haywire

My heart has gone haywire. The daily moments, and humdrum details, have taken on a sort of technicolor level of emotion, at which I blink back tears at the most inopportune of times. Thankfully, this has not yet had an adverse effect on my workday moments. Children do a great job of allowing one to busy about with the practicalities of living in the moment. At least those I work with do. Sometimes I laugh at the things that come out of my own mouth, actually. This morning the lines of elementary kids got overly excited as they recited the last stanza of our poem, lapsing into a jumbled mess of rushed words. “That was horrid!” I blurted out, as they finished, proceeding to lecture them in proper poetic annunciation. Afterwards, carrying on with lessons, lunch detentions, and duties, I mused on the humbling nature of this work: you never really know what effect you are having on young ones, and just kind of have to trust that there is grace for the mistakes.
But back to the topic at hand, or in mind, as the case may be. In my ladies’ study this evening, it did not come as a great surprise to me when I lost my stoicism and broke down into tears. It is times like this when I am tangibly reminded of the blessing of life in a close community like the one in which I live; when I am forced to face up to the intensity of my inner life, I am brought to my knees by my own neediness for the company of people I trust. We were speaking of prayer, and of how we are to approach it in a way that both trusts in His providence [and not our own ideas of what should happen], and yet that shows faith in the promised power. As I enter into the “mid-thirties,” as I like to call this past birthday’s threshold, it is getting strangely harder for me to reconcile this paradox. I think I used to have an easier time just stepping back, emotionally, and taking things as they came in life. But I am too old for that, in many ways, now; my life does not need to be as much of a “martyr-like” struggle as it did at one time, for various reasons. So I am forced now to sit with the reality of my own choices . . . and to make those choices. It is my choice, for instance, to bare the vulnerability of my heart in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. It makes little sense for me, at the age of thirty-three [yes, I like goofy rhymes] to try to be anything other than the odd soul than I am. Is it uncomfortable to be real? Goodness, yes! Does it hurt? Absolutely! Is it worth it? My prayer is yes.
So in the middle of my workday, I take a break from shelving and blow bubbles with a student. We play with the photographic effect for a bit, laughing at the effort, and then I resume the business of books. And at the end of the workday, I walk to a neighboring classroom and join in their “math night” fun, doing a sort of numbers cake walk with the children. This is my life at the moment. It will likely be very different, very soon, but it makes no sense to do anything but live in it here, now.