A number of years ago I was at an event at my church and I stopped to visit with a new friend, Alice, on the way out the door.
I was carrying my baby girl in her carseat and trying to wrangle my young son as we were headed home for nap time (praise Jesus!- And every mom said ‘Amen!’ :) )
There was something about Alice that drew me to her, feeling like I needed to know her better.
Have you ever had that? When you’re like, “Yeah, I think I need more of you in my life….”
That was my intuition about Alice.
Just a little sidenote:
Being a military spouse can be tricky on friendships because we all know the obvious: one of us is leaving soon.
That’s just how it goes.
A constant rotation of people in / people out.
One of the self-protection tactics we’ve all learned to use is to just not let anyone “in” because then it’s easier when we all have to go our separate ways.
Well, I was in a season where I was trying to let my guard down a little and let some people in.
That being said, I was so tired from just trying to keep up in life…
My husband was deployed [AGAIN] and I was left alone with our two small kids in a foreign country – giving my all-American best to do all the things I was “supposed” to do.
- Keep the kids fed (which is apparently required for LIFE – and that means going to the grocery store and I HATE the grocery store!)
- Be involved in everything possible at church (because that’s what a good Christian woman does).
- Make sure you’re home for phone calls from Daddy for the kids (because if you can’t accommodate your schedule to his schedule then your kids are going to be messed up for life).
- Make sure to get the kids out for a variety of play-time experiences at parks (because if you go to the same park every day you’re lame and you don’t love your kids).
- Set up those playdates! (Can I just tell you that I HATE the word “playdate”?!? It feels like a combination of forced friendship & time commitment and, for me, there is nothing about that that feels authentic so it grinds my internal gears like crazy!)
- Oh yeah! When you get the kids to bed, be sure to start your schoolwork for your Masters degree (note to self: you have from the hours of 9:30pm until 5:30am to work on that before the kids start waking up and you need to get on with the rest of life so work work work, girl!)
- Don’t forget to make a dish to share for the potluck style gathering at church (and make sure it’s not just some frozen store bought thing, either!)
And on and on…
You get the picture – and I’m sure you can relate on so many levels.
Well, that day in the church foyer with Alice, I said “Hey, I’m sure you’re pretty busy, but if you ever want to get coffee, I’d love to visit with you more!”
Her reply: “I’m not busy because I don’t want to be busy. I’d love to visit with you.”
Wait – what?
For the first time in my life it hit me: I get a choice in this.
I don’t even remember the drive home because my mind was so busy tossing this idea around and – honestly – trying to figure out the loophole where this could not apply to me. The thing was, I never quite found that loophole that confirmed I was the exception to the rule… I did have a choice in my schedule, in my commitments, in what my days looked like. And at that time, I was letting the expectations and opinions of everyone else dictate that for me.
And here’s the thing: while there were surely times when people were blatantly obvious about what their expectations were for my life, there were more times when it was my own perception or assumption that they had those expectations for my life.
In reality, most of the time, nobody was going home with their pen and notebook writing down the score of my life and saying, “Oh look! Amanda didn’t take her kids for a playdate this week!”
So much of that was on me.
It was me allowing myself to believe that my worth was wrapped up in checking all the boxes and what everyone else was doing.
For the times when it really was about meeting the expectations of other people, I started to ask myself why it mattered so much to me to live up to their ideal for MY life. There’s some interesting stuff that comes up when you start soul-digging like that…
It was really kind of crazy when I started pulling back and looking at the patterns of things:
So many of us were doing things simply because that’s what everyone else was doing. Like a great big conga line, we all took our places and followed the steps of the people in front of us.
No one ever stopped to notice if the people before us actually wanted to go wherever that line was taking them…
That day when Alice said, “I’m not busy because I don’t want to be,” a whole new world opened up for me. I knew I could carry on, keeping up with the rhythm of everyone else – OR – I could exercise my rights and step out of line and decide what I wanted for my own life.
And that’s exactly what I did.
