To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
Life is a funny thing. no matter how much you think you have a handle on it, something always pops up to throw you. or try to anyway. the older i get, the more i learn that nothing is ever really what you expect. sometimes thats good. and sometimes its not. but its always something! and really, as much as you THINK you can prepare for whats next, you cant. maybe physically or financially. but you cant mentally prepare for something you've never faced before. or maybe its just me. and i continue to be crazy.
“Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real.” Deepak Chopra
to recap, i lost my mind and quit my job last spring. started my training business (which i LOVE), but am not really making any money at (YET). i also decided, quite consciously, to "take the summer off" (hence the post labor day post). and by that, what i mean is that i went back to the days when my kids were little when my JOB was to hang out with them and take care of them. and believe me, however sad, it's been YEARS since that was my JOB. as your kids get older, they get easier to take care of. they require less of your actual time - especially once you have a driver! they dont need you to pack lunches or help with homework. you dont need to organize playgroups or take them to the park. they do their thing, and you do yours. and i feel like i got lost in all that. i'm so lucky that my kids are cool. we still did fun family things. but somehow i felt like we were all moving in these different directions all time. and i decided this was the summer to fix it. and i got the added benefit of making my kids workout, so there's that :)
this is what we did, we had family summer. 3 days a week, the boys went to workouts with me. followed by family lunch. and by family lunch, i mean whoever happened to be at workouts! it was AWESOME. wakeup, workout, lunch, and home to relax. 3 day a week. ALL SUMMER. we ate more meals together this summer than in the last 5 years. we had friends over EVERY DAY. we went school shopping. and to the pool. we even managed a quick beach thing. but more than that, it was the everyday lunch thing that reconnected us. if you worked out, you got to come to lunch. if not, you were on your own. its funny how FOOD motivates everyone in my house!!
What greater blessing to give thanks for at a family gathering than the family and the gathering. ~Robert Brault
in reality, what this summer did (i hope) was remind me and the kids that our family is pretty cool. and home is a great place. so when they leave, they know they always have a place to come back to. not because they need to....but because they want to. we dropped jake off at Clemson with the knowledge that we would always be there for him. but that he probably wouldnt need us to be. he is taking his next step. one i am confident will lead to a very bright future. and one i'm pretty sure will never again include family summer. so we took it while we could. and hopefully when he looks back, it will mean as much to him as it did to us.
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.--Alan Cohen
so there you have it. seasons change. one my babies has left the nest. the most difficult question i get asked pretty much daily is "how you doin mom?". how am i doing? i'm doing ok. honestly probably better than ok. do i miss jake? sure. but we facetime. technology ROCKS! is it different? absolutely. but just like everything else, life goes on. it may go on differently, but it keeps on going. its just the next "new" normal for us. luke gets to be the BMOC for a little while. josh has the xbox to himself. the house is a little quieter. there's a little less fighting (who knew jake was the culprit there??), but mostly its just life. i used to hate that saying "it is what it is". but its kind of true. we knew jake was leaving for college. we planned and worked and prepared for it FOREVER. but mentally you cant be ready for it. and it was hard to drop him off. but its also SO COOL! he's starting this next incredibly interesting new chapter of his life. and so are we. by the end of the fall, we will have ANOTHER driver. and another set of worries. its just whats next. i know its coming ,but that doesnt make it any easier to watch luke drive off alone for the first time. like with everything else, i just have to hope that we've done our best to prepare him for his next step. like always. parenting is an imperfect science. and its never ending. sometimes you just might need to hit the pause button. spend a minute and reconnect with the kids you've dedicated so much to raising. it's totally worth it. i promise. you never know what's next for them.....or for you.
Celebrate each season, for you too, are transformed with the turns of the earth.--Arthur Dobrin
No comments:
Post a Comment