Zeal for Your Own Life

I saw this picture of myself a family member had posted on Facebook of all places and at first I wondered (and took a second look), who is that? I look at myself once in the morning and never really pay attention to what I look like or who I am. Have you ever wondered who you really are? Whose skin are you really wearing? Are you just your mother’s child? Your husband’s wife? Your children’s mother? Who are you at work? Church? With your acquaintances? It’s amazing how the skin gets kneaded and transformed when peer pressure is pushing on you. From the day of birth we are constantly trying and somehow succeeding in changing ourselves to fit into whatever skin that is pushed our way. I used to wake up before the sun ready to do it--whatever it was. Lately I am having the hardest time trying to figure out who I am and what I am supposed to be doing in life. And have wondered where the zeal has gone.

As long as I can remember I wanted to be an artist and then I wanted to write. How happy I was when I realized I could do both. How I fell into the field of childcare I don’t know. I used to not even like children. I constantly hear how I have a gift from God, this is where and what I am supposed to be doing…yada, yada, blah, blah, blah...you know the words. Over the past few weeks I have been feeling as if my skin has been stretched around this profession by those around me and I am about to pop a thread. 

I believe writing a blog really helps, because as I write the answers to my thoughts always come forth.

It's not that I want to stop working with children it is the knowledge that my world around me is really changing. My main reason for working from home was to be with my daughters. My daughters are remolding me from the 'mommy skin' into the mother skin. The youngest has graduated from home-school and the middle daughter (my first college graduate, the eldest will graduate soon)has bought her own home. Life has changed. I have been their instructor in life for twenty-six very close years and the new skin that's trying to take over is grating. I feel like I'm a butterfly stuck in between the cocoon and the free world and just like that butterfly I need a moment of rest.

 
This year I'll be 52 and I'll shake out the wrinkles of this new skin and hopefully be a whole new me. The me I have always wanted to be. A published writer. I have set my goals in stone and if I have to throw them at this glass wall that's holding me back from the finish line of success, I will.  And I guess with my new venture into self-publishing, I have.

To put life in the perspective of the letter 'Z" and its placement in words. It may be the last of the alphabet, the last in line, but when push comes to shove it more often than not stands tall and begins at the beginning. Even when everything else ends. See more Z on my Wade-In blog.

I loved the A-Z challenge.