Author: Melissa Snyder

Melissa Snyder https://awriterbecoming.wordpress.com Melissa Snyder is an introvert with a flair for the dramatic in her writing. She is a wife, mother, teacher, compulsive writer, voracious reader, and fierce defender of Love and Imagination. She likes to write about faith (her own and faith in general) and self and emotion and society and hobbies, as well as revealing the myriad paracosms that inhabit her mind. These paper bullets of the brain live in her blog and on Facebook where she endeavors to write about life and Imagination boldly and share honestly.

The Adult You Are Looking For Has Left the Building.

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Adulting is hard! Allow me to repeat that: ADULTING IS HARD! And, yes, like so many other words in the 21st century we have verbed the noun. Our predecessors would most likely remark that there is no such thing as “adulting” when youĀ are one; it’s just living life and doing what’s necessary. Perhaps so but, sometimes, it can feel downright oppressive.

Here was my adulting today:

  1. I got this week’s bills written up and ready to mail.
  2. I wrote letters to friends and loved ones.
  3. I sussed out our budget for the next week and a half.
  4. I went to the post office.
  5. I went to the bank.
  6. I helped my in-laws get their tax forms printed off since their printer is being a jerk.
  7. I went to the credit union to make sure all was in order for some important payments.
  8. I dropped four bags of stuff off at Goodwill.
  9. I found a prop my husband needed for a project in under three minutes of entering the store.
  10. I ordered and picked up dinner for my family and my in-laws.
  11. I chatted with my husband about something I felt God had led me to do today that he needed to know about.
  12. I washed and dried a load of laundry.
  13. I fed my daughter.
  14. I baked cookies at her request.
  15. I made the beds, tidied the bedrooms, and aired the house.

In my opinion, that’s some respectable adulting for one day. As I speak, however, there are some things I am leaving undone. The dishes in the sink have not been washed, the laundry in the basket is still waiting to be folded, and the living room is a mess from my girl’s afternoon play. And you know what? With the exception of the living room, which needs to be tidied up a bit so I can do my barre workout, I am just fine with it staying that way for the rest of the night. There’s reading and working out and relaxing to be done!

Self-care is still a learning process for me. I was excellent at it for about a week while visiting my parents; I read more that week than I have in any space of time in recent memory. I went for walks, I got myself ice cream, it was a good time. But now that I am home in the same old same old, I am having to relearn how to do self-care every day. And this is part of it.

The dishes and laundry can wait. It’s Tuesday. Things that I enjoy are waiting for me.

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Encouragement for Sunday Night

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OK, LOVES! It’s Sunday night. Monday is on deck, another week ready and raring to go. Sunday nights can be dark nights sometimes and rather trepidatious. So: that is why I am here. If, tonight, you are feeling a bit unsteady, I want to remind you of a few things:

You are strong.
You are beautiful.
You are intelligent.
You are loved.
You are enough.
You can do this.

If you feel like you could use a bit more of a pick-me-up–words spoken just for and to you–I’m more than happy to try my best to do that. Feel free to comment below. I would love to encourage you, love on you, and, if you will let me or would like, to pray for you over whatever this week and your life holdĀ for you.

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The Truth on Earth, Not in the Air

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It’s April and it smells like Christmas outside. It’s that cold, shimmering scent, one that promises things to come. I suppose, in that sense, Christmas and spring are similar in nature. Almost like the world is holding its breath, waiting for something. The air is cold and crisp, too much so for April for my tastes, but this is Indiana, after all. The grass is green, the trees are starting to shed their buds and press forth with leaves, albeit reluctantly, and so nature assures us of what the weather would belie:

Winter is done.

Spring is coming.

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Once a Lost Girl…

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Ruth B’s single “Lost Boy” has been moving quite fluidly across the airwaves of late,Ā  sung in her dreamy, soulful voice, though I first heard it when a friend of mine shared a YouTube video of the song to my Facebook page, saying that it reminded them of me. I take that as quite a compliment, personally. The first half of the song goes like this:

There was a time when I was alone
Nowhere to go and no place to call home
My only friend was the man in the moon
And even sometimes he would go away, too

Then one night, as I closed my eyes
I saw a shadow flying high
He came to me with the sweetest smile
Told me he wanted to talk for a while
He said, “Peter Pan, that’s what they call me
I promise that you’ll never be lonely, ” and ever since that day

I am a lost boy from Neverland
Usually hanging out with Peter Pan
And when we’re bored we play in the woods
Always on the run from Captain Hook
“Run, run, lost boy, ” they say to me
Away from all ofĀ reality

When I was a child, the first storybook character I fell in love with (yes, I believe that I loved him with all my little-girl heart) was Peter Pan. I had a beautifully illustrated storybook, a book on tape, loved the Disney movie (was so jealous that Tiger Lily got to “kiss” Peter), watched the “Peter Pan and the Pirates” television series on Fox in the mornings before school, had my blue ā€œWendyā€ nightdress, and had the Mary Martin production ofĀ Peter PanĀ memorized (still sing “Once Upon a Time” and “I Won’t Grow Up”). It’s safe to say that I was a bit obsessed with Peter Pan and all the characters therein.

When I was a child, I didn’t have many friends. I was small, skinny, awkward, studious, always with my nose in a book. Not many people wanted to associate with that, particularly in the first half of middle school. So I turned to my books and movies (which were mostly based on books), to the characters held within them who had ever been steadfast friends. I was a Lost Girl in truth. I could sink myself into those stories, let the characters pull me along to join them on their adventures, and live a thousand lives that I would never have in the real world. I was happy as a Lost Girl, in Never Land. I was happy with the dream of Peter (who, interestingly, has continued to grow as I have grown) coming to my window, taking my hand with that handsome, sweet grin, and flying me off to somewhere where I could be more than what I was. Where I could be a Lost Girl, not just little Melissa. Where I could talk with mermaids, fly with fairies, fight pirates, and dance with Tiger Lily.

