Stop Waiting

I have some quiet time, but I never know how much.  I’m sitting here in my office, the one I designed.  Many things I could/should be doing, but I sit here.  I have a few minutes of precious quiet time with nothing to distract or interrupt.

It’s the middle of the day, me and four boys while I’m working, or at least trying to. My heart is calling me to something different and I hear it. My baby’s sleeping, my other boy is here with me in my office. He likes to be close and is happy reading.  My other two boys are out.  One is with Grandma, the other is with a friend. 

I look at the corner of my office.  The corner where everything is piling up.  All the unfinished projects, things to go through, things for “not now” but “later.”   A Later I know is just something that if I put off, I hope it will take care of itself. I hope it will just go away, but it doesn’t. 

This space calls to me.  “Please address this, everything else is new, clean and ready for a new start.  Include me,” it calls.  I think why?  What is the importance of this project? Can’t I just let it sit there? 

I begin to be aware, it’s symbolic. Janae, “You can do this, let go of the last of this.  Start over.  Begin this life that’s been calling you.  Don’t keep letting yesterday and the, ‘I can’t get to it now,’ and the past pile up stop you from enjoying all the work you’ve done, the healing you’ve created and the forgiveness still ahead.  I know it’s scary, but let’s start with a clean slate. 

Everything is ready for you now, it’s just waiting for you.  Don’t let this past that’s piled up into a mess dictate your present or future anymore.  It’s time.  Stop waiting.” The pile up continues, “This office, this is your space to create: to create you, to create your new life, to create a new way of working and a new life and new love.  You can do this.  

Finish that last pink bag with the sympathy cards from the funeral, and all the other little things you’ve been putting off.  The things that you set aside because it’s all been too much.  The boys report cards, homework, mail that has that unpaid bill addressed to Grant and other things that need to get done right now but didn’t before because your heart hurt and other things also had to get done first.

“Do now what just wasn’t in your ability before, to be two people doing all the things that needed to be done. Do it when you’re one person doing as much and more as the two people who did it before.  That’s over.  Stop thinking that.  You’re one powerful person and you have everything you need to do everything before you.  You do,” urged the pile.

 Yes, I say.  I don’t want to let this be an excuse any more, like the other excuses I’ve used for so long.  That girl isn’t me anymore. I know all too well that excuses ‘don’t work for nothing’ and me, well I work for everything.  I don’t want my nothing and everything to collide and sabotage the beauty that’s me.  No, not anymore.  

So today, I’m going to clean up that mess. The pile I hide in the corner, where no one can see and if they do, it’s not too noticeable.  That one that reminds me every day where I was and how it was hard and still is. That’s even why I ignore it.  Yet it’s there and just like a debt, it doesn’t go away when you don’t look at it.  It only goes away when you address it.  So I’m going to address it.

When I look up from my desk, I want to see a clean and cleared counter, a fresh surface for a fresh new start of anything I want to put in that space.  In my life, when I look up, I won’t see that sadness that says the past is what you wanted. It’s gone, but just keep trying to grasp it and maybe what is will change.  It won’t. 

So I’m not going to hide my messes under this illusion anymore.  I’m going to clean this up too and know that it’s another step that helped me clean up my heart and mind. Now I can love a little more, do a little more, and be a little more. I couldn’t with this mess holding me back from my beauty. 

What holds us back in life are the little messes we try to put off till later.  The ones we hope will go away or work themselves out.  They don’t.  Our stuff is ours and only I or whomever created it, can clean it up, regardless of who contributed to the mess. It’s only the one who made it that can remove it.  So here I go.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my husband leaving me; dying, abandoning me, us, our children and all of that. It is that however I want to look at it, it is messy. It hurts and I’m the only one who can clean myself up.  Even though it was Grant who died, it’s me who has this messy heart, messy life and messy emotions. 

I’m cleaning this up and creating the beauty that’s waiting to be revealed out of the chaos that is currently what I see. I can clean it all up today and choose to keep doing it everyday because I am a being of order. I choose to unveil the beauty underneath the chaos.