The Clay Will Become What It Wants To Be

I spent the last six weeks taking a pottery class where we did hand building as well as wheel throwing. I was in a season of betweenness, and I really needed a creative outlet. I specifically chose pottery because I have always had a bit of a fascination with it, and because I knew I probably wouldn't be very good at it, and that seemed like a great way to learn some valuable lessons along with some new skills. I was certainly right about that and can definitely say I learned a lot. 

At the beginning of every class we would start with a few lumps of damp, grayish-white clay that had no personality whatsoever. Then our teacher would show us an example of something we could make but would soon set us free to "create whatever we wanted." Being very new to the craft and prone to rule following, I pretty much stuck to the projects of the day, but I never really produced the true likeness of the teacher's example. And even he, with more than a decade of experience as a professional potter, said he wouldn't be able to replicate his work exactly. Perfect was not my goal, and I always felt delighted that I had managed to make anything at all and found each piece beautiful in its own way. Each classmate brought their own ideas about what they wanted to get out of the class. One of my classmates rarely stuck to the prescribed project and made some truly interesting pieces that she conjured up purely from her imagination. Another classmate broke down in tears and scrapped many of her projects when they didn't turn out "just right," even though I couldn't really see anything wrong with them. But, as our teacher reminded us over and over, there was no one correct approach.

In hand building it was difficult to get the clay to a uniform thickness or to master the detail work. On the wheel, it was easy to get the clay too off-center, leave it too dry, get it too wet, or stretch it too thin. If you had something specific in your head when you started, you could almost count on something going awry and then having to take some measure or other just to salvage the project--the image in your head be damned. And never once did all six of the students end up with things that even remotely resembled what the other students had made or what the teacher had shown us. By the third class we had embraced a motto: The clay will become what it wants to be. And from that moment, the whole class became an exercise in letting go of the idea you had in your head and just accepting whatever happened. The concept freed many of us up to just enjoy the process and be delighted with whatever we created. 

Once the clay had become something--a beautiful, wonky, lovely, unique thing--it had to dry out for a week or so before it could be fired. The heat of the kiln was sure to shrink the pieces and sometimes reveal serious and not-so-serious cracks. And once it was fired, each piece had to be glazed. We could read on the containers the colors of the glazes and, for most, see tiny example tiles of the finished colors, but many of the glazes looked almost the exact color of the clay when first applied or not at all like the finished product, as the heat of the kiln during the second firing was what was needed to bring out the trueness of the hue. There was a skill to applying just the right amount of glaze too (especially tricky since we couldn't always tell where it had been applied). Too much, too close to the bottom of the piece, and it would melt onto the kiln and pretty much guarantee chips in the finished product; too little, and the color would barely show up at all. It was super hard to predict what the finished pieces would actually look like, and it was a little like a wonder-filled Christmas morning when we arrived to pick up our finished pieces. 

I was enthralled with all my pieces and genuinely appreciated what each of them had become--with and without my help. I did a show-and-tell with my family and was practically doing a happy dance seeing everything displayed on the table. I have a couple of "bowls" that decided to become "planters" because of unplanned holes that appeared in their bases during the process. I have a vase that fell in on itself on the wheel and turned out to be one of my favorites because it is so unusual and interesting and 100% non-replicable. I have coffee mugs with awkward handles, but the coffee this morning tasted better out of a mug I made myself. None of the things I made is perfect, but every one of them is beautiful to my eyes and to my heart. I did the best I could with the raw materials I had and the skills I learned along the way, but without a doubt, the clay became what it wanted to be, which is what makes each piece so valuable to me.

Examining my work got me thinking about raising kids. It's a process. And people do it differently. And there are a lot of things that can factor in to how the final product comes out. But even if things don't go according to our original plan--which they rarely do--there aren't really a lot of ways to do it wrong. Even the mistakes we parents make along the way can become something lovely. My finished product will not look like yours. It will likely not even look like the picture I had in my head. We start with similar raw material that is moldable, but ultimately "the clay will become what it wants to be," and the only real truth is that the final product will be absolutely beautiful and unique. 

