Maybe I just crumble when I reach this level of stress. Maybe I’m just not made for it. Maybe the fact that I’m prone to extremes impedes my ability to handle anything at all when I’m stressed as much as I am right now.

Life has tides. I get that. I get the up and I get the down and I get the static–I’m always grateful for the static–but still, it wears a woman out to be moving around so much.

Can life be blurry and clear at the same time? I took about a year to figure myself out and I can tell you that the shadow of self I see staring back at me as I glide against the sunlight is more focused, more detailed, more permanent than it’s ever been. And yet, everything that is not in my head and in my heart–which is, of course, everything else and other–is like a kaleidoscope puzzle. I’ve kind of determined that I’m not the one to sort out the shapes from the colors, and so I just sit and wait for the skies to clear around me. Waiting is hard. I’m not good at waiting.

I saw a double rainbow the other day. It rose above us on the soccer sidelines. Many parents took out their phones and their cameras and snapped pictures of the magical moment. I kind of just stared at the sky, moving my head left to right and right to left like I was watching a tennis match. And I laughed this oh-so-free laugh, like nothing could touch me in that moment.

Maybe that’s what it’ll feel like when the puzzle breaks free of the kaleidoscope and comes together to form one, whole picture. Maybe that’s what it’ll feel like when the focus I have on the inside stops feeling so separate from the world I live on the outside. Or, maybe my life will always be like that double rainbow. One strong, perfect, rainbow beamed across the sky, showing each of the Roy G. Biv colors. And another, just above and beyond it, slightly fuzzy and nearly broken in the middle. Faded. Worn. But still there. And just as important as the one standing in front of it.

It’s Tuesday. That means you Just Write and then go join Heather.

Today I’m joining my dear friend Heather of the EO, for a little Just Write. It’s the freewrite, people; get your flow on.

Words. They change our lives. In every way. Their sound. Their meaning.

We introduce them every day to our children. Starting from the day they were born and ending…when? Perhaps never. We flood them with words, and expect them to pick up the pieces and talk to us like they know what they’re saying. Talk so we can understand them. Talk so they become a part of our world.

I took summertime walks to the soccer fields when I was a teenager. A good book, a dictionary, a journal, and a selection of pretty-colored, inky pens. There were one or two big, beautiful trees on the edge of the fields. I’d lean back into the shade and open myself up to the words. The fields were empty in July and August. No practices, no games, no sweat. Just a serene landscape of green, and the perfect spot to catch a breeze.

I played with words then. I read the dictionary and scribbled in the margins. I kept lists of favorite words on the back page of every journal I owned. I picked the vibrant ones–either in sound or in meaning–and plotted them on a page, weaving meaning and story between them. Letters and poetry, poetry and letters. I have a trunk full of them in the attic above me.

Over the years time evaporated; I couldn’t lean back into word play anymore. There were papers to write and living to do. I started to feel silly just letting the words float through me and onto the page, with no purpose or poise.

Then there were babies to raise and my words pointed to them. Speaking and teaching took over. My brain started to get very full. SO FULL. Spilling over full. The kids and the maturity and the Real Life stuff took over. Oh My! (How do we handle it all? I’m just not so sure.)

Do you have all these ideas? Because I have all these ideas. Things to say and do and write. Words flying through my head at all times of the day. I could carry a stack of index cards in my back pocket, or ask Siri to transcribe my thoughts onto my iPhone. I could grab the nearest napkin or receipt and jot them down just to get them out. But I don’t. I run and hide from the words in my brain. Stop, I scream, Just Stop! Give me some peace. A bit of silence.

When I try to write them out and make sense of them all, it seems they just come out scrambled. The things I thought were pounding at the doors of my brain, ready to burst right out of my heart, well…I open the doors and they stumble forth, kind of wandering from side to side all drunken-like. They don’t know how to play well together anymore, they don’t know where to land.

Momma says “Monkey Brain.” Yeah, that’s it, I suppose. Something about running, running all the time, even if my legs are sitting still and my Asics are parked by the back door. Is this what it’s like to be human? To be a woman? A mother? Or is it in my DNA? In my personality?

Answers don’t matter. What does is that I recognize that sometimes, just sometimes, I get it right. I listen, really listen, to what my kids are saying and I do take a quick moment to jot it down. When I find it later, all balled up in the corner of my pocket, I smile as I read and remember. Oh! how beautiful they are and how cute that day was and how much they are already starting to learn: from books and life and me.

