a 31-day challenge

Some weeks ago I heard a story on a radio show of a man trying to get rid of the weeds in his yard.  It plagued his mind and  made him all sorts of irritated to look out and see the unwelcomed flora taking over his lawn.  Armed with concentrated, heavy-duty, spray-on weed killer in hand, he took to the yard on a mission to beat back the unwanted overgrowth and return once again to a beautiful landscape.  This became his modus operandi for weeks as he diligently and vigilantly wreaked havoc on those pesky weed.  Within a short span of time, however, it became all too clear that he had not only destroyed the unwanted weeds, but entire sections of his lawn in the process.

Ain't that the way?  How many times have I found an unruly weed popping up in some area of my life and fought it back with some huge overcorrection that left the earth beneath my foot very nearly scorched?

When his wife finally convinced him to drop the bottle of liquid destruction, this gentleman realized he needed a new approach.  He asked a pal with deeper and wider knowledge on the topic to come over and help assess the damage and cipher a better equation to both be rid of weeds and have a healthy lawn.  Without much need for a tour of the very apparent damage the friend had only this to say: "If you want to get rid of weeds for the long haul, you plant more good grass."

There it is, folks.  That right there?  Profound.

I've got some lifelong and recent practice at all this, both the over-the-top ulitimately detrimental response, and the calculated casting of new seed to starve the unwanted of a life-supply.  Those weeds, I've definitely got them; in my yard, in my house, in my relationships, in my time, in my mind, in my spirit, in my person.  How I'm going to get rid of them, well, still remains to be seen.

For the month of October I am linking up with the nester and a slew of others as we accept the challenge to write for 31 consecutive days.  The site and comment section is abuzz as everyone works on deciding their 31-day focus and topics, themes and categories.  I could think of nothing more relevant to the me-of-right-now than a month of writing centered on "planting good grass".  As all things are - and few things aren't - it'll be a process.  Nothing would make me more content than you reading along in October.  And would you consider talking back in the comment section below?  Let's think this thing through and work it out together.

 My mind is swirling with ideas and inspiration.  We'll see where 31 days takes us.  Hopefully the grass will be truly greener and more plentiful on the other side.

here's my link image that will show up at thenester.com

And we're back...

Alright.  Things are about to get wonky (temporarily) around here.  A year ago I left blogger for another web hosting site.  A year later, I'm coming back.  I missed blogger.  Oh, what a wayward child I've been.

Everything from there will make its way back over to here for my own archival purposes.  But for my sanity, I press on afresh.

Lots to be said.  Some of it, hopefully, interesting.  And maybe, someone will once again read it...

Working With What I've Got

I don't think I'm any different than anyone else when I say that I felt more than a little stressed about setting goals for myself at the-end-of-2011-going-into-2012. I never think of them as “New Year's resolutions” simply because the connotation in my head for resolutions is their inevitable and swift demise; what Mary Poppin's describes as “pie-crust-promises: easily made, easily broken”. But there's actually nothing inherently wrong with a resolution since it literally means, “a firm decision to do or not to do something”, which is actually what I think of a goal being. So, apparently calling it a goal or a resolution is just semantics.

But I digress...

I felt stress making resolutions for 2012. It's not news here that I try to approach life within the balance of changing what isn't wholly beneficial while accepting imperfections as part of living. But when I stared the clean slate of 2012 in the face and tried to think of how to make it somehow better or more – or even less imperfect, perhaps? - than 2011, I just felt discouraged. That's it, discouraged; completely without courage to formulate the formula for improvement. If I knew how to bring about the positive change that would be my goal for 2012, wouldn't I have done it in 2011? Who would I be kidding if I said 2012 would be any different? All the same shortcomings and deficits in my person that had existed in the last one would still come into a new year.  Staring at the yet-to-be-discovered year of 2012, all I saw was the stuff that I failed at in 2011.

Le sigh. No wonder I felt stress.

I definitely think that part of what I like to call “reflecting rightly” requires looking at the fullness of things; discerning the good and the bad, the whole truth of a thing or person or situation. But on occasion that assessing looks less like discernment and more like harsh judgment, and never more so than towards myself. In contemplating what my goals would be for 2012, it seemed every failed goal of 2011 - each financial woe, all relational conflicts, the glaring behavioral flaws of myself or the kids I parent - was all I could see. And though I knew that all the wrongs of 2011 did not, could not, rest squarely on my shoulders, somehow the weight of them seemed to. The awareness of my faults – and the gross magnification thereof – lured me into feeling like the sole proprietor of the Little Shop of Shortfalls.