The last few months have held frequent reminders for me to accept things as they are and to see the beauty in what is. My kids are not all turning out according to the images I had in my head or according the societal "instructions," but they are all turning out to be exactly who they are meant to be, and it is absolutely the most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed. 

Rain but no rainbow

There is a pretty good chance this post may make some people uncomfortable because it's real and raw and doesn't really have a happy ending or a moral, and stories like that aren't everyone's cup of tea. There is also a chance that some people will be comforted by an untidy story that they might be able to relate to. And some people, coming upon this blog by chance, may see that it's called "Chasing Rainbows" and think it is all about positive experiences. It isn't, though I certainly do try to find the rainbows in the midst of life's storms most of the time. To see a rainbow, the sun will be behind you and the rain will be in front of you. You will not see the rainbow while looking toward the sunny part of the sky. In fact, the best rainbows will be seen when you face the darkest part of the sky. And that's what this blog is about: facing the darkness and finding the light and encouraging others to do the same. But not this particular post. 

I'm not going to candy coat it: Life has been hitting extra hard the last few months. It's not one thing, but it is one thing after another, and the pile feels pretty crushing at the moment. I have been swinging daily between anxiety, which says, "Everything matters a lot," and depression, which says, "Nothing matters at all," and PTSD, which says, "The things that used to matter most, still matter most." I'm not writing this from the other side of it like I often do, when I've discovered the lesson and am ready to implement the growth. I'm just in it. Right now, I don't see the rainbow or the sun or anything other than dark thunderclouds. The storm is too all-consuming, and new storms keep rolling in. There is not yet any light in the sky with which to make a rainbow. Today is better than yesterday--which is why I have even found the motivation to open my computer to try to string words together with the hope of unraveling some of the tangles of my mind--but the skies are still very gray. I am staring at the darkest place in the sky, wishing I could see the rainbow, and all it is doing is staring right back at me and continuing to spit in my face.

I feel a bit like Lt. Dan in "Forrest Gump" when he shakes his fist at the sky and challenges the storm to a showdown. I'm more of a tears person than a fist person, though. I tend to experience my emotions (all of them) with tears, and the tears have been pretty free flowing in the last few months, despite whatever happy images you may have seen of me on social media. (And, of course, life is not ever all bad, so those images are real, but they don't feel like the complete story of me.) I have experienced tears of sadness, hurt, anxiety, frustration, anger, fear, stress, regret, shame, guilt, resentment, helplessness, hopelessness, self-pity, compassion, concern, and uncertainty. And there have also been tears of pseudo-resignation as my higher self works to just accept things as they are. But, honestly, these have not been tears of genuine resignation, because in my heart I don't really want to quit fighting and raging at the things Life is handing out at the moment. So much of it feels unfair. So much of it feels like it is out of my control. So much of it feels unfixable. And I'm not yet ready to look for the silver lining or even to pretend like one exists. 

So here I am raging at the storm, hoping I might come out of it at some point in a peaceful state like Lt. Dan did, but not fully ready to accept the lessons (and losses) it has for me, because what I really want is for things to be the way they were before the storms hit. I want a season with calm water, with sunny skies, with time to just float and not feel like I am having to constantly bail water or exhaust myself with trying to keep the boat from capsizing. But that is definitely not the season I'm in, and it seems like a lie to pretend otherwise. 

So, yeah, no happy ending. But you can't say I didn't warn you. As much as I wish it was otherwise, not every storm comes with a rainbow. And sometimes another storm hits before you can recover from the last one. That's reality. And that's where I am. 

(I do believe the sun will come out again eventually and that rainbows are still possible. But that magic is clearly for a different time, which I could have waited for and written about, but the need to be authentically me in this moment got the best of me.)

