One Small Step

Every major journey begins with one small step forward, right? Well I've finally summoned up the courage to place one foot in front of the other. Knock on enough doors and one will eventually open. Seek and ye shall find. Think positively and it will be. Yada, yada, yada. And on and on and on...

Now that I've shaken out all the cliches.... I'll get to the real stuff. I've recently started writing for, albeit on a probationary period, a tech web site called The Tech Maniacs. I'm excited for the chance to share my craft and see my words posted out there in cyberspace (on something other than my own blog)!

You can check it out at www.thetechmaniacs.com.

Thanks for all the support and positive vibes, my faithful little readers! 

Another Tuesday Morning

It is utter chaos.

I had to stop in between each of the first four words of this post.

It… “No! Stop! Put the cup down!”

Is… “Don’t stand on the chair, sit… sit down… yes, on your bottom. Thank you.”

Utter… “Oh my gosh, please stop pushing her chair! RELAX!”

Chaos…. “Where are you going? Yeah, let’s not just get up and walk out the front door, sweetie.”

I have to laugh. He’s wearing his pajama shirt backwards with matching shorts and a superman robe. Getting up from his bowl of what has to be terribly cold oatmeal by now, he very purposefully puts on his socks and shoes and proceeds to open the front door.

Up to this point I have been satisfied with spectating but I suppose I should caution the four year old boy that walking right out the front door by himself would be wildly inappropriate at 8am in the morning. Or any time really, but whatever.

“Hey, where you going?” I feel the need to use improper grammar with children, like they understand it better.

He simply looks back at me and points outside.

“Yeah, let’s not just get up and walk out the front door, sweetie.”

He shuts the front door and mumbles, “I’m gonna go get my mom.”

Probably a good call, kid. This babysitter might need some help.

It is really just another weekday morning. The coffee began brewing at some point in the dark hours, the kids are roused and prodded to get dressed, hurry, eat, hurry, brush your teeth, hurry, and off to school they go. The little ones beg for breakfast, then leave it to mush on the table, apparently never as hungry as they think they are. Babies begin to cry, cups spill, trash cans go unemptied, clothes strewn across the floor, while morning talk shows play to a missing living room audience.

And thus the day begins.

It is the quintessential portrait of life, is it not? We rush about, hustling to get up, get out and get on with it. In the meantime, we leave behind a mess that eventually we come back to, clean up, then mess up again. It’s an endless cycle that breeds frustration and tiredness. At some point we stop, look around and question why, why continue with any of this? Is it worth it?

It is in those moments of broken inquiry when I realize that this mess, is life. And in all of its chaotic form I begin to see beauty. I begin to see that as hurried as I can get and as messy as my life can be, there is something bigger than me, something larger than my feeble disasters. There is a reason I continue to answer “yes” to the question of “is it worth it?” There is a reason why I always come back to the mess, clean up and move forward.  

I suppose that in the eye of these storms there is the hope that my presence here will have made a difference. A hope that the kids whose lives I’m a part of will grow into adults who carry a little extra love in their hearts that they got from me. A hope that my co-workers will move on in their careers and one day reminisce about the good old days we had of working together. A hope that my friends will become family, and that my family will become my friends. A hope that my end game is one of love, positivity, encouragement and acceptance.

To begin with the end in mind, I’ve been told, is how to go about leaving a legacy. I understand now that it is the only way to not give up in the middle, at the height of the conflict, when the struggles seem the heaviest. I try to make it a point these days to take my gaze just out beyond today and think about what this moment might look like in another lifetime from now. It becomes so much easier to smile and let go of the little things I clench so tightly in my grasp. It becomes easier to love and support the ones around me, to just be present.

It becomes easier to appreciate the mess.

 

Dude Looks Like a Lady

There was a moment in the interview with Bruce Jenner when Diane Sawyer says, “So, Bruce Jenner is reemerging as…”

He finishes her sentence by saying, “Myself.”

Something in his simple response resonated with me in a powerful way. I’m not transgender and in no way know what that’s like. I was born with lady parts, I like them that way. I identify as a woman. I am a woman. But I have not always been myself and even now struggle to be me. I understood in that moment the fear, the courage, the power in reemerging as “myself”.  A part of me longs to be the one being interviewed, sitting there on the couch, reemerging as myself in front of everyone; in front of the world.

I learned at a very early age how to read people and I could quickly determine who and what they wanted me to be. I became an incredibly talented chameleon. Being a part of a prominent family in a religious world dictated my identity. Every moment of my life was on stage and as such I naturally became an actress in all facets of my life, both personal and otherwise.

I became the person I was supposed to be but never identified as her.

There is a fear that people will think I’m changing, that I’m becoming someone else, and they will draw all types of conclusions and assumptions as to why and how. And in part they will be right; I am changing. I’m connecting to the person who has always been covered up and disguised. I’m removing the façade. I can’t blame them for not knowing that person and for identifying this change as what’s fake.

The process of getting to know myself is scary. It means letting go of the safety shield I’ve held up between myself and others, or even between myself and the self I project into the world. It’s kind of a psychotic mess that can scare you out of grappling with the grace and shame, the honesty and embarrassment that needs to be dealt with. It is a vulnerability that is foreign to me.

The process, though, has taught me self-love and acceptance, and that those things aren’t selfish or self-indulgent but are necessary if I am ever going to be genuinely alive. I am growing in my understanding of grace and kindness. I believe that one can never truly extend to other people what they are unable to extend to themselves. Once we are able to connect to our hearts and love ourselves, our love for others then comes from a deeper, more authentic place, our words are naturally more kind and our eyes see more than the masks held up in front of a face. It is the antidote to pride.

Underneath the face of arrogance and perfection is a deep pool of insecurity that will drown you if you aren’t careful. I have become good at treading water but it’s exhausting and I’m trying to swim to shore and rest, exposed to everyone as myself. You know the feeling of spending all day on a boat and then laying down in bed that night, you still feel like you’re swaying with the waves? Living life in that realm is a strange experience, the sense of uneasiness and being a little off balance. I’d imagine it takes a bit for that feeling to go away. It is all a part of the process. And it’s one I can’t rush or control.

Bruce Jenner is a woman and I think that freaks a lot of people out. There was a time when I would have been so compelled to bang on the pulpit of morality that I would withhold grace and love, the very things I’m called to give freely. I’ve realized though that it’s not about being transgender, or gay or male or female or black or white or atheist or anything else that allows you to label someone as unlovable. It is about coming together as human beings and allowing each other to be themselves; people who are inherently flawed but unconditionally lovable.

Call me idealistic, but I wish we could all sit on that couch and reemerge as ourselves. I believe the humility and vulnerability it takes to do that would rid the world of pride in a heartbeat. But we can’t force anyone onto that couch. It’s hard enough to get myself there.

And so it’s down this journey I continue, stumbling along and figuring it out as I go. Reemerging as myself.