Even if my thoughts don’t make sense, and the words I write for me don’t come together as easily as I’d like,, it’s nice to know that in between the discipline and the lessons and the pleading and the threatening and the _____ and the _____ and the _____, they are cobbling together some bit of greater meaning to their lives. And you can’t do that without words.

Ethan (4): You’re not the boss of me!
Max (5): Yes.
E: No. Jamis (9) is the boss.
M: No. Mommy is the boss.
E: No!
M: Yes. Mommy and Daddy are the boss.
E: No!
M: Actually, God is the boss.
E: No. Nobody is the boss.
M: Yes, Ethan, God is the boss.

I have some more words for y’all. And they are “HAPPY BIRTHDAY.”

Please wish my most beautiful Mama, Momalomsmom, a Very Happy Birthday! You are a light in my life, GG.

___________

Tell us about Words. We’re listening!

(And if you need a reminder, here are the topics for the rest of the week.)

Enter the link to your post below. Then head on over to The Extraordinary Ordinary. Read Heather’s words and link up with Just Write!

Welcome to Five for Five — Day One!

Yesterday I learned of some very unmannerly behavior my 9-year-old exhibited while at a friend’s house. It was embarrassing. And then my nearly 4-year-old slapped me in the face because he didn’t want to take a nap. It made me blood-boiling mad. A regular, old day here in Sarah’s world. Nothing special. Just the type of challenges you’d expect out of parenthood.

It may have been a typical scene round these parts, but it doesn’t take too much to tip me into despair these days. The kind of despair that puts me out on the pavement in a steady rain, running fast and hard for 7 miles because I just need to get away from it all.

Imagine the sound of the cars whooshing by in the rain, the sound of their tires as they approach and push the water toward me. Imagine the sound of my measured breathing, in a rhythm all its own. And the sound of my wet feet slapping the sidewalk, my heels and toes rolling into squishy socks and soles. It was exactly what I needed to do, when I needed to do it–a rare triumph.

Now listen to my thoughts, my staccato thoughts:

I want to change. I need to change. This family needs change. I’m the one who will make it happen. I’m the only one. It’s too much pressure. I can’t handle it. I have to handle it. I wish we could all start over. That I could start the family over. Start out with these new lessons I’ve learned. Implement these new changes from day One. Forget it, we can’t do that. There’s no going back. There’s only going forward.

There’s so much to change. Too much. It will be so hard.

Be kind to yourself, Sarah. You have made changes. You’ve made so many changes. Last year was the Year of Great Change. You found a faith and trust and devotion you’ve never before understood. You must be gentle and recognize your change. Allow yourself to feel each small success. But also know you cannot do it all at once. I know you want to, but you cannot. You must learn to accept that a little at a time is enough. That you are still moving forward. You will not ever be perfect–and certainly not in one day–no matter the changes that you make.

When I got to my front door I shook out the rain that had pooled by my elbows and stumbled in the door. There they were, the four of them. My family. Two boys watching Hugo, one Dad on a business call, one boy who’d given into that nap after all.

A hot shower drowned out the remains of my energy. I curled into bed and drifted into a fitful sleep.

These kinds of days and those kinds of thoughts are almost too much for me. And yet, I have them often. I get overwhelmed easily. I shut down a lot. And I get stuck looking at all that I’m not, all the wrongs in our family, all the work that it will take to make it different, make it a picture I feel some peace about. Not perfection, just some peace.

A parenting book I’ve recently read teaches that we ought to focus on the positive opposite in order to stimulate change. I try so very hard to look for the good stuff, the stuff I don’t want to change for anything in the world, the stuff that makes me Me. I can see it. It’s there. It’s there more often than I give it credit for.

And it’s in my boys, too. The ones who spit and scream and fight and tease and cry because life is unfair and they don’t get their way and because they are who they are. The good stuff is there even when it can’t be seen. I just have to remember it in the ugly moments. And I have to remember that if I focus on the good there will be more good.

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I’m so happy that you’re here with me today, readers. I’ve been in flux for well over a year. I’m just coming out of my haze, and it’s obvious I don’t have it all figured out. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly aware I never will figure it all out, but I’m hopeful to get a firmer grip on where I want to go, who I want to be and what sort of life I want to breathe into the soul of this family. It’s a journey. A big, bumpy journey. And while I’ve been a person accustomed to change for most of my life–a girl who always managed to land on her feet–I’m still a bit thrown that the changing never stops. We just have more control over what and where and how the change happens as we age. I remind myself that it’s not a burden, no. It’s a gift that we are here to live through these changes. It’s a blessing to have the opportunity to become a better version of ourselves every day.

