Over the Fence: And Then There Was Light

 

Hello loves.  It's so nice to see you again.  Today is a perfect day for leaning over the fence having a chat.  The pollen is increasing but it's not so bad, yet we need to shelter indoors.  

 I've been seeing the signs of the approaching season for quite a few days now.  This week I spied Carolina Jessamine blooming in the treetops in the woods and in many yards, there are little mounds of creeping phlox, which Granny always called "Thrift".  I was surprised on one of our runs to the dumpsters to drop off trash bags to see a daffodil on the ditch bank across from the family's house up the road (or across the field).  It was one of those lovely double daffodils that Mama used to call 'Scrambled Eggs", a mix of yellow and white.  How it came to be there is a mystery.  Where it came from is another mystery.  Did some earnest squirrel borrow it from Granny's yard or was the bulb hidden in a load of dirt brought to fill in a low spot in the road and then pushed aside?  Does it even matter?  It's absolutely lovely however it came to be there.

Something has changed here, too.  You all know I've been struggling mightily these past few months.  Somewhere in November I began to sink into the sea of despond, dark clouds rolled about my head, and I spent the bulk of November, December, January and part of February burdened, overwhelmed, incapable of seeing good in much of anything at all.    It was a difficult passage.  But since this weekend I am free.  I said a prayer this past Friday night asking to be released from all this despondency, overwhelming anger, irritation and frustration.   I don't for one minute discount the number of you who have said week after week for all these months that you were holding me up in prayer either.  I think I had to be ready to let go of my grief at what I'd expected from life at this time and yield to what God needed to do in me in order to bring those prayers to culmination.  

In all the years since I was healed of depression, these past few months I was very close to being back down that horrid path of depression all over again. I've said a time or two that a day made me Navy Blue, but this was deeper than Navy Blue.  And it was more than a day long.  But never mind.  That is not what I want to talk about at all.  I'm just so very grateful to find myself released and feeling like myself once again that I wanted to share with you all that I'm ok.  I really am.

I woke Saturday morning, and it was as though someone had turned on a light in a dark house and I could suddenly see my way.  I felt at ease and relaxed and any form of resentment or frustration was gone.  I marveled a bit at this but when I woke on Sunday morning and felt the same and again on Monday, I accepted that this particular dark sojourn is over.  Not one circumstance has changed.  Everything is exactly as it was Friday afternoon.  But I have changed.  I am changed.  And I am so grateful.

Overall, it comes down to two things I think, aside from the compliment of prayers that came my way and one of them was that I either TRUST God, or I don't.  That came up in a song at the special worship service on Friday night.  I asked myself in earnest, "If I trust Him, then why am I angry that my life right now looks different then I'd planned it?"   I am that man in the Bible who told Jesus, "I believe...Help my unbelief."   

There I was saying I trusted and angry at God at the same time for not doing what I wanted, grieving over what might have been and wasn't.  I don't know if I'll ever have those things I'd planned.  I don't.  But I have to trust Him.  I vowed on the side of that mountain some 11 years ago that I'd trust Him in ALL things and look at what all we've been through and come to.  Hard and difficult things, wonderful things.  

And the second thing is that ultimately, I believe good triumphs over evil.  Every single time.  Because good is more powerful and less self-centered than evil.  If those things I want are not to be, even now is difficult, then I must trust this process to be a triumph over the wrongs we've experienced and a greater good ahead.

Yesterday, we took Little One to the playground at a fast-food place after we'd done grocery shopping.  A young woman came out with her small children and shortly thereafter another young woman came out.  She was a lovely girl with a familiar face.  She apparently knew us and said "Hey Y'all!  Hey!" and I smiled at her acknowledging that I knew her but I wracked my brain trying to determine where I knew her from.  I finally realized she was a girl that was about Little One's Mama's age.   

This morning, as I puttered around the kitchen making lunch for the Little One, it suddenly occurred to me to wonder at her.  Her children are Little One's age and younger.  I wondered just how she felt about homemaking and housekeeping and meal planning and childcare.  Did she look longingly back to those days when those things didn't exist in her life except as the occasional chore or babysitting job?  

I thought back to my young homemaking days and I asked myself the same.  I was so accustomed to tedious housekeeping tasks since I was the main one doing them that by the time I'd married, I knew how to plan a meal and keep a house.  What little I didn't know, I was able to learn quickly enough.  I had a world of past experience in teaching myself what needed to be known to draw from.

I remember in those early homemaking days what I enjoyed was the freedom to decide when I wanted to do chores.  If I didn't feel like doing dishes after a meal, then I didn't.  If I didn't want to wash dishes all day long, I didn't.  If I didn't want to make the bed, I didn't.  If I wanted to make a cake, I did.  I no longer needed permission to do the things I wanted to do, so I could just do them.  I no longer had anyone demanding I DO things, so I didn't.

Naturally that state of affairs didn't last very long.  I soon enough learned that I preferred the neatness of a well-kept home.  It took me years upon years though to learn to use the routines that I use now in home keeping.  It would have been easier if I'd learned those sooner.  

Do you know what I also remember?  I kept a clean neat home for the most part.  Not as clean as it might have been, but not dirty.  Not cluttered.  It was neat and as attractive as I could make it.  Why, then, did I let others make me feel inferior in how I did that job?   I did.  I let my ex-husband, my in-laws, and a few others, to say that what I did wasn't enough, wasn't up to a standard that they held.  However, what I know in looking back is that without the dark colored glasses I looked at life through, I had a pretty home.  It might need to be dusted, the floors sometimes weren't mopped, but overall, my house was neat and clean. I made the best of everything I had in order to make that home pleasant.

When I really struggled with homemaking was after the accident with the drunk driver, when I was in deep pain and weary as could be from being unable to sleep well at night and felt pressured by a stressful job outside the home and the needs of a family inside the home.   Then my standards dropped somewhat and yet, I tried.  I did try.  I just needed help that wasn't there to be given.  And when John came along and moved in, he took up the reins of management and told the kids what chores they needed to do daily.  He did his share as well.  The house was tamed once again and looked nice.  We had a home that was always company ready.  Which was great because in those days our doors were always open to anyone who might come along.  Neighbors, co-workers, family, friends, all dropped in often to visit and often they stayed to a meal with us before they took their leave.

I miss those days of hospitality, but here we are.  A different home, a different season. 

Goodness seasons do come and go, don't they?  I was a stay-at-home mom, a working mom, a stay-at-home mom once more.  Then I was a stay-at-home wife.  And here in my so-called retirement, I am tending to a 3-year-old child on a full-time basis.    Do you know what I really see?  An endless lifetime of cooking, cleaning and caring for others, lol.  A life full of seasons past.  So why on earth should I let this particular place make me feel it is a permanent station in life?  None at all.

What's important is that I remember that life is ever changing.  And that there has been a break in the darkness and I'm once more in light.