This pic could have been an epitaph on my tombstone MINUS the X until recently….

When was the las time you said screw it and MEANT IT?

Or are you like me and your plates have names?

I had a breakthrough moment in therapy where I simultaneously lost it and I found it:

I was lost and then found.

But not happy, at all about the findings!

Ya know that moment when you hold up all your fragile, delicate dinnerware to the gods for an offering and the gods say “ Let the plates drop!”

And your like WHAT? Seriously that sounds stupid.

And your higher self says this is a big freaking nudge from the universe that IT IS WELL PAST TIME!

So you hold you breath, open your hands and let them go…

You hear the sound of ALL of it breaking into a million little pieces.

You can celebrate – the sound of silence broken!

Then….

You look at it all, smashed to bits and instantly regret that you let go because now you aren’t holding them anymore BUT you also know you are the one who has to clean up the mess?

I’m not the type of girl who ever let my plates drop.

Im cautious and careful to not break anything that MIGHT be worth SOMETHING someday!

I’m like my Mom and those old freaking placemats she still keeps in the spare dresser for the last 40 years, not for any particular sentimental reason whatsoever, but just in case….

Just in case, she may need them someday BUT it’s been 40 years and that day has never come.

Nor will it ever because she has enough damn place mats for a table setting for an army.

I’m bad for that, I admit it.

I’ve got dresses in my closet from the 90’s that I keep just in case….

In case I ever get back to a size 0…

In case they comes back in style…

In case there is some event somewhere that I will NEVER go to anyways that’s got 90’s theme.

Y’all know what I am talking about those things we hold onto that do NOT serve a purpose but you REALLY want to hope they will…..

Someday, maybe?

Please. I hope.

Those thing may make us THINK we feel safe.

Like my 19 year old daughter Elysia’s Teddy that she still sleeps with every night and I suspect she always will. Teddy will still be there someday 20 years from now in bed with her, right along side a damn good man, her at least 3 so let’s presume 4 kids and at near close a dozen puppies.

But Teddy is a good thing!

Teddy has sentimental value.

Teddy doesn’t take up much space in her life.

Teddy IS safe.

Teddy is not freaking heavy as holding up as all those plates we bought at the garage sale hoping they will be of ‘someday value’ and featured on American Pickers…

Held above one’s head: Arms outstretched defying gravity, with hands holding them tightly and back straighten to the heavens.

Sooooo long that we cannot bear the weight of them all…

Not another… single….moment.

I let the plates drop.

And I did not die.

But it feels like it – a little bit…

It feels like a loss.

A loss of a dream, of a hope, of a wish, of a prayer of IF ONLY….

It feels like a weight has been lifted off your chest but admitting it kind of felt safe even though you literally could not breathe – under it – anymore.

So this morning I grieve.

I grieve the loss of what could have been but was NEVER going to be.

And the reckoning that I can not change anyone else but myself UNLESS they want to be changed because for me – my plates have NAMES!

I am reminded of the scriptures of old that are timeless and for all.

That there is a season for EVERYTHING under heaven.
A time to mourn and a time to dance,
A time to weep and a time to laugh.

A time to stop believing that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

And..

A time to realize you have cast your pearls to swine.

A time to realize that you have been garbage picking for a jewel that ain’t in there.

And a time as scary as it is to let those damn plates DROP!

Find the message in the mess and walk the hell away.

It was never my mess to clean up in the first place.

Perhaps it’s not yours either?

 

#NOMORE