Oh the first day of school….

There’s this song that Christian Cagle used to sing when we lived together in college. She would bang pots and pans and wake us up to celebrate it being our first day of that particular year of college. I think about that song every year on the first day of school. And it makes me cringe as much as if I could still feel the pots and pans being banged right in my ears.

But I survived the first day. I really like my kids. I don’t like the first week and the last week- when they really don’t know the routine or abide by a routine, that’s the hardest. But we’ll survive. No one peed their pants today, which is ALWAYS an accomplishment.

On the non-job front, I feel like my brain is still there, in that picture. I can’t explain it. It’s not like I’m wishing I was still in Scotland (at least not today) or even that I was still sitting on that beach. It’s more that my mind is thinking like I was thinking sitting there. To your great surprise, I’m sure, I just have a lot going on up in my cabeza. There are things I want to figure out that I can’t. There are answers and directions and questions and hints and advice and concern and joy and hurt and information and revelation and desire and words and plans that are all cooped up together. Would someone get my mind a filing cabinet, please?

Because I need to separate these things and think them through individually. I need to be on that rock, with nothing but creation in front of me, so that I can attempt to file these things. But unfortunately, it’s like each paper is tied to another, so even to file them would tangle the strings, maybe rip the papers, surely be messy.

That’s what it is in here (“here” being “Annie’s brain”)- MESSY.

But it’s a hopeful messy. I think this is still what it looks like to “work it out”, as previously mentioned. I feel like it’s purposeful. It’s a directional messy. It’s like this painting. Maybe it will come together to be something, maybe not. Just colors. Thrown together at random. Thoughtlessly. Or was it?

The down side of this reflection time is that it is making lots of other things messy. Friendships. Job stuff. My journal. All of it. I talk on the phone, even to my sister, in short one or two word sentences. People ask how I am doing and I don’t have a good answer. I stumble around for words or phrases that make me sound like I am coping well with the hand I’ve been dealt or thriving in my environment, but they do not come. Not because I don’t want to talk (you KNOW I do), not because I’m in a bad mood (I promise I’m not); but because my focus is elsewhere- watching as my brain, or dare I say God, paints something with my thoughts and fears and questions and desires. I fear missing the stroke of genius. The one that completes the abstract art and makes a piece. And makes peace.

I want my brain, my life, to look like this painting- chaos and beauty and reason and random. To raise the question, “Who is this Artist and what was He thinking?” 🙂 I’m okay if, even hoping that, people will say that about my life.

This is what I get for being a lover of abstract. For appreciating chaos in art. For being overly self-reflective. For asking you to suffer through this- you should be given some sort of badge.

And sorry if my friends (or sisters) feel unloved. I’m coming around. I’ll call you back tomorrow.

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