A close friend asked recently on her blog, Oregon Pilgrim http://oregonpilgrim.com/ , what the one liner for our lives is. I decided mine was the title of this blog, searching to feel settled without settling. I haven't felt truly settled at any point in my adult life except maybe those brief few months right after my children were adopted and I had them home and I was taking care of them as a stay-at-home Mom. At that moment I felt settled. One of my friends even commented that I looked the most settled he had ever seen me and the most happy and at peace. And truly I was. However, it was not to last. Life shifted and I ended up in emergency mode and have basically remained there ever since.
As life has shifted me in new and unplanned directions I have always felt a little out of balance. My friend Robin suggests that I am getting in the way of my own joy and I have to agree I am good at that. It is difficult to admit that you are the problem with you but I am. I have accepted that I am the one responsible. I know the most about myself and therefore know what is good and bad for me. But I do not always follow those instincts. In fact I almost never pay attention to the caution signs in life and then I get in the way of my bliss repeatedly. But I really do want to be settled at some point.
What would feeling settled look like for me? I am not entirely sure but I know that I would feel more settled with the right companion in my life. The trouble is I am no good at choosing those. I want someone who makes my heart skip a beat when I look at them and then can sit down and have an intellectually stimulating conversation. Of course he would have to be willing and able to sweep me away to the many places in the world I have not yet been. This doesn't sound very settled does it? My idea of settled seems to have to do with following my dreams and having someone there to lift me up to those dreams and share them with me. So far I have not found this.
Settled for me still looks like a farm in Italy, at least in the summers. It looks like my boys being content and well taken care of. It looks like me writing, gardening, hiking and traveling. It looks like me helping others and not in small ways.
My home when I was a child was idyllic and this may lead to much of my unsettled feeling. My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. They took us on vacations when they could. We had a tree house and a huge back and front yard. We grew up feeling settled. Home meant settled, comfort and contentment. I have only called once place home since I left for college and that was the red house we lived in when the boys first came home. Every house since that has not felt like home, has not felt settled or has not made me feel content when I walk in the doors. I am still searching for that wholeness I felt. Therefore settled to me also means home.
So in the end I guess I am searching for home which would include a complete family not the fractured one that I currently inhabit.
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