Honest

I have sat down so many times to blog over the last few days. I've procrastinated and read other peoples' blogs and every time I log in to my own, I just sigh and sign back out.
I don't know.
I get tired of the broken record of busy-frantic-busy-crazy. Why write about it more than I already have? I am tired of living it. Why would anyone want to read about it?
But I think that for me (and I suspect for other girls out there), there's something a little deeper going on. I mean, lots of us are busy and we thrive on it and we like it. We laugh and take secret pride in our hectic lives.
And I'm not talking about those girls.
I'm talking about me and girls like me who want more to show for their lives than a stack of used calendars and planners. Girls who live intentionally, who go after the things that interest them and who fight against the sweeping tide of normalcy. Girls who fill their lives with good things and who are aware of so many more good things to put into their lives as time goes on.
Am I the only one?
I mean, all the things in my life - the things that make me busy - are good, nourishing things. But the sheer busy-ness of it wears on me so that I cannot enjoy the many, many good things that I have.
I suppose that part of this is a stage of life - a normal and natural passage into the next part of things as they're mean to be. This is the part where, as my dad said last night, you often are unable to just put one foot in front of the other. This is the part where moms get stuck in one hairstyle and start wearing high jeans to cover the rolls from childbearing and eating too many convenient carbohydrates. This is the part when you lose yourself as you help your kids discover who they are.
But I think this deeper thing that's going on me is that I'm one of those girls who has never settled for normal. Yeah, it's normal to enter this stage of life. But it's not normal for me to do what's normal.
So I find myself in a strange spot. Something inside is fighting against the turn my life is taking. And I'm not really sure it should be.
I'm not one to think that moms are supposed to pour their very souls out in an effort to raise their children. You'll have nothing left when they're grown. But I also don't think that a mom's interests should be indulged to the point that her children miss formative opportunities.
Do I spend this night knitting or do I volunteer for the band fundraiser (I mean, I have to take the boy there anyway, why not help?). Do I take a photography class, or do I commit to driving Emma to ballet once a week?
Because here's the thing - I can't do both. I have been trying to and it isn't working. I've always said that I can't do it all and I know that I can't, but I guess I always thought it would be obvious what I should and shouldn't do.
I just typed out the list of all the things I want to do and all the things I think my children should be doing and it's astounding. I deleted it. It practically doubled the length of this post. But the things on the list, they're all good things that are relevant to who my kids and I are.
It'd be nice if I could just point a wand and utter that magic spell, "balance," at the pile of stuff and it would sort itself out into piles of dos and don'ts.
Wisdom says that I am young and will have plenty of time to explore all the things that I want to do in life eventually.
Something else in me says I need to do it now.
I hope that doesn't mean I'm going to die young.
I'm only mostly kidding about that.

We recently watched a Rob Bell teaching called Shells. He was talking about his son, who was swimming out toward a big starfish floating in the water. He kept returning to the shore in frustration, having not retrieved that prize. They finally figured out the issue - his hands were already full of shells. His point, of course was that if your life is so full of small good things, you'll never be able to grab your great thing.
I have so many beautiful shells in my collection. And maybe I am not so sure I have a starfish.
Oh, I'll be fine. I know that sounds melodramatic. This is just me working out what's going on inside and I thought about not doing it here, in this public spot. In fact, I even opened up another blog, one just for me, just so that I could work through some of this. But I have had even less time to put into that and I thought that surely I'm not the only girl my age who has these processes churning in the undercurrent of her life. Why not put it out there, I thought?
You out there? You're not the only one. I'm not either.
And at the risk of getting sappy here, that's what makes us different, I think. A willingness to exist in the tension between two pulls. It's uncomfortable, yes. Sometimes the tension threatens to rip you in two. That's where I am right now.

I think that if I fell firmly into one side of this mess, I'd always be worried about what I was missing out on. On the other hand, I'm also missing out on the full understanding of one good thing.

DAILY BLISS: sitting on the porch on this gorgeous day, gnawing on a chunk of sugar cane with my kids