It Can't Rain All the Time
I have not been getting very restful sleep. I would blame it on baby wakings but I can't do that. I moved to another room to try and get better sleep and left the night wakings to my husband. He didn't complain and let me do it but I still woke up more than I wanted to. Then every morning my husband has been leaving for work 2 hours before he is due there and I have to wake up to tend to all three of my kids. So, my sleep has been interrupted and dreamless. Sometimes I will remember my dreams but I lose them by the time I wake in the morning. It is okay. If there was something important to remember, I trust that I would.
Fighting Hopelessness
This week I have been struggling to push the negativity about life away as best I can. Keeping busy is one of the best methods I have of doing that. However, with three children to tend to, what I can find to do is limited. I have been stuck inside and around the vicinity of my house for the most part. The one time I attempted to venture out I got nothing accomplished. I had called my mother-in-law to watch my middle child and took the baby and my oldest in with me to try and get the kitchen cabinets ordered. What ended up happening is my usually slumbering baby awakened the minute we got to the store and demanded to be held while my daughter ran off and hid or danced around haphazardly. Then the person I needed to talk to had not yet arrived to work and I was told to "come back later". Recognizing my folly, I left the store as soon as I could, making my way back home as quickly as possible.
When I woke up yesterday I felt trapped and angry. I felt drowned by loss and it made for a very long day. Eventually I managed to make the day productive by putting aside my own wants and needs and devoting my time and effort to my children. Once I let go of my own selfish desires, it got easier, the children were happier and I was too busy to think much about myself or the things I wanted. Yet no matter how much I busied myself, there was a nagging feeling and questioning at the back of my mind - "It this my life? Is this what I was suppose to look forward to?"
Perhaps one of my lessons in this life is to learn how to not want for myself but to be happy in service to others. What better way to learn it than by being a mother/parent? Yet the very act of succumbing to the role of motherhood has me feeling very depressed. I struggle daily with the guilt that comes with wanting to do something for me. The very act of typing in my blog has me feeling as if I am doing something wrong. There is a part of me that is saying, "You should be interacting with your children right now" while another is saying, "But when do I do what I want to do?" And there is always the defeated voice that soon follows that says, "I have nothing better to do anyway".
Fear
It seems this little four letter word keeps popping up in my posts and life lately. This morning my husband gave me a long talk about how fear ruins people and keeps them from living. It takes the joy out of life and slowly pulls one closer and closer to death. He is right, I know this, yet I struggle with finding any point to fighting my fears especially when I can't seem to find anything worth fighting for.
My dream to go Clear has been put on hold. For how long, I don't know. I am waiting to hear if I will be able to go this summer. If not, then I don't know if I have the fight left in me to continue to pursue it. I know I want it, but I am feeling so broken now for some reason. My guide did interrupt my thoughts last night to remind me to not give up on my goal to be free and helped me recognize that I had previously made the decision to stay at home with my children, but his encouragement did not help. I feel strangled by my own decisions and desires. Is that fear? Probably but I am not sure. I think loss and fear are in cahoots. They come in and work together as a team to strangle the life out of me. I can see the surface of the water but I can't seem to swim hard enough to reach the surface and get to the air.
It Can't Rain All the Time
This morning it is raining. And as I sit here typing about my fears and losses, I contemplate the rain and flash back to an OBE I had not long ago. In it, I found myself standing in the rain inside a wrecked mobile home with a broken roof. As I stood there feeling the very real rain hit my skin, its cool wetness running down my back and tickling my ankles, I wondered how I got there and what it meant. When the memory of that OBE hit me I instantly recognized that I felt that way now - sullen, depressed and wondering what I am doing here. Presently, as I watch it rain outside saturating the dry ground after years of drought, I consider how needed it is and a quote from a very old popular movie comes into my head, "It can't rain all the time" - The Crow.
Perhaps all of this emotion or lack thereof is just the cycle of life? Constantly changing and evolving, the up's and down's of life are that roller coaster (life) on which we all as Spirit enjoy riding so much. The rainy days of lolling about and being lazy with nothing to do are part of that roller coaster. But I struggle to enjoy those days and long to be at the top of the roller coaster anticipating the thrilling downward drop that leads to yet another boring, perhaps rainy day.
And I can't keep the words of my guide out of my head, either. She said, "Just play the game". And I am trying but I do not like to lose. I suck at playing games, actually. For example, take the game of Monopoly. I can count on one hand the number of times I actually completed the game. I usually end up quitting the game long before I reach the end. Why? It seems better to me to quit than to lose and when I see that I am losing, I give up and quit the game leaving the winner unable to bask in his/her glory. My husband calls me a sore loser and I am. I have always been that way. In fact, I have lost or quit the game so frequently that if my husband asked me to play for the fun of it I would decline. Why bother? I would just lose anyway.
It reminds me, though, of times in my youth when I was playing basketball and tennis. One particular memory that comes to me is when I decided to play basketball "for the fun of it" and not worry about winning or losing. During that particular game I fouled out and had to sit out the rest of the game. Yet I was thrilled and quite content to sit out the game because I felt victorious. Why? I had played the game for fun and enjoyed every foul, every stolen ball, every missed shot. I didn't care. And once, when I played that way at a tennis meet, I ended up getting second place at the tournament. All because I stopped caring about winning or losing and just played for the fun of it.
I can see that I need to do that now but life is a much bigger and longer game. Plus, playing for the fun of it does have its consequences. For example, when I played that basketball game for the fun of it, my team ended up losing a player to the bench and losing the game overall. Yet when I played all my matches in that tennis tournament for the fun of it, my team ended up winning the first two slots. With the former experience, I won and my team lost. In the latter, everyone won.
My husband wants me to step up and play the game without fear of losing. Yet my family, my team, is very important to me and I do not want them to lose because I throw caution to the wind. Yet I know that is the risk one much take if they want to get the most out of life. How do people do it?
These are the most recent words from my guide: Do not accept anything other than what you want, for when you do, you lose before you have even begun playing.
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