Underbelly: 10 Things - Holy Mess

#126 in a series of wild and precious gut checks to uncover the beauty in chaos that is our life.

This week I contemplated Holy messiness — messiness in general. Swimming in chaos that reminded me (fondly) of how it felt to try to herd 4 high energy little ones back in the day.

Luckily it was sunny this week, with inspiring high fluffy clouds, a light breeze, and gorgeous reminders of the beauty in chaos.

At times, I almost felt as if the little reminders were dropped into my life as soon as they were needed — before I was aware of the need.

(H/t to Karen, reader of this newsletter who dropped the name for this week’s theme into a conversation and set the ball rolling :) )

“Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force (these are words we are allowed to use in California). Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground — you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it’s going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

I think I have mentioned anchoring recently?

The key to being the calm in the storm is to have an anchor.

My anchor is literally my path of following Jesus, and this necessity was gifted to me by an incredibly wise counselor and member of the Squamish Nation (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw).

What are you anchored in?

I gifted myself the moniker “Ice Dragon, Killer of Joy” when my kids were around 12, 10, 8, 6-ish years old because it was becoming apparent that I both needed to role model being that anchor, that “eye of the storm” calm—

—and, honestly, I would lose my mind if I had to be so serious all the time :)

Somewhere along the lines I happened to notice that ego is often heavily correlated to an overly serious demeanor.

The idea this week is to find calm but not lose the messiness that is our humanity.

Breathe, but don’t forget to laugh.

Resource:

This is a very easy to digest quick Psychology Today article on how to stay calm :) — remember the basics:

1.Embrace uncertainty,

2.meditate daily,

3.take small actions,

4.choose wisely, and

5.hold a vision of who you want to be.

This is an extremely slow video on how to breathe. There’s an Inception level slowness to listening to this video — especially if you know how to breathe.