In the Leafy Treetops

Do you ever feel so overwhelmed by all the problems that you can't fix?

I do.

I saw an adoption posting for two beautiful young boys. My heart went out to them, and I wished I could give them a home.

My home is not large enough, and we aren't able to move.

I saw a fundraiser for a child who needs money for medical expenses to fight a terminal disease.

My bank account is not large enough, and it won't be for a while.

I saw a comment section that was full of hateful generalizations toward a group of people I love very much. I knew those statements were intentionally hurtful and untrue.

My courage was not large enough to say something that would only be attacked. I knew my voice would not change anything; I knew I would be drowned out.

The people without homes. The friendless without comfort. The children without love. The refugees without safety.

I sometimes feel like I am never able to give and solve and create and help when I often feel like that is what I was born for. Why does it always feel like my hands are tied?

When I was on study abroad for college in Germany, I was 20 years old. I'd lived a country life as a child with horses and land, and then a campus life. My days were filled with books, general college shenanigans, and working part-time mowing lawns and raking leaves.

I landed in Berlin, and I saw something else entirely. The city was incredible, and everything I experienced there was privilege. I went into the best museums, toured architecture, studied the language, strolled through the park, ate pastries, and shopped at H&M.

I also saw the same woman on my way to class. She had no shoes. Her feet were black from the dirt of the street. She didn't speak English or German. Her face was dirty and sunburned, and her dress was stained.

I thought maybe that her feet might be the same size as mine.

I knew I had an extra pair of sneakers in my bag back in my apartment.

I resolved that the next day, I would bring my extra pair of shoes and bring them to her. After two weeks of glancing at this woman daily, I finally thought about helping her.

She was gone the next day, and I never saw her again. I still regret how long it took me to see her, really see her, instead of just turning my head away.

I missed my chance because I was distracted. I still wish I had made myself see and care just one day earlier.

I did not sleep much last night. Instead, I was up cuddling my baby girl, because she was throwing up and feeling miserable. We were both exhausted. She was only calm as I was singing. Her favorite song is

"In the leafy treetops the birds say good morning.
They're first to see the sun, they must tell everyone,
In the leafy treetops, the birds say good morning.
In the pretty garden, the flowers are nodding.
How do you do, they say. How do you do today?
In the pretty garden, the flowers are nodding."

Over and over, I sang it.

She eventually calmed down and went to sleep. I stripped her bed and took her soiled clothes to the laundry basket. I scrubbed the vomit out of the carpet. I washed out the bathtub with disinfectant.

Yesterday, my heart was large enough. My body was just awake enough. My soul was willing enough. That was all that mattered to her.

A bird or a flower might not be able to cure the heartaches of everyone, but they can serve where they are. They can sing the song of the sun or nod at people as they pass by, brightening the world just a little bit at a time.

When you see the sun, will you tell those who can't see it? When you're feeling colorful and happy, can you cheer the path of someone who needs to be reminded?

In the leafy treetops, the birds say good morning.

Back On the Horse

I'm one of those people who pushes back against cliches. I like to do things differently, and I don't mind trying to come up with my own twist on things. I dislike things like "Live, Laugh, Love" and I don't really like most inspirational quotes that rely too much on generalizations with universal appeal.

Life is about learning to dance in the rain. Home sweet home. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. Always get back on the horse. You know what I mean.

But, today I am going to break my own rule because I saw something on *gasp* social media that resonated with me.

'"I did not come this far only to come this far." Keep going. Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing.' - Jeffery R. Holland.

Sometimes, we're all too tempted to take a break from our goals because we've hit a snag. I may or may not have eaten homemade donuts, yogurt, brownies, and a bowl of cheesy vegetable soup today instead of eating a green smoothie, a salad, lentils, and whole-grain bread. Yesterday might have been worse.

I sometimes think I've come far enough. I can rest now. I can stop and take a break. But when you're only halfway up a hill and you stop, it's so much harder to get your momentum back. Getting to the top seems harder than it maybe seemed a week ago. And, over time, you lose your progress and slide slowly but surely to the bottom of the hill again.

One of my mom's beautiful horses. 

Your goals might not be the same as mine, but they might seem just as out of reach as mine currently feel to me.

A retired doctor came to speak to a group of high school students. One student, during a question and answer panel, asked the doctor how long it had taken him to become a heart surgeon.

"14 years," he replied. Undergraduate, medical school, residencies, fellowships. Fourteen years to get where he was aiming for from the start.

"Oh," the student replied with disappointment, "I could never spend so much time getting there. That's too long."

"Why?" asked the doctor, "The years will pass no matter what. You will have the time."

Don't get discouraged when results are slow to come. Don't give up. Keep trying. I did not come this far only to come this far. I can do more.

