Tag Archive for: identity

While I Sit Here.

/in ,

I am pinned under a sleeping infant. His steady breathing matching my own. He fell asleep breastfeeding and has been this way ever since: in peaceful slumber.

I love when he does this. I love the way his eyes flutter and his lips pout into a fishy face as he sleeps. I love the smell of his bald little head and the warmth of his teeny body against mine. These moments of stillness are so so needed in the chaos of life these days.

And yet there’s a restlessness inside of me. A constant staring at dishes in the sink or dirty clothes on the floor. The lists I make during nap times are endless. Somehow it always feels as though there is something to do, somewhere to be. It feels like (dare I say it) the sitting and waiting is keeping me from the things I actually need to do.

Ugh I hate that I put that out there. It makes me shudder to admit. But is that not true for us in so many moments of our lives? In the sitting and the stillness is where the beauty and purpose is happening, but we look on to all the “important” things that must be done. Oh how much we miss. Oh how much stress we create with the constant to do lists, the never ending goal making.

As I think toward the New Year I cringe a bit. The idea of “starting over” and resolutions has never sat well with me. I need freedom and stillness, not more to achieve and be enslaved to. And that may not be true for you and bravo for you knowing your truth! But that is mine. I find everything I need in the stillness. That’s where I have always found myself, my God, peace. Why then is the pull towards the chaos so strong?

Tonight I snuggle Beau’s body a little bit closer. Remind me of what I need little one. Pull me back to the stillness when everything around me screams to do more. Together we will rest in these moments, we will cling to them. The sweet sweet stillness that changes everything.

This New Person

/in ,

About 8 months ago I met two new people. One teeny tiny one that relies on me for everything. And one slightly bigger person who I’ve spent my whole entire life trying to figure out.

Me.

It’s interesting how you spend all this time preparing your heart and your home for this little person, and yet you can’t quite prepare yourself for the other person you will meet at the exact same time: yourself as a parent, and for me, a mom.

It’s not a negative, the exact opposite in fact. I thoroughly enjoy getting to know myself better. The ebbs and flows of life and constant transitions, though difficult, are also exciting. When I look back over my life, I see a series of new people sewn in with the old person I was, and what a beautiful tapestry it makes.

Now enough with the poetic writer stuff. My apologies. I expect you want the vulnerable, knitty gritty out of me right? Okay, I’ll do my best.

Trying to find your new sense of self while also taking care for a teeny person 24/7…not easy. Where I used to have a variety of ways to escape or care for myself emotionally, I now am only left with a few, and usually I am too tired to really pursue those.

Self love has taken on a little bit of a different feel these days. A warm cup of coffee in the afternoon, a nap while she naps, a quick workout before she needs to be fed again. Everything feels a little bit rushed, with a baby waiting at the end of every activity. I must try so very hard to rest.

Well crap. Because resting has never been my strong suit. I’ve never been a good napper, mediator, lie around all day-er. Productive is the only thing that feels right to me. Hilariously, now I am a mom, so productive goes right out the window. A day where laundry gets done but the rest of the house is a wreck is a win. A shower every three days is a win. A blog post written on a weekday is a win. A few moments journaling about my hopes and dreams-MAJOR WIN.

When I take a step back, I am the same me I have always been, with just a few little changes. And I have to work hard to remember that when it feels as though my life is nothing like it was, that I am a totally different person, I am just me, with a baby. And maybe the seasons of my life look a little different, and I have to spend my “free time” more wisely than I once did. But maybe it’s a gift to be forced into intentionality. To be given a reason to fight against day to day melancholy as I play blocks on the floor for yet another hour.

I’m still in there. There’s just a teeny person clinging to my hip. And I would take one toothy grin over a weekend on stage, or a 5 mile run, or a full night of sleep. Those things will come again, but for now, this is my beautiful, messy, exhausting life. And I am the same Lizz living in it.

Photography by Lexi Fazzolari. Cover photo by Ashley Sider

Who Am I?

/in , ,

Is that not the age old question?

And although I hoped against all hope that I would escape the baggage that question brings this year, I am slowly realizing that I have not. In fact, as the years pass, the stronger the question:

Who Am I?

As a Christian I know that I am a child of God, prized, loved, pure, perfect in the eyes of my savior. But the resounding truth is often muddled with the noise of the world all around me.

Who Am I?

I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, granddaughter, niece, cousin, friend. I am a writer, a teacher, an actress an athlete. I am sweet, I am sassy, I am thoughtful, witty, sad, happy, angry, and a thousand other things.

And yet, I am none of them.

Whenever I let one of those things define me, I falter.

Sometimes I have to remind myself,

“if you were none of those things you would still be enough.”

Some days I believe it and some days I don’t, but I keep saying it to myself over and over. Because, I don’t want to live a life searching, chasing down identities that I can hide behind for a while.

“Who am I?” isn’t really the question. And while I know that i’ll continue to ask it in some form my entire life, I will not let it define me. Because who I think I am in any given moment, isn’t really who I am at all. All these things I think and say that I am, barely scratch the surface of who I am in the eyes of my King.