It is so good to feel creative, feel useful, and to create something tangible with my hands. Everything from picking out fabric, ironing each hem and seam, the rush of the needle over the fabric...all of it soothes me.
It feels good to make something that people like. That they comment on. I take pride in the work of my hands. I take pride in being creative and using my brain for something other than "Do we have broccoli or corn tonight?"
Motherhood is brilliant, don't get me wrong. But it is also tedious and wearing. And many times I feel as if I am lost, drowning in everyone else's needs, and never meeting my own. I love my family, and I love being home with my daughter...but sometimes I look around and think- "Really God...is this all there is?"
And then, as if on cue, Lily laughs and I don't need Him to answer.
Life is funny. There was a time in my life where I thought I would be alone forever. There were wonderful and not so wonderful men who came into my life whom I thought I would be with forever. There was lives I could have chosen with just a small push, a different turn, a well spoken word. All of those lives stretch behind me now like a roadmap of where I have been. But where I am going is so much more appealing now, that my eyes rarely turn back. Okay, they do, but it is to simply mark how far I have come.
I've been struggling with a sense of purpose lately. The whole crisis of "Why am I here...what is my purpose." Yeah, I know it's totally cliche. It's silly. It's ordinary. But it is. I a struggling. I know what I am- a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend. But what else am I? What else am I supposed to be? A writer? A sub-par seamstress? A paleontologist? I just don't know. Like everyone else, I feel less that stellar at most of my roles. I am not the wife I wish to be. I am not the mother Lily deserves. God knows daughter isn't one of my key titles. And friend- well I think most of the time I get that right- but even that is backwards- why be a good friend if you're not a good wife and mother?
Don't be worried for me. All of these thoughts and feeling are nothing new..probably not even to you, my 3 faithful readers. We all struggle. We all push through. We all wonder and wish sometimes. It's human. It's human to struggle for happiness. It's even human not to recognize happiness when it is on your front step.
Tomorrow when I am walking in the park, laughing at Lily's crazy antics, making dinner with my husband, calling a friend on the phone, or drifting off to sleep, these thoughts will be forgotten. But the carousel of worry and regret will keep turning for me...for all of us. It's what we do while we are taking a turn on the ride that counts.
