Technicalities.

So, I’m averaging about one blog post per month, which is interesting to me. I kind of thought I would be blogging more often, but I also haven’t wanted to pressure myself. To explain in words the complexity of emotions my husband and I have been faced with would be impossible. Sometimes I think about blogging and I feel very overwhelmed at the thought of it because I am unsure of what to say, or where to start. People have told me, “You should blog more, it’s helping so many people.” It’s not that easy. I mean, I am so thankful that somehow this tragedy and my response can help others, but the whole thing is so messy.

To give you an analogy with how I’m feeling I will start by saying that I was a very messy child. I was raised without an example of how to keep things tidy, I had zero structure, zero routine, and my bedroom growing up definitely reflected that. It was a disaster 95% of the time. I was not raised with the example of how to keep things clean, so I literally felt incapable of keeping order in my own space. My parents would critisize me for those tendencies and often get upset with how messy I was. My dad, who is a very orderly individual, was a long haul truck driver (still is) he was only home about a month total out of each year, and had a very hard time understanding why it was so hard for me to keep my room clean. When he would get frustrated with me about it, I remember telling him, “I don’t know how.” I didn’t. I didn’t know how to clean my room. I was never shown, I had never seen a clean house, I had never been taught, and had no example of how to maintain personal order in everyday life.

As I’ve grown up I have gotten MUCH better about staying organized, having a business has definitely given me that incentive because in order to be successful you must have order. At the time though, I remember feeling so frustrated with myself, like such a disappointment to my father for not being able to please him by keeping my room clean. It sounds like a small thing, but I remember feeling so helpless, like I wanted to be a neat person, but I just couldn’t, I was not capable. It took a very long time for me to learn the art of living in order, with structure. I longed for that, but without an example to follow how could I just create that behavior on my own, as a child?

When I think about where I am at emotionally after my son’s passing I feel a very similar sense of helplessness. I look at my heart and see what a mess it’s in and a lot of times seeing that vastness of it is utterly overwhelming. It’s like I just short circuit and don’t know where to start. I’m learning that just like I had to be patient with myself in practical, material order; I’m having to do that with my heart. When we get down on ourselves because we don’t feel like we are measuring up, or we feel like failures, like a disappointment, the best place to start is giving ourselves grace. When I first started being intentional about keeping my physical space in order, I had to be very patient with myself. I had to say, “Ok, Kristina, you have really let things go this week, and it is OK, but let’s start with something small and just do that.”

Instead of turbo cleaning my entire living space, I would choose an area that needed attention, no matter how small, and organize that. Maybe it was just my jewelry box, some days that was all I could handle putting in order without getting overwhelmed and short circuiting. I would do that one small thing, leaving the rest of my space a mess, and intentionally choose to change my attitude towards myself. Instead of focusing on the rest of my room or home being a disaster, I would focus on my accomplishment of organizing my jewelry box and give myself a big pat on the back. Mind you, my situation was severe, my mother is a hoarder, to a pretty extreme degree, so I was battling that tendency within myself, because it’s all I ever knew as an example.

These days, my house isn’t perfectly clean all the time, but I definitely have made progress in leaps and bounds, given what I came from. Now when people tease me about certain areas of my personal space getting messy, I don’t get hurt by it or down on myself. Instead, I think, “If you only knew what I came from.” Reflecting on that now, I am encouraged. I am proud of myself for breaking the cycle of constant chaos in my personal space.

Now, how does this tie into my metaphysical space? Well, I’ve noticed a similar pattern. When I look at my metaphysical space from a distance, it is overwhelming. The deck I have been handed in life recently has pretty much destroyed the condition of my heart space, and left me with a disastrous mess to clean up. The days where I attempt to look at the whole thing, I can barely function. So, instead I am learning the art of giving myself the grace to let the mess just be there and focus on one area at a time, no matter how small, no matter how long it takes to clean the whole thing up.

I hope I’m making sense. Moral of the story for me and I guess for whoever is reading this is, don’t focus on the huge mess, dial in on whatever you can handle that moment and focus on cleaning up and getting healing in that area, no matter how small it is. After you’re done, don’t let yourself look at all that you have NOT accomplished, but focus on what you have accomplished and really give yourself kudos. This life is difficult and complex and we all need to be a little more gentle with ourselves and with others.