I have a super power — Invisibility.
I’m having a difficult time sorting things – knowing that I want to be writing, but accepting life, which includes very little time for creativity. My camera has fallen silent and well as this blog.
I have done a little writing, including a piece for my church on the Eat This Book challenge this year, which I will share a link to soon. It’s a beautiful little magazine, entitled Illuminate and I’ve written and offered my photography for it often.
These days our lives are all topsy-turvy; more than you could know. I cannot write everything. I can barely process it myself, before the next day begins and we do it all over again, sometimes worse, sometimes with a little reprieve. It seems it has been this way for months and I do not know when things will end. Some days I feel as if I might break in a thousand pieces of sorrow.
And then a dear friend gets cancer and I’m thrown into a whole new perspective — at least we have our health, at least we have one another.
There are some stories that are not mine to tell. Somehow telling my story (or the impact of my dead father on me, which I have done a lot of) is okay. But writing about my kids is complicated and I wonder whether I even have the right? I want to protect them – to make life safe and to not talk about them. But their needs are necessitating that I write less, work a part-time job, schedule and attend a million appointments for their academic and emotional and physical travails.
I feel invisible sometimes. I live now for my children and I don’t know if that’s right? It doesn’t feel entirely right, but I know no other way to do all this, for now. I just don’t want to become invisible. (This setting aside of my dreams feels decidedly unfeminist, to say the least.)
All the while, my mother is aging and I am helping her, more and more. A widow, she lives independently and happily on her own but she doesn’t want to go to doctor by herself. It falls to me, the daughter who is close by and doesn’t have a “career.” I don’t mind. My relationship with my mother has never been all that strong so I am grateful that I know her better than I ever have. Her stories, her endless remembering which once annoyed me, are treasures to be stored away. It’s a gift to be here for her.
In the meantime, I’m having a hard time being disciplined. I haven’t gone for a run in two weeks, or is it three and it’s not just because the cold of early winter has set in. It’s because I’m exhausted and confused. I’m crying a lot which is so ironic because for years I longed for the ability to cry. It was shut off by emotional pain, medication, and God knows what else. Now I just hope I don’t embarrass myself with the level of emotions that are bombarding me, flowing free for the first time in my life.
I’m sleeping very little which makes me certifiably crazy!
And in the midst of this I hunger for and lean into God; depending on and knowing the unknowable God better than at any time in my life. I pray for deep belief, evidenced through my actions, through my life. Belief in the Holy One’s faithfulness, love and peace.
But I’m so tired. And honestly I’m just surviving.
I’ve alluded to some of the challenges in recent weeks, but I cannot say specifically what we are dealing with. Not just to protect others, but I don’t want this to be a place of emotional vomiting. I want it to offer the hope that I depend on, and to express my dependence on the Holy One.
One day I will find the moments, enough hours in the day (or night) to tell my stories and put them in a manuscript, one day. One day I will become a solid form for others to know and read. But not today.
These days are about invisibility — mostly silent, these days are serving and giving. And in many ways about receiving (learning to do so) from the amazing community of people we have in our lives.
In the meantime, thank you for being faithful readers and friends, for your occasional comments and for staying with me through a busy and mostly silent summer and fall. As I learn I become more visible, prodded by the Spirit and growing. And I hope to have the energy to share it all with you.
Logic & Imagination 