Of Something More

With my husband gone for the evening, I find myself preparing to drown my loneliness in ice cream and chick flicks.  Bringing my new favorite Blue Bell variety in from the deep freeze, I find myself wondering.  Is this it?

Not, "Is this all the ice cream?"  But, "Is this all of life?"

Looking forward to a bowl of sugar and milk and an evening on my couch.  Is this all there is?

It's the same question I asked earlier this evening, as I changed another cloth diaper, putting another insert into the diaper pail, waiting to be washed and re-folded and re-filled and re-dumped into the pail.  Is this endless parade of the same task all there is?

It's the same question I ask myself as I scurry through another December, determined not to be lost in the materialism, determining to let it all go and feeling as though it won't let go of me.  So I find myself, only twelve days left, worried I won't have the packages in the mail on time - the packages I bought long before this ridiculous deadline.  Is this breaking the same resolution year after year all there is?

It's the same question I asked myself a few weeks ago as I realized we're here.  The American dream.  We've achieved it.  If the dream is a warm place to live, food in my belly and a family (pets included), with a little money to spare to satisfy our (smallish) whims - we're here.  But is this really all there is?

And I find myself coming to the same answer: If I'm bored with life I must be doing something wrong.

It's like I have finally achieved all I meant to and now I keep waiting for something to happen and I don't even know what it is.  I feel like Rose of Titanic fame, envisioning my entire life before me, an endless stream of the same.  Glorifying God through it all, yes.  Loving the little moments, the thousands of gifts, yes.  But still feeling, truly knowing, that there is more to this.

And because I still haven't allowed myself to fully seek His path and let go of my own self-imposed to-do list, self-imposed expectations I imagine others have (or maybe don't even imagine, but the importance of their opinion is definitely sheer fantasy) and fully run after what I know He has laid before me, I remain listless unsatisfied, ready to just be home.  Done with here and ready for there.

But I am still here.  I still have a family I love, I still have friends who encourage, I still have the resources I need to do what He has asked - so maybe I should do something about this.

Maybe it's time to do something right.

1,000 Gifts:
1058. A warm December afternoon, shucking the coats and heading outside
1059. Tiny hands grasping orange fur
1060. The baby boy in my lap, giggling and nuzzling, in the warmth of the sun
1061. One bright spot of light on the wall, a ray breaking through the closed blinds
1062. This hope, a knowing, of something more.