Surrender

   This year a word I am trying to keep before me is 'surrender.' I felt nervous about what this might mean and before January first rolled around I knew at least one part of what that might look like for me. However the opportunities just keep coming.
  Surrendering sucks for someone who has anxiety issues and hates feeling things out of control. So the house that I love ~ I hate that it is under construction. My back yard is disgusting. It is full of all the stuff coming out of the basement and I cant even handle walking out there because it is such a junk yard! Yet in the scheme of it all that is pretty tiny to what the end results will be. Something to try to surrender to...the process...and not let my head just keep going over and over how much that mess is really bothering me.
 The not knowing ~ I hate the not knowing about how things are going to turn out and when things around me keep changing. I get comfortable and think that things will stay the same, and they don't. People keep making decisions that affect me and yet I cannot change them and I know that and therefore they get to live their own life...but sometimes it sucks. I am trying to surrender to the fact that I need to REALLY let people be but not just outwardly but in my thoughts as well. Try to surrender them to God to and their journey and let them go.
  The biggest thing I need to work on surrendering this year, and that has become VERY clear, is myself. I have wanted to start putting myself first quite honestly. I feel like I have been laying myself down for everyone else for a VERY LONG TIME and I am sick of it. However it becomes more and more clear that that is not the path that is the best for me. That might be a duh to anyone reading this but I feel like I was at a point where if I even got a glimpse of 'myself' and living more for me then things for my children in how I would give to them would have really shifted. Motherhood in this day and age has changed. People view motherhood as sort of pause in 'real' life and they seem to be really encouraging you to sort of 'move on' past motherhood as quickly as possible. It is almost like it supposed to stop once the children are in school. I was supposed to go back to school or start more hobbies or whatever it is that people try to encourage a mom to do as soon as I possibly could so that I could be 'me' again.

Here is the thing
It would be great to just simply be encouraged in the journey I am in  ~ for the rest of my life. My journey as a mother is forever ~ AND to those who do this ~ who encourage me on this specific path ~ I am so grateful. I dont need some big mind shift, I dont need to go back to school as soon as I get a chance to find my true self or to get back on track. It is tempting sometimes, it would in some ways feel so much easier, it would be more my strength and I would feel so much more succesful at it probably. However, the surrender comes in embracing the fact that I am called to these children and this home and this life and I am thankful for that call. It is enriching and life giving maybe not on the outside but deep down in my core I know that it has given me more in my life than much else could have.

And so I continue on one day at a time
Trying to steep myself in surrender but mostly banging my head against it...

xo