A Half-finished thought...

[Full Disclaimer: I started this post on Sunday. Then I put it aside to add pictures later. And now it's Tuesday night and there are still no pictures. If I want you to ever read it, it'll just have to be the words!]

It's gotten quite bad lately. The kids have started to chastise me when I loose track of a sentence.

"Mom, what were you saying?"

I whip my head back toward my original intention, pulling my attention away from the one who stole it in the first place.

A blank look crosses my face. "Uh....I forgot."

Or I start to sweep the junk off the floor under the table. I make a nice little pile. I go to find the dustpan when someone needs me or I get distracted or something happens. And I totally forget about the sweeping and the pile of dust and food crumbs waiting in the middle of the floor. Until some child (or I) step through it and spread it everywhere again.

And that seems to be the story of this past year.

It's been the year of unfinished thoughts, projects, intentions.

As I type, there are four Christmas gifts that I cannot finish while the receivers are out of bed.

Looking on my bedside table, there are a couple books that I started, but have never finished. Not because they aren't great, but I just didn't. (Honestly, the ones I haven't finished have all been non-fiction.)

At my feet in the office, is a stack of soon-to-be discarded rough drafts of my novel, which although received so well, has stalled (and died?) in the middle of a major revision.

Throughout the year, I've started diagnosis/medication paths for children, to have them go nowhere.

I've started life changing conversations, only to not be able to have the time to finish them well.

A box of half-addressed Christmas cards sits on the dining room counter. (Consider them New Year's best wishes.)

If there has been anything that has characterized this year, it is the un-finished-ness of it. The things I haven't been able to follow through on, the things I've started, but not yet completed.

I want to think that this is a phase, that there will come a time when everything is completed, where projects and thoughts and intentions are brought to fruition. But I don't think it's going to be for a while.

So the question i have, how do I live life well in the middle of this: life unfinished, rough cut, unedited? I'm sure there is wisdom and patience to be found even in the midst of these stops & starts.

I'll go look for it in just a minute....


[If you've gotten this far, then let me wish you the merriest of Christmases, full of the traditions and events that warm your heart, the quiet moments of reflection and pondering that refuel your soul, and a reminder that our greatest gift isn't wrapped under the tree--He was born in a stable. Blessings. -S]