what to do with what you prayed for

a journal entry reflection on being overwhelmed by your blessings and judging yourself for it

I often stay seated in the need for things to be ‘great’ far too long that I miss out on all the fun of being authentic, chaotic. I miss out on failing well and making more mistakes and watching myself grow through them. I forget there’s some good that comes from being utterly confused.

A few weeks ago I sat silently on the couch with no mere urge or interest in being distracted. I was feeling suffocated, choked up, and didn’t know why, and for whatever reason I decided to sit in it. I laid on my arm and watched my fountain pen dance between my fingers. My own version of a fidget spinner activity. After a few days of my journal gathering dust, my fidgeting fountain pen seemed like a good fit for a moment like this.

So I plopped in my headphones, turned on some music, and started writing.

A bit of an out of body experience, it was. I had drifted elsewhere and by the end of it I felt myself take a deep exhale and my shoulders fell slowly to rest. I read it back and begged the question: All of that lived inside me? This is what I’m feeling?

Turns out I was blessed, but I didn’t know what to do with that.

It sounds horrible and ungrateful and self centered, I know. ‘Boohoo, you’re complaining about getting what you prayed for?’

It’s not that simple. Take a look:

Tuesday, March 25th | 10:03 pm

I’m feeling low today. Stuck in my thoughts, overwhelmed by them. I guess if I had to dump them all in one place I’d put them on a table like so:

These are all gifts really, but Im learning some gifts change shape and color over time. Or maybe it’s us — our capacity to make heed with said gifts. to pick up and water the seeds we planted, or to muster the courage again and again to take from the jar of ideas and make them happen, to forgive ourselves for not creating because we were busy living, resting, and that takes precedent, rightfully so.

I vented to new friends the other day and one of them said ‘these are good problems to have.’ It doesn’t take away that a struggle is a struggle, but if I really take a look at what he said, it invites me to underline the word good.

I think we feel the need to embrace and alchemize and combine something good with another good thing thinking ‘okay, this’ll make it stick’. But honestly all my fondest memories, the ones that genuinely bring me to tears at the very mumble of the opening line of its story, have never been scrapbooked, but tucked neatly in my back pocket, so comfortably that my pants don’t fit without them.

If and when I get overwhelmed by the good in my life, each calling me to monopolize or practice gratitude in the form of unnatural list making, I shall sit back in my chair and watch the light hit the cherry oak wood, the water in the vase, and feel my mouth curve into a smile with a heart full of contentment and a certain knowingness that even good doesn’t last forever. But for now, it is here, sitting with me a hand apart, and that is enough, until I wake the next morning with an itch in my heels that will be remedied by taking one of my blessings out for a stroll.

- intermission -

Looking at the table topped with the Fruits of My Labor, side by side with Changing Connections, Nostalgia, Anticipatory Grief, Growth and her best friend Uncertainty, I choose to lean into my chair, cross my legs with my coffee in hand and take a look at a table so full— a thing to be grateful for. To observe with full trust that they are protected and blooming, full of excitement for the ways they will change.

I don’t mind contradictions. I better get used to them, it’s the price we pay for being alive. I don’t mind. I want my art to be so unrecognizable to me that it feels like I’m experiencing myself for the first time, yet so familiar to me that it feels like a really, really good hug. I want my connections to feel odd so I may recognize growth, I want nostalgia to call me in every cup I drink as a reminder of a life well lived and a good ol’ time right now.

I want Trust to sit across the table from me, to look at me and ask, ‘are you ready?’ To which I will set my cup down and hold Trust by the hands…

‘I’m ready.’

Being human is weird. We struggle and we don’t like it, we’re blessed and we question it. We put everything under a microscope hoping to find where it starts and where it ends, as if that would enrich the good experience and help us navigate the bad ones.

We feel the need to take Struggle by the throat and shake it until it cries so we can finally have a civil conversation, ‘why are you here?! what do you want from me??’

And Blessings? We grab it by the waist and squeeze it dry, or, better yet, find it a lover to marry so the good can multiply…and multiply…and multiply. Because God forbid we run out of juice. God forbid we experience the duality of life. God forbid we believe we can handle it. God forbid we finally accept it. So we spend more time milking it than we do living it.

I think sometimes when good things happen, not knowing what to do with them yet, or how to enjoy them, doesn’t make you less worthy or grateful for them. Acknowledging your blessings is a form of gratitude.

We need to trust ourselves more, I say. Humans have a way of getting to where they’re supposed to go. So if it means watching your blessings light up the room and not touching them just yet, so be it. Because it won’t be long until you put your favorite shoes on and step into the world with the things you prayed for, it won’t be long at all.