Uninspired

You can probably tell from my lack of verbose, enthusiastic updates that I'm in a bit of a writing slump.  It isn't that I don't have a lot to say, it's that I seem to be unable to sort it out in any kind of useful and thoughtful way onto the page.  My words come out wrong and jumbled, full of misspellings and grammatical errors that have me cringing on a re-read (yet I lack the desire to correct).  I'm still cooking furiously as always, yet I'm less excited to share or photograph it.

At MOPS this past week, we spoke about The 5 Love Languages of Children.  Part of the speaker's talk was an exercise in illustrating Words of Affirmation (which just so happens to be my love language - go figure).  The mom sitting to my right wrote me a "warm fuzzy" as I wrote one for the mom on my left.  My warm fuzzy reads,

"I love that you always have a wonderful sparkle in your eyes - it seems like no matter what stresses you may be going through, that joy still shines!"

That's an awesome warm fuzzy.  It's no secret if you read this blog with any consistency that I pride myself on keeping a positive attitude and believing that good is in everyone and everything.  It's something I try to do consciously with a lot of effort, and while I don't always succeed, this attitude has helped me through some pretty rough patches in life.

Yet the past few weeks I've felt decidedly less sparkly.  I've been having vivid dreams and nightmares.  My grandfather came to visit me one night.  I have no memory of what he said, but I woke up with the scent of his pipe tobacco heavy in the air.  Appropriately it was the night before a rather upsetting fight between Brian and I.  Another night I was screaming and crying at Brian. And still another I was back living in Alabama with my ex-husband and running from tornados.

I know why this is happening.  Brian and I have started going to marriage counseling together - something we're doing because we love one another enough to do it.  We want to learn to communicate better, to pinpoint the problems, and find some tools to help us work around, with, and through them ('cause they're never going to just go away).  All of the counseling, though, stirs up a lot.

So.  Yeah.  Here I sit with just a lot to ponder quietly.  It's not that I'm not very happy and full of love, because I am.  I'm just not sparkling right now because my focus is interior and not exterior. Sometimes, I suppose, that's just what one needs to do.

Everyone has problems.  Everyone has stress.  Everyone wakes up and feels like crap some days.  Everyone gets sad and mad and glad.  It's part of life.  I'm not upset that I'm feeling this way or confused by it.  I know it's a process and if I embrace it fully I'll come out the other side stronger, wiser, and more sparkly than before.

In the meantime, if you're a praying person, I'd appreciate yours, specifically for Brian and I, but also for Chloe and Liam.