Desire for More

When we were little, playing in the fiery Georgia clay was so much more than risking the wooden sting on our bottoms for ruining ever inch of our cotton clothing while making mud pies in Momma's nicest pans. It was a way to escape the mundane and pretend even for just a little while that you were more than that barefooted, slow-talkin child. See, I remember the feeling of putting your foot down in the clay. Feeling the cool, smooth fiery red ooze up around my toes, yet the magic happened when you pulled your foot off. There in the good Lord's ground in His country lay the imprint of my foot. MY foot. When you're hip high, you believe your foot will stay there forever. It won't ever leave. Permanently impressed in this world. Isn't that the dream? The hope that somehow, someway something we do, anything, will leave a permanent mark on this world?

These day's I don't even feel close to that little girl who believed her footprint would forever be in the world. How did I lose that? Honestly, this ladder climbing track that I have been on doesn't thrill, excite or scare me. They said go to college. I went. Pick a major that will give you a stable career, they said. I picked two. I'm coming closer and closer to the end, I can actually see the end, and yet all I see is another step on a ladder bolted to a ground with a padded flooring underneath.

I feel stuck. I'm ready to do something that scares the living heck out of me. That seems impossible. That seems just plain crazy. The South is more than just my home. It is the very breath of me. It is forever etched in my DNA. It comes out in how I talk, what I hold valuable, and even in my obsessive need to add just onnnneeee more cup of sugar to the tea because it's not quite teeth-rotting sweet yet. Now, I'm not talking wear-white-britches-after-Labor-Day crazy or having the nerve to walk into the grocery store without your face did and hair tall. No! I'm talking about moving clear across the country because you think part of your story may be there crazy. Crazy like traveling to other countries, countries that take "third world" as a compliment because they know that category is above them, just for the chance to tell their stories crazy.

I'm ready to clock-out of the monotony of this predictable job I've labelled as life. I'm ready to go. I want to fall back in love with this world. Each sunset, every sunrise. I'm ready to be so engulfed the excitement an uncertainty of life that I end up losing myself. Then maybe, maybe when I come out on the other side, I'll be able to be the one sitting on the rickety rocking chair while the crickets sing a soft melody in the background. Then with all eyes locked and ears perked, slowly, I'll begin to verbally paint the experiences that have come and gone.

#WifeMe

#StayTuned