To be Me.

Anyone else feeling old these days?  I don’t mean you noticed the few extra wrinkles in the mirror or that you have a few more grays.  I get all of those too (daily, it seems) and I try my best to erase and embrace (do what I can and ignore the rest).

I am talking about the realization of how fast life is going by? How quickly days come and go and even on the longest day (like stupid day light savings time), you lay your head on your pillow and try to recount the day.

I am not sick with a diagnosis and I am thankful for that.  I am not living with an exact date or time frame of when my life will end like so many who walk in this shadow.  But yet, my days are numbered.  Like everyone of us.  And this realization of my life slipping by has never been so evident than it has been in the last 2 years.

No matter the day, I lay my head down with the thought, another day has passed and another will come as long as I am blessed to see it.  I wonder if I was good enough today.  I try and replay the good moments in my head.  The girls smiles, the laughter, the sillies.  Did I play enough, laugh enough, stay in tune enough.  Most days I fall short and even some days I would rather be anywhere else but home (if I’m being honest) because homeschool just stinks some days.  Some days I am lazy.  Some days I just want to be by myself.  Some days my thyroid disease (that I am asking healing for) kicks me in the butt and I pass out on the couch like a women of narcolepsy.  (Let’s be real, this happens a lot and my kids witness the drool.)

But no matter what the day brings, lately I lie down at night and I think, wow, where did the day go?  I add the days, the weeks, the years (it’s almost Christmas and my BABY is FOUR!!!!) and soon the decades have come and gone like a blink.

Lately, the words from Ecclesiastes have rang in my head, in which the writer claims that everything is meaningless.  “Meaningless, Meaningless!” he says as he goes on to say that all of his labor and toiling is useless (and meaningless).  I have to wonder if this guy was having a moment of recollection on his own life, realizing how quickly all fades away under the sun.  The earth keeps revolving and we notice that we are no longer as young as we used to be.  I wonder if he would insert a few of our today’s meaningless habits into his outcry of emotion.  I wonder if he would consider scrolling meaningless.  Comparison meaningless.  Envy.  Pride.  Strife.  Building a life that doesn’t match up to who we were called to be.  Meaningless.

I wonder if he would call us all out in the places we are lying to ourselves and tell us that perfection doesn’t exist and that we all need a dose of humility.  I wonder if he would tell us to quit trying so hard and just enjoy the ones around us.  I wonder if he would tell us to leave work a little early and gather around the table for dinner.

……I wonder, I wonder, I wonder…….

Y’all.  I don’t know about you, but this realization is causing me to wake up a little to the world around me and the people who I love the most (my family).

I spent my early twenties trying to be what everyone wanted me to be which landed me in a whirlwind of emotions and bad decisions.  I spent my later twenties trying to redeem who I was the first 5 years with works.  Striving.  Trying to make a name for myself.  I wanted to be somebody.

And now here I am 36 and all I want to be is MYSELF.  Every flaw.  Every good and perfect thing.

Every ditsy, clumsy and ridiculous thing I say and do.  Even the moments that I yelled at the driver, threw my hands in the air and called him an A-hole because he scared me half to death on my bike the other day.  I LOVE Florida drivers and they bring out the best in me (insert eye roll emoji here).

I just wanna be me.  So tonight I pulled out my laptop and wrote.  Mainly inspired to document my thoughts from my oldest girl who has had her nose in the computer the last few weeks writing her own book.  But also because I thought, if I’m feeling it, then maybe you are too (bad grammar and all).