I'm Doing Good Too

This post isn't meant to make you sad, but I've been feeling a little sad lately. As I've thought for days, well who am I fooling: for weeks, months. Years. I think sometimes of the odd reality I live in. Married and single. I became a widow at age 29. I gave my husband all of my 20's. I spent my 20's working, next married, then having children, being so incredibly grateful to be a stay at home mom. I also spent them confused, terrified, and in despair for my late-husband's mental health. Now a single mom staring blankly at the question of "to be, or not to be (dating), that is the question."

I've not been on a date in a long time. Honestly, the comedian on stage yesterday said it perfectly: "I feel like a door that says push, that everyone is trying to pull." What would it even mean to date? A question that I think I'm too traumatized still to answer. I have my push ways and get rubbed up against pull people. I look at the flow of the current: dating, marriage, then children and feel exhausted by the thought. I've been on my knees petitioning the Throne of God to let go of the anger in my heart after my husband died. Now I'm simply living my life every day hoping I'm doing right by God - stewarding all… and all the blessings and responsibilities he's given to me. My desire to date doesn't even fall the back burner. But only because of all the disappointment and grief in that category I've already encountered. It makes me think "been there done that."

So I live in a Groundhog Day that I wish I could slow down. Because things are good. I have a community I've only ever dreamt of. My kids are happy and safe and their tummies are full. I'm doing good too.

I feel utterly wrapped up in and deeply grateful for my children. A push person in a pull world. Maybe I'm just not ready to date or maybe I need a man to fall out of the sky and be recommended by Jesus himself to feel confident in turning my heart over again.

While leaving a park yesterday my daughter said to me "Is it hard being a mama?" and I wished for a second I could peer into her mind and see exactly where that train of thought came from. Did I make it look easy? Or did she think being a mom was only hard for me? But easy for everyone else. Was it a question of safety or fear? Has she seen too much change in her mere 6 years? My son sat quietly in the car seat next to her. Was he quiet because he was listening intently? Or did he already decide it was by watching me for 8 years? 

I was about to validate or confuse them with my response. Because for her to ask means she has been thinking about this. The weight of the car I was driving felt as if it was actually sitting on my chest instead of the road. 

"It is the hardest thing I have ever done Raela." That's what I said. And I meant it. I have never done anything harder. Flashbacks flooded my mind as I thought of the past. After the light changed from red to green, I pushed on the gas and continued the journey home. 

She sat silently then spoke in a whisper "Is it harder than running 10,000 miles?"

"I don't know baby girl, I've never ran 10,000 miles. But being your mom is also the best thing I've ever done."

The car seemed to physically breathe in that sentence. The tension left as emotional whiplash had me in despair for the past and in utter awe of God's greatest gifts to me. The two I will call "my babies" spilling crumbs everywhere in the backseat. 

I don't know what my journey home to God looks like. I know I'm looking for what to do next with my precious time here on earth with my children. I feel like I fit into a category I haven't quite found here on earth. A lot of the time I feel like people don't know what to do or say around me because of the titles and experience I've had in my short life. So I will continue to do what I feel like is the next right move for my family. Making it look easy or hard I don't know. But it is in fact easy and hard in ways I am deeply grateful and humbled by.