February weirdness
I looked at my calendar weeks ago and saw that week ended in February…. And it already feels like February is going FAST. I will be completely honest, I have failed at an attempted “new year, new me” for 2024. Life happened, as it tends to do… My first response was to stop making myself the first person I take care of everyday. So now we are a month into 2024, and I do not feel as good as I had intended. So… I’ll start now because… I can do what I want….
A dear friend of mine sent a funny text a few weeks ago. About an appointment she had for one of the things we do as women ~Spray tans before event season. Im sure my pigmentally challenged skin absorbing only the wrong color from a spray tan, so I immediately wanted to know all about the place she went and how it all turned out. Read: my friend is NOT the same shade of Celtic/ French/ English that I am…. SO the relevance of me knowing how it went is likely unrelated to how it work out for me. BUT her response to my questions was something that I loved so much. The hi light was – “My weirdness made it weird…”
It’s not the words, it’s the underlying acceptance. She is an entirely gorgeous human and this was just, like I said before, a thing we do as women. MOST of those things are altogether awkward….and yall know there are no lies in that statement. Even for the most confident, comfortable person there is always a moment of discomfort. I admire anyone who leads with self awareness even in the most mundane awkwardness. Anyways, I read that text while I was sitting in the deep end of a pool of self judgement. MY weirdness made it weird. I hadn’t been able to show up in 2024 the way I wanted to. I wanted to do things we just couldn’t do, and I couldn’t see beyond my weirdness. I needed a healthy dose of relatable banter to allow me to accept my position. So I spent time making memes with those very words….
My weirdness was making everything weird. I was paralyzed in life, with a lot of irons in the fire. Y’all, I’m so SO sooooo grateful for my people. Each one of the people I interact with has a way of speaking directly into my soul. God Knows I am stubborn, but I love people and I’m not the Christian who hears “the whispers” of the Lord. I will not respond to gentle. I need a piano dropped on my head. I have practiced yoga & meditation for 24 years, and I love the slow moving strength that it creates. And still, my weirdness had me stuck. I couldn’t get my mind calm. I wasn’t eating well. I stopped exercising. I didn’t want to do anything at all.
This whole interaction pointed my heart to Psalm 139. 23-24 as so relatable. My family and friends have shown me through even when they aren’t trying. IN FACT, my normal stress response is to shut out my people completely and keep my boat afloat entirely on my own. My understanding of this psalm is that David was asking God to show him the places where he was working against himself. Where sadness, anger, or evil of any kind is distracting him from his destiny. I didn’t hear the whisper in this moment, but I felt the nudge to just be ok. Because I was definitely ok. I was overwhelmed and sad. But I was ok.
I shouldn’t say I had been lazy, because I haven’t been lazy. I had been taking care of my family. I still don’t feel like I have done anything wrong. I read my bible and I take care of my kids, so I’ll celebrate those as victories. And now I can restart, with much more grace for myself. It’s funny how I am ready to shovel out the grace for anyone but myself. But the acceptance and forgiveness I needed to move forward was only within myself. I just couldn’t see it.
