough instances on their very own!  Every day, I work on patience and refining it, but this week, as I reflected on some of the things going on in my life I have come to the conclusion that I need a lot more work.

As I work on my student teaching, I am patient.  I think it is one of those areas of patience that I have always had a firm grip.  I can be really patient with other people’s kiddos.  I have time to listen to a student work through an idea.  Even the little things that might annoy me or take my patience away in other situations don’t bother me while I’m with a group of students.  I am a more patient person when I teach.

When I worked in the kitchen, I had many opportunities to be patient.  Many processes take time and patience.  There was roasting the bones to make stock…takes forever.  There is making consume…really takes forever and impatience will ruin it.  The process that really taught me patience was baking bread.  At one of the restaurants I worked, I was responsible for baking all the bread that was necessary for lunch and dinner each day.  This meant that I was up around 4 am and began baking shortly after.  I would stumble into an empty kitchen and work alone for two to three hours.  All the bread was made from scratch daily.  Lunch rolls, bread for the tables, scones, cinnamon rolls…you name it, I baked it.  The bread making process takes patience from beginning to end.  The measuring, the yeast, adding ingredients, the rising, the rolling and forming, rising again, and the actual baking…really the simplest part…but even while in the oven, bread needs attention, patience.  I loved this work.  During the time I was baking, I was in my late twenties and I wasn’t very patient.  I had not baked early in my cooking career…it made me nervous…too much math.  It was about five years into my cooking experience that I became a baker.  It was one of the greatest jobs I ever had.  It was a life lesson, it reformed my ability to be patient and transformed me.

Fast forward ten years or so and my life fell apart.  My life that was looking so much like the life I had hoped for imploded.  My husband was diagnosed with a terminal cancer and he died.  The happy home I had patiently built, crumbled to rubble in a mere six months.  I was suddenly left without the relationship I had worked so hard to build. My best friend was ripped away from me.  My primary person was gone.  The person who was there for me always, who had my back, really the only person I was really able to settle into feeling safe with and stay there with left.  I really didn’t know how I would survive…

Cue patience…grieving takes all the patience I have.  It takes patience with myself…which I rarely have…and patience with others and with the process itself.  In the early days after he died, all I wanted was it to be over.  I wanted the pain to stop and the sadness to leave.  A wise grief counselor told me that sad was here for a while, but would leave eventually.  I trusted her.  I was patient.  I let sad stay.  Sad left in stages with me…that heavy sadness lightened after several years, well, maybe four or five years.  That sadness that stayed in my heart and was just there, deep inside, hidden away, is moving out bit by bit.  New experiences, time, and my own ability to let it go helps sadness move out of my heart more and more each day.  I have been patient.  This time, with my grief, I have truly been patient.

Recently, I have the opportunity to experience something new.  I have this person in my life that cares for me.  I know I’ve said this before…but I really never believed that this would be possible.  I thought if I lived my life, took care of my kids, worked hard, and kept my head down, that my life would be ok.  In the years since Dave died, I hoped that maybe some day, I would be lucky again and find someone patient enough to deal with me, but at the same time didn’t think it was a reality. So there’s this person around now who does care.  Here’s the thing though…I don’t want to put the cart before the horse…I want to wait and see how this will play out…another time to be patient…with him, with myself, with the process itself.  There has been an intimate connection emotionally with him that I didn’t expect.  I never thought…well, I never thought I would be capable of it again…let alone that someone might feel something back.  Feeling these things makes me impatient, makes me nervous, makes me think too much and anticipate too much.

So here I sit with more experiences to strengthen my patience.  It has been such a gift to experience this relationship unfolding in my life.  I will be patient.  Just like baking the bread, each step requires patience to help the next step evolve. Again, perhaps patience is my life lesson on this planet. I will live in this moment and not put too much pressure on the next moment to hurry and arrive…and who knows…maybe I’ll land in a place I never expected.  No matter how the relationship plays out, I am again transformed, by him, his caring heart, and by my ability to risk my heart again.

Patience…

One extra day won’t kill me…

This weekend is a three day weekend.  When Dave was alive, I looked so forward to the long weekends.  Hanging out, finishing unfinished things, and just relaxing made the weekends complete respites.  We enjoyed each other’s company, had time to do our own thing, and quality family time all in three days off.

Then he died.  Three day weekends were torture.  All I could see was families doing the things we used to do, couples holding hands, and dads playing with their sons.  My vision was filled with what was missing…completely normal I think.  It seemed like the weekends would drag on forever.  I was miserable. The kids were miserable.  Life was miserable…again, completely normal…I think.  This went on for years for me.

