Ten Years of Compost

I am reading 6 parenting books, 3 Psychology-type books, and not enough of my Bible lately. I have 3 other books that help me formulate prayers for my sons, daughters, and hubby, and Jesus is Calling is always read with my morning cup of cold-brew. You’d think with all these words going from paper to my brain that I’d be exploding with ideas to write about. But no.

When I was in college (completing degrees in writing and Psychology… ooo… yes… impressive… but not), one of my professors touched on the thought of composting ideas, an awful way of talking about “writer’s block.” When nothing innovative is coming to screen or paper, just give it time – let it compost.

Well, I’ve run with that for almost ten years now. I have written here and there, but nothing like I have in school (although I was paying thousands for that and for a degree).

I feel like one big mass of events and one unacknowledgable creature of emotions because I have not sat down to actually see what this composting period has done. As a girl that wrote out her emotions for clarity (because I have always struggled with identifying what each emotion really is), I have had no writing or thinking or evaluating attached to these years; just survival.

Can I just breathe?

Can I just sit for a moment and be raw?

That back there, that last decade of chaotic life-building events and moments, that was crazy hard.

And beautiful.

I’m nowhere near the Manda that started that journey. I have cracked and bent and collapsed and exploded and released and birthed so much; many days it’s just hard to even recognize myself.

And (I think) I’m okay with that. That’s probably normal. We change in every season of our lives – some seasons you stretch more than others. And sometimes I have stretched so much I feel a need to re-introduce myself (Ha! No, seriously.).

But I am now realizing all that back there, including my lack of Manda, is not so much what I have to “sort through,” but more like it’s time to use my compost…and move on…move up.

A definition of compost is “a decayed mixture of plants that is used to improve the soil in a garden.”

My decayed plants are anything and everything from these last years – singleness to marriage, infertility to a mother of four in five years, weight gain to weight loss (To weight gain! Hey, being real here.), births to deaths, unemployment and insurmountable bills to debt-free and flourishing. My decaying plants are all of that and more.

So what in the world do I do with all these piles of compost?

I don’t sort it; I work it into my garden to improve the soil. I work it in to improve my future plants, my future years, the future generations, my children and their children. I work it. I use it. I already learned from it (whether I acknowledged it or not) and now it’s time to plant something NEW.

I let the mass of decay just mix all in and look at it as a whole instead of parts.

I survived. I’m grateful. I learned a lot so I could survive, but I am ready to grow.

This is the realization of newness. Anticipation without looking back. Taking my past, painful and tender, and instead of mulling on it, building from it.

I feel a loud echo within saying “It. Is. Time.” and I think this may be the foundation of me living this year unapologetically.

Here I go!

(Thank you, Rebekah Lynn, for these quotes you shared.)