i told someone last week that i often feel like "the stuck one". i often feel powerless. powerless to be heard, understood, powerless even to let my voice free of its chorded box. powerless to change, powerless to move toward God and love and healing and beauty.
like my story is on repeat.
my life seems to add up to all these moments of feeling helpless and settling into daily resignation.
but she tells me: you are not powerless. maybe you were once powerless, when you were a child. but now? you are only as stuck as you believe yourself to be. there are all these options available to you, all this energy.
i have a hard time believing that, looking at my dailies and the housework that never gets done and the stove that never cooks my meals, and the budget that is a thousand dollars in the red every month, and the shame that i always seem to let win, and the way i don't raise my voice to the occasions where it is required. and a defiant 3-year-old who gets his way much too often, and a baby who never sleeps. and all the emotion-spirit-body battles i can't seem to find the strength to fight, much less win.
and it is easy for me to fall into the trap of believing i truly am stuck, and it's not up to me, because i am incapable of changing any of it. because, look at how successful i've (never) been.
so i wait for that moment when the externals feel less sticky, and it never comes.
but that's okay.
because today? today, i believe her.
today, i am changing my mind.
today i am unnaming something that has long laid its roots deep in me.
i am NOT the stuck one.
i am powerful and brave and held and strong and free.
(...remind me?)