Tell us about Change. We’re listening!

(And if you need a reminder, here are the topics for the rest of the week.)

Enter the link to your post below.

Sometimes I think if I could just sit in one place long enough, I could find that kind of lasting happiness that pulls a mother through another dreary Thursday.

By Thursday of every week I am tapped out. I have nothing left. Thursday afternoons find me turning my head when the boys do wrong, and, instead of doling out punishment or planning dinner, I’m curling up in bed wishing, praying, and seeking some silence. I’m touching the pillow, and searching for a moment I can settle into. A moment where I can feel resolution seeping in–through my eyelashes and my fingertips–and making its way to my heart, showing itself with a smile on my lips.

I’m starting to think that everything is just too much. School, schedules, expectations. I never thought I was a person who would stop pushing forward, but I can feel myself slowing down. I’m starting to wonder if I can do right by my children by letting them–asking them–to slow down with me. Instead of rush-rushing them like I’ve always done, and push-pushing them to achieve that next-best thing, I want to slow into silence long enough to hear them breathe. I thought all the pushing and rushing would make their lives easier, that their achievements meant they Would and Could and Should. But you know what? They Can and Will when it’s time. Some day. One day all the things that should happen, will. And I don’t much care when that day is anymore.

One thing’s for certain: it’s not today. Today is Thursday and I’m fighting the urge to pull up the covers.

Subconsciously I must have been aware I’d wake up to Valentine’s Day. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about that, even though I’d (finally) just coaxed two of the boys to address and package their class Valentines.

I climbed into bed beside my husband who, for the first time in forever, was reading a book. The Hunger Games, if you must know, because I’d been hyping it up as a guilty pleasure to everyone I know. Of course, he downloaded it to my Nook, leaving me to either start a new book or dip into an old one I hadn’t yet finished. There’s lots of that unfinishing thing around here. For me. Always. But that’s another matter.

Before I decided on anything, I remembered a thought I’d had in the kitchen and reached for my long-lost journal to write it down. What came with it was a short list of Loves. To which I now hope to add. It’s appropriate for the holiday, of course, but I feel I often need these reminders of Love and Good and Happy in my life. Daily. There just can’t be too much of this.

___

I Love that family descends on the house for a holiday celebration and various kitchen items are inevitably left behind. I love that I can’t tell which Tupperware is mine or GG’s or Jen’s when I store the leftover thrown-together Minestrone Soup I made for dinner. Family is in the ordinary, all over my house.

I Love watching my kid play sports on Sundays, Game Day. One Basketball game. Two Soccer games (or more). One kid putting it all out there. Showing us what he’s learned. Working for the team. It’s easier to appreciate than spelling homework or math worksheets. So much more gratifying. (Maybe I just take spelling for granted?)

I Love finding “Thankful Cards” tucked away in my journal. Blue and green index cards that should have made it to the Thankful Box after dinner, but didn’t. Maybe they were pushed into my back pocket for later. Maybe they came out of my pocket when I put my jammies on for the night. And then here they are. Slipped in between my own pages. My own space. Reminding me that my kids are thankful for school–or were, on 9/13/2011–even though they fight me each morning with the getting dressed and brushing teeth and giving last hugs.

I Love pushing my body to work hard. Sweating just enough to remind me that my body works so hard for me every day and that it’s happy for this extra effort I’m putting it through.

I Love that my boys have brothers. That I have sons. That they are loud and that they fight and that they still know how to love. If I twist the angle by which I view their rough-housing and their screams, I see that they are learning how to get along in the world. That there is conflict and then there is resolution and we all have to work so, so hard to get through both.

I Love the way Ethan asks me for lunch: I want cheese on a sandwich on a plate cut in half with a drink and four oreos. On a plate. Cut in half.

I Love knowing that no matter what amount of money they make or how many things they learn or own, how many failures they have, how many successes, my kids will always know what I treasure most: family and honesty and showing your Love.

___

What do you Love?

