personalblog

at the present moment.

Natalie Price

Time is a funny thing. Right now in our world, there is a pandemic wrecking our bodies, our economy, our mental well-being, our daily schedules, our expectations and much more. With the global outbreak of the Coronavirus, I’ve had countless time to reflect on endless nothings that rabbit trail into all sorts of thoughts. But the main thing I keep coming back to is the concept of time when it comes to my life.

Three weeks ago, I came home from the hospital with our second son. We named him Nolan Graham after longingly expecting his grand arrival. He is perfect to us in every way and I love the joy that newborns bring. Getting to watch each stretch or yawn or infant snore stirs up the best of my emotions. And then when I think about the fact that he joined our family less than a month ago, my mind can’t wrap my head around the right orientation to time.

How can it feel like I’ve never known a life without him and yet I’m just beginning to learn about this little bundle? I then look at my firstborn, Griffin, and find it so hard to recall our lives before he came into the world. But there was a life before. There was just the two of us, Hunter and me. Once before, we were newlyweds starting life together in a world of exciting and yet nervous unknowns.

When I step back to reflect on a short 27 years of life, all at once I can picture myself in the corner of Mrs. Qadeem’s 4th grade class working on a writing assignment and at the same time, I’m a mom of two under two sitting at a desk in the corner our Wisconsin apartment. Time seems to stand still and fly all in the same breath. If I could just hang on to it long enough to really lean in to every moment, I wonder how much more fulfilled my soul would feel. I wrestle with being so many things to so many people while also longing to still be that eleven-year-old girl who was easily invigorated by elementary school writing assignments.

How do you hold the tension well of being present in your life right now and honoring the truest parts of you that have always been intrinsically wired within you? I’m a wife, a mother, an employee, but I’m also creative and find my best self in my writing and other arts. I find value in contributing my distinctive work to the world through creating, leading, and collaborating on ideas. And yet, to name just a few, I am the diaper changer, bath time supervisor, financial investor, and crying calmer to two small humans. My world’s don’t always intersect in a way that confidently assures me that I am valued, or crushing the parenting gig, or producing meaningful matter that ignites people, even if it’s just meant to inspire me.

One of the phrases I hear myself say all too often is, “Before I became a mom..” and I realize I’ve separated my life into their own time-periods based on titles I carry. Before getting married, after having Kid #1 or Kid #2, when I was still working at the salon as a hair stylist, after I became an Executive Coordinator at my job, before I became a work-from-home-mom: all of these are seasons of my life I have subconsciously categorized my experiences in. It’s compelling to me that this is how I would organize my life story, when I so deeply desire to be known by people for who I am instead.

Furthermore, the very thing I want to be known by: my creativity, my thoughts or ideas, my true heart does not get hardly any of my focus. I am not convinced that this is intentional, as so much of my time naturally gets directed toward my marriage, my tiny, tiny children and maintaining order within my home. I’m not looking to be the next best-selling author or inspirational Instagrammer, but I am questioning how to allow myself to be all that I feel called to be while I spend my days cleaning cottage cheese curds off of a high chair tray and scrubbing jumbo crayon scribbles off of my walls.

How do I stop longing to know the girl that was inspired to write about majestic mountains at Sandburg Elementary after gazing at scenic calendar photo on the wall and start becoming that same imaginative girl as I mother a curious toddler? The best qualities of who I was can still be part of who I am if I intentionally hang on to that girl with every new hoop in life I jump through. While I am so grateful for growing in my character and wisdom as a result of my experiences, my hope is to build upon what makes me, distinctively and originally me.

I don’t have all of the answers, but I do have the ambition to keep diving into the depth of my questions and to live in the now. Maybe my wondering will reveal the shadow side of my soul I’ve been hiding away. Perhaps I’ll learn new things about my wiring that will spark more authentic creativity out of me. Maybe I’ll discover what it looks like to appreciate each orientation to time in their own fullness.

The best part about the faith I carry in Jesus is that I follow a God that was with me at my deepest and darkest and present for every moment of my highlight reel. He sits with me, ever intentional and present, even in my investigating and struggle to reason well. He’s already on the other side of my pilgrimage to becoming. So maybe, maybe what I’ll find in trying to discover all of the best characteristics and qualities of me in the midst of my responsibilities and seasons of life, what I’ll really find is more of Him.

Take care & take heart,

Do Less

Natalie Price

One of my favorite videos on the internet is by Trey Kennedy called “Do Less, God Bless“. I fall over laughing every time he references people going to the unnecessary extremes in life that need to do a whole lot less. It’s side-stitching funny to me and “do less” has become a strong phrase in my vocabulary any time I catch people taking things to the extreme.

The irony is that I’m the one that needs to do less. I’m not sure what the main cause of me going into panic mode this week has been, but I feel frantic from a million little things. Not in an anxious way, but more in a desperate-to-control-what-I-can’t kind of way. My feelings are deafening to me and my mouth has yet to figure out what my brain already knows: no amount of talking about what I can’t change is going to solve that very thing.