Vegetable Soup

Self-care is important. At least, so say the mental health publications, the mommy bloggers, the parenting magazines, the college counselors, and others.

But what actually is self-care? Is it really eating the chocolate, taking the bubble bath, going to bed early, or getting a massage (#selfcare)?

No, self-care is more than that. One bubble bath won't really take away the toll of a week of stress. Your sleep will still suffer, your body will still hurt, and you'll end up struggling, in spite of all the self-care you've lavished on yourself.

It's time to change the definition.

Self-care is anything that consistently makes your life less hard. Self-care is the stuff you do now so that the day, or next week, or next month, or next year will be less difficult to live.

On a daily basis, my self-care looks like going to the gym and lifting heavy weights, so that carrying my laundry baskets up the stairs is easy. It might feel hard in the moment, but those moments are actually when I am caring the most about my self.

Self-care looks like choosing healthy foods for your body. It might mean passing on alcohol or soda and choosing water. It might be saying no to chocolate and warming up a bowl of peas instead.

Self-care might be paying down debt instead of going on vacation, so that maybe one day, your life won't be as financially stressful.

Self-care might mean taking time each day to pray and study so that when you really need it, your faith doesn't fail.

Self-care might mean being honest with a friend about how you are doing. It might mean asking for help. It might mean confessing that you aren't doing as well as you'd like to be doing; you don't have to put up a good show all the time. It might mean that you say no because your plate is full enough.

Today, my self-care looked different. It looked like staying bed until 8:30, several large cups of tea with honey, accepting that I am too sick to work out or do much work at all, and allowing myself to rest. It looked like vegetable soup.

Self-care doesn't have to be about self-gratification. In fact, they are more opposites than similarities. Self-gratification tells you to give up, or give in, or quit when things are hard, even when those things are worthwhile. But if you truly want to care for yourself, you'll embrace those things that will truly make your life better.

Keeping it Real

Today, I wanted to write a blog post about reality. It might be a boring, uninspirational post, but that's okay because, on the whole, my life is not dripping with color or achievement. It's steeped in the lukewarm mundanity that lingers in the background and often the foreground from waking to sleeping.

Today, I made banana bread. That sounds really homemaker-y and might be incredible to some, but the real reason there are two loaves of banana bread cooling on my counter is that I bought bananas, didn't eat the bananas, and then made banana bread so I didn't have to feel guilty about throwing them away.

Today, I went to the gym. We did an upper-body workout. I surprised myself by holding a 50-second plank with a hundred-pound sandbag on my back. That might sound really impressive, but I wanted to make it 60 seconds and I didn't quite get there.

Today, the weather is over 50 degrees. It's sunny and there's no wind. I thought about taking my kids to the park, but I was so tired from the week of workouts and reduced sleep quality that I laid in bed for two hours watching Hulu while the baby napped.

Today, I watched the children in childcare at the gym for an hour. There were toys everywhere, at least one person was crying the whole time, and at the end of the hour, I went home. I unbuckled the kids from their car seats. I helped a neighbor unload some sheetrock from his truck. I checked the mail.

And tomorrow, I will wake up and I will do the same things again. I'll bake something. I'll probably do a burpee or a pushup (or 50), I'll drive kids to school and pick them up again and do dishes and make some sort of dinner and budget the dollars and maybe buy some groceries.

And something in the back of my mind will tell me that this is unexceptional. That the things I do are not even ripples in the pond.

Some of you reading this might want at this point to say, "But you are exceptional! Look at all the amazing stuff you've done!"

But here's the thing: sometimes worthwhile stuff is unexceptional. Sometimes it's not impressive. Often, it's uncomfortable, awkward, ugly, unpleasant, or mind-numbingly dull. The answer to the question, "How was your weekend?" might mostly be a shrug, or a non-commital "Fine, and yours?" because my weekend consisted mostly of breaking up kids' arguments and checking the tracking data on a package that still hasn't come.

In a time when everything is made to be shown off (bodies, baking, clothes, kids, houses, etc.), take a moment to reflect on the things that are not worth showing off -- they might be your biggest accomplishments. My first 9 batches of failed macarons, the endless nights of no sleep holding a sick child, the daily green smoothie that I drink even though it actually tastes awful, the calluses on my hands from trying and still not succeeding at doing a pull-up.

Sometimes the biggest accomplishment of them all is not something you can post on Instagram. It's this fact: In the face of the mundane and uninteresting things that fit like millions of grains of sand among the few flashy pearls on the necklace of your life, you haven't quit. I might not have a glamorous life, but I have a real life.

Some perfectly mundane seaweed that nobody would normally take a picture of, but I did obviously.