But then I snapped out of it. THEN, I reflected rightly...

I got to thinking – instead of feeling, for pete's sake – about it all. 2011 was a good year, like all of our years are. It had great stuff in it, like all of our years do. It had crap in it, like all of our years do. I did awesome and stunk it up, like I always do.

Get over it. Get up. Fail forward.

A year or so ago, the prince among men that is my father, gave us kidlets and kidlets-in-law a book called StrengthsFinder. Though its novelty should not be so, it is a hugely unique and innovative tool for approaching goal-setting and life-living. What is so different about it is that it starts from the place of your strengths and builds on them.

Rather than putting a magnifying glass to my faults and flaws, why not start at the places that are strong? In fact what if the things I am good at, the places of my strength, were allowed to overshadow the weaknesses? What if the strengths were given such support and reinforcement that they became strong enough to improve or diminish or eradicate the failings? What if I believed that this non-cookie-cutter, unique, one-of-a-kind person I am was created by God on purpose to be just that . . . me?

I believe in a three-personed God. I believe in God the Father. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the Holy Spirit. And I believe that I need this triune God to help me every step of the way. I know there is a supernatural needed in my natural. But I have to stop refusing to see that the person He so meticulously and intricately and thoroughly created me as was done by Him intentionally, with a wealth of strengths He wants to build up and build on.

Now that is a resolution: to stop starting from my weaknesses and to begin starting from my God-given strengths. It's different. In fact, it is a paradigm shift. But apparently, my top strength tested out as being adaptability, so that should help.

So let's get crackin' . . .

An Ode to Adjustment

In 2011, we stretched out into an additional 800+ square feet of house and a swagger wagon of sorts  that will seat seven. We have a flock of eight hens,and spent most of the year caring for our dog and that of our best friends who relocated overseas. My hair grew. Additional weight accumulated. We even accrued unforeseen debt; some out of necessity (is that an oxymoron?), some out of stupidity.

I'm not bragging or complaining or lamenting. I'm just saying.

It's been a strange thing. In a year that in some not-so-small ways has been more about acquisition than winnowing – buying a larger home, a larger vehicle, a larger stock of animals – it's felt strange and difficult and somehow false to write about winnowing, at least the kind that I had grown so accustomed to when we were trying to abide – two adults, three children, ten fish*, and one dog – in just over 1100 square feet. If not completely false, I have at least felt duplicitous in a lot of areas; high ideals and aspirations to steward, save, sift, and shift, but mediocre execution.

2011 held the certainty of change for us. The whole year was about finding the fit into new realities: a new home, Brilliant Beauty's last year in elementary school (gulp), best friends moving to Asia, the singularly most travel-intensive year ever for Ma Luffin' Mayun (40+ days out of the country), and the constancy of flux that comes with a 4- and 2-year-old.

Hm. It makes sense that there would be a jarring of my status quo winnowing woman self.

I don't know where I'm going with all of this. I might feel that an apology should be made or an excuse attempted for not writing much here of late. In fact, I know I feel that way. But I realize that to make an apology for shifts and changes and seasons is a lot like seeking forgiveness for growing pains in your legs during the middle of the night. Once again, it just is what it is, and I think I'll not apologize this time.

I feel steadier now. Like I have my sea legs back under me for faring the waves of winnowing, separating the good from the bad, in 2012. I hold in my heart a well-spring of gratitude for all we gained in 2011, even in our losses.

And here will once again be the narrative. I don't know if you will read it, if you are still reading. But I do know this: I will write it.  

*We winnowed the fish - um - unintentionally.  We're down to 6.

Living Life

Yep.  That's what we've been doing, just living life.  It's been good, it's been hard; it's been exciting, it's been boring.  It's the life I've always wanted.  It's full of daily frustration.  I've constructed thousands of bits of blog posts in my head or heart.  But the living won out over the writing therein. There's lots to say, but then again there always is. I will pick back up and start from here.

But today, Brilliant Beauty has words better than my own.  She has a creative writing assignment due tomorrow in her fifth grade class.  She came down from finishing her rough draft to read it to me.  It was lovely, and she drew the picture so well with her words.  So tonight's blog is turned over to her.  She makes me proud and joyful, and abundantly aware of the privileges of living this life.

The Garden

 As we enter the gates at Botanical Gardens in downtown Athens, I rolled down my window and I felt Fall.  I felt superb.  The cool, crisp air began crawling down my back.  Plus all the grand colors; red, yellow, brown, and orange.  Pretty, all of it.

