Thirty-Eight | Feast On Your Life
It’s been a big week! I celebrated my 38th birthday and I cut back my hours at work in order to prioritize some projects that fill me up and bring me joy—writing and creating mostly.
Truthfully, for the last eight months, I’ve been drowning. I’ve been… whatever the opposite of “thriving” is. (According to the dictionary, the word I’m looking for is “failing.”)
It was the natural result of saying ‘yes’ to too many things that drain me and back-burnering pretty much everything that fills me up. Before I knew it, I was working two jobs (one of them full-time at a start-up), homeschooling, helping my children navigate some serious mental health challenges, traveling, and y’know… trying to be a human during this time in history. It was way too much and I’ve barely been keeping my head above water.
I know some phases in life are just busy. But I’ve recently realized that I tend to create these situations because I place so little value on my own joy and wellbeing and so vastly underestimate the importance and potential of the work I want to do.
A couple months ago, I told my husband that I feel like I’m walking along my path in life and people keep handing me rocks to carry. As they’re handed to me, all the rocks seem so important or worthwhile (or both) that I just keep accepting them until I have so many heavy, awkwardly shaped rocks that I can barely carry them all. And because I believe all the rocks from other people are so much more important than my own, I drop the ones that are important to me. The fact that I’m getting weighed down with other people’s priorities, that I’m exhausted, that I’m in pain, that I’ve abandoned the things that bring me meaning and joy… those things seem much less important and worthwhile than the rocks being handed to me.
That’s how very little regard I’ve had for myself and it’s sad, really. I wouldn’t let anyone else I love carry on like that, but I left myself there for months.
Obedience, service, purpose, meaning, mission, submission—those were the only things I was taught to value as a child, as a Christian, and as a woman. Seeking joy or value outside of these things? That was selfish. In my perception of the world, the only real purpose in life was to take up my cross (and other people’s rocks) every day and to carry it all with a smile. Every message made it clear: The daily struggle was the only valid place to find joy… especially as a mom. Changing my situation in order to find more joy or relieve some of my burden was not a valid option.
Thank god for a partner who valued my joy more than I did. Over the last couple of years, Gary has helped me see that I wasn’t created only to serve… I was created to be. And yes, for all of us, sometimes that means serving—life is life after all and there’s a lot to be done. I’m not talking about shirking responsibilities here! But I’m learning that there can be just as much meaning and purpose in joy as there can be in selfless service. That there can be just as much mission in things that are unpaid, unrecognized, and unseen if they create meaning in my life and help me become more fully myself.
At 38 years old, I’m learning that life is for living in all its fullness. That serving and suffering don’t inherently make life more meaningful and discovering/creating true meaning and joy is worth considerable risk and sacrifice. This is real life so I can’t quit my job completely, and it still makes me deeply uncomfortable to give up a portion of our income, but I’m tired of investing the entirety of my time and energy in a career that I don’t want to build because the heftier paycheck makes my work feel more valid. The work I want to do is more meaningful to me and to the world around me so I’m ready to invest in making that a real thing.
Less income right now means less everything that costs money.
But more me. And that, I’m learning, is worth it.
(Now, please enjoy this beautiful poem that I recently discovered. It’s bringing me joy and inspiration for the coming year:)
Love After Love
(By Derek Walcott)
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.