at various points in my life, yoga has been a really important practice. sometimes, i even dream about yoga poses or classes or things to do with yoga, besides the really comfy pants. sometimes, when i can’t pray or don’t know what to pray for, and i feel restless and ill-at-ease, i can do a practice, and feel better. some people walk labyrinths, some people have therapists, some people do yoga, go to confession, take long walks, read their Bible, journal, whatever. when i feel my brokenness poking through, i know the place i most belong for God to say what needs to be heard is on my yoga mat.
which brings us up to the present day. i’m thirty-five. i’m married to the absolute love of my life. we’re about to celebrate two years of knowing each other. he is amazing. he loves me so much and so well that some days, i even believe i’m the badass he says i am. and there are other days when i am hopelessly unconvinced of my awesomeness, and just pray he doesn’t figure out all the terrible shitty things i know to be true about myself and know that he will stay married to me, anyway, because he’s amazing and loves me, just the same, and poor him. gross.
i can’t overstate the fact that i am terribly grateful for this man, and for the life we make together. i could not have picked out a more appropriate and perfectly suited mate for my soul. every single day, i become more and more convinced he was absolutely custom made. he is one of the best and brightest ways i see the face of Jesus in the world, and know the love of God in my life.
all of that is true, and so is the fact that right now, i’m just having a hard time feeling settled inside my own head. there’s kind of a lot going on. life keeps happening, and whether or not i really could go for a two-week break on anything new happening at all, anywhere in the world, and just get kind of caught up doesn’t mean jack squat, in the grand scheme of things. this is not how life works. sometimes, i have to get right with the fact that occasionally life gets a little busy and pokey and super-tiring and hard, and the thing i need to do most is just keep breathing. but holy smokes, my brain is so full, and it's a really good thing my brain remembers to breathe for me, because if i had to remember to do it every few seconds or so, at some point in the day, i would probably die.
we may be moving into a new house. i have 2.5 jobs, and six email addresses to manage. my work life is going to quintuple over the summer, and my job is still kind of strange and new to me, and while i know it’ll be fine, i’m kind of freaking the deuce out, because TRANSITION TO NEW THING I’VE NEVER DONE BEFORE. and until that time, i’m trying to bill as many hours as i responsibly can at two very different but equally lovely non-profits, and subbing for the public school system. it's kind of hard not to worry about those things...and other things...to just breathe through them, the way i have to remember to breathe through at charley horse at three a.m.
mostly, i worry about money and not making enough, and it always being winter and never Christmas and cancer and car wrecks and vulnerability and resilience and not being a whiner and is this shit normal at all and why does every third person seem to want to vote on whether we have kids or not and the damn bells have stopped being charming because sometimes it’s nice to sleep uninterrupted until 9:30 and should i cut my hair or leave it or does it make me vain to even think about that and i really need to buy a new jar of eye cream and did we eat enough protein this week i have no idea what i want to watch on tv and this rug is puckering in a funny way and i’m excited about buying a new dress but i don’t want to try one on and god i hope i don’t look like a dumb shit in the pictures (tangent--it’s not my wedding, why should i be giving a shit about if i look good in someone else’s pictures...so tacky to be so selfish) and why did it bother me so much that those kids were mean to me and called me a bitch and why was i afraid of them why did i feel like i had to shout to be heard or that i had anything worth saying to them that would make a difference in their lives did someone tell that child they were loved before they left the house did they have a house to leave why do i feel so white and so naive and does this mean i’m secretly this dumb about everything else in the whole world and no one had the heart to just tell me to wake up and smell the fried okra god i hope i remembered to put salt in that...
i don’t mean to issue heavy silence, because this shit, this broken tape of things I’m not even trying to hear, is not about anyone but me. and i suspect, at our toughest and most tired moments, all of us have unwound just a little bit. and i am quiet, right now. on the couch, at night, during the day. i work a lot from home, when i’m not in meetings or in a classroom. our house can feel very big and very quiet. and sometimes, that is really great. when i’m doing what i like to think of as “reassessing”, it’s sometimes easy to get swallowed up by a big space, and i end up feeling even smaller than when i started. i think that’s why lately, i’ve been sticking to the kitchen table and the backyard. even while i’m feeling kind of pokey and broken, right now, it’s nice to be able to watch the light change across the table and watch spring creep into the backyard. the light and the color remind me that this part won’t feel so pokey and broken, forever.
and yoga breathing...i didn’t forget...part three to follow...
mil besos,
rmgj
No comments:
Post a Comment