Peace in the midst of turmoil. As a young parent I used to handle that well, but these days it's harder to silence the voices inside my head. Harder to breathe.
Today I reached a whole new level of insanity that almost did me in. I have had to get to this place just to find myself again. To get away from the madness temporarily before I totally lose who I am. I know who I want to be, but pressures of the day seem to shove "me" to the place where I cannot think. I am losing track of reality or perhaps I know reality all too well. Not being able to change it gets to me. Lack of respite. Apathy. Words fail.
Thankfully I know how to regain my sense of "being myself." There's only one solution, and it will take longer than a weekend shut away in a house by myself. Beginning next week I have a plan. It will begin slowly, but over time I pray it brings the answer I seek. I've been asking for an answer for quite awhile, but the answer I receive is "Trust Me". Funny how you think you are trusting when in truth you're far from it.
My prayer is that once the answer and direction come I will have the courage to make a change. Sometimes I wish I could relive the childhood days of spending time in the woods at my grandparent's home, laying on the "big rock" reading, walking down to the railroad tracks against my mother's wishes, and riding trees in the breeze. My childhood escapes from insanity saved my life, perhaps remembering will help now.
Today I reached a whole new level of insanity that almost did me in. I have had to get to this place just to find myself again. To get away from the madness temporarily before I totally lose who I am. I know who I want to be, but pressures of the day seem to shove "me" to the place where I cannot think. I am losing track of reality or perhaps I know reality all too well. Not being able to change it gets to me. Lack of respite. Apathy. Words fail.
Thankfully I know how to regain my sense of "being myself." There's only one solution, and it will take longer than a weekend shut away in a house by myself. Beginning next week I have a plan. It will begin slowly, but over time I pray it brings the answer I seek. I've been asking for an answer for quite awhile, but the answer I receive is "Trust Me". Funny how you think you are trusting when in truth you're far from it.
My prayer is that once the answer and direction come I will have the courage to make a change. Sometimes I wish I could relive the childhood days of spending time in the woods at my grandparent's home, laying on the "big rock" reading, walking down to the railroad tracks against my mother's wishes, and riding trees in the breeze. My childhood escapes from insanity saved my life, perhaps remembering will help now.
Birches
by Robert Frost
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter of fact about the ice storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them, 30
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May not fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter of fact about the ice storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them, 30
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May not fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
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