This picture says everything. The last 9 months or so I have been on an accidental journey of discovering myself. Brought on I believe by being forced to be at home.
When the quarantine first started last year I had a hard time. I had spent five years as a dispatcher and pretty much learning to hate everyone and everything. I have never been very social but I had gotten to the point where I truly didn’t want to see anyone other than my husband and kids, ever. After leaving dispatch and starting a new job that turned out to be awful I ended up where I am now. That job brought me out of my shell tremendously. I made friends again, I wanted to socialize, I hung out with coworkers outside of work. Also during that time our favorite brewery transformed from a place we went to occasionally, to our Thursday night spot for date night, to our place! The people there really helped me grow and open up and most became friends and many became like family.
Then covid happened and like everyone else I was affected. The first few months I look back on now as blessing. While we were all trying to figure things out we spent a lot of time with family that we hadn’t before; they were our quarantine people. I had no idea then how thankful I would be today for that time.
As time moved on we got more used to the new normal and for me that meant being in the house M-F every day, alone. I have gone through so many different emotions it is unreal but when I saw this picture, it all made sense. For me this has been a season of growth and I’ve learned so much about myself, who I am, who I want to be, and how that and everything around me affects me.
Each day this week I have struggled so much with my emotions but at the same time I’m also thankful that I know how to process them now. Life scares the absolute hell out of me. It really is but a blink and we all say it but I don’t think we realize it. Life is hard and this week nothing has made sense to me but this morning this song came to mind. In the words of the great Jason Crabb, “He never promised that the cross would not be heavy and the hill would not be hard to climb. He never offered our victories without fighting but He said help would always come in time. Just remember when you’re standing in the valley of decision and the adversary says give in; just hold on; our Lord will show up and He will take you through the fire again.” Even if you don’t consider yourself a Christian; even if you don’t care for this style of music; even if anything I encourage you to give it a listen.
I’ve said it so many times but I’m really feeling it this week, social media has taken away all the social from our society. I have a hard time with it constantly, this desire to be connected to people, all the while hating how much it’s actually harmed our connections with real people. In hindsight I would not have let my kids get Facebook or any of the other platforms. In fact looking back I regret even getting them cell phones. I know we tell our selves we need them so that we can be in contact with them but that is a lie we tell ourselves to justify it. I did the same thing when DJ started staying home alone of course he needed a phone. I could have gotten a landline. He started driving and of course he needed to be able to call me, another lie. When I was 17 I wrecked my car. I had a friend (that later became family) in the car with me. I was driving like an idiot. Thank God we were okay. And you know how we got help? We walked, to a pay phone, I know shocking right?!
I use the term “kids” all the time but I’m starting to realize that this stuff started when my kids (who are both adults) were kids. So when I say kids I mean them too because it really kind of started with their generation. We have so many connections on various social media platforms and seemingly so many friends and so many people looking out for us and caring about us. In reality we do not even know most of these people, like literally do not know them! We have actually become more isolated, more alone and more susceptible to hurt and pain. Kids from this generation, and a lot of adults now, don’t know a world without the attention from likes, comments and DMs. They don’t know how to have real interactions that don’t involve a screen.
I wish I knew how to reverse this but I don’t. I know we need to put our phones down and close our laptops. I know we need to call and talk to people and hear their voices rather than read what they type. I know we need to gather together more often and keep our people close. We need to learn the value of relationship again. Of being with the people we love, learning to love, to forgive, to trust, to believe in each other. I just don’t know how we do that.
Many of you know my backstory, many of you don’t. Many probably think they do but don’t know the truth of it. My marriage was hard, it was difficult, it was challenging. I am so thankful that social media didn’t come into until late, but even then it reared its ugliness. But am I thankful now for everything my marriage went through to get where it is now? Absolutely. I don’t say that to garner any sympathy. We all have junk. The problem I see is that we handle it several ways. We pretend we don’t have any junk and life is perfect. We take that junk and use it as an excuse to just keep living in the junk. We take that junk and make it bigger than it even really is so we can use it as a crutch. Or we take that junk, we process it, we learn from it, and we grow and thrive.
My message to you today is to please choose the last option. No matter how big or how small your junk is. Process it and thrive!
~Carla
Arise and Glow 