Please share with me. Because Love is something there will never be too much of. Ever.

xo

Jen and I have often talked about creativity. How it is a blessing and a curse. Our daily lives consist of those daily-type things. You all know them well. They bring you up and they bring you down and then you find a way to just plateau and get them done.

But creativity always seems to work itself into the day somehow. Not being creative, exactly, but having creative ideas. And no where to put them. Because there is no time for that in the daily grind, the plateau is easier than managing the ups and downs while fitting in the creative part, too.

But you see, I was talking to another friend about that creativity thing just yesterday. And I find that if I have the time to talk about it and think about it I should also have the time to DO something about it. Even in fragments of 5 minutes or less, in between wiping a child butt and pouring juice into a child cup and retrieving a child from school.

So here we are. Striving to let the creativity out of the bag. Maybe it’s just another symptom of the oh-it’s-2012-and-the-world-is-all-new-and-shiny-again mentality. That tricky little New Year’s bug gets into all of us, one stinking way or another. I haven’t made any resolutions this year. I’ve set some goals but I think of those much more seriously and I forgive myself a lot more when I fail to meet them quite exactly, or meeting them takes longer than a person thinks it should. In fact, I have set no time limit whatsoever on my goals. I need it that way. Deadlines make me itchy and only push me to give up faster than it took me to dream them up in the first place.

My kids bumble around the house and play with new Christmas toys and readjust to the real life of school and soccer practice, bedtime and go-go-go from the moment they first awake. I, too, bumble around the house and readjust to a new shade of life. Is it the New Year? Is it the startlingly cold temperatures we’ve had? Is it those goals that I’ve written down–in conjunction with my husband–that have me figuring out how to navigate today so that tomorrow I can feel I accomplished something? No matter what it is–and it really doesn’t matter, I’m a new color, hue, shade, whathaveyou.

I’m never quite sure of anything anymore. And least sure of what I want to write here on the ol’ blog, as Jen puts it. We’ve been here awhile, in this space, and we’ve been on bottom and we’ve been on top and now we just are. Maybe I’ve been waiting for this spot all along. To just be.

A year ago I was most uncomfortable with the just-being part of living. I didn’t dare sit still and contemplate my life, my self, my thoughts. I’d try to sit still but just get wrapped into a tangle of thick vines and sturdy leaves and have trouble finding any meaning to the feeling of being trapped, tangled up and trapped in my thoughts. But several weeks ago my husband made mention of an everyday Saturday morning wherein he found me behind my closed office door. I was sitting in the corner chair, listening to some lovely tunes, ignoring the children and the mess that inhabited every other area of the house except my office. I had a book on my lap but I wasn’t reading. I was sitting and I was thinking, I guess. I wonder if I was listening to the lyrics of that sweet melodic voice coming from the speakers, or if I was making a plan for the day. I don’t know if I was there because I was happy or I was sad or I was recovering from some other emotion that may have overtaken me the day before, the hour before. I was just sitting, he said. Sitting and listening to music and I looked so content and so peaceful and he wished he had more of that. Music. Peace. Sitting still. Thoughts that didn’t revolve around work and business and schedules.

I hadn’t realized it at the time–obvious by this point–but I was crafting my own little perfect space away from it all. I wasn’t fixated on something, I don’t think. I was just me. Part of me was old and part of me was new and I was sitting with them both. Contentedly. For as long as it would last.

He kissed me gently and left the house. I’m sure the kids soon invaded my space and I turned off my music and fixed up their breakfast and broke up their fights. But I had those few moments. I can see them still. The light outside was so dim and the air inside was so warm and I was sipping hot coffee and drifting my head back into the chair and just… ahh.

So I guess what I’m saying, if I’m saying anything at all, is that I have to make time for the creativity. I have to remember what it means to sit still. And that, as I wrote a dear friend of mine today, I am in the garden of my life. Everything is lush all around me. I should feel fortunate for all the creative ideas that come. I should try my best to do something with them because I know they are a result of the lushness. But that I also must seep into the moss sometimes and hold steady, because being a part of the lushness means just as much as creating something from it.

It’s here. The season of giving. The jolly and cheer.

What do you most wish for this year? What do you most wish to give?

We talk a lot about effort in this house. And attitude. Body language and doing the best you can do and supporting those around you and having good cheer. I defined “oblige” last night during a bedtime read.

I’m exhausted from the conversations, to be honest. But the irony is not lost on me, oh no. If I gave up on the lesson because it got too hard or too frustrating or I felt like I was constantly running backward, what kind of example would I be?

