To Remember a Moment
If you ever feel that your days are so busy all becomes an overlapping blur, I must suppose you and I are not alone.
As the year comes to an end, we must discipline ourselves to take a moment and ponder how we lived it before another one inexorably arrives.
I find joy in placing words of encouragement all around my home. I am that one that reads bumper car stickers and people’s shirts and while you may think I didn’t notice, I am silently giving you an air high-five (I should have trademarked that over a decade ago when I started texting it to others) as I smile or laughingly repeat your intended message in my head, spreading the good vibes into my spirit.
So, to not complicate moments of this year, let us categorize parts to ponder under three ubiquitous categories: love, laugh, live. Let us take this moment to ask ourselves each question as to whether or not we truly journeyed each and thus, ponder upon the moments to remember.
Did you love?
Love can be so overrated as my husband and I have come to an agreement in our almost three decades of marriage. Don’t take this as negative, but instead, as a comfort of knowing that no matter what level of love you believe to have given, ultimately, you have loved this year. Whether your best friend is your spouse or your dog, if you have selflessly given a part of you for their sake and not yours, this, would merit itself to be a form of love.
My husband and I have come to realize, with our own background of observing exchanges of what is deemed as love, deciding for ourselves if indeed this was love to us, our expression of such word can have a vast array of meaning and thus, delivery.
The beauty of sticking it through and making love work, as we have found ourselves to admit, is that there is discovery from within to know what that should be, but not for oneself, for the other.
If you ever get a chance, read the book, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, as this was a good eye opener for both me and my husband. Just by a simple reading, we discovered after so many years that while my husband is about affection and quality time, revealingly, I am about words of praise and servitude. This was quite a revelation for us both. While he would take the role as the romantic, planning times for us to be alone or the ultimate super head of the house, creating moments for all of us to spend time together, I felt pressure from his suggestions of how to please everyone with my own role and part, making sure all was going right for each in the family through my servitude.
Just as soon as words or actions were questionable of my attempt to love, silent dismay and feels of failure overwhelmed me. While I was giving what I defined as love, I was depleted when not getting the same in return. In parallel, the eyes of my husband would be just as telling. Add kids to that mix and the “love” barrel runs on that generator you hope is still working or in many cases, was even actually purchased for backup.
These were our moments of conflict. We couldn’t understand how the other could actually be perceiving our loving gestures as neglect or devoid of “love”. We were each giving what we felt was precious love to us. We loved. In our own sacrificing way, we loved.
Did you laugh?
I believe in the suggestion that even fake laughing is good for the heart and spirit. Try it if you haven’t. There is something about the act of laughing that causes a reverberation of good energy throughout the body which brings joy into your soul. This leads as one obscure truth that you don’t necessarily have to have anything to give you reason to laugh. Laughing alone is the medicine to bringing in joy and perhaps, peace, to each needing part of what is inside.
I read this sign today that alone made me laugh. It read, “Don’t grow up. It’s a trap.” You have to love this meme. You live long enough to deal with adulthood and all you can truly do is laugh at the many underlying truths about this forewarn. No matter what you do, take a chance to laugh when you are given the opportunity.
I was so deep into adulthood one evening that I had no personality in me left when I found my daughter crying tears of laughter as she watched a social media comedy clip. I since have watched that video and found myself hysterically laughing as well. Moments don’t always align with other’s good times, but even just looking back at my own daughter’s beautiful tears of uncontrollable laughter was a keepsake in my heart that allowed me to catch up. Catch up, I did. That comedy clip was hilarious!
Did you live?
Rhetorically, yes. If we are still here, we all lived. And yet, did we REALLY live? I recall giving birth to my last two boys just a little over one year apart. In my mind, I would stay home until both were school age just like I did for my first three. My first three, however, were three and two years apart. While I can imagine that having multiples all at once has its own challenges for sure, I was at a loss for having two, one at walking, trying to climb onto tables and wanting to eat everything stage versus one learning to roll over, crawl, and taste everything stage. Both were in different-sized diapers. Both were needing to be fed with different food textures. Both were at different sleep patterns. Both cried at different times with different developmental and many times, unclear needs due to lack of non-verbal communication.
Did I live? Surely. Silently, in truth, I was walking dead. I can admit that now because the challenge has long past and each day I lived to make it through yet another. My oldest daughter’s words to me rang in my ear and pierced into my heart, “Mom. You’ve changed.” Just like other moments where your own children speak of what they see, but not truly grasp what you are going through, she will never (need to) know how much her words took me down. While silently fighting my own stones trying to persecute me, realizing my own child and perhaps, all my older children suggesting I was losing my “self” were the heaviest if not, most jagged stones thrown at me. Those words took some great healing time.
Seeing and hearing the joyous voices of our still youngest two is a testimony that while I may have seemingly been taken down with heavy judgment, most often, judging my very own inconsistencies and inabilities, I can take it all in and say to myself, “I lived. And I have lived well.”
Loving, laughing, and living should not be falsified by the mere images of flawless images of such gestures or actions. There is gratitude for having loved when at times we have hungered for such affection. There is that feeling of exhalation after a good laugh. Finally, there is that moment of reflection for when we can just be real with our own self to say, “Life happened and I lived it.”
All is well. Take in the memories of when you have loved, laughed, and lived. Don’t underestimate the level or size of any parts of your life. It is your book to finalize.