And yet, here I am. A close family friend who is a licensed therapist told me when I was a middle schooler that I take on feelings three to five times more intensely than the average person. While it was a shocking statement to me, it’s served me well over the years to understand that I at times can be in my own stratosphere of pain, disappointment, frustration, excitement, confusion and every feeling in between. And while it at times it can be comforting to have an explanation for the depth of my emotions, it’s isolating all in the same breath.

But I’m grateful for words. I’m grateful for a second chance at sorting through the magnitude of my feelings that seem to take up rent in my chest while I think out loud on paper. The funny thing about emotions for me is that they always seem to be urgent and don’t stay silent for very long, not usually anyway. To remain quiet for me is to deny authenticity, but to vocalize myself is to be at risk of my heart not landing with safe people who can help steward the weight.

Do you ever get done reflecting on your day, only to conclude that you just weren’t that impressive? I’m forever indebted to the people that take the time to listen to me every time the pendulum swings to the other extreme, but for days especially like today where I just seemed to spew how I felt about people or how situations made me feel threatened and panicked…I would love to do a whole lot less. My massive need to verbally process how things feel can turn into a persuasive speech in a matter of seconds and change the trajectory of how others view the people or situations I feel so fiercely about. I’m very aware of how I need to be slow to speak and quicker to steady my heart so I can actively listen.

So tonight, after a long week of wrestling with the change I consistently resist, my prayer is to get to a posture of doing less, of controlling less, amidst the impossible of feeling less. One of my recurring, subconscious thoughts is that people who have the ability to suppress their feelings are strong, and I am not. I wonder if some people suppress what they feel to avoid exposure to pain and disappointment. I’m just not that good.

I’m pausing on that thought to redirect to the question: What if strength is actually the ability to feel your feelings, but ultimately surrender them to the One who is stronger?

My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:9, New Living Translation

One of the fights of my life will always be between controlling my circumstances so that I can recorrect inadequate feelings I desperately try to avoid — and — surrendering control by sitting in the rubble to purposely, longingly sit closer to the feet of Jesus.

My final question for heaven tonight as I watch the sun set is, “If God designed me to hold so much passion and so many sensitivities, what beautiful picture did he have in mind for me in the way that I steward them?” C.S. Lewis used to say that, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” In my life, I want to be so near to him that he only needs to whisper to me.

May we lead lives that hear the loving whispers of Jesus
as His grace perfects our weaknesses
and fortifies our character.

Take care & take heart,
Natalie

Finding Joy in the Ordinary

Natalie Price

You’ve Got Mail is my favorite movie for many reasons. One of my favorite Kathleen Kelly lines as she is emailing Joe Fox is,

“I like to start my notes to you as if we’re already in the middle of a conversation. I pretend we’re the oldest and dearest of friends–as opposed to what we actually are, people who don’t know each others names.”

You’ve Got Mail, 1998

So as my oldest and dearest friend, I feel safe sharing with you what I am learning as of late. I’d like to go on record and say that my mind is having an incredibly challenging time fully expressing myself. So prepare for me to talk in circles to you in hope that they make some sort of sense.

Several months ago I was on a walk with my dad, something that we do together often. I am the type of person who never wants a conversation to end and he is one who likes an exciting experience to last as long as possible. We make a good team in this way, where he can walk with a freed up mind, and as long as I can keep up with him, I am welcomed to share my endless stream of unfinished thoughts.

One of the things that came out of our conversation is that we need to continuously find joy in the ordinary. As my favorite Podcaster Christy Nockels has worded it: to find the glorious in the mundane. Reading those words sound like a simple to do, but for me, that is probably my biggest challenge in life.

Have you ever experienced the unsettling feeling of something missing from your experience? I get that. For me, that’s when finding joy in the ordinary seems impossible. Knowing what’s missing and not knowing how to fix it is like feeling an itch on your back, but not being able to reach it yourself.

With that being said, it has taken me a while to find myself here. If I had to give a summary of who I think I am at this very present time in my life, words like overwhelmed, doubtful, and weary come to mind.

My name is Natalie and I am learning to press into Jesus’s grace and truth as I wrestle with all of my fears and failures that I’ve let life rent-free in my head for far too long. I’ve believed many lies about myself, especially in this last year. Some of them were simply spoken over me and I crumbled under the weight of not being enough. Some lies I formed for myself in my darkest moments.

I have allowed myself to become and play the victim card for years and I’m finally here because I am exhausted and desperate for something better. Maybe all of this sounds very vague, but if you for any small reason you relate–I hope to pursue the grace and truth of Jesus with you and what that means for our lives.

At the end of the day, I know that I am His. I know that I am beloved as a daughter of the king of the universe. Knowing and believing though, are two separate things. You can know a lot of things without ever believing them in your heart.

So I am Natalie and I am ready to believe in the God who knows exactly who I am, even when I doubt truth. Welcome to the story of grace.