Just when you think life is hard, it gets a thousand times harder. You feel weak, you feel like the crushing weight you are carrying is going to end you, and yet there is something deeper down than you can reach, that keeps you going in the midst of it all. For me this is one tangible evidence of God’s strength when I absolutely have none. Every day it feels like I didn’t sleep at all the night before and I now understand all the health issues I have (hopefully all), and though it seems impossible, somehow I still manage to show up at work and get things done. I can’t take credit for this. This is what I was made to do, and I can’t not do it.

Here’s hoping things will get better soon. If not, all you can do is push through. Yeah, it may take longer to topple challenges, but they will still fall. Things that stand there and mock me will have their day of doom. The only way that anything can stop you is if you choose to believe you can’t. I tell my children this all the time. I can do anything, even while sick, even when everything about me is jacked up, so long as I never admit defeat and back down from what I was made to do. It is this spirit that built our country, and anything good we experience now came from the endless grind and painful climb of people who refused to be average.

It may seem hard what you’re facing, but know that it isn’t something you can’t do, it is merely something you haven’t done yet. Time is all that is required once you’ve done all you can, and then all you think you can’t, then you will see the finish line. So many of us give up on the brink of victory, so many of us conclude that maybe the nayers (that’s right, new word) were wiser.  This is the voice of doubt. Don’t commit soul treason and ignore the dreams God has given you, but raise your rusty sword and seize the dragon of doubt looming over you. Rend it free from the ground it’s claimed and throw it down on the mocking rocks below.

I’ve been struggling with who I am. Due to many reasons I can’t adequately explain, my personality is very fluid. I often change views or thoughts on things rapidly, based on new information or new logic. This makes it hard to establish a true north. It has to do with autism and related issues. There are various sections of me that don’t seem to ever be the same, and some that are. I also attribute this to the wild and innovative soul of the creative monster I feed for some reason, but don’t know how to let it out.

I am essentially an autistic child who needs to be left alone in a room with materials for as long as it takes, and out of that will come my equivalent of the Mona Lisa, my masterpieces. There is much thinking, art, music, form, function, and feature in me and my biggest fear is that I will never find the sufficient peace in this jacked up world to let my ideas bloom. I have tried a lot, but there is so much mental noise, and believe me when I tell you it is louder for me in here than for most people. I feel everything way too much. Emotionally, physically, etc. Peace is hard to come by, and my definition of peace is far quieter than most I think. Which makes it scarcer.

My only cosmic question in life right now is this, how can someone like me, creative, wild, inventive, zany, too-much personality create and design and learn and grow when life is so doggone rhythmic and I can’t fight the noise in the cadence? I guess I still have a lot of doubt dragons and a thick skull, so I wish there was a way for me to see how those who have learned to block out the noise and create anyway have managed to do it.

If my only masterpieces in life turn out to be my children, then I will have lived well. I do however want to make things with my little artists that can reach beyond just our family.