The Reckoning

The Reckoning

In my late thirties I experienced an early mid-life crisis. It's fairly well documented on this blog, especially in the Project Home & Healing collection of posts.

During and after that crisis in our family life, marriage, and faith I went through what I've called The Reckoning. The Reckoning started during the crisis but was more the aftermath, the fallout from the crisis. It was a sense of regret, loss, and failure.

At the same time our kids were going through their teens years and yikes, what parent of teenager doesn't experience these emotions?

My Reckoning is a coming to terms, as much as is possible, with the decisions made earlier in my adult life. How those formed me, and inform my life now. And how so much of my life is out of my control and that my decisions will not yield what I expect.

This is a hard lesson to learn.

This series of posts, written and published over a couple years time span, explore this experience.

But I need to tell you upfront that I went into this writing with a bias. A bias I carry from my faith tradition, personal experience, and the perennial wisdom of humanity.

Experiences of loss, regret and failure are the very soil, the compost, the rich earth of dead and dying matter that makes all things new again. A resurrecting soil, out of which new life and abundance grows, once again.

I already know the conclusion and I'm working to make it a reality in my living and my writing.


The year I find my fire

The year I find my fire

The year I come into my power and purpose through unexpected means.

Own it. Like a mother.

Own it. Like a mother.

It seems I've lost my confidence in my myself as my kids have grown older. A confidence I need to re-discover as I leave the nest, post-homeschooling.

Auntie Anxiety and her two am homeschool doubts

Auntie Anxiety and her two am homeschool doubts

Let's call her Aunty Anxiety. And I've come to see that her intentions are good, even if I have to squint real hard to see it.

The purpose and ultimate irony of desire (The mountains are calling)

The purpose and ultimate irony of desire (The mountains are calling)

One of the hardest parts of growing up has been realizing we don't achieve our desires. At least not the way we think we will. The joy comes not in attaining what we desire, but in giving ourselves to the cause, the aim, the goal. Circling the desire, but never reaching it.

Can we trust our desires? (The mountains are calling)

Can we trust our desires? (The mountains are calling)

Acting on desire is how we make decisions in our life. It's how we choose, to the extent we can, the path we want to take. But how do we know we can trust our desires?

The loopy trail that is our lives (The mountains are calling)

The loopy trail that is our lives (The mountains are calling)

If I had known, in my early twenties that I was a mountain girl I would have never moved east. I would have gone west.

Softer, older, rounder (The mountains are calling)

Softer, older, rounder (The mountains are calling)

I associated the mountains with summer vacation. It wasn't a place you lived, despite the obvious evidence of locals, it was a place you visited.