this life/this space/this weekend

images from our saturday hike

my mind is bursting-full of thoughts. meaty stuff that i think you care about, too. even if you're not thinking about it right now. and i keep thinking, 'one of these evenings i'm going to sit down and really give some time and energy to writing out some of these thoughts...' but then i get to the evening and by the time the kids are quiet and the dishes are done and the phone calls are returned and the legos and dollies are put away for the night, my energy is gone. and instead of giving voice to my own stories, i just read yours. or look at your pinterest boards. or fall into bed like tired timber. or lay on my back and plug my ear buds into my ears and listen to something fascinating - which only adds to the thought traffic.

but even when i'm not that tired, when i have energy for cleaning and planning and texting my sister 'til too late at night - i just haven't had the guts for writing anything very transparent or exploratory lately. not sure why. i don't feel flat or blunted in my real life (a little overwhelmed by myriad things, maybe?) still, there's plenty of passion and joy. there's a lot of mellow too. a lot of calm and contentment with who i am, where we are, what's in store. i feel like i keep bumping into that comfort, that deeper self-knowledge, and feeling startled that it's here - lingering. i certainly haven't been on a quest for it - it seems to have just distilled gradually over a long stretch of time, and in the last few months i've realized quite a nice dew of self-awareness and self-acceptance has accumulated. it feels both natural and foreign. natural because it's me; foreign because it hasn't always been like this. i'm used to more angst, more fickleness, more concern for external evaluations and expectations. this is not to say that i am some paragon of authenticity and confidence. hardly. but there's more here now than there has been. and if there is more of this that awaits me in my thirties, the threshold of that new decade seems less foreboding.
the reason i bring up that confusing mess of cognition is because i used to feel (create?) external motivation to write. i read back over the evolution of this blog and want to cringe about some of it. whose voice was that? i wonder. i've nearly deleted certain selections from the archives. but that censorship wouldn't be authentic either. and the voice that seems so contrived and forced to me now, was authentic in that season - if nothing else, evidence of the fact that i was trying to find a truer voice.
so what is my point here? i guess i'm just trying to get to the bottom of what really motivates me to share in this space. and revisiting the predicament of how authentic one can really be on a blog. the best stuff of the blogosphere (or any sphere), the stuff that really matters and moves me in significant ways, is real and raw. but again...guts. (sigh) complicated.

at the top: yay! we did it!

anyway...totally unrelated: we hiked as a family this weekend. it was beautiful. right at first the kids needed lots of coaxing and there was plenty of complaining. i wilted inside and started to wonder what we were thinking bringing two little people up a mountain. but nate and i got creative with all manner of diversions and challenges and pretty soon we were all so swallowed up in the fun of being together and the beauty of the "fall time leaves" and the energy in our burning muscles that we forgot about murmuring and just collected rocks and smiled and climbed.

it was wonderful.

she likes to dress herself :)

also at the front of my mind: i am so thankful to be able to hear all the things lily says. a few nights ago, i read a very tender story about a little girl with rett syndrome who lost her ability to speak during her second year of life. sometimes lily talks my face off and i start looking forward to the quiet of the post-beditme evening at about 3:00 in the afternoon. but the other night after i read that article, i went into lily's room and kissed her face and thanked god that i get to hear every single thing she's ever thought about. because seriously, those little lips speak more sunshine into my life than i deserve. today at costco she got about an inch from my face and looked right into my eyes and said in the goofiest little voice, 'i like you willy, willy, wiiilllyy much, mommy!'

sometimes i get mired in the hard, heavy stuff and think, "why me/us?"

other days (most days) i stagger at the abundance and wonder the same thing in reverse. "how can i possibly have all this? why me/us?"

xo