I started paying attention to the things that filled me and the things that drained me in life.
I started journaling, soul-wrestling with why I felt like I needed to check all those boxes.
I started to make the hard decisions and telling people “no.”
I had to put grad school on pause for bit.
I didn’t make all the phone call times with my deployed husband or grandparents back in the States.
I quit signing up for everything at church. (It turns out, Jesus still loves me.)
I created margin in my life… And I started to breathe again.
No – no …. I started to live again.
Instead of putting my daughter in her carseat to run off to the next obligation, I put her on my lap and bounced her on my knee, holding her face right before mine so I could see her wide open toothless smile as she laughed her sweet pants off to the tune of “Trot Trot to Boston.”
Instead of lacing up my sons shoes to jump in the car, I laced up his shoes to take a walk in the woods and collect acorns to cook. He never knew (and to this day I don’t think he knows) that we’d distract him in the kitchen and swap out the pan full of acorns for a pan full of pistachios. :)
I started noticing how I felt after doing things.
I’d take note of how full my heart felt or how depleted my mind got.
The more I made myself notice these things about my own life, the more I pressed into the things that brought me more into the life I really wanted to live.
But that also meant having to protect that life by saying no to all the things that insisted on seeping into its place.
There’s always a cost to the things that have truly have a high value.
My cost was dealing with the internal discomfort of feeling like I’d disappoint people.
The alternative was knowing that if I didn’t do this, I’d have to live with disappointing myself – for not being the kind of person I really wanted to be – for not standing up for what I knew I really wanted – for sacrificing what was true to my own soul on the altar of public opinion.
And I just couldn’t have that.
I seriously give thanks to God that I have the right to choose the path for my own life. It’s not lost on me that this Country I call home has men and women who have fought for me to have this precious life-giving right.
When I consider the reality of so many people around the world, especially girls, they don’t have this same chance to choose. It’s chosen for them.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many of us – here in the Land of the Free – allow our lives to be chosen for us when we have the right and privilege to blaze our own trail.
There’s a funny thing that happens when someone chooses to step out of line and step into who they really are and what’s right for their own life:
Freedom is found in that place.
And it gives other people inspiration and permission to do the same for themselves.
That’s what happened for me when I saw Alice somehow pulling it off… She got off the crazy, frenetic crazy train that was only destined for fatigue and regret. She stepped into what was good and right for her own life.
And, as I followed suit, I know for a fact that so many people have been the beneficiaries of that example. They see that people like Alice, people like me,… we’re doing it. And somehow we’re ok.
Not just ok, but thriving.
Happy.
It’s why you’ll hear me say over and over and over again:
“A simple life is good for the soul.”
I don’t just say that, I believe it because that’s been my experience.
Sometimes the pursuit of happiness is more about laying down the hurry in order to make space to hold the happy.
As American’s we’ve long believed that being BUSY equates to personal VALUE.
We see busyness glamorized in movies – the beautiful blonde with the beautiful body and the perfect breakfast smoothie is off to the races as she runs from this place to that place and crushes it along the way… She sinks into the couch at night, and then gets up to do it all again the next day.
We see that and think how we want that.
We want to be needed, to be important, to have that kind of value …
But the truth is, we already are all those things.
What we really want is depth.
And too often, our haggard lifestyle is robbing us of the kind of depth we want, which only comes from living with our heart. – When we’re so busy running around, checking all the boxes, living up to perceived expectations of others, we don’t have space and time to live with the kind of depth and heart that actually makes us happy.
The hard truth is – this deep and abundant life is possible, but you’re the only one who can make the hard decisions for your life to have it.
Nobody else can do this for you.
You have to be willing to step out off of the cultural crazy train-
To step into your right to choose for yourself –
To stand up for what you want in your life –
To color outside the lines of societal norms –
… to be the example for so many others following behind you that it is possible to live a life that’s true to your own soul and find depth and happiness there…
But only you can do that for yourself.
The question is:
Are you willing to?
