Opening My Eyes

To My Most Amiable Readers;

Ever come to the realization that something that you've known and accepted in your head has made a sudden migration to your heart...and lay there, clear and bright in truth....maybe bringing horror, maybe disillusionment, maybe awe, maybe that "click", that "oh! I see now!"?

It used to happen to me in mathematics. I would cry almost every time I did algebra homework in high school; leaned over my homework...pressure and frustration, why don't I GET IT!? It felt like tying shoelaces with mittens on....it should be so simple to tie them...but...AAAAHHH...stupid mittens!! But then it would come, that proverbial lighted bulb over my head, the mittens came off and I could do the task easily...it made sense...I'd smile.

To those who see clearly and discern from afar...who put your mittens on after you tie your shoes, I admire you, I am not you. I discovered today that having my husband and my children in my life is the second-biggest outpouring of wonder and blessing that God has seen fit to shower me with. See, I was more clear about the biggest one...God, His love, His presence, speaking, healing, leading, cheering, rebuking, holding me in His hands...He is my very lifeline.

I'm kind of fiercely independent. I get resentful and sulky if I'm around people for too many hours in the day and can't get away to think, alone. I love interacting with people, I also love not interacting with people for a good chunk of each day. In a way, it makes me ready for them again...so, guess what...motherhood and wifehood, in their heady blessed reality, were too heavy for me some days...too charged with otherness, other people's needs, chatter, schedules, moods, poopy diapers, laundry, expectations.

My writings reflect vague illusions to the wear of it: "I want to be where people aren't, to run down hidden trails..." I keep up a very active imaginative side; I think if I were transported into an eight year-old's body for a week I would make for a very believable character (I love water fights, making sand castles, romping through the woods, doing handstands and somersaults in the pool). So when the "otherness" of my domestic life wore on me, I would give my imaginative side the go-ahead to daydream of cool things that might happen in my life...

And you know; they were always centered around me, for example: I'd imagine getting so good at rowing that I'd become the national champ in Chile, and then the States Olympic people would recruit me to row in Beijing, and amidst all the fanfare I would get to share the gospel in China..and then....well, I could go on. Or try this....I'll write a really profound blog article (hee hee), and someone will notice it, and it'll get put in a magazine where a major publisher will see it and contact me to.....and so on.

I guess that all sounds fairly innocent, but I think it's speaking to me now that deep down, I want more merit, more value...of a calculable sort...like, here's Sarah, she wrote a bestseller, or meet Sarah, she's an artist with a major show coming up. I knew my worth in God's eyes...what I wanted next was worth in the world's eyes. I wasn't content being not fantastic.

So here's where my mittens are coming off; I realized today that, wow, I have a husband who loves me, and whom I love deeply. I can kid around with him; he shares and knows my memories. We have a treasure of inside jokes. We can communicate with subtle facial expressions and know exactly what the other is thinking without saying a word. I trust him; we're promised to one another. There's love, there's security, there's unity.

I have children. Little happy smiles meet me in the morning. Sophia always tells me "Mommy! I wake up! Sophie wake up!", like each morning it surprises her and should surprise me too. Edison smiles with his whole body when I come in the room and shuffles over to me on his little chubby knees...when I lift him up he curls right into me, as though his body has memorized just where to sit on my hip and just where to lay his head on my shoulder. They are hilarious. And when they're sad or sick, it seems like, impossibly, I love even more...as if love given in extra doses will heal what ails them. I even love their stinky morning breath...because it's my baby's stinky morning breath.

So, what I'm saying is, I'm blessed up to my eyeballs and have no business throwing my hopes on daydreams, on possibilities that are somehow going to redeem me from being just Sarah the housewife/missionary/mom. I'm finding out that I want to be me...not who I might be yet, but me, Dustin's wife, Sophia and Edison's mom, God's child....

Your Most Devoted,
Sarah