I like clean breaks. A definitive ‘then’ that ends to allow for a dedicated transition and full immersion to the now. Living in the past while trying to reorient to the future is difficult for me as I feel divided. Muddy boundary lines between seasons make for confusing expectations because of the necessity to juggle often conflicting priorities. This can make it hard to move on and move forward. Looking back, I have always had this desire for clean starts and blank slates and this has been especially true as I am about to enter motherhood.
Every year at the end of December, I feel this compulsion to finish all the books I am currently working on so I can start the new year with a blank reading slate. I recap my prior year in my journal at the end of December as it feels wrong to recap it in January when the new year has already begun. At the close of every day, I want my kitchen to be put together with no dishes in the sink or on the counter to help ensure a fresh start for the next day.
There is something so immensely satisfying to me about a clean break. It feels like a huge accomplishment, a job well done, and a sign of well-executed plans. Wrapping things up in a nice little bow leaves me with the sense that I have my life together and am managing life as I should - even though the decision of what I choose to wrap up is arbitrary and specific to me.
As we are less than 2 months from our due date, this desire to wrap things up has come on in full force. The nursery is complete, I read the baby books I want to read, and we completed our childbirth class. I have already begun looking at the books I am reading to try to proactively think through which ones I want to finish before little miss arrives and which may continue when she is here. I threw my last pottery bowls this past week and finished up a 30 bag pound of clay I had been working through for a few months. While I still have to trim, fire, and glaze those pots, the majority of work is completed. I have a list of three Substack posts I want to write and a plan to finish those in the next few weeks. My biblestudy in James only has a few lessons remaining. These are all ongoing projects that I think about often because I want to tie them up so that my slate can be as blank as possible ahead of my due date.
Yet, the amusement in all of this is that I do not know when she will come - she could come in the next week or in seven. This planning and wrapping things up feels like striving after wind and a way to claw back some semblance of control as an unknown future yawns ahead. While I do not think this desire to wrap things up is bad in and of itself, I have to vigilantly be on guard with thinking that my pursuit of tying up loose ends means I have it together and that it will translate to a better transition after birth.
However, I want to see the value of not wrapping things up in a neat little bow as I believe there are learnings that can be carried from one season into the next when a transition is more jagged. Sometimes, I think that my desire to wrap things up is because I want to shut the door on a season of life and move full steam ahead into the next. As I have waxed upon in numerous Substacks, I tend to look forward and not behind. However, the risk of shutting a door to a prior season is leaving lessons unlearned in the hustle and bustle of striving towards the next thing.
People talk a lot about ‘leaving well’ whether that is in reference to a job, transition from one church to the next, or moving. I would argue that there is a way to leave one season and go into the next well. Leaving one season well definitely involves preparing for the next, but it also means reflecting on the season you are about to leave and carrying forward any lessons learned and lessons still in process.
There are numerous lessons that God graciously taught me in the past few seasons of finally desiring motherhood, having a miscarriage, working through miscarriage, and now being pregnant. I think if I fully try to wrap up my current season then I could miss how the lessons I learned in the past two years shaped me into who I am now. Obviously, when giving birth is a clear demarcation between being pregnant and not pregnant. However, I do not need to feel this strong compulsion to transition everything else in my life. I can leave some books in progress, have a knitting project ongoing, and gasp not have some nursery decor complete and it will be ok. Hopefully, leaving some little things ‘undone’ in my mind will help me carry forth lessons that I learned during some difficult periods so they can take root and continue to blossom in me in this new season.