I am currently sitting in the waiting room of a surgery center while my husband has a routine procedure. I should not be listening to her conversation. But she is talking very slowly, and with a lot of intention and I can’t help myself. Four chairs away from me an older woman is on the phone and is explaining to the other caller that she can’t commit to what is is they want her to commit to. Because she is putting her life “on hold”….. because “ my son is having a procedure today, and they think it’s cancer”. 

I have had a crazy morning. I had to get up at 6am and take Lulu to the bus by 7 am only to turn around and go and drop off my husband at his appointment then turn around and take the twins to preschool and come back to the doctors office to wait for him to be done. I’m sitting here, trying to do some work on my computer and checking the time over and over again wondering when Kevin will be done so I can get my much needed Starbucks and go workout. But right next to me this precious mama is dealing with this hard reality. We never know how people are hurting around us. Truly. She looked so content reading her devotional. Had I not been eavsdropping ….

One of the hardest things for me to do in life is lean into the pain. I am the kind of girl who loves to have fun. Live my best, fullest life Enjoy. So when things go upside down, it’s so easy for me to want to skim right on over it. Run away. Not feel it. Because those feelings suck. Those feelings are draining. Pain is draining. To put it simply, hurt HURTS. 

Ironically, right now in our home we have instituted a “Calming corner” for the kids. Basically a place for them to identify their feelings and learn strategies though a chart taped to our play room wall that teaches them though happy faces and sad faces and smiling faces ways to calm themselves down. A place to learn that all feelings are good, identify what those feelings are and an opportunity to grow and learn. This is ironic because I can totally see the irony within myself. Maybe our calming corner is really for me, to figure my self out. Stop running from how I feel and actually deal with it.

I’m 38 years old. Almost 40 and what happens when you are this age is people around you start dealing with the finality of life. They start loosing friends. Dealing with illness. Saying goodbye to loved ones. And it’s so hard, because nothing will readjust your perspective like death. Or someone you love staring at it right in the face.

I wanna write you a post on Target today. On the biggest sales and all the steals and deals there are to be had. But I can’t. Because that doesn’t seem that important today. Today, I wanna love on my children. Try and enjoy being a mother more. Be more okay with the stressful moments of parenting, and lean into the mess instead of trying to clean it up all the time. I want to try and teach them what they really need to know. I want to be a kinder wife. I want to give my family the foundation that they need so that they can deal with, not the world I want them to live in…. but the world they will actually live in. A world that is beautiful. A world full of wonder and miracles. But also a lot of questions and hurt and things that don’t always make sense. I want to teach them this now because one day, something will happen in the lives of my kids that doesn’t make any sense. I want them to be prepared. And while I can’t write every wrong, I can teach them that you can find peace in the middle of the storm. Love in the middle of the hurt. That feeling pain and sadness aren’t bad feelings. They are feelings that are part of our experience as human beings. And if we can learn to accept that life is full of good and bad, we can enjoy the good even more knowing that the darkness won’t last forever. Nothing does.

And there is the hope. Nothing lasts for infinity. Except my love for them. Hoping it covers my mistakes and and lasts to infinity and beyond.

XO

Brandon

P.S. Target post next week xoxo