the middle

With this post I hope to launch a third season of this blog. When it first began in 2006, I had just quit my full-time job to become a freelance photographer and writer. I was headed to Uganda for two months and wanted to keep in touch with family and friends. Two years later I picked up where I’d left off, this time newly engaged, arriving in Rwanda for a three-year stint. But as time went on, between motherhood and moving continents and my father’s death, the blog fell by the wayside.

Uganda 2006

Rwanda 2008

For a while I’ve been thinking of returning to my writing, starting to put down on “paper” once again the thoughts, dreams, ideas, questions running through my head. What new adventure has prompted the desire this time? There isn’t one. Which seems appropriate given the fact that I don’t feel like I’m at the beginning of anything. In fact, I feel like I’m right smack-dab in the middle. Of everything. I will turn 40 in four months. The very definition of mid-life. My days consist of work and meals and bedtimes and gymnastics lessons and travel and friends and laughter and tears and anger and contentment. Some days seem like such a fabulous adventure and others are very very ordinary. But most days are somewhere in the middle of all these things. A big messy mix.

The hardest part

After years away from it, I started running again about a year ago. I decided to run a 10K with a friend and then realized I should probably do some training, since even back in the day when I did run, I was a sprinter and thought a 5K was a long way. So I started training. Sometimes I barely had time to squeeze in two miles, but other days I started increasing my distance. Four miles. Five miles. Six miles.

Victorious with my dear friend Jen
who inspired me to start running again.

And I noticed something. I hated the middle. If I planned to run two miles, the one-mile mark was miserable. If I was running five miles, I started to feel like life was over around two and a half. If I was running the full 10K distance, I was ready to give up at the 5K mark. No matter the distance the middle was just hard. Too far along to go back, not far enough along to see the finish line. So easy to get lost or give up or question myself or change my mind. And clearly I’m not just describing running anymore. I’m talking about life.

Years ago, I heard someone say, “Life is good, but life is also hard. And the truth is most of us live somewhere in the middle.” By turns I find this statement comforting and infuriating. But always I find it true. Sometimes the middle feels like a balanced, ideal place to be. Not too complacent but not too extreme either. Other days the middle feels so hard, not to say hopeless.

So here I am, friends, somewhere in the middle. Some days victoriously moving “further up and further in”, other days wandering lost or sitting down in a huff refusing to go on.

"The story of who I am"

Given my in-the-middle-of-everything existence at the moment, this space is bound to be a little all over the place. That messy mix I mentioned earlier means that some days I’m passionate about my work, about the world, about the “important things” while others I just want to spend the day on Pinterest and Facebook. Some days I am all about my newest DIY project while others I feel like I can barely get out of bed. Sometimes I am super mom, somehow having plenty of time to do crafts and play games with my children while still getting a healthy, delicious meal on the table. While other days require lots of TV time as I grit my teeth waiting for bedtime to come.

I have always written about where I am, whether Uganda or Rwanda – or somewhere in the middle of all this. Why am I planning to drag people through it with me? I guess I hope there are others who can commiserate – er, I mean relate. I think it is sometimes comforting to know we are not alone as we stumble along.

But I also have a somewhat selfish motivation. Brandi Carlile’s song, “The Story,” is among my very favorites. It begins: “All of these lines across my face tell you the story of who I am. So many stories of where I’ve been and how I got to where I am.” As 40 looms and more lines appear I embrace this idea. And I do love to tell a good story.

The main players in my story these days.
Photo credit: Allison Dubois Photography

And then the song says this: “But these stories don’t mean anything if you’ve got no one to tell them to.” I desperately believe as humans we were designed to be in community. William Nicholson, in his screenplay for “Shadowlands,” wrote this line for C S Lewis, “We read to know we are not alone.”

Maybe some of us also write to know we are not alone?