In Your Language

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Things won't ever be the same.

Jimmy Evans has a sermon that he says that it is more likely for someone to change for the good or bad over a 5 year period. Not to say that we are destined to make shifts to the extreme, but shifts none the less.

I believe that due to my adoption, I have a weird concept of time. I feel it so viscerally. I have an attachment to time- the here and now. I want this moment to last forever. I guess the emotional part of me knows that things will never be the same. I rarely take for granted a moment in time- especially with you. =)

I remember when I was in my last trimester in the pregnancy with Gabriel. I felt such anxiousness about my relationships with my children. I wanted our relationships to be awesome before our lives would be changed forever. I kept thinking-- "This is the last month that it will be just Jasmin and Alexander and Me... just the four of us."

Every time we'd fight, I'd think "is this how you want to remember our last months as just us? Are you satisfied with our relationship as it is now because once the baby comes we won't have as much time to work on it?" I was doubly insulted that it didn't affect them like it did me.

I don't want to have regrets. I don't want to leave anything unsaid. I don't want people to question how I feel about them. Perhaps I do too much "intentionally." I am particularly high strung in that way. I'm extremely intense and have a hard time just relaxing and having fun. I'm always "on."

I think back three months ago when I was in labor with my baby boy. I feel sad that I don't remember it very much any more. I guess that's why I love to write... so I can always revisit those treasured times. Just the same way I keep my college text books. I feel like the past is still alive- but I must pursue it. When I write, it is a way of honoring the present- the past of our future.

This is why I think I've been writing about my life for as long as I can remember. I remember writing letters to my biological mother on the chance I could actually send them to her. (I was able to send them to her- for good or for bad.)  Writing makes pathways in our brains that help us learn and help us understand who we are as people. I think that is why I hated that my mother told me I was a bad writer... it meant so much more to me than just writing... it was about how I think, understand, experience life, how I remember events...

Anyways, my point is that writing gives us access to the times we could easily forget and take for granted. In a time where Alzheimer's disease is so rampant- I hope we learn to appreciate our trials as much as our successes. In the end, when we forget all of that, it is as though the fabric of time as been incinerated; the fabric being our experiences.

Things won't ever be the same as when I was the poorest with my husband... we had a lot of good meaningful times together... we were the most creative in that time. Now that we are the wealthiest we have been together, we seem to lack ideas for how to spend our time.  Even if we lost everything all over again, it won't be the same.

Things won't ever be the same as when we were at his brother's wedding. The one picture that comes to mind- we are standing arm in arm and laughing and someone caught that moment in an unstaged snapshot. He looked so handsome. I worked my booty off to wear a size zero dress from Express. It felt as if it were OUR wedding... that's how awesome that moment felt.

Later that night, we went to the piano bar on the premises and I sang Gershwin's "Someone to watch over me" which reminded me of the fateful night I watched "Mr. Holland's Opus." That movie had me so wrapped up in "the moment" of the screen. Well, that night at the bar I sang that song. It felt great. Funny enough, it happened to be the favorite song of one of the customers departed mother. And that night was her mother's birthday. I have to say it was so magical, that I couldn't even tell it was happening. What I remember is not how well I sang it, but the amazing way that I brought her mother's favorite song to life on no other day but her birthday!

I could don that dress again... I could go back to that particular piano bar... but it still wouldn't be the same. The magic was in "the moment." I'm glad that I've done my best to change for the best as my circumstances are always shifting. What ways have you changed... stayed the same?


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