the circus is in town
By the always beautiful Tiffany Winn Rueckert, Guest Contributor
Happy early birthday . . . and, oh, yea, the circus is in town.
I beat myself up and gave myself a pep talk all within in an hour this morning.
Dave is out of town and I woke up late, which put everything into panic mode. We scrambled to the bus stop, Tommy barefooted in 50 degrees, me in my pajamas. The boys reminded me at the bus stop that I forgot to give them book fair money. My friend handed them each $10. We came back home to two bags of freshly cut carrots on the counter: forgotten morning school snacks.
Just to be sure I really felt like crap I got on the scale and made sure that I weighed the most I have weighed since I had Tommy. Yep, sure do. I sat defeated on the bed—"It's the eve of your 37th birthday and you don't have your crap together."
And then I opened the most beautiful email from a friend—an early birthday greeting that reminded me what a tremendously hard year this year has been for me. A year that has stretched me thin—or not so thin—and has taken me in so many new directions.
I stopped my pity party and went down to my messy sink and I started analyzing why I feel like I'm limping to the finish line of another year of life. I started to feel relief when I realized that I have attempted more growth in this past year than I have in a good while. I have given up a lot of comfort for the sake of growth and as a result of all the unknown that comes with new growth, certain aspects of my life that I have traditionally valued just aren't gaining traction. But in reality, how can they?? It's frustrating but I am realizing that we have these periods of rapid growth in our lives that cause a little life upheaval for a while.
The old balls will always drop quite a few times while we are juggling in three new ones and mastering new tricks. We just need to give ourselves a break and tell ourselves to persevere—that things will end up settling like they always do—And then hey!—look at you! You are juggling them all! Even the old balls! With the new! And you have a monkey on your back! And the circus is in town! And your friend happened to have cash for your kids so they can buy goofy books and smelly pencils from the Book Fair!!
Life is good.
Copyright © 2015 by Rent's Due Publications
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, click a button on any page to send email with details of the request.