Running together

Early this morning, my two oldest boys and I went for a run together. But, ironically, we didn't run together at all. We all had different needs, agendas, and skills. One boy was following a specific training program that required him to maintain a certain lowish heart rate for the duration of the run, which dictated he would move at a slower pace. One boy essentially just wanted to get it over with and so was trying to run the route as quickly as possible. And I took my own path and moved at my own pace, which was something between the other two. We all ran about two miles, in roughly the same location, but one finished in under 13 minutes, one took about 20-25 minutes, and one completed the run in 34 minutes. Before we parted ways and as we were reunited, we gave words of encouragement and support, and we were all proud of ourselves and each other. And we all agreed that the whole point of going together was accountability. None of us had really wanted to get up and go running at 6:00 on a Saturday morning. I think we all admitted to formulating texts to the group in our minds to bow out before going ahead and getting out of bed because we didn't want to appear weak or like we were backing out on our agreement. Knowing others were doing the hard work to get up and to go running was good motivation to just do it.

I actually love that we were all doing the same thing--and we were doing it togetherish--but we were all doing it our own way. And each way was worth celebrating. The whole experience got me thinking about how every person is traveling through life togetherish, sort of moving in the same direction, which is forward. But we will not all have the same outcomes. Some will run through it faster. Some will move deliberately slower. Some will have more natural skill. And some will have to work a bit harder to develop the skills they need just to get through it. None of us are doing it incorrectly, though if we measure everyone else by our own skills or agendas or needs we might have the impression that some people are getting ahead or some people are falling behind. Everyone is just running their own race, and all we need to do is be supportive and encouraging. We need to celebrate all the victories, because the one thing we all have in common is that getting through it is hard for each person in their own way. We can allow the way we show up to encourage and motivate others, even when we are facing our own struggles. We can run separately but still be in it together.

Jumping at shadows

In mid-July, my 17-year-old son invited me to start running with him. Trying our best to beat the heat, we were heading out just a little after sunrise every morning. But with the start of school, we have had to push our morning runs up, and now we are running while it is still dark out. Max has continued to brave the unlit, uneven, partially unpaved two mile trail that runs around the neighborhood, with the confidence of a young man in peak physical condition who has never suffered a serious sports injury. I, however, am a middle-aged woman, not in peak physical condition, who is just eight years out from destroying my ACL and meniscus and enduring the surgery and recovery that went along with that, so I choose to stay on the lighted sidewalks of the inner loop. There is some light, yes, but it's not like the areas where I am running are bright enough for me to see everything around me. And sometimes the light seems best only at conjuring extra dark shadows, which move around as if possessed. 

One day in the last week, I literally jumped off the sidewalk into the street (not to mention almost out of my skin), not once, but twice during a single run, startling at some wavy shadows dancing around on the sidewalk in front of me. And, then, of course, upon closer inspection, I felt silly for being so scared of NOTHING. Thankfully, there aren't many neighbors up and about at that hour in our neighborhood, so my embarrassment did not have any witnesses. 

But I got to thinking about this tendency to jump at shadows, and it made me consider that this concept is very similar to the way anxiety works. Frequently, with an anxious brain, there is only a perceived threat rather than an actual one. But it FEELS real. Real enough to make you jump out of harm's way. Or freeze up. Or fight imagined monsters. Or spiral into more and more worst case scenarios. I used to really hate this about my brain--making a big deal out of things that turned out to be nothing and feeling like I couldn't stop it or control it. 

I still wish I didn't have such an overactive amygdala (the "fight or flight" center of the brain, specializing in fear and anxiety), but I have learned to appreciate this part of my brain. It desperately wants to protect me. Instead of fighting against the anxiety now, I'm learning to embrace it, to say, "This feels scary, but I can get through it and it might actually be okay." This part of my brain is trying to help me, not hurt me. It is a friend, not an enemy. But even well-meaning friends sometimes need to be questioned when they are offering advice. Thankfully, I'm learning to examine my thoughts and question their validity and their helpfulness. Yes, I jumped when the shadows startled me, but I didn't stop running. I didn't refuse to go again the next day. And if there had actually been a snake on the sidewalk, I would have been so grateful for the instinct to jump. Anxiety is no small thing, and for some people it is truly debilitating, but sometimes there are ways to manage it so that you don't have to be ruled by the shadows. You may still see the shadows and they may still feel uncomfortable because of their shiftiness, but you are allowed to take a breath and ask a question and reexamine the situation once you have more information. I'm thankful I have a friend in my mind that wants to keep me safe. But I'm also thankful that I can sometimes tell her I appreciate her concern but I'm good. 

