Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

identity

Workiversary

One year ago, I went to work.

That’s such an ordinary statement, especially now, after a year has passed, but at the time, it felt big. Like, really big. And important.

It had been nearly a month of clearances and trainings and paperwork leading up to that day, and I remember walking out of my orientation the day before with an ID in my hand and a kinda sorta plan for the next day. Ready or not, the job was waiting for me.

My memory is fuzzy about a lot of things from this past year, mostly because there are so many experiences. I remember how quite a few of my first days were two-hour delays, which was an extra measure of grace as I learned my job, although it made getting into any kind of routine difficult for a few weeks. And I remember thinking how fortunate I was to have a job with the same schedule as my kids, especially on these delay days. I’m not good with spur-of-the-moment plan changes that require extra effort for decisions like “what do we do with the kids?”

Two weeks into my job, before I’d even received a paycheck, I wrote this longish post about what it meant for our family to have a second income, even if it was small. (It’s kind of a financial history of our family, and it is some of the rawest stuff I’ve ever written.)

A year later, I can still say that this job has been more than just a paycheck. If it was just a paycheck, I’m not sure I’d still be doing it. The extra money has been nice for our family, yes. We’ve reduced our debt load though not completely eliminated it, and we were able to make wise decisions to benefit our family’s overall wellbeing, not just get by or survive. (The differences between thriving and surviving and huge, and it is hard to bridge that gap.)

But beyond the money, this job has awakened something inside of me.

When I was little, I would dream of being a teacher. (It’s the same life goal my daughter has now.) I don’t know if it was because I liked school and I mostly looked up to my teachers or because I sort of liked being “in charge.” Or maybe it was because school was my whole world and I didn’t really know anything different. Somehow, this “dream” faded and I decided I was too shy to stand in front of a group of children (whatever their age) and lead them day-in and day-out.

When I think back on it, I wasn’t just shy, I also wasn’t confident. If I had attempted being a teacher earlier in life, I don’t think it would have worked out. Even at age 40, going to school every day, where there are teenage students, is a test of confidence. Mostly I consider it all practice for the fast-approaching days of parenting teenagers. 

People have asked me if I would consider going back to school to get my teaching degree and if they had seen how much I initially resisted applying for this job, they might not ask. Truthfully, I’m not ready to even look into it. I’m not sure it’s what I’m meant to do and as long as I don’t get any more information, I can’t consider it further. (This is me sticking my head in the sand. )

While I might not have made a good teacher in my 20s and 30s, for some reason, being a paraprofessional (I heard a friend call it “parapro” for short and this makes me sound like a superhero, so this abbreviation stays.) in my 40s is the exact right fit.

Maybe it’s the kids I serve. They tug at my heartstrings, and I have lots of room in my heart for them. I am at a place in my life where I care deeply for others. (This has not always been the case.) Much internal work led to this, but I feel really lucky that five days a week I get to act on my compassion for others in tangible ways.

I was so scared that my new job would somehow diminish what I think is my life’s work as a writer. That somehow my purpose for living would seem less. But the truth is I feel more alive now than I ever have. I can look at the time I spent at home, trying to put words to the page, trying to make something happen with my writing, binge-watching Netflix and scheduling coffee dates in the city with more honesty now. While I’m glad I had the opportunity to rediscover myself after years of stay-at-home parenting, and while I cherished the freedom those days allowed and the experiences I was able to have working with refugees, overall I was drowning a little bit. I can see the slow slide into something in the neighborhood of depression. I know myself well enough to know that if I don’t have to leave the house, I won’t. Comfy clothes, sporadic showers, too many snacks–this was my life, and it wasn’t the dream I tried to make it out to be.

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

These five hours I work outside the house now force me to do a lot of good things. Interact with adults, for example. Wear clothes that look good. And make better use of my time. When my days are full, there is no “I’ll do it tomorrow” for important things. (I mean, I still do put things off, but not as frequently.) I have to budget my time. I have to make use of the two hours after work before the kids come home. This is when I run or squeeze in an errand. I wake up most days at 6 to get some writing in before we start getting ready for school and work. Before, I would crawl out of bed about the same time as the kids because all I felt I really needed to do was get them ready for school and on the bus. Then it was “me” time. (And that often meant more coffee, second breakfast, and/or a trip into the city.)

