Discovery

"There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why."  I have a friend who comes up with a quote at least once a week that always seems to ring true with me (thanks Amy and keep 'em coming!!!!), but this one (maybe it was the timing with the arrival of our new joy maker, McKinley) really hit home. I've spent many an hour pondering that very thought.....why am I here.  I think it is a natural question everyone asks themselves at one point or another.  Especially when faced with adversity or a fork in the road.  Unfortunately I wasted a lot of years looking to others to answer this question for me, unable to really find anything I liked about myself and thinking maybe they could give me insight into, well, me.  It's kind of like a little book I read my kids about a caterpillar that goes through all these ideas of what he will become; a bear, a bat, a lion, etc., and none of those things fit.  I love at the end of the book how he decides he'll be a butterfly and says, "That's what I'll be.  That's just right for me."  It is a beautiful thing to be at a point in my life where I finally like who I am.  On my road to discovery I have given quite a bit of thought to the opportunities afforded me just simply from the geographical location I was blessed to be born at, the time in history, and the family I came to.  I have often thought how I wished I were born in a simpler time when everyone really knew each other.  They would sit gathered on a porch and visit or make music.  They toiled alongside each other and a person's word really meant something.  Strangely I don't feel that way anymore.  I am a firm believer that there are no coincidences, and my place in life right now is exactly where I am supposed to be.  How do I know that? Because I do my best to be the best person I can be, and when we're doing the right stuff, we end up in the right place at the right time....just like the perfect timing of a note in God's grand orchestra.  I am to be that person who brings a "simpler" life to my family now, who looks past the superficialness of "How are you?" today, and who lives up to my word being my bond. And, as my children will attest to, pretty much everything routine in our lives is accompanied by one of Mom's crazy made up songs.

I think often about how remarkable it is that I was born in the United States, both lines of my geneology running back to it's beginnings and beyond (and an entire volume of subject matter for another blog as I am quite passionate about the freedoms they fought so hard for).  Born to a country where I not only enjoy freedom, but where that freedom also gives me more opportunities than any other country on the earth.  Born in a time when education is at my fingertips and is not available to primarily one sex.  Born to a family of hard workers with giant hearts and extended hands, who raised me to stretch and reach for whatever I set my mind to.  Just the good solid, sweet home full of love I was raised in and that I enjoy now is enough to say that my life has been a priveliged one, for from within those walls I have been molded to look upward and outward, to learn from looking backward, and to try to make a difference moving forward.  Knowing that less than 5% of all the people who have ever lived on the earth have had the opportunity to live in freedom (and even less than that if you are female), simply looking around at all that I am blessed with, recognizing that I live in a day and a place replendant with opportunity, the question I ask myself daily is, "Why am I here today?  What is it that I am to do?"  Just like I don't believe in coincidences, I also don't believe that we are born for only one reason.  I think that in the journeys of life we discover a myriad of reasons we are born, and a myriad of ways to fulfill that purpose.  In the journeys, discoveries, and fulfilling of those purposes I find contentment, and even more so as I see my children do the same. 

After some serious introspection and a lot of thought and prayer, I have discovered a  few things I know I was born to do (the list is actually longer but doing those things will come in time):

1) Love.  Love without judgement.  Love without criteria.  Love without being asked. 
2) Teach.  Not because I know it all, but precisely because I don't. 
3) Be happy.  Being able to find the joy amidst the tumultuous journey of life is one of my most cherished gifts God has blessed me with.
4) See beauty.  I am grateful to live in a day with technology that allows me to try to capture the incredible beauty in this world.  My poor old camera has been around the block. And am I ever grateful to have eyes and ears and senses to capture what cannot be caught on any medium other than our hearts.  Every day that I get closer to hearing aids I listen more carefully to the sound of my children's laughter, to the beautiful strains of music I hear, to the soft sighs of my sleeping baby cradled in my arms.
5) Listen.  Which is hilarious considering the rate at which I am losing my hearing.  I am grateful for the gift of empathy.
4) Mother.  In a day where so many women who give birth are not capable of having a mother's natural affection, how I treasure the profound joy I find in my children.  I do not wish them away. I do not feel they have "kept" me from my career as I have the entire rest of my life to pursue that and only a short number of years to wholly devote myself to them. I do not celebrate the days they return to school except in the joy of knowing they are blessed to receive an education. I do not feel the need to take vacations from them, they are my vacation.  They are my stand-up comedians and not just on a weekend night.  They are the most important career I will ever have, and the most important job I ever do right.  There is no deeper joy than having my arms so full of my very own children that I can barely fit them all in at once.

