Hi friends! Day 8!! It’s been over a week of beginning the practice of changing my thought patterns, shifting my perspective and actively looking during each and every day for my very favorite moment. The one that made me feel the most light, the most joy, the most comfort, the one that made me understand or see something in a good new way. And? It’s helping. It’s not that I didn’t recognize that good things were happening in my life…. it’s just that there was so much chaos and so much noise and so much stress and so much hurt that I felt sort of trapped and lost and stuck in this giant thought tornado around me that every now and then had lightning strikes straight to my heart that unearthed emotions which just sort of bled out. I couldn’t see anything but the sad and the confusion and the worry and the frustration. Sure, sweet stuff happened around me, but it was sort of like a brief moment of acknowledgement…but then right back to the cinema of insanity playing in my brain.
I was stuck in a circle of:
• how did we get here?
• what does the future even look like any more?
• is anything I once knew even a reality any longer?
• what does remote schooling look like for me and my party of four kids?
• what is this new pandemic reality and what does that mean for my own family with changing rules and knowledge of the virus and local numbers?
• and how can I be the best wife and mom and friend and human during this craziness…while also not losing myself in the process….?
It’s… been a time.
But this? This has been nice.
I needed this.
Now, I acknowledge the lack of control and the wild wave I’m on, but that’s like the background noise and my actual *life* is back on center stage where it belongs. So simple, so easy actually.
Honestly, please, give it a try and see for yourself!
So here we are.
Day 8.
Frisbee in the Ocean
My moment of joy today was a simple one. We were at the beach and my mom had left and the girls wanted to go back with her. It was golden hour, and it was just my husband and our two boys. They had brought a frisbee and had a pass the two of them while my husband and I clinked White Claws and caught up a bit. A few minutes later, they asked us to play with them. My husband hopped up, an actual literal child in an adult body, and the three of them were having a blast. I snapped a photo and smiled, and sort of exhaled to have a moment of quiet by myself. Everyone was taken care of. But then I looked at them and thought wait, no, I’m healthy, I’m physically able to do this (and I love it – we’ve had some epic tosses this summer), why am I sitting sideline on my life? So I jumped up and trotted over to them and the smile on the kids’ faces was just so great. Their eyes lit up and then off we all went, taking turns sprinting at top speed into the shallow waves and hurling and snagging this white frisbee out of the air, with the blue sky encircling us all around. People out for a stroll stopped to smile and clap for particularly dramatic catches.
It made me so happy to use my strong legs to run and my fit arms to catch and my healthy lungs to push. It was such a fun way to end the day. I feel so thankful to have had the gift of rewiring my mind to push me out of my chair tonight, and right into what is now a lovely memory. ?
Care to share your thoughts?