Finding My Way Back to Me

Have you ever had a season in life where you were really struggling, and yet couldn't really put into words precisely what the problem was?

The past year and a half or so have been emotionally charged in ways I am not yet certain I fully understand.  Big life events have occurred such as my mom's inability to move through rehab and return home, requiring the emptying and sale of her place.  Attempting to develop and open a businesses from the concept to open doors has been a tough gig and required taking a lot of risks.  Health issues for the entire year with my thyroid completely off kilter have caused hormonally driven lows.  Multiple surgeries with Kenny have been excruciating to walk through side by side with him.  Kids have had some real ups and downs I have elected not to share here but that have been incredibly painful and required lots of my deepest attention.  Life is shifting in new directions all over the place, which doesn't disturb me at all, despite what others might think with kids graduating, etc.  I am not, nor have I ever been, one of those moms who yearn for the younger years or need to cling.  I have been excited about every new stage, and revel in watching them move forward in new directions.

What is the problem then?  What has me so off balance? 

I would describe myself right now as lost.  Not the kind of lost that comes from empty nesting, because we aren't even close.  Not the kind of lost that comes from feeling older and like life is passing me by, because that has yet to feel like an issue for me.  It is not the lost that comes from impending menopause, fraught with hot flashes and anxiety around a changing body, though I am certain that hasn't helped.

Spending the past several months in great introspection, I have come to a couple of conclusions that may or may not be true.  Here are a couple of my thoughts, and I wonder if others in similar circumstances have felt the same...

• Helping my kids heal, spending years in the role of therapeutic parent, has taken a toll.  You absorb so much pain, and you move on, nary a thought to how doing this episode after episode is chipping away at your soul.  You yearn for wholeness for them, and you might not realize you are losing your own wholeness.  You lose sight of what you are sublimating over time.  You take the "hits" over and over again, thankfully you often see eventual growth and building of emotional "muscle", but at what cost?  I have ignored this, maybe never seen it at all.  But I am feeling it now as a weight that feels almost too heavy to heft over my shoulder.  Maybe it has just all caught up to me, maybe it seems never ending, I don't really know.  But I hurt and emotionally bruise more easily these days, and feel less resilient, less easily able to bounce back after hard days or weeks...or months.

• Spending countless years in seeking out help, answers, and a future path for our kids has left me little time for working on myself.  And now, I have no sense of who I am.  I lost my way somehow, and need to come back to myself without really knowing what that looks like.
  
  I am no longer who I was, too much has happened in the past 20 years for me to ever find my way back to who that woman was.  And the version of myself that exists now has just been hanging on for dear life much of the time, trying desperately not to fail those around me, recognizing the true life and death stakes at play.  If I can't return to the old version of me, and have had no time to develop a new version, where does that leave me?  In a kind of limbo that is very hard to describe, and in some ways with as little self-knowledge as a late teen has.  Understandable at 17, not so understandable at almost 53.

• Unlike many with kids this age, I will always have a life more intertwined than others might with their young adult kids.  Sure, we will graduate them, but at the very least Kenny will always need support in some form, and there is more needed in other directions as well for the unforeseeable future.  We are unlikely to have an empty nest for several more years, if ever.  There is active parenting going on all the time, despite chronological ages.  While many might interpret my current angst to kids graduating, that is not it at all.  How do I live into a new version of "me" as everyone else seems to do at this stage of life, when the old version must remain, at least in part, perhaps forever? 
  
  And knowing that I need to be fully present much of the time so that others can have a real life, what can I actually live into for myself for this next phase of my life?  I don't have the freedom to just come and go as I please, because others need my presence for a variety of reasons.  In other words, how can I "become" under those circumstances?  I see my friends entering this new season, and it looks so different than mine that it is very hard to relate.

These are not complaints, they are observations and the unvarnished reality.  They are not an indication of depression, but instead an expression of the swirling confusion that is my inner life right now.

I am not unhappy,  I am lost.

What is my true role with Buckaroos?  Where might God help me find meaning and value in my day to day work as homeschooling gradually wanes?  I can't work at a real job, I am still needed far too much and likely never will work at a real job ever again.  Does the perpetual running all day, the guiding, the listening, the encouraging with young adults...does it really matter?  Will I ever find a way to teach again once I am done, something I have found I truly enjoy?  Or will those days be put behind me and become mere fond memories?  Is there more I am being led to do with Blue Collar Homeschool?  Or as we end our homeschool journey in a couple of years will that feel disconnected from me?

I have prayed and prayed patiently and repeatedly for God to show me a way forward, not for my kids, but for me...something I seldom ask.  I need my own personal 2x4, and perhaps I received it recently in the unique, undeniable way that God tends to work in my life.  While it didn't provide concrete answers, it may have offered me a direction of sorts, one I am paying close attention to.

God's 2x4 came in the form of a quote from a book, and a Costco visit.  Trust me, they are connected in an unusual way, so just stick with me for a moment.

