August means it’s time to think about back-to-school. New teachers, new classrooms, new subjects, new shoes, new backpack, new school supplies, new unknowns in so many realms. The old backpack and the contents of the locker and desk from last year are still exactly where I left them on the kitchen floor on the last of school. Yes, I am one of those moms. I haven’t touched them, and Lord knows I don’t want to. But the time is closing in and I know soon I will need to touch and tackle that horrid monstrosity.
August also means it’s time to reflect on the reality that I only have one child going back-to-school. I officially have a college graduate now, officially an adult working in the big wide world of full time employment. I cannot be that old, I cannot have a child that old, I cannot process that I need to come to grips with all that is involved in the continued transition of parenting small children and that of parenting adult children. These are two entirely different, and difficult, worlds I need to navigate.
August means it’s time to mentally walk away from vacation mode and figure out where to start with all the work needing to be done. It’s time to start to think about fall programing and details at work. Securing volunteers, confirming calendaring, brainstorming changes, tackling the millions of big and small details involved in starting a new year. And this year, we add the start of a new senior pastor into the mix, after a busy season of vacancy and transition. An added blessing, but also an added change along with the natural stresses involved in individual and corporate change.
August also means time to again come face-to-face and carefully reach back and touch some of those monsters and skeletons sitting in the back of my mind’s dark closet. August is a trigger month for me personally… August always seems to open a door and allow a little bit of light to seep into my dusty dark protected areas that I try keep hidden and closed off. August ushers in pain and hurt and deep sadness. August holds on to unknown answers and unresolved feelings and internal conflicts. August marks so many feelings and obstacles, so much chaos, so much emotional baggage.
August is also this odd time of it actually still being summer for a few more short weeks. There is in fact a little time left, a little time still at the lake, a little time to still celebrate the quickly fading days of heat and freedom before the start of so many new things. I need to intentionally protect, hang on to, and celebrate these last few days and not just let them slip mindlessly through my fingers.
After a somewhat low stress summer of intentional relaxation and soul care, for some reason I am suddenly a freight train of emotions and crazy on the inside right now. And honest to goodness, this is the me I hate. This is the me that I used to be every single day, this is the me that I have to wrestle myself away from day after day in my attempt to live sanely and not get forever lost into the oblivion of over processed "busy" in life's unmet dreams and expectations.
I have also come to realize this unsettled internal buzz of feelings, is often a time of God at work in and around me as well. These feelings and inner tension the result of the heightened sense and presence of God’s calling, God’s whisper, God’s direction, God’s desire working within me. It’s often Him bringing me to the steep precipice of change, the pointed call to something bigger, something greater than I’m wanting to see, know, tackle, or even consider. It’s the unsettled feeling of anticipated and projected change, whether that be God ordained or earthly forged.
This is the me that has heightened tension on the inside, a wild mind on the inside, a quickened pulse and over alert mindset racing around like a madman on the inside. This is the me that is battling looking like I have it all together on the outside, but fall apart at the seams on the inside.
It’s a feeling I don’t enjoy, I don’t like, I don’t desire to be stuck at. This is a feeling I have been consciously trying to reign in, be conscious of, to overcome for years… and yet, year after year… here I am, sitting at my desk amid piles of papers, incoming emails, outgoing messages, phone calls, pages and pages of to-do lists (both for at work and at home), in personal and group meetings, and juggling so many appointments here-and-there quick-a-minute before school starts. Dentists, orthodontists, pediatric speciality doctors, ENT appointments, well child checks, eye doctors, school supply shopping… and I could go on and on…
Every year I somehow manage to just continue forward every minute, every hour, every day. I somehow manage to just get everything done, get everyone what they need and have requested, but it’s all a crazy whirlwind inside me… out-of-control bumper cars all plowing into each other, all trying to get away, get ahead, get control, but ultimately none end up actually getting anywhere at all.
I know this is a season that “this too shall pass”… it always does… but I also find it just a jolting reminder of just how intentional I need to be to try reign this personal chaos all in, how purposeful I need to continue to be guarding of my time and the rollercoasters within my mind.
My personality is one of high function, high stress, high expectation. I have come to find this is both a grand strength and damning weakness. It drives me to accomplishment and achievement, yes… but it also drives me to utter despair, burnout, and overwhelm if I'm not careful.
I know I’m not alone, I know many, many are stepping into a similar mindset and battling similar mind games right now. Many of us have jobs of heightened crazy, families and homes in complete chaos, minds with out-of-control and falling apart tendencies during these crazy seasons in our lives.
I know we all carry insecurities, and expectations, and attitudes that weave together the colorful (and not so colorful) parts of our personality. And it’s in that rainbow of activity our true colors most often shine, or simply fade and fizzle away.
I find myself wondering why I can't control all of these feelings during this season better. If I know it's coming, why can't I stop myself from feeling this way, reacting this way, getting sucked in and sucked up with the the day-to-day drama of self-induced busy and emotions? I’m fully aware it’s going on, I can feel my metabolism screeching to a near stop, I can feel my cholesterol and blood pressure levels rising. I can feel the weight already coming back on. I can feel my insides getting caked with thick tension sludge and a sticky miry muck.
I want to eat all the chocolate. I want to drink all the coffee. I want to tell myself I’m too stressed and busy to continue to care well for myself, and that all those poor choices would be entirely justifiable right now. I want to tell myself it's ok to quit running, quit half marathon training, quit weighing in. But deep inside I know none of that is ok, none of that is acceptable. And I know that's exactly how I got to where I was just twelve short months ago.
I’ll be the first to admit it, I do not have my poop in a group right now, but I’m slowly learning that that's ok. I’m slowly coming to grips that life is not about perfection, not about knowing and conquering, it's not even about the arrival, the end, the final product….
It’s simply about the journey. It is all about the journey, even when we don’t want it to be. It’s about weathering the seasons of change well, or at least attempting to survive them better than we did the year before. But you know what, even if we don't, that ok too. Be conscious of, be aware of, be mindful of, be attentive of, be grace filled towards the feelings, and emotions, and thoughts coursing through you during these times of heightened insanity.
Change is not here to break us… it’s not here to burden us - it's here to broaden us, to grow us, to mold us, to better us, even though it may sometimes feel like it’s absolutely earth shattering in the interim.
I have a hard time giving myself grace and fixing my eyes on the little shaded path set directly in front of me, rather than the entire mountain looming in the far off distance, that mountain that looks unattainable in ever reaching. I have also found that sometimes the little path I'm currently on, doesn't even bring me to that big 'ol mountain in the distance, that one I spent all that time and energy worrying about how I was going to climb and conquer.
While the tension and emotions and stress triggers continue to attack and rage inside me, I actual delight in the realization that all of that didn't reside in me much these last several weeks. My intentional hard work to protect myself and my family time, granting myself soul care and rest this summer has started to bear fruit.
Yes, it's August. Yes, the next season of change is quickly approaching again. May we all find a way to simply embrace it all, rather than drown in it all.
{ Next blog post "Passports and Poverty" HERE }
{ Previous blog post "Last Night Of Vacation" HERE }
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