He’s only 9 and I’m daunted. It gets harder as they get older. You become so much more aware that they are individuals. They will one day function all alone in the world. No mamas and dadas to tell them when and how to dig deep when it really counts. No one, in fact, to even define what it is that really counts.

It is such a tricky balance: knowing how far your kid can go and pushing him to that place, while also supporting him when that “place” does not measure up to those around him, not all the time. I often feel like a coach. And not just from the soccer sidelines, but during school wrap-ups and after a bummer playdate with a friend. I am always trying to get my kid to be the very best person that was planted inside of him. He’s there, a seed at birth and still–always–slowly growing. I use soft gloves and hope there is no wilting, no torn leaves, no brown roots. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, of course, but there’s always the promise of a budding flower, and often the blooming comes erupting so suddenly I’m stifled by shock and awe.

He’s there, that person. That little man, growing up before my eyes. Unavoidably sprouting. Watching him and coaching him and loving him is effortless. But consciously teaching him how to stand tall and push through and not give up when life gets tough is overwhelming. How often have I given up? Changed course? Lost direction? How many times did it get so hard that I ran away?

I think this is my first taste of “I want you to have it better than I did” kind of stuff. The “I don’t want you to walk in my shoes” song and dance of parent and child relations. Truthfully, I’m not happy to be here. I never wanted to say those things or think those things. But I finally get it. My heart is wrapped right around this child and I want to move him toward all the opportunities that I lost just because I didn’t know the definition of “oblige” or the reward for effort.

Truth is, you may never win the race, dear child, but if you keep moving your legs, you will always finish. Stick with me, I’m going to learn all of these things myself by teaching you. And then we will be unstoppable.

In early Autumn my son had a soccer tournament. Day 2 found me alone on the sidelines, no little boys in tow pulling my eyes away from the field and my chatter away from the relatively adult conversation that can happen between players’ parents. It was a glorious weekend. The kind of pervasive sunshine that sneaks up on you, burning the gap of skin between your hairline and your collar. The boys had played three out of their four scheduled games. During the break between games we moved our chairs into the shade, doling out Gatorade bottles, and passing high fives to our brilliant players. We parents have an awesome job sometimes.

After 30 minutes of getting their sillies out and refueling, the boys were called back together. Coach did a little coaching–work on this, work on that, this will be a tough game but you can do it–and then he forced 14 9-year-old boys to shut up. They were not allowed to speak. They were not allowed to play. They were asked to lay down, or sit comfortably, and relax. Zip it, chill out and relax. That’s an order!

I remember looking over at the boys and at the Coach and then back at the boys in awe. Sure, a few of them just could not handle it. They ripped up grass and threw it at each other. And then they waited for the Look from Coach, which they got, followed by a smile. But most of them relented. Leaned back into the field and watched the trees above, listened to the parent chatter-chatter to their left, watched the current game to their right. Most of them were relieved, I think, to have a moment of calm, to let their bodies shut down just enough so that they could fill back up. So that they would have the energy to bring every last nerve and muscle to the next game.

Sometimes there’s The Hard up ahead. I can see it and I want to pause and lay down and regroup. I want a moment to let my body gather energy again, just so that I can go on, even if The Hard of today is nothing like what I dealt with last week or last year. It’s Hard now. It takes energy and strength and calm. Now. So much resolve that I so rarely have. Now, now, right now.

But there is no pause. There is no one saying, “DON’T.DO.ANYTHING!–Stop your body, stop your mind, just stop.”

I try to make this happen. Like in the little snippet of time where I’m waiting in the car while oldest runs in to grab his forgotten homework. Or when youngest doesn’t want to come out of the bath. Or when middle takes 12 minutes too long to choose his goodnight books. I try to make that my pause. It’s forced upon, a la Coach, and I try so hard to see it as a gift. Here you are, Sarah, and all you are doing is waiting, Sarah. So gather up your breath, Sarah, and let the sun pour in your eyes. Fill up your mind and your strength now. Right now. Courage and calm will come. It will come.

Sometimes the little pauses are just the thing I need. Sometimes I am so grateful to have remembered the opportunity they bring.

But sometimes I want to back the car up and leave my child running from the front door, homework in hand, wondering how he’ll get to school. Sometimes I want to say Little Pauses, go to Hell.

Not that I do. I’m just sayin’.