Gap Year, Week 3

How are we only 3 weeks in? I feel as though a lot of life has been lived.

I’ve re-done a closet, started a YouTube channel, been on a girls trip to Asheville, NC, and run a 15K race.

I may need to re-think the pacing. After all, the point here is for my rest, not just my adventuring.

But I’m not super good at rest. After all, I’ve spent over 2 decades participating in lots of “ing” words – parenting, working, cleaning, cooking, driving (oh, dear God in heaven so much driving). And yes, other, less desirable and productive words as well – worrying, panicking, yelling.

There has also been celebrating, happy crying, praying, comforting, hand holding, loving, teaching. A lot of life lived in a certain context: the one where you have and raise children and build a home. But resting doesn’t come naturally.

And As I contemplate the “what’s next” over the next 15 months, I am going to have to fight for focus. I don’t want to just flitter away these days and busy myself with the normal. I want to be busy with the abnormal. Not in a bad way, in a breaking the mold of what an empty nesting 48 year old mother of 3 is SUPPOSED to look like way.

I recently read Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward and this is my favorite quote:

“When you get your ‘who I am?’ question right, all of your ‘what should I do?’ questions seems to take care of themselves.”

So for now, my answer is I am an explorer. An explorer of myself as more than a wife, a mom, an employee. I am a human with potential. Perhaps untapped? We will see. But there is also no immediate pressure on me to perform or produce or create income.

It is a gift I almost cannot grasp in all of it’s enormity.

The writing and the creating feed me. And I am, at the very least, a complete dichotomy. I will film and talk about Disney and running and then read Virginia Woolf and be completely inspired by this:

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only hours, nobody can say.” A Room of One’s Own

It’s truly horrible for one’s “branding”. And I don’t even care. I sit in my finished basement (because when I typed just basement in that sentence it read very creepy and weird) and film videos, and although the intellectual part of me wonders if it’s ridiculous, it’s so much stinking fun I don’t even care. I can be an intellectual who reads deep thoughts and also does videos about running and Disney and organizing.

Because that, Friends, would be the entire point: I get to be whatever I want to be. Cue the music. I know many of you know it. Please sing with me. And if you can’t sing, let me know so I can pray for you that someday you can. Music video posted below.

There’s a land that I see where the children are free
And I say it ain’t far to this land from where we are
Take my hand, come with me, where the children are free
Come with me, take my hand, and we’ll live

In a land where the river runs free
In a land through the green country
In a land to a shining sea
And you and me are free to be you and me

source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/f/freetobeyouandmelyrics/freetobeyouandmelyrics.html

And you and me are free to be, you and me. It works today the same way it did when I was 8. Onward.