On Titles and Timing

A Mom seeking her Path in the midst of Chaos and Beauty

– Amy Lyon Smith

How appropriate that this should be the post I had planned to write last week and today the daily prompt would be chaos.  The original catalyst for the following thoughts is the Weekly Discover Challenge.  The theme this past week is Raison D’etre, the French term for “the reason or justification for existence”.  We were asked to think about the reason we create, whatever that medium may be.

I’m not sure exactly what my creative mediums may be.  Part of this journey is discovering what they are.  Right now it is stringing words along to try to convey my thoughts and learning to get the camera to catch what I am entranced by.

I am left-handed, like my father.  I had always heard that lefties are creative.  My dad has the amazing ability to draw, to carve tiny wooden items, to build cars, and he learned to play a guitar by ear.  I wanted it to come naturally for me, like it does for him.  To be able to take something from my mind and be able to recreate it on paper.  To hear the notes that play, the ones I want to crawl inside and live amongst, and have that travel down and out my fingertips.  But this did not just happen.  I have to work at those things and still can’t master them.  I have, at times, been frustrated that this creativity and artistry must have bypassed me.  Until my husband asked me if I had ever considered that I am creative, it is just in different ways.

And I thought about it and discovered that I was indeed creative in different ways.  I design and layout the decor of our homes. In the past, I’ve been known to host some pretty fun “little kid” birthday parties.  I string words together, whether in poetry or prose. I photograph the world around me.

I am creative.

I don’t feel as though I’ve discovered all the ways I can create.  I just know that I want to create.  This is a tiny piece of my “raison d’etre”.  Because I have this inner desire and I believe it was placed there by God.  I’m not sure what he wants me to do with it or if it just about the journey of discovery.  I began this journey in January.  I spent a long time before becoming bold enough to enter the blogging world.  I put my toes in lightly.  First on social media by making my Instagram public.  Then working on a blog with private settings.  And then jumping in with a splash.

I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to name my blog.  I tend to overanalyze!  I knew that I wanted it to be about my journey.  This process of discovery.  This evolving. This time as the children become more independent.  About how life is filled with ups and downs.  Yin and Yang.  The glorious and the underbelly.  And that is how Bedlam & Daisies was born.

Bedlam is defined as: a very noisy and confused state or scene (aka-chaos). A madhouse.  And let’s be honest, parenting can quite often feel like that.  So then I needed a balance.  I chose daisies because they are cheerful and calming to me.  They were the flowers that decorated my bridal table and cake.  They are thought to symbolize “new beginnings” since they open at dawn “days-eye”.  I loved this about them (aka-beauty).  This was my journey as a mother figuring out her direction.

My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight- Robert Frost

To begin preparing for who I want to be after the children have flown the nest.  Which brings me to my main “raison d’etre”.

My Children.

I want them to go boldly out into the world. I want them to not be held back by fear.  And I saw that I was being paralyzed by fear.  One way to teach them was to move beyond my fears.  I decided that we were rapidly approaching the oldest leaving for college and I should just step out.  Pursue things I thought that I might enjoy.  To seek who I was deep inside.  To listen to the little “God prods”.  To become everything that he has called me to be (whatever that may be!).  When the little voices inside tell me that “I’ll never be enough” or that “nobody cares what I have to say” or that “there are these amazing works out there better than mine”, I press through it.  I continue even though I want to believe the lies.  And I do that because my kids are watching.  I may fail a thousand times, but no matter how discouraged I become, I get back up and I keep trying.  I do this because they are watching.  They are learning about persistence and about patience.  They are learning about pressing through fear.  They are learning to listen to voice inside.  They are learning to be bold.  They are watching and they are my motivation.

My Raison D’etre

Let your light shine!

Amy