Three Dimensional Life

Home. Two weeks. Two thousand miles, two time zones, two - two hour flights, and a drastic weather change. From snow blanketing the ground and icy cold, to green grass, flowers and shedding coats and scarves and gloves. Wearing flip-flops today instead of two pair of socks. Crazy differences.

Also, home to feeling inadequate. Like I'll never measure up. Never be able to help fix all their struggles and challenges. Never be able to conquer the piles of stuff here and travel lighter.

My wise son, said, "Mom, if you could fix everything, we'd all just be mommy's boys. 'Mommy, I need this...' and we wouldn't have any character. The character is more important."

Well, we have raised some characters!

My inadequacies are like the shadow of that tree. Not the real thing. Bigger than the real thing, maybe, but not reality. They may even look deceivingly beautiful. The snow, although my camera didn't catch it, was glowing with tiny daylight fireflies. Pretty. The shadow stretched across the pristine snow, smooth and even. Flat, not three dimensional.

The yard on the other side of this fence, the yard where we were, looked like an elephant brigade had passed through. Tromped by dogs and kids and adults as they played in the fresh, deep snow. An igloo, a snow fort and a huge snowman. Lots of snowballs. The same snowfall, yards divided by a wooden fence. The snow on our side was definitely three dimensional. Like a whipped up bowl of cream, churned and peaked.

I guess I'd like life to be smooth and even and glistening and predictable. Instead, it is churned and uneven and stomped on and thrown and cold and icy slippery. And I fall. But, if instead, I view my feelings of being inadequate as flat, shallow shadows, I can see what to do. Not what I can't do. Pray. Live my own story. Build my home here, with the boys still at home. Continue to thin out the stuff. Continue to work, creatively. View the churned up side of life as well-lived, well-used. Enjoyed. Three dimensional. Real.