I'll be honest with you. I'm having a very human day. No hormones to blame it on, no hard HARD life stuff. Just the regular hard life stuff. The stuff that is little and you don't quite know what to do with it so you put it in an emotional junk drawer (such a bad thing to have--- go throw out your junk drawer right now) and bit by bit the debre of things accumulates until it explodes crap all over your kitchen. A glorious vomit of projectile repression.
I feel like I need to clarify that I am a very happy person in general. I carry an overarching belief that life is good, I am capable and worthy of joy. That a loving God has my back.
But it doesn't stop me from making things harder on myself than they ultimately need to be.
Sometimes I try so hard to convince myself that I am enough in all the places and ways required of me that I forget one important thing. I am freaking awesome.
I am a highly mediocre house keeper. A miserable chef (because meal planning makes me miserable). I forget almost everything. I pretend to like working out but I usually don't cause it sucks. I run on the assumption that my kids are alive and not toilet papering town hall while I force myself to take my bi-weekly shower. See, even hygiene- not my thing.
I am, in fact, so bad at so very many things that I really have to wonder where the heck I come up with this defiant feeling that despite my laundry list (I don't know what that is, I should know what that is) of faults I am stronger, and awesom-er than I know. More powerful in my own life that I am willing to believe.
It's easy for me to see it in you. I see how smart and strong and brave and beautiful the people in my life are. I also know how many of you don't see it in yourselves.
When I am painting I have to force myself to step away from my work. Backing up helps an artist to see. Sight is the most important part in making art. Not just the basic, miraculous blessing to have working eyes, but to be able to recognize subtle things that work or don't work. Also, because by stepping back I can drag myself out of the weeds. I can get so caught up in the details and fighting for perfection that I'm liable to work a hole through my canvas.
I can forget the whole message of my work- the one important thing I am trying to say by getting too caught up in the supporting aspects of my painting. It's like a camera man on a movie set following around an extra and forgetting to film the hot male lead.
So I'm sitting here trying once again to figure out what it means. (You guys are such good therapy.)
I think it means acceptance. The only world in which I can exist as both generally super awesome and at the exact same time riddled with so many flaws I make for a barely passable adult is the world in which my value is not determined by my limitations.
I am super awesome because of my potential. The stuff of diety that everyone of us carries with us. That spark. That heat. That vibration, electricity that runs through us. That immovable, stubborn, unyielding human-ness that is as infuriating as it is sacred.
I accept that in my human-ness I am going to let people down, let myself down.
But I am going to try something new. I am going to separate, best I can, my shortcomings from my worth.
I am going to continue to fight for myself. For the strength and potential in me. I will continue to see, in awe, the people around me and their wonderful brilliance. I will use it as a reminder that I am one of them. WE ARE ALL the brilliant, the exalted ones.
