When Blogging Stops

I'm a bad blogger, but for all the right reasons.  These days, I'm so busy living my life that my time to write about it is short...and I would have it no other way. 

We are all well.  Outstanding, in fact.  We have made a transition that a year ago I would have laughed at.  We have moved into a space as a family that has some breathing room, some routine and a purpose.  We are comfortable with each other and within our individual relationship in a way we have never been.  We have become insular in that we seek our comfort, joy and release from each other. 

Maybe that sounds weird - like, shouldn't we have been doing that before?  But I gotta tell you, we were not.  Before I left work, we were too strung out to find joy in each other.  We ran at a dead sprint and when we finally got a few minutes to be together without running, we had no clue how to be together.  None at all.  Every moment was frenzied.  Blogging was my outlet - my way of vocalizing my gut fear about what I saw happening and had no way of fixing.  Kelly and I couldn't see the solution to the conundrum of our lives because we were so deep into it.  And as a result, we lost touch with why we are a family.  I think this happens a lot...but in many cases, the outcome is to leave not stay.  I'm glad I we chose to stay and make a change that seemed impossible. 

That's a convoluted paragraph, loaded with thoughts that seem disjointed.  But in reality, it's the summary of what the last five months of my life have been about.  This has been a time for our family of reconnection.  Reconnection to each other as individuals and as a family.  Reconnection in my marriage as my wife and I find each other in the madness and embrace the chaos as our own.  Reconnection to ourselves as people.  It's also a time of redefinition.  We have redifined ourselves as a family and the definition of what we thought we were was erased and rewritten.  I have redefined myself as a mother, changing what I thought I would always be (harried, frustrated, pulled apart by competing demands) into the mother I wanted to be (focused and committed).  I have redefined my idea of success, my ideas of what being a strong woman means and my role as wife. 

And in all of this change, which has always been hard for me, I have found an absolute peace.  I know myself better than I ever have.  I am not afraid of my weaknesses any more.  I can see how I balance them with incredible strength.  I trust my gut as a parent and I follow my heart as a wife.  I am able to compromise because I can see that doing something differently and letting go of perfect control is not going to derail everything.  When you spend all your time trying to maintain basic control of a train out of control, as we did for 2 1/2 years, it's hard to allow any change...because that might derail the whole thing.  But inflexibility kills a marriage and destroys the good you might bring to your children.  I can see that now. 

Space.  This is all about space.  My mind has space to do what it needs to do.  My heart has space to grow where it needs to go.  My children have space to be children and find comfort in two parents who are not so distracted by life that they can't parent.  Our marriage has space for good days, bad days, glorious moments and terrible moments.  All of this has room on the plate. 

And we are so much stronger because of it. 

Bailey has turned 3 since I last blogged.  Three!  I didn't blog and for a few days, I felt guilty about it.  Except that, for the first time ever, I did not celebrate her birth externally.  I celebrated it internally.  We celebrated as a family.  We had a very small party with her two best friends.  We made cupcakes together.  We let her be the queen for a day.  It was wonderful.  Moving. 

It was perfect.