Once we found a parking spot our journey began; time for the shade walk.  It really was a shade walk with trees everywhere.  There were magnolias, oaks, pines, all kinds of trees.  We even saw a hawk fly to its nest.  It was black, brown, and with a white-striped tail.  My brother and sister lay in the green, thick, luscious grass while I enjoyed the outstanding flowers and all the colors.  There was this one flower that was precious, petite, and purple.

As we took steps by steps, I was intrigued.  I saw a bench.  From that moment on I knew it was photo shoot time, the time of photos galore.  Splendid pictures are taken from my mom’s point-of-view.  I took pictures of my parents.  My dad took pictures of mom.  Mom took the rest.
After ending the shade walk, we went to see the bronze children.  My brother handled the boys, and I the girls.  We named them Jessica, Jack, Lewie, Joy, Charity, Tanya, and Mrs. Cavrey.  We played all day like we were doing homework and studying.  All so fun!

Finally it was time to go home.  We packed up the car.  As we made our way through downtown Athens and into Statham I thought, “Sure, we had fun doing the photo shoot and walking the shady path.  Yet our true happiness was FAMILY TIME!”

Literary Laryngitis

I think it's safe to say I'm in good company.  ACB is feeling it.  SBB is, too.  And it's not a topic I haven't hashed out with KakiBlack any less than a thousand times prompted by a hundred different circumstances.

This life is not perfect.  I am not perfect.  It is what it is.

I make it my goal to be authentic in my writing.  I figure it serves no one well for me to write about anything other than the life I genuinely live with the voice that is organically mine.  I long ago made peace with the sort of laws of imperfection that exist around us all; things are not always as we wish them to be; the hair, the clothes, the status, the days just don't always fit as comfortably as we'd like; there's that something we can't seem to quit, or that something we can't seem to begin.  However, the more days, months, years, and experiences I accumulate the less I want to be anything other than what I am in all the becoming.  I'm okay with the work in-progress.  And though I don't love everything about myself or my life or my way of doing things, I don't spend a lot of time trying to be something I am not or comparing myself to any one else.

Until the times when I do.

I want to be a writer.  Like, a lot.  I have loved to write and photograph and chronicle as long as I can remember.  (Ironically, for a woman that doesn't answer her phone I feel like I have a lot to say.)  In recent months I have dreamed of it and ached to do it, disappointed when there isn't time and so contented when there is.  I have brainstormed topics and thought some things through.  I have networked a little here and there in places where blogs can get a little bit more exposure (because, after all, writers want to be read in the end).  And I have read other people's blogs, particularly those of other "successful" women bloggers. 

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Um, not so much.

What I have found myself doing is sinking underneath the sea of other writers out there.  Even now just thinking about it I can feel my chest tightening at the thought of the overwhelming number of female bloggers/writers who have carved out a niche or branded themselves into these forces to be reckoned with.  They write about everything: motherhood, home life, marriage, career, fashion, food, homesteading, crafting, spirituality, health.  You name it, it's being written about, and often better - or at minimum, more thoroughly - than I could write about it.  At least that is how it feels because that measuring stick I pride myself in not pulling out much is not only pulled out, but is measuring my writings against these - or worse, my life against theirs - and I'm carving out notches to mark all the places where I don't measure up.

I hate that feeling.  And all the measurements and comparisons seem to tighten like a vice grip on my throat, on my written voice in particular.  I ask questions of myself I've never asked before: could I write more like her, about more of that?  Should I twist this thing and contort it to try to make money out of it?  Do I continue to nurture a deep-rooted passion regardless of who notices or am I looking to peddle some gimmick that will stroke my own ego by raising the number of readers?  I hate these questions.  This is not who I am.

I believe I have a healthy and balanced confidence in my own writing, and in this life I live as a whole.  And to have allowed myself as much time as I have lately to make comparisons and draw misguided conclusions severely erodes that confidence and my morale.  There are some exceptional women writing some exceptional things out there, and some who aren't.  And there are some who paint a picture of an unattainable perfection, an I-have-it-all-together-at-all-times-ness, that I can't identify with but have wondered lately if I should fake.  Then, I remember.  There are a lot of writers, but there isn't another one with my voice . . . because my voice is only mine.  And your voice is only yours.  It's worth adding to the chorus. 

If you've forgotten or maybe even doubted, you're in good company. 

Use it.  Don't lose it.