For our Blue Collar Homeschool book group (I lead an online discussion) we are reading this book:

Now, this book is a fascinating look at how average is sort of a farce we all buy into, and the comment on the cover was true...it is consistently mind-blowing.  It has nothing to do at all with special needs, and offers a lot of examples and data which some might find mind numbing but I found quite intriguing.  What might this have to do with any Divine 2x4's?  Wait, I am getting to it.  

I was reading and making notations as I was back east a couple of weeks ago, which is a long story and I won't go into it here.  I hadn't quite finished the book, and planned to complete working through it on the flight home.  While there, my best friend Candi and I visited Lancaster, PA and ended up visiting the Costco there briefly.  Throughout my visit, we also had many deep conversations which were about Candi's future, mine, my sense of feeling profoundly lost to myself, and much more.  We both have lives that lend themselves to needing a special place to share, and thankfully we have that in each other, where we can be authentic and hide nothing, and know we are heard and understood.  Such a gift that is!  More's the gift in that there is real time invested in prayer for one another, and this time it felt like an immediate answer was offered.

On the flight back, I open my book back up and begin where I left off.  A few pages in I am back deeply involved in it, and then I read a paragraph that utterly shocked me. I stopped reading, put the book down and just couldn't believe it.  I picked it up, and there it was, in black and white, and I was NOT imagining it.

There on the very page I was reading, was mentioned the Lancaster, Pennsylvania Costco I had visited a mere four days earlier.  As if that were not enough, that paragraph spoke about a young man with special needs hired by that Costco, finding meaning and worth through work in his community.

Throughout the book there was never a specific location mentioned in this way, nor was there ever a special needs person mentioned...until this page that I read...four days after being in that exact location...as I am trying to help start a business for employing others with special needs...a couple of weeks after I had, on a whim, enrolled in an online certification course to become a job coach for those with special needs but not thinking at all that it was perhaps an actual direction or call in my life, but simply thinking practically that if I do this even a little I could learn a bit.

God knows my deepest yearnings to live into a life of purpose, and my great fear that at some point I will look at my life and see I am doing little of any real meaning.  Homeschooling and raising my kids has been an incredible ride, more meaningful than I would have ever thought possible.  I actually hated the idea of homeschooling and had to talk myself into it.  I did so, frankly, because I felt God told me to, and I trusted there was something there for me as well, despite the fact that it was the very last thing I would have ever volunteered to do.  That trust paid off, and I ended up finding I had gifts for teaching I had not anticipated or seen before, I learned a lot about myself, and have thoroughly enjoyed every single moment of it, truly.

In talking my life through with Candi, she has tried to help me begin to view Buckaroos as my next "classroom", rather than feeling like I am peddling backward to begin working as a fast food worker again.  While I was gone, I connected with yet another family in our community whose young adult may need a place to belong, grow and learn.  We now have three possible employees outside our family who are in need of employment where teaching will happen daily, and where support and encouragement will be on great supply.  

It may not be clear exactly how much involvement I have, nor how other pieces of my life are meant to fall into place. I may feel lost for much longer.  But if I am indeed lost, at least I am not alone as I wander.  I have a peace about this part of my life now that I haven't had in a couple of years.  Details are in scant supply, but I have no doubt now that over time I will be let in on the Great Secret of Phase Four of Cindy LaJoy's life.  As long as it feels God guided, I am perfectly fine with letting it all unfold, and now I have that assurance, whether others would feel that way from the experience I had or not.  As Dominick and I talked about my Divine 2x4 we both used the same word...infinitesimal.  The odds of me reading what I read in that window seat were infinitesimal, and I trust it.

As for other things, I realize I need to be kinder to myself, for I have quite regular healing of my soul that needs to occur.  The work I do is far more painful than others would imagine, and it is indeed work...work to keep my heart soft and pliable when it wants to harden like granite.  Work to remain as patient as I can when logic leaves the room and seems like it will never return.  Work to believe when others have lost faith in themselves and God's presence.

A new Cindy is very slowly going to emerge.  She has no clue what she looks like yet, who she really is, or how many unique and uncommon places her life will lead her to.  She may indeed be lost right now, but she is stronger than ever because she has been well-honed by life, she has a great capacity to love and not allow life to cause her to strike out at others because she has seen the impact of that, worked with it and knows how beautiful it can be when walls come down. She also trusts more than ever, sure...doubting once in awhile because she is human...but walking in a faith that is basically steadfast and certain even when it makes absolutely no sense to others, because she has trusted before and every.single.time it has proven to be the wisest course of action, even when it would not have been her first choice.

And maybe she will discover that in the years spent helping others "become", she has found the bread crumbs that will direct her toward her new life, that it was really not all just about the kids, but about her as well.

Hopefully, over time, I will find my way back to me...not the old me who is long gone, but the new me who needs a little encouragement and time to settle in, and has the wisdom to look forward through the windshield and not in the rear view mirror.