Dear Becky,
It’s been a crazy couple of months around here. So far we’ve had a plague, murder hornets, and now a very recent series of grievous unjust killings of people of color. We’ve had protests and we’ve had riots. The climate around here resembles a powder keg and our president seems more interested in his appearance for the upcoming election than what is happening around him. It’s scary, Friend.
It’s been tense closer to home too. As it turns out, Becky, it’s incredibly hard to work from home while the kids are out of school. I have struggled more than usual and my typical enneagram 7, moving-towards-others-personality has had a ridiculously hard time putting to words just what it is that has been so difficult. I must admit that when the “shelter in place” order came, I didn’t think much would change for us, because The Weatherman has been working from home for 2-3 years now. It was more like summer just came early than anything else. However, all these prior plans and commitments I’d intended to wrap up before the kids came home. Needless to say that didn’t happen. To say I’ve been feeling the weight of it would be and understatement. I can hear you snicker as you read this because you know that this is one of those times when my sometimes unrealistic optimism sets me up for a fall. And I can see you shaking your head because you think I should know better. I’m sorry to say that I don’t.
I had another dream, Becky. It came in two parts. In the first, I was a part of a theater company and we were set to perform a large production. But the director sent me away before the play was supposed to start. I wasn’t given any knowledge about where I was to go, just that I was to get on this one particular windy road and follow it. I could see a dark, ominous, storm on the horizon ahead and I didn’t want to go. I was flooded with all sorts of emotions because I thought I was being stripped of my part in the production. But out of obedience, I went. As I drove down the road, it was like swimming into dark murky waters. Uncertainty threatened me. The feeling of loneliness was heavy on my chest. As the intensity of the dark and heavy rain beat down on my windshield, I pulled off to a rest stop to shelter. As I sought refuge, I found two other individuals sheltering there as well, and although unfamiliar with these strangers, we huddled together. The discomfort of huddling with strangers quickly gave way to an odd sort of comradery as we came together for a common cause….safety from the storm. I remember expressing to these individuals my gratitude to have found them and the sentiment of wondering how many times I had avoided connection with strangers due to fear. Then the dream shifted in the way dreams do, offering no sensible explanation, and these individuals and I were back at the theater company. All I remember was arriving back at the theater and being confronted with my grief over missing the production. However, the director arrived to inform me that the acceptance of the mission she’d sent me on had in fact provided me the privilege of my choice of parts in the delayed production. The show had waited for me. I remember all my questions giving way to intense gratitude, before the dream took one last shift.
In this last segment of the dream, Becky, the perspective of the dream shifted to a more abstract presentation. In this part, I saw a table with a basket of bread crumbs, a knife resembling a scottish dirk, and a grinding stone. I leaned in reaching for the basket but it was moved just out of my reach, though it remained within sight. The dirk was then put to the grinding stone for sharpening. Then I heard a voice say that the basket of crumbs were my aspirations being moved just to the side for a time of re-sharpening, but only for a time.
I must confess, Becky, that I’ve been dealing with a lot of anger. I know it won’t surprise you that I didn’t immediately know where it was coming from. All these years and all this work and I still can’t read myself well. I’m discouraged, Becky. I’m frustrated. I have felt as if I cannot have a career unless my children are in school. The reality of that simple notion brings a myriad of complicated and ugly implications that I wish did not exist for me. I had prepared my plans for 2020 with the intent to have all my biggest commitments cleared away for summer, so that I could simply be the mom that I usually love to be! But summer came early this year and I wasn’t ready put my work in the back seat just yet. I have to remind myself that I chose this profession for its flexibility, but circumstances have asked me to bend before I was prepared to. It’s been hard. I have even wrestled with guilt over my internal (and external) tantrums. But it seems I must accept that it is time for me to reorganize my priorities and remember that my primary aspiration is that of “Mom”. This doesn’t mean I'm not pursuing my work, Becky, it simply means that it’s my kids’ turn to ride shotgun for now.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. ”
All my blessings, Friend!
-Lauren