How big are your feelings?

I'm writing more now, obviously.

But I had the distinct thought the other day that I might not be writing for anybody out there. Maybe I'm writing for me, maybe I'm writing not for something to propel me forward, but as a way to just get the thoughts in my mind out on paper. Maybe I'm writing so that when I have something to write I will be in practice. Maybe so that when God reveals His purpose I have people to listen.

To be honest, I don't know. I just know I need to write.

What if I was gone tomorrow and I was waiting until I had 'something' to write? What if I hadn't written anything down for my children to remember me by? Hadn't told my story.

My great great great grandfather wrote a small autobiography. He must have written it toward the end, it wasn't very long. He was a complicated man with a complicated story.

I wish I knew more of his mind as well as his story. There's a lot that came down the line from him to future generations, good and bad. Maybe if he had shared those lessons (if he had learned them) some of the heartache that came from his troubles and propensities could have been hedged. We will never know.

I know I think I'm sharing sometimes. Posting on instagram. Writing small updates in my journal when I have the chance. But I have a complicated mind, one that doesn't stop. One that bursts with thoughts during every waking moment of the day. Snippets just don't seem to paint my picture.

It helps me to be alone in my mind. To sit in it. To feel it. To try to understand it. What if everyone in this world understood their own mind? What would be different?

I have struggled with bouts of anxiety, depression, overwhelm, sadness. I'm a big feeler... but I wasn't always. Or at least I wasn't a big expresser... (Is that a word? You get it.)

It wasn't until I married Jay and he became this safe space that I think I finally gave myself license to feel my big feelings. To feel them and look them in the face instead of stuffing them and letting them resurface as disordered eating and unhealthy exercise. Coming through as overworking and over-scheduling. Who needs to feel when you don't have two seconds to rub together?

I came from an  family who shoved a lot of big feelings under the rug. There wasn't a lot of safe space for feelings. Be good. Excuses aren't valid. Don't cry- make a plan to fix it, you know..

(And really, they were just doing the best they knew how. They wanted us to be good kids, and I feel those same instincts with my own kids. I get it. So I shoved. And I was a freaking good kid according to the checklist)

Then I got engaged to Jay and the feelings became too much to bear. Maybe that was the collateral beauty of my parents marriage beginning it's rapid decline months before my wedding day. It was more than I could keep in. Too painful. Too close to "take care of" before getting married. So I felt my big feelings. I cried them into Jay's lap in a basement classroom, in his car at the top of Y Mountain, many days in our crackerjack apartment those first few months.

And he proved he was safe.

And I stopped stuffing feelings. And slowly stopped eating them. And started to sit in them.

And started exploring why I felt them. And started trying to understand myself better.

And it took time, but it worked.

It's easy for me to get caught in a trap of feeling like I have too many feelings. Like my emotions are too big and complicated. Like I am too big and complicated. My daughter got it too, the big feelings. But lately I've been trying to remind myself that God made me this way. He made me to feel big, and I was that way before I came here- I know that. And when I tell her the same thing the truth of it rings clear.

So here I am- in all my big feelings. Expressing the good and the bad. Not because I want sympathy, not because I love to over-share (believe me here- privacy is a much easier row to hoe) Because someday if I succeed I don't want anybody to say, "Oh, another success story" I want somebody, anybody to say, "Hey, I saw myself in her story. Maybe I could do that too." Or more importantly for my daughter to know my story and say "I feel like that, and I can do this."