Repairing the cracks

After our road trip to Colorado last month, I noticed a tiny--probably smaller than the tip of my pinky fingernail--chip in my windshield. Having learned from experience, we immediately bought a windshield repair kit and patched up the crack to keep it from spreading. That gives me a certain degree of confidence that I will not have to replace the entire windshield for this one tiny ding. It is not really in my line of sight but my eye is drawn to it every time I get in my car, and I have been pondering that little pock mark quite a lot lately. 

The car I was driving prior to this one also had a small crack in the windshield. I didn't bother to repair it, since it wasn't in my line of sight and it didn't seem like too big a deal. But, over time, with cold winters and hot summers, the little crack started to spread. I still didn't bother to do anything about it, because it still wasn't in my line of sight and fixing it seemed like a waste of money. It seemed like a problem not worth investing in. But eventually, the crack made its way across the entire windshield, and there came a day when it actually seemed like it could possibly be a little unsafe. Like if just the wrong kind of pressure was applied, the whole windshield would come crashing in. My now-husband, who I was just dating at the time, became concerned. And one day while I was at work, just before taking off on a long road trip with my kids, he hired a company to replace the entire windshield. It was a kind gift, and I was truly touched by the gesture and may have fallen a little in love with him as a result. Ignoring the problem wasn't making it go away, and I was thankful someone who cared about me stepped in to help when I clearly wasn't taking care of the problem on my own.

So why am I thinking about cracks in windshields, you ask? Well, it's because I can see the cracks in my life, and I have learned from experience that it is better to repair them while they are small than to wait until they spread to a point of destruction. Not all of them are impeding my ability to go about my days. But they are there and they are real. There are broken pieces doing their best to act with wholeness, integrity, kindness, goodness, and love. But they are still broken pieces with sharp edges and a propensity to spread to others and create potentially unsafe spaces if the work isn't done in a timely fashion. They are easy to ignore. Until they aren't. Small issues not dealt with become big issues that demand attention, sometimes in very unlovely ways. Cars are meant to be driven, and in driving them, dings will happen. In the same way, lives are meant to be lived and there will inevitably be some collateral damage. However, if you can find the tiny cracks--the toxic attitudes, the unhealthy mindsets, the learned destructive patterns, the emotional immaturity, etc.--and work to repair them before they become problematic, you might just be able to save the whole windshield. You may still be able to see the crack, just like I see the little ding every time I get in my car. But it is only a reminder of the hazards of the road and a messenger bringing a sense of gratitude that allows me to proceed with confidence, knowing it will not destroy me or harm the people I care about because it has already been dealt with. 

Big emotions during family game night

I am embarrassed to say that last night during family game night I became unreasonably annoyed at how the games were going for me, and I decided I needed to take myself out of the last game (and out of the room) in order to preserve my peace and in order not to be tempted to say or do things that would be hurtful to my family. I think this was the right move, even though I felt pretty horrible because that is not the person I want to be...and not the person I usually am. I don't want to be a quitter. I don't want to give that kind of example to my kids of how to handle uncomfortable/unpleasant situations. I don't want to sacrifice my peace FOR A GAME. It felt like a truly ugly version of me that I wish didn't exist. I am pursuing peace like its my full time job, but, alas, I am a human, and no matter how much work I've done on myself, there are still triggers that can make the process feel like one step forward, two steps back. 

After beating myself up for a while, I decided to dig deeper and see what was actually going on. It didn't seem fathomable that I would be that upset over games of chance that I have played without incident thousands of times. And that's when I began to realize that there are some things going in my life that truly do have a significant emotional impact that I have been feeling like I need to push aside, that I need to become (or give the impression of becoming) indifferent about since there doesn't seem to be a clear resolution for them. I feel like my expression of those emotions needs to be stifled for a variety of reasons. Earlier in the evening, my sweet husband had asked me if I was doing okay with regard to something that he knew was having a big emotional impact on me, and I even said to him, "I'm just trying to ignore that."

