Mushball Brooke

 

I am lucky.

Not in the winning prizes or cakewalks or having the stars align every time I want something way, but in the way that helps me remember that it is not luck at all, but rather, some Higher Being watchin out for me. I’m glad, too, that “some Higher Being” isn’t all He is to me. Plus lots of caring people, lots of access to great beauty, and lots of privilege of circumstance I did not one thing to merit.

Christmas has been different to me this year. The smallest things have made me tear up; I think this is directly proportionate to the permission I have given myself to become a sentimental mushball on account of jrad.

Allowing myself to become a mushball has enriched my life greatly, I should let you know. If you are considering allowing yourself to accept the same fate, I am strongly in favor. This is a promise to love it if you would like to call me, if someone is asking you why the heck you are crying, and are you menstruating, or whatever insensitive question they could possibly pop along your journey of letting yourself become a mushball.

Mushball Brooke is also directly proportionate to Newfound Writer Brooke (I just erased ‘Wannabe’ out of that sentence because I am a writer because I write. That’s it). I’ve let myself free on a lot of accounts this year. Free in harmless, real-meaning-of-freedom categories. Thank you, Universe, for letting me be lucky enough to have time and space and support to try these things out.

Anyway, as luck would have it, I have been a bawlbag all holiday season. I have lost more water sitting at choir concerts or the ward Christmas program or thinking about the Christmas story than probably during the rest of the year combined. I’ve never been one of those people who always had to carry around those little mini-packs of tissues. I am beginning to believe this would be a wise practice.

 

I feel like I’ve arrived, finally, this year.

I’ve been able to internalize things. I’ve been able to let my tender emotions be totally pricked at Chopin and Wordsworth and Angels We Have Heard On High. This pattern I’ve allowed through the latter part of 2009 has seemed to culminate during Christmas and I don’t think it will ever be the same for me again; in a delightful way.

I have let myself finally paint Mary vivid in my mind—how we’re a lot the same, probably. I’ve let myself see every kid as a heaven-sent gem, for REAL. I’ve opened my mind to thinking that the birth of the Savior meant, too, His death and suffering. I’ve allowed myself to mull over these thoughts with no iPod buds in my ears. I’ve contemplated in depth and written, streams of consciousness and very personal thoughts—the kind you want to write in itty bitty writing because you’re still a little scared of them. I’ve let myself be okay blabbing to my mom forever about feelings and mental processes instead of doing my homework right away. All this makes me a better thinker,

and, too,

a better feeler.

I never knew this would be the result of writing and internalizing and talking and contemplating while walking home in the freezing icy bluster, starving and exhausted.

I think we often have no stinking idea what the results of our “starts” will be. I think that is a wonderful thing about living.

Luck really has nothing to do with it. It’s a lot of people working behind the scenes, and somehow I end up getting to be the one riding the wave.