I feel more productive and purposeful. Maybe more tired, too, but not always. It’s a funny thing, how this work doesn’t drain me even though it requires more of my mental and physical energy than staying at home did. I am energized by the work and therefore able to keep moving, most days, when I get home while still being appropriately tired at night.

Initially, I thought I was taking this job for the good of my family. For the extra income. And I was. But I didn’t realize that I was actually doing it for me. How much I needed to do something that wasn’t directly for my husband or my kids. These hours at work are all mine and I think it makes my conversation a little more interesting because I have done something all day and I have new work friends I can tell my family about. How for a few hours a day, my life is about something more than what’s inside the walls of my house.

And I think I serve my family better now because my whole world isn’t about them. (This dynamic is still a little bit mysterious to me because I know other women who serve their families so well by staying home. We are all different with different needs.)

So, it’s been a year. And I’m celebrating that because my life is richer for having this job, and it was the first of many steps I needed to take to be more me.

Broken and Whole

I came home crying from work one day last week. This is not something I make a habit of but it’s been a stressful few weeks with more stressful weeks to come, and I was fed some misinformation by someone whose intentions were good but whose word I should not have trusted. This was the kind of ugly cry sobbing that scared even me because I couldn’t control it. Thankfully it was a day my husband was home when I got there and I could get it all out of my system in a safe place and way.

For weeks now, I have felt strong and capable, convinced that whatever life has to throw at me will not break me. I have said these words in my head, “This will not break me.” And it is stunning to hear my inner voice say something so definitive. I have convinced even myself that whatever “this” is, it will not break me. I used to be the girl who thought any small criticism was the end of the world, any deviation from the plan a disaster. (Confession: I’m still sometimes that girl.)

So. Many. Things. are wearing me down right now, but I no longer feel like my house–in this case my mind,  my will, my spirit–is made of straw or sticks. It is a fortified house of bricks, a shelter from the blustery wind outside.

This will not break me, I say to myself, and I live as though it is true.

—

Part of this newfound strength and resolve has to do with my diet, i.e, the food I’m putting into my body.

For the last 30 days I’ve embarked on an experiment with food called Whole30. (If you aren’t familiar with the program it’s a 30-day elimination process for foods to help you reset your body and discover the effects certain foods have on you.) For 30 days, I have cut out sugar, dairy, legumes, and grains, and focused on eating high-quality meats, veggies and fruits along with good fats like avocados and olive and coconut oils. It was nerve-wracking at first and a little overwhelming to attempt but I made a plan and bought ingredients to have on hand in my house and a few days before my official start, I started thinking like I was doing a Whole30. I began the slow elimination of the temporarily forbidden foods.

Before this, my health was already improving. I had lost 12 pounds since the beginning of the year, partly due to having a job outside the home for the first time in almost 10 years and partly due to a commitment to running two to three times a week. But I needed to take this next step to reset my relationship with food and try to discover what exactly was causing me such distress.

I won’t chronicle everything about the month for you. Maybe at some point I’ll write more of it down, but at the end of these 30 days, I feel more amazing than I imagined I could. I happen to look good, too, in my own opinion, but it’s the feeling good part that has me convinced that some of the foods I’ve been eating are not doing me any favors.

I still don’t understand the mental shift that takes place when you change your eating habits and I’m about to enter the phase of the process where you reintroduce your body to the foods you eliminated, but no matter what the scale says or how my pants fit, I cannot deny the way I feel. Even in the midst of stress, I have not been paralyzed by anxiety. Even though I’m still sometimes impatient, I haven’t felt like exploding as much as I used to. I still get tired, but I don’t feel exhausted by the middle of the day. I feel too good to go back to how things were.

