complicated feelings

Recently a beloved friend of mine read some of my poetry for the first time. She leads a beautiful life as a mother of three (with one more on the way). Her home is always open to neighbors and her collection of bedraggled friends--My son and I are often showing up at her house in part because I simply delight to be around such homeiness and goodness. But of course, all of that homeiness, hospitality and liveliness takes almost everything she has to give and much more than that, I'm sure.

When she read my poetry, she was so sweet and encouraging and positive, just as I could have expected of her. And then she said: "Jenny, I'm glad you don't have four children. If you did, you wouldn't be able to write poems like these."

I said I knew she was right. I know that's true. But it isn't a truth I make peace with very easily. All my feelings about writing and about time and about family life are so complicated. I can barely make any sense of them at all.

I have never been someone with a very clear life aim or plan. I never thought about getting married or having children until I wanted to marry one particular person (who I married ). But I always thought once I was married I would have many children and be busy and happy with them. It was so easy to imagine, (since in my fantasies I never had to factor in how selfish I actually am). It was so easy to imagine and it seemed so clearly (in my fantasies) to solve all my problems with trying to figure out what I should do with myself. I'd be busy. Busy would mean worthwhile. And then I'd be OK.

I know that was unhealthy and faulty reasoning and really amounts to using children to prop up my shaky ego. Not a lovely thing to do to anyone. So, I am glad that I didn't just simply get what I thought I wanted.

But here I am with these unexpected gifts... a beautiful family I adore and some extra time to think and to be creative and to even write.

And as much as I believe in God's soveriegnty and goodnesss and say that I trust him, I really I haven't made peace with these gifts, the gifts of my reality. I spend lots of time spinning my wheels feeling guilty. I spend a lot of time wondering how I can just make myself busy enough to know for sure inside myself that I'm OK. That my life is not just a long looping exercise of futile self-absorption.

I feel guilty I only have one son and am not as busy as other friends. I feel guilty because I have time for the luxury of writing and then I feel so afraid or reluctant to write that I start to spin around looking for other ways to make myself busy --because busy in my emotional life equals feeling OK, like my life has some value. But although service other activities are wonderful things--I find that if they are done to prove something to myself or to my perceived audience (God ? my friends? my family? ) those good acts of service become self-righteous and manic----I'm not giving of myself with generosity and grace--I'm simply desperate to prove I'm OK.

So here I am-- I have a certain things--time, money, freedom, health--in relative abundance. I'm not really a busy or important person, though I pretend (in my fantasy world) that I am. I have time. I have enough time to write poems, sometimes, and that's OK. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

Ha.

I write that and reread it with the full knowledge that I don't believe it. Oh well.

Here's to another year to continue on in the craziness, thankful always for grace ... and thankful always for my many beloved friends.