Creating Space & Saving Spoons

I was just kinda wondering about a few things. Like, why do we get burned out? Why on some days do I love my son’s stuttering. It’s really not even stuttering, it’s halting, starting a word, bringing it back in and reforming it. Then it all tumbles out until the next words get backed up in a jumble. This process happens on repeat until he’s spoken a big, colorful paragraph of an event in his day. 

 

I know all the words are in there. Its not like he’s trying to find the right one. No, they are all there in a pile, jumping over one another to get out but they need to all get in the right order first, but these letters are so excitable, so fun, so colorful, order is hard for them. They are so full of verve, light and description.  I picture the words backed up between Wil’s brain and his mouth like the letters in the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book; multi-colored in different shapes and sizes, bright and tumbly and happy. Rolling, wild, and excited. 

 

I could wait for hours to hear those words come out. They are halting but active. Sometimes slow to come out, then arrive in a fluid order colorful details, a clear look into a sliver of his day. It’s always worth the wait, I know this. 

 

But sometimes, some days I don’t want to wait. I just want to know in black and white. Quit with all the colors, just give me a look into your day. Quit making me work so hard for it.

 

He’s not bothered. I am. It’s not his fault, and he would never look at it as a fault. And when I do step back from my impatient moments I see how he is wired, and love his colorful wiring. He’s worked hard for these words, and I’ve waited years and prayed for years to hear these sentences from him. So I hold back; I fight for patience but God if you could just give me that picture in right now I’d take it in black and white!

 

Why are some days like that while others I could wait hours for the color picture show?

 

At a professional development class we learned about spoons. How we all have a limited number of spoons and they get used up during the day until we have none left. So on the black-and-white days, I’ve clearly burned up a lot of my spoons. And when I fight for patience, I’m actually burning up even more spoons! What the heck?! 

 

This brought me to the thought of when I was running long distances. I read that when we are on an easy run, we look around and take in more of what is around us. When we are doing speed work our brain focuses in and narrows our view. Aha! 

 

When I’m in a “work hard” mode, my brain focuses. Becomes more black and white. When I relax and release the reins some, my brain expands its view. It’s me who is in control of my spoons. But control is the opposite word of what I mean. When I try to control my spoons, when I fight for patience I’m actually hoarding spoons and that takes so much from me my hoarding actually uses my spoons up! You follow?

 

However, when I visualize those lovely, crazy, mismatched but oh so perfect big colorful letters jumbling from my son’s mouth, they come out in perfect order in their own time. And the reward is I’m actually GIVEN spoons. 

 

So again I wondered, can we take in the bigger picture while still focusing on where we want to go? Because those big, crazy wild Chicka Chicka Boom Boom letters — I don’t think they are asking if there will be enough room. I think it’s us, wondering, stressing trying to control how it will all happen. And yet the letters tumble out in their colorful, wild way, bumping, falling out of the coconut tree the way they are wired to do, unbothered.  

 

Just like Wil’s words. It’s not him — but me — that needs to know there will always, unequivocally be enough room (and enough spoons).