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It’s been a season of change in my house. Chris started a new job July 1st, and for the first time since pre-pandemic days, he is commuting to an office again, and beginning to travel for work. This is the kind of job we have dreamed and hoped for him, the kind of job that is already sweet to his soul. (And therefore, a gift for the rest of us, too.) Still, last week the boys and I were home together for the week while Chris traveled. And I felt the familiar squeeze of my lungs every afternoon. That voice I used to live with when the kids were little: It’s just you and you’re not enough for this.
In those years when the kids were tiny I learned to do. Do and do and do. The dishes, the shoelace tying. The storybook voices. The stroller pushing. The smalltalk with grown ups at parks. The grocery shopping. The diaper changing. The bedtime routines. And it was lonely and sometimes more than that. Sometimes it felt like my chest couldn’t hold me inside it.
I felt that last week and it surprised me. My big boys hanging out around the house in summer-mode and Ace’s therapy appointments and meals to plan. I found myself alone in all of it. My friends gone on summer trips, my work mostly paused while we’re in these long summer days, and it all felt too familiar. The Sadness.
So I was grateful to hear Suzanne Stabile on Glennon Doyle’s podcast speaking some familiar truths to my Enneagram 4 heart, but also giving me some new words and ideas I needed to hear. The main things I need to remember? I want extremes. I always have. I want happiness to be SUPER happy. I want sadness to feel the Most Intense. And in-between feelings are the ones I avoid. This rings true, and I know some of what I struggle with the most in my spiritual journey to embrace God’s nearness in the ordinary is to receive the in-between feelings as good.
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