My Crazy, Mixed Up, Discombobulated, Wonderful Life
Living so life is more than a happy accident
I have a friend who laughs any time he hears someone ask me, “What do you do?” and randomly sends me one-liners over text like, “Have you applied to go to the moon today?” He makes me laugh. And think.
Thinking… that’s what gets me in trouble. And God. He seems to have planned quite a circuitous route for my life. My crazy, mixed-up, discombobulated, wonderful life. And I am thankful.
Today I built a tent. I’m going to attach it to a pool noodle frame (that I plan to build tomorrow), cut the floor out of the tent, and use it as a floating pool shade so my daughter with extreme light sensitivity can enjoy the pool during the daytime. When I bought the supplies for the shade project, I also bought supplies to make dog agility equipment. For our border collie, Charlie. Perhaps that will be another story… things you can build with PVC and pool noodles. But I digress.
Between shopping at Home Depot and building the tent, I did some bible study, brainstormed educational reform for our school, worked on a piece of acapella music I need to memorize in the next few days and filed away Anatomy and Physiology lesson plans for the summer. I read. And I wrote. I tried to love on some people who are sometimes difficult to love. And I attempted to learn how to love better. I tended the garden. I should have, but did not yet, complete a continuing education course for my physical therapy license renewal. Tomorrow I will try to make progress on all those things… after I workout.
People often ask why I keep myself so busy. Am I avoiding something? Trying to distract myself from some deep-seeded feelings? The truth is… it makes me happy. I read a book recently by Lisa Harper entitled, “Overextended… and loving most of it!” The subtitle speaks to my life quite well: “The Unexpected Joy of Being Harried, Heartbroken, and Hurling Oneself Off Cliffs”. I often find myself harried, am inevitably heartbroken, and certainly have the sensation of hurling myself off a cliff every time I realize I may have bitten off more than I can chew.
I’m a burn-the-candle-at-both-ends kind of girl with lots of room for improvement when it comes to creating margins for rest. My calendar is so often double-booked that I have alerts for my alerts. Buzz after buzz. My purse vibrates so much it looks as if it’s being tasered. All too often I live like I believe busyness is a spiritual fruit. (Harper, pg. 6)
And yet… this chaotic drive to do more, experience more… it makes me happy. But is it the activity itself that I thrive on? Take away the environment -the people - and is the doing, alone, satisfying? I dare say this has been put to the test over the last three months. And the results are in:
In a vacuum, I shut down. I feel lethargic. Unproductive. Disconnected.
What drives me is relationship. It is the people I meet in Home Depot, the women I sing with, my students, my patients, my family, co-workers, and my neighbors. It is love. Love compels me to do. To serve. And it is teaching me to care for myself too. If we have learned nothing during this period of ‘shelter in place’, surely we have gained a greater understanding of our need for relationship. I pray this revelation helps change the way we live and prevents us from ever “going back to normal”.
Normal is boring. Why would we want to be unchanged? To maintain — or return to — the status quo? Now don’t get me wrong… there have been seasons in my life when you could have heard me begging for a bit of “normal”. But what I really hoped for was relief from what burdened me. And rest. I’m not sure either of those is actually normal.
When we love people — all people — things can get messy. And mixed up. When we try to meet the needs of those we are called to serve and care for ourselves, we can feel a bit torn. And discombobulated. But that is not tragic. It doesn’t mean we are doing something wrong. It simply means we are being stretched. And sometimes, stretching hurts. But often it leads us to new and wonderful ways of living — and loving.
I want to be peculiar, as Meriam-Webster states, “different from the usual”… not normal. I want to love and expect nothing in return. To give when I am empty. To experience life to the full and not let a moment pass without my awareness. My attention. My intention. I don’t want my life to be a happy accident. But to spend each day purposefully discovering the surprises that come from loving with intention. Truthfully, as many of those surprises will be difficult as will be joy-bringing. Living life to the full necessitates pain. But it is the darkness that teaches me to appreciate the light. The essence of the wonder found in this mixed-up, crazy, discombobulated life is the juxtaposition of all its parts.
So let’s live big, bold, loving lives. On purpose. And in so doing, find it truly is a wonderful life.
