February is a great month

Ok...I am one of those people who write cathartically...I write when I need to get something out. So looking back over posts, I seem to sound as though I may need to delve into psychology some...possible even therapy;O) And while I know I owe no one an explanation, I feel for my own sake, I must defend myself by saying I think for the most part I sail through life relatively sane. That said, here I am entering into my favorite time of the year...February...on that same rough road of questioning where the heck I am going!

Well, February is not really my favorite time of the year, but it does signal some very special events. The first is that Winter is finally coming to an end. Winter stops being cool for me after Christmas, when the fires in the fireplace have lost their newness and the ashes have won over into being a dusty film over the living room, the Christmas toys have now mingled with the resident toys into some kind of unrecognizable clump of mismatched parts and pieces strewn throughout my house, the appeal of all my favorite winter veggies has turned into a begrudging question...oh my god, what old vegetable am I going to roast this lovely evening and finally, the kids are wearing me thin with their energy that has been pent up over the much too short and too cold days!...And we live in Georgia! This is some major insight into why we didn't survive very long in the arctic cold of Denmark. I also like February because of Valentines day...the pink and red combo is just fun and happy and my birthday, which is just my day. I like it.

That said, it's interesting to me that as I get older, I find lots more answers to the questions I have asked over the years...but the questions keep coming...and keep getting bigger. Just as I find the answer to one thing I see a new way of applying it to something else that leads me to a new awareness of some facet of life or God or me. I used to think that as I got to be a grown up I would get to a point of just being me and I would be in this place of OK...I'm done...I know everything and can start living. When I realized it wasn't that way, man, I freaked. Trying to control everything is tough. It can drive you nuts and almost did. Well, I kept learning and I have grown into new understandings of myself and my place in the world. I thought I was "done"...haha...now I have been realizing that I have to change. Sometimes when you are busy growing and realizing, you make observations about your belief systems and you misinterpret the observations as changes within yourself. But an observation is merely internal until you make it a part of your life. As I have grown over the past 5 years, I have made many observations and realizations about my beliefs about kids, how they learn, what they need, I have realized things about God and Jesus and where I think church fits in and how I think I am supposed to respond as a believer in this world...I have even learned the ways I want to react to myself with love and have delved into the ideas of meditation some and living more naturally and holistically...I have made some changes. But not big ones. I think this internal upheaval I am now experiencing is going to deliver the goods. My insides seem to be saying, "OK you have done the inside work Amanda. Now is the time to step out and live them on the outside." This is particularly hard for me, a relatively shy, historically people-pleasing person, who now needs to break out and change schools, possibly change churches and to some degree change the way I live. Not that any of it is bad or even warrants change. That got me for a long time. I thought in order to make a change I had to deem the status quo as bad, without repair or at least relatively broken. Which it's not. It's just that a lot of it isn't me or the direction I am going internally and the friction of that contrast is starting to wear.

Change is hard, but good. Life is a journey and whether you want to be a part of the ups and downs, they aren't asking permission. They are taking you along.