A Letter To My Children

Cup cakes are in the oven and Conner and CC are playing. Conner took the blanket from his sister; my feisty, headstrong, fiery daughter is shouting, “I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” Oh CC, you will cry that all throughout your life. There is much we don’t want. Much that hurts, much that we wish could be gone, much that causes us to want to stop and weep and not take that step forward…that step into the dark…off the precipice…into the unknown.

I promise you my sweet son and daughter, that you will never be left comfortless, that you are never alone in this life. Your Savior, your Lord, your King will take you by the hand and guide you through every.single.day. You must ask, you must seek, you must be strong, for the winds will howl and pain and sorrow come to all. In this life however, you will also experience profound joy and there is only ONE source…only HE.

Speak

If will alone was a super power, I'd be a comic book hero.

I visualized myself winning a writing competition; the first one I've ever entered. I was notified that I was a finalist and didn't exhale it seemed for a good five minutes. I could feel my character breathing out her history. I thought my story had legs and could run marathons. It must have sauntered casually to that finish line however, and others crossed it first, and second, and third...

My left hand is the conduit through with communication must steadily flow and somehow the space between my brain and said hand loses something in the translation, because I can very rarely SPEAK effectively. I'm married to a National debate champion and the mother to two offspring who talk circles around me, straight from the womb.

And yet, with paper and pen I'm alive and I can pretend...I can pretend I won. That I won the contest and that I walked up on a stage. That there was a microphone so imposing that it made me cross my bleary eyes which blocked the courteous clip clapping of the crowd that came to hear me read my words, my soul. That my children could see their mother achieve something, anything so that they too may know that they can hurdle their Everest.

I picture myself reading, nervous, tremulous diction and damp underarms, but lit up like Christmas morning. My best clothes, straightened hair, unshed tears, a hidden heart resurrected; crazy glued together and soaring into another time...another place...another life.

I WILL do what I dream to do because there is no choice. I was born to speak, though one has to read in order to hear what I'm really needing, yearning, crying to tell them. Someday I will succeed...and until then my left hand will not stop dog paddling through this ocean of words I need to flood my empty pages with.

Because I have a story to tell.