It’s called the Whole30, I think because of the nature of the foods you eat while doing it, but in my mind, this process has made me feel more whole, like I’m giving my whole self to my life now. And while I don’t consider myself to have arrived or finished the work of healing, the Whole30 has been like finding another piece to the puzzle of me. When I stripped away some of the comfort foods and crutches I’d relied on to see me through tough times, somehow I discovered that I was stronger than I knew, that I didn’t need those things to get me through.

It’s confidence building, and I’ve never had confidence in abundance, no matter what it seems like on the outside.

—

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

This is a line Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms. I’ve not read it, or if I have I don’t really remember it, but this quote is tossed around often and that last part sticks in my brain like a piece of food between teeth. The more I try to free it, the more stuck it becomes.

Strong at the broken places. I think I know what it means. I think maybe I’ve even experienced it. Or I am experiencing it now. If the quote ended there it would be inspiring and encouraging, but anyone who has read Hemingway or knows about his life knows that inspiring and encouraging are not really his jam. Which is why the next line makes a lot of sense, too.

“But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.”

Now A Farewell to Arms is a war novel, and I might have to pick up a copy just so I can find this line in the story and see if its meaning becomes any clearer, but I get it. Sort of. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe Hemingway himself didn’t understand it. I know all too well how it is to be a vessel for words. I can’t pinpoint the origin of many of the sentences I string together. I sit down to write one thing and something else entirely emerges. Maybe Hemingway knew this. He is the same man who said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

It is like that, sometimes, when I’m ready to let it, like bleeding my thoughts and feelings and observations onto the screen. It’s hardly ever about gratuitous attention. I release my thoughts so I know what I’m feeling, so I can make sense of the world. If you also take something from that, that is a bonus side effect.

I don’t know if Hemingway meant “broken places” as an actual physical location, like the site of a battle, or if he was meaning metaphorically, like the places inside of us that are broken, but I believe that experiencing brokenness can make us stronger.

—

There is a broken place in my heart. Not the literal one that pumps blood through my body but the one we talk about when we talk about spirit and emotions. A crack runs right through it. Probably more than one. The broken places are many. And they are mended.

There were days–and weeks, months, and years–when I was sure I would be broken beyond repair. When I thought the breaking would kill me.

In a way, it did. A part of me died, but even the broken places allowed some light to penetrate. Growth springs from cracked and broken all the time. Look at the trees whose stumps sprout with new branches. Look at the cracks in the sidewalk where flowers and grass and weeds push up, straining and striving for the light.

Photo by Abhishek Pawar on Unsplash

Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of light to convince you you’re not finished yet. Sometimes you’re broken and think you’ll always stay that way. But all the while you’re healing and you don’t even know it until one day instead of feeling like life is beating you down with every chance you get, you stare it right in the face and say, “Bring it.”

You are strong because of the broken places. Somehow the cracks have contributed to your strength. Maybe you could have been strong without them, but maybe you couldn’t. Maybe you needed the broken places to prove you couldn’t be broken forever. Or that you could be broken but you would survive it.

It is a weird thing to feel strength in your spirit when you know how weak you have been. It is almost like you are a different person. Or you had a dream about someone else’s life.

I think Hemingway is right that the world breaks everyone. We all have a breaking point, and maybe that changes based on the day. Maybe we are not always strong at the broken places or anywhere. But maybe we could be. Maybe we hope to be.

I wish I had a formula to tell you how, but all I have are years of life experience, much of which I wouldn’t wish on anyone. All I can say is if you think you can’t survive it–whatever “it” is–give it another day.

—

I don’t fully understand the relationship between broken and whole, how they can work together and how you can sometimes be both at the same time. I have known seasons of broken that I thought would never end and I’ve had glimpses of whole that I wished would endure, but what’s happening now is like an ebb and flow, like the tide coming in and out with regularity. I no longer believe I will only have one or the other but they will both be present, maybe in equal measure, maybe not. But I have hope that the broken won’t last forever and the whole will come, and I have confidence that the whole will be more than a fleeting glimpse.

This week I have felt them both. They both make up a part of me. They both contribute to my life.

I am broken but not destroyed. I am whole but not yet finished.