But here's the deal about things that have a big emotional impact: they don't go away just because we don't want to face them. The emotions will find their outlet. Maybe while you sit in traffic. Maybe in the slow checkout line at the grocery store. Or maybe on family game night. And then the outsized reaction will seem ridiculous (but maybe safer to express). But those reactions are begging us to take a closer look and see what's really going on. For me, the breaking point was playing games where I was doing everything right and trying to move forward only to have the game itself and the other players block my progress. And that happens in life as well. I have often felt like I'm doing all the "right" things and still not being able to make the progress I want to make, still not being able to "win." And the way the games made me feel tapped in to how life makes me feel sometimes. It can feel so unfair and demotivating. It can feel like there are too many things I can't control, even though I am truly doing the best I can. It can feel like there is no way to win. 

My big emotions weren't really tied to the games at all. They were related to other things going on in my life and they came out in the games because I haven't been giving them proper expression elsewhere. Instead of trying to see them and understand them and heal them, I've just been trying to ignore them, trying to wish them away, and trying to convince myself that I'm okay when I really am not. Anger is a guide. It shows us what really matters to us. Our work is to figure out what the anger is telling us and to find the proper way to approach the other big emotions it is escorting. I'm thankful my family had grace for me last night. And I'm thankful family game night has given me a new level of motivation to sit with and try to resolve the underlying issues. 

If you are also experiencing seemingly unreasonable instances of anger and frustration in the "small" areas of your life,  I encourage you to ask yourself what is really behind it and then do the work to address the underlying issue, even if it is something you would rather ignore. The emotions won't be silenced. They will just find different outlets for expression.

Year of the Snake

Apparently, the Chinese--or Lunar--New Year begins tomorrow. I say "apparently" because I am not really a close follower of this holiday and typically only really think of it if I eat at a Chinese restaurant around the time it is set to kick off. This year is no exception. While dining at a Chinese restaurant recently, my dining companions and I decided to search out which animal is to be the star of this Chinese New Year. It is the Year of the Snake. Further research showed that, in fact, the year I was born falls into the group of birth years considered snake years. This got my attention, and I continued my research. 

I'll admit, I have pretty much always had a mostly negative view of snakes. My grandmother was deathly afraid of all snakes and may have inadvertently passed some of her fear along to me. I only truly fear the venomous ones, but the trouble is, it is often hard to tell a venomous one from a non-venomous one until you are already too close, so I tend to err on the side of caution and avoid close proximity to all snakes if possible. Snakes, to me,  have always felt a little dangerous, creepy, evil, sneaky, and not at all cuddly or friendly. I have frequently referred to myself in a self-deprecating way as a "snake" because of my extremely dry skin and my apparent inability to produce my own heat. These aren't my favorite traits and the comparison has done nothing to give me a more favorable view of snakes. So, when learning about this Lunar New Year,  my first instinct was to be disappointed that I fall into the "snake" category.

But my curiosity about why a seemingly unpleasant animal would be included in the Chinese Zodiac as one of the top twelve most important creatures got the best of me. What I learned is that in Chinese Zodiac, the Snake is linked to metamorphosis, wisdom, and intuition. And the Snake Year is characterized by introspection, mystery, and intelligence. The positive qualities associated with the snake include resilience, creativity, and adaptability. This means snakes are uniquely equipped to overcome various obstacles and challenges. Snakes typically shed their skin 2-4 times per year, a process that accommodates growth and the removal of parasites and damage. The new skin that replaces the old is often more vibrant in color. And with all that knowledge, my perspective changed considerably. 

In this new year, I already know I will be shedding old skins and growing into new ones. And I will continue my quest to eliminate damage and parasites from my life. There will be challenges and obstacles that will require resilience, creativity, adaptability, introspection, wisdom, and intuition. Many parts of the changes ahead of me remain a mystery. But when it's all said and done, I know for sure a more vibrant me will exist, and I'm excited about that. I am a snake. This is my year.