There were long weekends when I would plan something to keep my mind off my lost love.  I would try to do something special with the boys…not even special really…just regular, but through my eyes of misery, it seemed special.  It always fell apart.  In hindsight, I can see myself trying to “be” happy.  I was trying to force it for the kids.  It always ended up badly.  The three of us were miserable and most times the outings would end in tears.

Then there were the long weekends when I would try to keep myself so busy with housework and tedious chores that I didn’t even acknowledge the long weekend was happening.  People always asked what we were doing for the weekend… I’d replay – “oh, is it a long weekend…I hadn’t noticed.”  Denial rang clear in my mind as I busied myself, ignored the families, ignored the couples holding hands, and ignored the dads playing with their sons.  If I didn’t acknowledge the three day weekend was here perhaps my misery would ease.

I’m not sure when it happened, but the pain of the three day weekends started to subside.  I’m not sure if it was because my boys are growing and I’m not constantly exhausted or if it truly is just the passage of time.  I know that it helped when I stopped trying to do and be something that I was before he died.  I know that it helped when we began to understand and acclimate to a life without their dad and my husband around.  As my grief journey continues, I know that each day, each experience I survive, has made me that much more able to deal with the next day, the next experience.  It’s time served so to speak…time that I’ve become more capable to deal with my broken, healing heart, time that I’ve come into my own as a sole parent, time the boys have acclimated to only having one parent around….does it just boil down to time?

When I started this journey without him my life looked very different.  I had a six month old baby on my hip and my oldest was only six years old.  Now, my oldest is nearly in high school and my baby is now a happy school kid (most days).  Life changes.  I look back and don’t know how I made this far, but I did.  I look back and see a life that seems so foreign to me now…and that’s ok.

Life had to change for me to survive.  I took slow, most times unsteady steps toward survival.  Each step led me to a place where a three day weekend doesn’t rattle me anymore.  I even look forward to them.  It leads me to a place where I can relax…even if it is just me and the boys.  I can watch families, couples, dads and sons enjoy their lives and not loose it…I can even be happy for them.  Even better than all that…I can look back on my life with Dave and be happy that I had that too.  As much as he helped me be the woman I was to be when he was alive, he has helped me be the woman I am right now.  His death forever changed me.  His death is woven into the fabric of who I am…not just his death though…it is really his love that did all that. His love helped me become a woman who can love herself…I loved myself enough to survive his death.  I loved my kids enough to survive…but loving the kids wasn’t enough for me to become who I am today.  Loving them, being loved by him, gave me the courage to love myself.  It gave me the courage to sit through long weekends in misery which led to place of appreciation again.

This journey that I didn’t want, that was thrust at me, that is my worst nightmare, has become my journey.  No matter how much I would do anything have him here, I don’t think I want to change who I am right now.  I want to continue to grow and evolve.  The pain, the heartbreak, the grief and sadness were so deep that I am transformed.  I wouldn’t be who I am without losing him, our life together, our future.  So, so bittersweet.

I sit here this morning looking forward to my days off.  I sit here this morning changed yet again.  I sit here this morning, grateful…and dare I say it…even cheerful.  I am ok with a long weekend.  I am ok with a long weekend where I am the only adult on duty in my home.  I am ok with playing with my kids alone, doing my own thing for a bit, and then adding some more quality, family time.  I think the simple fact that I can say “I’m ok”…is amazing…I never, ever, ever thought that I’d be ok…but I am.  Today, for this long weekend…I’m ok.

Paper thin heart

So, I’ve been thinking again too much…always dangerous.  In many ways I would say that I am a lucky, well maybe, even a blessed person.  I am healthy.  I have two, happy (most days), healthy children. I have a home. I have a job…and right now, a job that I really, really love. I have loved deeply. It all sounds pretty good on paper.

Then, there’s the flip side…the tragic side really…widowed at 39.  My husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer five days after the birth of our second son.  He died.  Widow and children move through life searching, hoping, and trying to heal their hearts.

Tragic sounding, a sad story, I don’t sound so lucky or blessed when you see this piece of my story.

I still argue that I am blessed…bad things have happened, but with hope and trust, I held on to the thoughts in the first paragraph.  I work very hard to heal hearts…mine and theirs.  I work very hard to move forward with my broken heart.  My broken heart, my rebuilt heart, my paper thin heart still has love to give.  I was so lucky all those years ago to find someone to love and who loved me…”just as I am”.

