What Can I Control?

Joining the Five Minute Friday writing gang again today.

I find that when I feel out of control I am flooded with anxiety and my productivity is severely unhinged.

When I stop and focus on what I can control -  ME - my actions, responses, reactions and behavior everything in my world comes into order.

What I can control is deciding what I will do and how I will proceed with whatever is happening in my world in any given moment.

I have 3 boys who are super busy, challenging, and incredibly brilliant - I'm their mom - I'm supposed to feel that way... but they are also like standing in front of a pitching machine with a bat in my hand and every ball coming toward me is unpredictable.

As I type they are yelling battle cries, shooting Nerf guns and careening about the house fighting with each other about whose is what and jockeying for position in the hierarchy of our world...

I can control me, type, focus on the benefits to letting them work things out for themselves while I carve out 5 minutes to blog.

The difference between peace and anxiety for me is knowing what I can control is me.

2017 the Year of Joy

It was 10 years ago, I had to say goodbye. Losing a baby changes you.

This past week my body has had more memories than I have. Back to back anxiety attacks, sadness, restlessness, and random mood swings that seem connected to nothing, I have been reliving it. The uncertainty, the fear, all came back like a tidal wave of history. The week of waiting to know if she was going to grow.

It was my first trimester, elated, I was already attached. Our toddler boys and I came up with a song to celebrate her existence only to have to change the lyrics once she died. They saw her, like a diamond on a ring when heart was beating, she was real to them. Having a sister in Heaven changed them too.

I’d walked with beloved friends through this loss. I’d seen the grieving, the heartbreak, the leaning in to Jesus when temptation is to push Him away. I begged Him to show me who I’d lost. In the haze of sleep and waking, the day after loss-discovery, He showed her to me. Tucked in His arms, girl-pink blanket swaddling and white knit cap revealing dark eyebrows, feathery lashes on eyes closed asleep, sweet teeny nose, rosebud lips relaxed, peaceful. For a few moments, only moments, the agony was replaced with beauty.

My middle name is Joy. I’ve loved and hated having an emotion as a part of my title. I wanted a girl and thought having a little girl named Joy would be delightful. My logical linear thinking Love said naming a child after an emotion wasn’t something he would consider. Until now.

We were overJoyed when we discovered I was pregnant for the third time. She only knew our Joy for her arrival. She would never know the pain of earth-living, Joy was the perfect choice for her.

Ten years later, I type in the early hours, Sophie-dog in my lap, releasing again the darling little lady waiting for us in Heaven. Grateful for the gift of her. The knowing of grief while embracing Joy is the declaration to dive deep and rise.

2017 the Year of Joy.

Re"Fine"

Joining the gang at Five Minute Friday today...


Choking again on another day of anxiety attacks.

The sun is shining, the sky is blue and I’m sobbing in my truck.

I went to lunch with my hubby, which I typically love, but instead today we talked of grocery budgets, his opinions and mine on expenses and I mentioned how I feel buried in my MUST DO NOW list. I’m sure he didn’t enjoy it any more than I did. He feels helpless with this crazy place that happens in our world. After 25 years, it’s still a challenge despite the professional resources we are grateful for.

And so, I sob, all the way home and cry at my keyboard as I type.

I see the word prompt for today is REFINE.

I feel like taking it in a non-normal direction and say re-fine is to say you are fine, and then when someone else asks, “How are you?” you say “fine”. So you re-“fine”. And you keep saying it because when you are feeling sucked in the blackness despite the sunny soggy-snow-melty blue sky day, that is how you are. Fine.

I don’t imagine off-ing myself. My suicidal thoughts died when my psychiatrist told me that often kids follow their parents if they commit suicide. That horrified me. Never. Ever. Ever.

Today I am just fine. Crying, sniffling, trying to push through the anxiety that is coursing through my veins I will continue to re"fine” until I believe it. 

I'll be "fine".