Sometimes I have a lot to say, but nowhere to speak it. As a stay-at-home mom, my thoughts are so often interrupted, sometimes I forget that my “thoughts” are a key part of who I am. I can feel so forgotten and unseen, striped of personhood in order to raise other little humans.

There are so many things that matter deeply to me, but yet day to day they slip away. Writing is one of them. But sometimes, I just don’t write, because I’m too tied and after all, what’s the reward? Most likely my words won’t get read, despite the amount of work they take to formulate (mostly the editing side of it because perfectionism, if the story is really flowing). But my creative side is so important to me, and I’m learning integral to who I am.

I’m trying to learn to write, even if I know no one will read it. It’s hard though. Because stories are something I want to share. But I’ve come up with a new “mantra” that I’m trying to remind myself daily –

My work already matters.
and an audience is just a bonus.

It’s so easy to feel like I don’t matter, and this blog is my way of fighting back against that, even if sometimes, some days, it would be easier to just lie die and let myself disappear.

It’s like a leaf….

A leaf attached to a small branch, on a larger branch, on a giant tree. The leaf stretches out to feel the sun, twisting and contorting to position it’s sight away from the tree, away from the branch holding it in place, and to what is beyond. A newer leaf, it hasn’t figure out the way of things just yet. Or rather, the meaning.

The wind pushes it. When the leaf stays affixed, it assumes it is of its own doing. When insects doesn’t touch it, again, it assumes because of its own merit. The leaf spends so much time looking away from the source, it stops thinking it’s a leaf at all. 

Something in it says there’s something more, something greater. It wants to be apart of something more. Something, out there. Watching the beyond, it wonders when it will get its chance to go and explore and do.

It watches, growing steadily, waiting for its time. Longing for more. Sitting unhappily in its station.

One day, the little leaf tries to jump, ready to do. Only to be thwarted by its attachment to the branch. It curses the branch, thinking it is holding the leaf back from what it is supposed to do. Because leaf knows it’s supposed to do something. It has all these giftings, and talents, and abilities and yet it just sits on some solid concrete, rather than being out there, in the world, being significant.

It tries many ways to get to where it sees, to do what it knows, down to its roots, it’s supposed to do. But each attempt is a failure. Nothing moves it away from the thing holding it back. The leaf spends so much time trying to get somewhere else, eyes on the world beyond, it forgets about the giant tree. Forgets about the source. 

Leaf finds despair. Looking out to the world beyond, knowing it could do good work if it was just released to do so. And yet it is trapped. Chained. Immobilized. The blue skies taunt, the green fields chuckle, the movement and life below mock.  The pain of a life confined. The disappointment of unrealized potential.

A storm comes and this time, leaf is too tired to fight against it. In high winds, leaf used to strain against the force in order to keep itself twisted out to see the world beyond. But this time, leaf lets itself be righted. Leaf closes its eyes. In the elements, its stem is straighted, pushed back to its original position, the very thing leaf had been fighting against. The rain stops, the wind ceases, but leaf just sits. Accepting it, keeping itself shut off from what is beyond now since it can no longer see out from its little corner. 

At some point, for an unknown reason, leaf opens its eyes to assess its new fate. Leaf sees its little branch, tracing its thin line back to the larger branch. It’s knotted and old, having stood through much life. Following its route, leaf sees a large vertical branch, and suddenly leaf remembers there is a name for this branch that runs up and down. It connects so many branches to itself, so many leaves. 

Trunk. Trunk reaching up to the sky and trunk reaching down to the soil, the roots. 

Tree. 

Leaf remembers what it is attached to. A giant tree. Mighty and strong. Formidable and kind. Tree that gives life to so many leaves. Leaves that are nothing without tree. 

By some miracle, leaf even more so remembers its gifting and talents. Those don’t disappear, they are now only realized fully with the help of tree. From the source of tree. Leaf isn’t nothing. Leaf isn’t trapped. Leaf is grafted, affixed onto something greater than itself. 

Leaf matters because of tree. Leaf had been going about its life backwards, searching for meaning that already existed. Everything goes out from source, not the other way around. Rooted to the tree, to its little branch on the larger branch, this was where leaf would find the pieces that felt missing. 

Tree didn’t ask leaf to not be itself, to be smaller or not use everything it had. Tree rooted leaf into its source, a springboard for leaf to be… leaf. Everything and anything that that means.

After so much time of focusing so far away, it would take time to readjust to focusing on source. To learn how to be fully leaf while focusing on tree. But leaf knew, somewhere deep inside, that this is life. And somehow, someway, leaf would still be able to reach life beyond, even if it wouldn’t be in the way that leaf expected.