Now what do I do
With this sweet love of mine
Do I give it away and
Hope someday I’ll find
Someone half as awake
As the moon and the stars
Mother, teach me to love
With a paper-thin heart

Sheryl Crow, Detours

As hard as I have worked on healing my grief, I still think I am left with a paper thin heart.  I worry that it will be torn again and sometimes I don’t know if I can heal it again if it is shredded into pieces once more.  I have poured my love out onto and around my children.  That’s safe, that’s a place I know that the love will be received and although not always appreciated, it will mean something.  What I haven’t done is let someone love me…I haven’t even really considered it possible.

It’s a strange life doing everything for yourself.  I’m the one who makes all the decisions.  I have all the responsibility and buck stops with me.  Seven years since he died equals seven years of me doing everything.  I’ve gotten used to life being this way.  I just do it.  It’s really the only option.  I really don’t think about my needs very often. I just keep moving. I just keep on going.  Someone caring about me was a memory.  I knew how it worked back then, but it really was a memory.  My coping skills have pushed that part of me far, far back into the past. I have set myself aside…to survive.  It was too painful to think about how alone I’ve been and too painful to think it may never happen again and I will be alone forever.

Will my paper thin heart be able to handle it if someone cares for me?  The answer is still evasive.  Someone has walked in and helped me feel again.  He has taken my breath away at moments with very simple moments of caring.  He opened up my paper thin heart and snuck inside.  I’m really not sure how, but he did.  He is kind and loving.  The really strange part I think is that I still can’t believe it most days.  I’m not sure if that is part of the paper thin heart deal or just that I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop…because, remember the second paragraph…tragic.  Tragic things happen to me…no one prepared me for a good thing to happen again.  I want to hold him close and then moments later worry that if he cares about me that something bad will happen and I need to push him away before it does.  I’m not sure if my paper thin heart can just handle that it is ok to be cared for and to care for someone again.

What I do know is that I have love to give. It’s a very strange adjustment for me to accept someone caring for me though…

I do believe that it is easier to give love than to receive it too.  It’s a very vulnerable and risky place letting someone into your heart and letting them care for you…even if your heart is not paper thin.  It’s difficult for me to think that I am worthy of this caring…it’s been a long time since someone cared about just me.  It’s hard to let someone in when I know that he may leave too.

But here’s the thing…I think it’s time for me to find out.  Paper thin or not, my heart longs for this…no matter how it turns out.  Isn’t that the real challenge? The real risk is just putting my heart on the line again…no matter how it turns out.

The art of spinning plates

As the sole parent of two boys, working mom and the other things I do each day, I have made an art of keeping many plates spinning in the air.  Do you remember those tricks? The person gets all these plates spinning on sticks and has to run back and forth, constantly spinning the sticks so the plates won’t fall and break.  This is how my life works.  Everything is so tightly scheduled that one minor mishap can throw me for a mental loop.  I keep the plates spinning, spinning, spinning.  I’m used to this.  I almost don’t even notice it anymore until something sneaks in and throws me out of whack.  Then, I start dropping plates.

Recently, I’ve been pretty good at keeping the plates going.  I even had the audacity to think I could fit in some time for me.  You know, those moments that are precious and few.  The moments when I get to be a grown up and relax. I had one of those moments this weekend and it was wonderful.  I was even a bit ahead on a few things anticipating this moment. Laundry was done, house was pretty tidy, and kids were in good hands.  I had a great few days.

Today, I get an email from someone very dear to me and she is ill.  I want to drop everything and make sure she is cared for, but I can’t. I’m spinning too many plates.  A little bit later this morning, my car developed some engine issues.  Don’t know how bad it is yet, but know it’s going to have to be seen and going cost me some money….the plates are beginning to wobble.

My mind is getting too full.

I know stuff will work out, but sometimes overwhelmed is just where I go.

I feel like if I drop a plate or two it may send all of them crashing down to the ground.

I don’t want to drop them now.  I’ve been working so, so hard to balance them.  It has taken so long to get the hang of this.  I’m going to have to readjust so I can handle the stuff life throws me when I am already in too deep already.  I don’t want to feel guilty about taking some time for myself.  I don’t want to beat myself up for things that are normal for nearly everyone else. If I start dropping plates though…can I let them fall to the ground? Will I be able to forgive myself?

There was a time when I just didn’t care, but now I do.  I want to live a life with quality, not just go through the motions.  There was a time when I didn’t really care what happened to me, but now I do.  There was a time when I couldn’t face setting goals, now I’m on the verge of achieving a few. I have been feeling better, doing better, feeling more like me again.

So, maybe, if I take a breath, get out of my head a bit and even let a few plates drop, I’ll still be ok.  Maybe if I drop some plates this week, they weren’t things I needed to keep spinning anyway. Maybe, just maybe, if I take a continue to take few moments to be happy, I won’t worry so much about dropping them at all.