Just Write 151

There is a kind of tired that feels so good while it also hurts to not be able to move your arms without hating painting. The kind that comes after hard work, together. After finishing something, or working your way (slowly) toward finishing. It’s hard to keep going and everything is screaming that I’m OLD, but it’s worth it.

Like childbirth. Only not.that.painful.

We are painting and painting at the Cre8tive Escape building, getting ready for our first creator’s retreat in the ginormous room downstairs next weekend.

NEXT WEEKEND.

We have had helpers, people who care about us and come to roll on paint or scrape the old carpet glue off the cement floor.

We pay them with….love. (How nice and generous, huh?)

I thought you might want to see what the ginormous room looked like before:

Ironically, the words on the wall from the previous renters of the downstairs space say “Pace Yourself”.

We pulled out the old carpet, then came the scraping of the glue. And meanwhile, we painted the walls a color called Sea Salt.

See? Salt…

Well, you can’t really see the color well, but that gives you an idea. And at this point, the floor had been scraped and cleaned and we had applied the primer for painting the cement. Yes, we painted the cement. It looks great, I’ll show you soonly.

Then this morning it was time to get the boys to third and first grade, and just like always, it hurts. It hurts to let them go in there and deal, you know? Just…deal. To learn to grow up with confidence and to face navigating relationships on their own, finding their way around, feeling the nervous feelings, and doing stuff like, I don’t know…math. I mean, how did these babies grow to be kids who can learn to add and multiply? How do they even know their ABC’s. I was there for it all and now I can’t wrap my non-mathematical mind around the number of days and months and years.

I would write about divorce and all the Feelings that come with it, the way I somehow made it through last night while they were at Daddy’s and how I hurried over this morning so we could all start the new school year together, but I can’t. Not right now anyway. I haven’t gotten through feeling it and writing until I let it all out and found some kind of peace in the midst of it would take hours and hours. I don’t have hours and hours at the moment, and I need more quiet for my soul. I don’t have time for a lot of quiet right now, and at the end of the day, we’ll be together again and that’s what I need most.

I’m going to go to work, walk through this day, telling myself all the good things we have, in each other, in the way their Daddy and I love them and work together to serve them. In the beautiful Minnesota September morning. In the way they love each other.

We just keep going, like we do. Just like you and you and you, we do the best we can in this moment. I’m out here doing that with you.

It’s the first day of school. It’s the first day of the rest of the year. It’s the first day of the rest of our lives. It’s a gift, no? I think it is.

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This is the 151st installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. There are really no rules, besides Just Write! (Then link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

Also. Please take a moment to visit someone else who has linked up! It’s a really good way to meet new writers and get inspired by the meaning behind their moments. Word?