There was a tornado last month in my old neighborhood. My kids and I were rather hilariously trapped in Kohl's during the warning, miles from the touchdown. We heard about the storm and it's aftermath almost incessantly for days and weeks afterward. Today, I drove by the site on my way back from my parent's home, marveling at how much damage was done now that the debris is cleared and you can see the gash the tornado cut through the very earth. It was also remarkable that rebuilding has already started, lots of new framing going up as survivors try to get enclosures up, belongings and livestock sheltered before winter hits.
It seemed a fitting analogy as I embark again as a writer in the ever more crowded internet space. I've been quiet for a long time, years. Writing was one of the buoys that kept me afloat when I was in the midst of the storms of life. For years afterward, as we began to assess and repair. And now the storm is but a memory, and life has carried me along on a rip current of both joy and new challenges that keep me off the computer and in the moment. I wrote through coming out, loss of faith, divorce, and rebuilding life as a single mom in a tiny apartment. I stopped writing when it seemed the story quit flowing from these fingertips, and because I gave in to fear. I could not write to the same audience, it seemed. I didn't know if I had anything worthwhile left to say to that audience, the Christian world, moms from homes that looked ever more different than mine.
So why write again? First of all, I'm not sure I will, or if this is just a brief hello to my old blog and old readers. I'm going to try. Most of all because it doesn't seem right to end the story just because I became afraid to tell it. And because I never know who might be listening, who might need the words I'll spill, the journey I'll share.
Today, I am remarried. I am a mom of seven kids, five of whom are teenagers. My oldest just got married herself. Two of my children have changed their names. I am no longer a full-time professor, but I work two jobs as a staff nurse and I teach part-time while still editing for a large educational publisher. I constantly feel like I have too many irons in the fire and something is going to blow up or turn out wrong. I am a rescue dog mom. I drive the same car. I love to drive my motorcycle. I recently quit smoking, a bad habit I picked up to carry me through the darkest times that seems silly now that times aren't so dark.
Life is good, and it is sometimes very painful. I continue to see a doctor at least every 3 months for constant changes in treatment to keep cancer recurrence at bay. I don't have many of the same friends and extended family can be a minefield. I don't know how to do this mom thing yet and that bothers me immensely. Stepmomming eludes me most of the time. I don't know how I relate to God, and I know that I don't relate well at all to religion.
Here I am, living life and loving it (most of the time). Still struggling with all the metaphysical questions that have plagued me in their ephemeral and gargantuan complexity. First to admit I don't have answers, I'm also first in line at the question window of life. How about you? What has changed about your life in the last five years? What questions are you wrestling today?
It seemed a fitting analogy as I embark again as a writer in the ever more crowded internet space. I've been quiet for a long time, years. Writing was one of the buoys that kept me afloat when I was in the midst of the storms of life. For years afterward, as we began to assess and repair. And now the storm is but a memory, and life has carried me along on a rip current of both joy and new challenges that keep me off the computer and in the moment. I wrote through coming out, loss of faith, divorce, and rebuilding life as a single mom in a tiny apartment. I stopped writing when it seemed the story quit flowing from these fingertips, and because I gave in to fear. I could not write to the same audience, it seemed. I didn't know if I had anything worthwhile left to say to that audience, the Christian world, moms from homes that looked ever more different than mine.
So why write again? First of all, I'm not sure I will, or if this is just a brief hello to my old blog and old readers. I'm going to try. Most of all because it doesn't seem right to end the story just because I became afraid to tell it. And because I never know who might be listening, who might need the words I'll spill, the journey I'll share.
Life is good, and it is sometimes very painful. I continue to see a doctor at least every 3 months for constant changes in treatment to keep cancer recurrence at bay. I don't have many of the same friends and extended family can be a minefield. I don't know how to do this mom thing yet and that bothers me immensely. Stepmomming eludes me most of the time. I don't know how I relate to God, and I know that I don't relate well at all to religion.
Here I am, living life and loving it (most of the time). Still struggling with all the metaphysical questions that have plagued me in their ephemeral and gargantuan complexity. First to admit I don't have answers, I'm also first in line at the question window of life. How about you? What has changed about your life in the last five years? What questions are you wrestling today?
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