gut feeling

Sometimes, we don't know why things happen. We can't explain why there are dark clouds hanging over our heads, even on the sunniest of days. We aren't sure why our heart feels dark and heavy as a stone inside of us, even as we see smiles, goodness, happiness, kindness around us. There are always days when things seem harder, and sluggish, and it takes all effort just to accomplish the tiniest of things. 

But lately, I've known.

I always know why it's all so much harder. I know exactly why for weeks, even months, I have felt a step behind, a peg lower, why good days feel like highs with something impossible running through my veins, making me invincible.

I haven't been to the temple in months. I haven't opened my actual book of scriptures in just as long. I sometimes remember to read or listen to a handful of verses in the middle of busy life happenings. I pray with half a heart most days and a full heart seldom. I go through the motions, I attend church because I'm relied on, I do FHE because the kids bug me about it, and I fast because it's actually sometimes easier than figuring out what to eat while also feeding three children. 

Something has to change. Something has.

I sat to read scriptures for the first time that both babies have napped at the same time in weeks. I had the feeling to go to the drawer my mini scripture quad sits and pull it out. I ran my hand over the cover that has since faded my maiden name to oblivion and opened the scriptures that never left my side for 18 months, a lifetime ago. I flipped to where I've been half-listening from the app in the Come Follow Me program. I read the first verse of the chapter I am at, words that only partially made sense since I have so badly neglected to actually listen to anything I play. 

And everything changed.

I felt an actual, real, true drop in my stomach. A burst of excitement filled my belly, just where my gut (and the Spirit, partners or the same thing?) always guides me with the best and the worst feelings. It was a feeling of a shift. I don't know the last time I FELT a shift. In my body. It was like the Spirit felt he had to actually punch me in the stomach (in a good way??) to make sure I was NOW paying attention. Are you awake now, Mandy? Have you decided that aimless slumber, that unconscious living, that walking in a blur as life happens, ISN'T what you actually want? Do you remember feeling true joy and peace and calm and direction and focus and purpose? Do you remember that it only takes a few things, it's as easy as looking and living. LOOK. LIVE. Be ALIVE. 

Life is so short. I am constantly battling a small degree of perpetual melancholy as I mother, knowing that one day I will be looking at my child and they are who they are in that moment, and when they wake the next morning they will be just a little bit different, a little bit older, grown, mature. How could I ever allow myself to sleep through that? To miss the best parts as they are happening, in exchange for being terribly sad and dreary and lost the entire time instead?

I may not know exactly what I am reading in the middle of a book called Hosea in the middle of the Old Testament, in the middle of a mild Georgia rainstorm, in the middle of a week where I have only barely tired, and majorly failed. But I will understand. I will get back to knowing, or at least knowing how to better learn. I will be brighter, lighter, and calmer. There will be more peace. It doesn't come without a fight. And the scariest part is when I'm fighting myself. Fighting one version for a better version, for a version that loves herself more, listens to her gut better, reacts in patience, acts succinctly, trusts God innately. She's in there. It's never too late. 

Sometimes it just takes a punch.