For a long time I felt like saying these things out loud was some form of pride.  I have just recently realized that accepting certain traits about myself only empowers me to use them to help others more.  So the question is, what was I born to do today?  Maybe just sit and rock my baby and memorize her face.  Even something as simple as that is profound.  It reminds me of the greatness of God and the miracles he works, it makes my heart burst, and it teaches her that no one on this earth loves her like I do.  Actually, I'd be thrilled if that was all that I had to do today!  As insanely busy as life is, asking this question helps sift through the things that jocky for my attention but in the larger perspective just don't matter.  It helps me do what I set out to do a couple of years ago which is not waste my time here doing things that have no meaning, that do no good.  I know that I haven't figured it all out yet, and I'm okay with that.  That is for tomorrow.  For now, I'm busy discovering why I was born for today.

Sometimes I Forget

Today I ran out to pick up Chinese food for lunch.  A rarity around our house.  I was completely alone.  Another rarity.   I sat down at a table to wait on the food to be ready and noticed a woman sit down with her plate of food.   Actually, I noticed her shoes first as I had had my eyes downcast staring into nothing.  I noticed that they were houseshoes and I giggled.   And as is totally typical, this led to a whole train of thoughts lasting about a minute or less before they called me up for my order that started with, "Hmm.  What would it feel like to have zero inhibition to walk out of the house and go out to eat at a restaurant with houseshoes on?" and ended with a sobering reminder.  She was sitting just diagonally up to my right facing away, and as my eyes drifted from her shoes I noticed that she was alone.  She wore worn and faded shirt and shorts that, in all likelihood, served as her "Saturday clothes".  I noticed she wore no ring on her not-pampered hands.  Tanned hands that bore the signs of wearying hard work, and not the tan of a tanning bed.  My humor at her fuzzy houseshoes fading, I took in her posture, head down, shoulders slumped.  Shoulders that looked like they carried the world alone.  She looked, in a word, tired.  Not the tired worn on the face of someone who just put in a long day at work, but the tired worn on the face of someone who is tired to the core.  You can see it in their eyes, and though I could not see hers, her body told me what I would more than likely see if I could.  There was a stiffness about the way she held herself that said, "I don't want your help or your pity."  The kind that oozes from a person that has fought one to many fights with their back to the wall and done it alone.  Aloneness.  That is what emanated from her.  It's difficult to put into words the emotion that gripped me as I sat there those literal few seconds.  Mostly because it was a whole plethera of emotions.  From empathy came the swell of emptiness, sadness, aloneness, the desire to ease the burden somehow, some way, and many more and then I hit an empathetic brick wall as I came to the startling recognition that I couldn't think of a time in my life that I have ever truly been alone.  I could not put myself in her shoes because I have never walked that barren mile. I'm not talking about physically being alone.  I'm talking about even when I am alone, even when I have waded through a hard spot in life that I had to go through alone, I have always lived knowing that I am not.  I have always carried the knowledge with me that there are people out there that care about me.  That love me.  And each of them are a blessing from the one who is always only a prayer away. The thought actually caused me to suck in my breath. The ache of sadness for her and gratitude for the strength that comes from knowing, if that makes any sense, both deepened.  I realized that that minute or less was a reminder.  A reminder not to forget those who do feel completely alone.  The ones who fight their battles with their backs against the wall and more often than not do it alone.  I was ashamed that wrapped up in my world I forgot that for a minute.  I am even more ashamed that I didn't go up to the counter and anonymously pay for her meal for no other reason than to lift her burden even a little, or just simply reach out to her.  The thought didn't register until I was already driving down the road.  Much to my chagrin I realized that I didn't learn my lesson very well.  I drove home with a somber reminder and greater resolve to pay more attention, think a little sooner, and act a whole lot faster.  I drove home with a prayer in my heart of thanks.  For the reminder, and for the blessing of simply knowing that I am never alone.