Where I could be someone else. More than what I was.

Even now, I am still a Lost Girl. I still run off with these characters and dive into their stories, their ranks having swelled over the thirty-some years of my life. Dear friends and new, they make me happy to be a Lost Girl. In fact, there are two new books on my table, two new shedloads of characters just waiting to take me on their adventures and share with me their realities.

As a matter of fact…I think that’s a tap on my window. Excuse me.

 

 

Lessons from “Calm Down”

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I have been watching Inside Out with my toddler girl–or, as she has renamed it: Calm Down–for the past few days and I am finding that, while I am trying to teach my daughter lessons about emotions and feelings, I am learning and relearning some important ones myself. While one can learn to be emotionally awake and mature, I believe that there are always lessons worth revisiting as we grow through life.

*It’s okay to not be okay, even when people ask or want you to be okay.

*Just because you’re sad about something, it doesn’t mean your feelings are wrong.

*Just because you forget something or don’t think about it anymore, it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t beneficial or important or that it didn’t do you any good at the time.

*It is entirely possible to feel two things at once and have both of them be “right”.

*Crying is OKAY! Sometimes we just need to cry, and it really does help.

*It’s all right to not have all the answers.

*It’s all right to be scared and sad when what we have loved ends for whatever reason.

*It’s perfectly okay to look for the fun and to try to find the joy in situations if that is what you need to do in order to cope.

*There is no shame in your personality, interests, hobbies, etc., changing as your life goes on. It’s part of growing.

*It’s also okay to not be willing to look for the fun and the joy in a situation for a time. We need to feel sadness, too.

*It is all right to need someone just to be there.

*We can sit on the bench with someone and not try to fix things or make things better. Sometimes someone just needs their sadness to be heard and felt and their tears shared.

There is so much that we as human beings are still learning about ourselves, our feelings, reactions, relationships, and growth, even as adults. Our personalities shift and expand and deepen. Our interests vary. Who we are and who we choose to be may change and that is all right. The truth is that we never stop growing, learning, feeling, or changing. And that is okay. We are okay. YOU are okay.

 

(Disclaimer: Inside Out and its images are the creation and property of Disney/Pixar. None of it belongs to me.)

The Memories of Raindrops and Sunbeams

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The weather has a memory. It remembers how we feel, just as the sensations it generates are buried in our minds.

Mother Nature remembers what thoughtful fancies flit through your mind when the clouds look like nests composed of cotton candy.

How your heart leaps, aches, thrills, or yearns when the sunlight is just so or the cool wind caresses the back of your neck.

It remembers how the scent of fall causes anticipation to bubble up in your soul.

How a park freshly carpeted with undisturbed snow can fill you from your toes to your crown with peace at its silence.

It remembers the way your heart beats a little bit quicker with something indescribable when the early-morning  sun races across the horizon to warm and caress your face in that one particular way.

How the blossoms of the dogwoods sparkle like stars in the moonlight, forming new constellations as they fall around you.

For this is the reason that Nature wields and weaves such a vast palette: not only for the nurturing of life but for the nurturing of the human soul.

A Smile Like Wine

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Her lips were dark like malbec, the smile that tilted them almost coy in its own innocence. They were lips unused to color, unsure of just how to function in it. How widely she may smile, how freely she may laugh. Her lips trembled and stumbled through it until they decided, seemingly of their own volition, that they could not maintain such primness and elected merely for truth of being.

They parted when she laughed, to let her voice ring out. They beamed when she smiled, her teeth flashing brightly against the dark of her smile and catching her bottom lip shyly at times. They flew eagerly, drawing accidentally elegant shapes, when she talked about something of which she was passionate. They fluttered like dark birds in that moment, like the starlings that wheeled in lovely shapes overhead.

Coy innocence. Accidental elegance. Unintentional grace. A wine-dark smile beaming a sun-bright spirit.

 

 

 

 

Coloring a Kiss

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She tastes like sweet red wine and strawberry Chapstick, the smoothness of caramel lingering at the very edge. Darker berries chase happy thoughts, faith, and trust over her tongue. 

He tastes like the bite of dark beer and the lingering heat of wasabi. Thoughts and ideas broad and wide and deep and high coil around his tongue and wreath his head like a fine, white-blue smoke. Or is it the other way around?

Art and magic, science and philosophy, beliefs and needs, thoughts and actions, even what you wear can color a kiss. It’s all part of the memory, part of the storied moment. 

Hints of sweet and spice, splashes of refreshment or a sharp, heated bite, perhaps even more so than your teeth could give. Your thoughts and feelings can slip out in a kiss, for better or worse, no matter how you might try to stop them. It’s like your soul slipping out between your lips, so that someone knows it’s there.  

A Long Way From Home, Day 8: There’s No Place Like Home

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Today is the last day of our visit and the prep to journey home has begun. This morning was packing, tonight will be washing clothes and making sure that everything that came goes home once again. But, in the midst of all of this, I was able to spend a wonderful lunch and long visit afterward with a high school friend of mine and her beautiful baby boy.

It was nice to sit and eat and speak at length with my friend, us trading Mommy stories, our own stories and happenings, and offering insights and encouragements. It was an afternoon that was sorely needed and greatly enjoyed.

A good ending to what has been a refreshingly good trip.