At the tender young age of 31, I was formally diagnosed with ADHD. This is a brain function about which people hear a lot, but really not a lot of people understand. It's simple in some ways and really complex in most others. If I were to offer an explanation so brief it borders on crass, I would offer you this: we live in a world of lists. Whether we make them willingly or not or whether we make them consciously or not doesn't matter. Those lists are there. A neuro-typical brain (yep - mine is physically wired differently) will see their world of lists and begin to prioritize each item and complete tasks as they are able and willing. If you are an ADHD brain, you see your list, but the tasks on it don't step into line...like not at all, depending on your severity. Then, the hard part is, not only do you see your current list as one big blob of "need to do", but you think about past lists you didn't complete AND future lists....all at the same time.
Gets very noisy, my friends. Not literal noise. It's like noise in your focus not in your ears. So I require some extra things to help me quiet my brain and force the mental connections that can't happen on their own. I have been repairing this part of my life with fervor recently, and something just struck me. The thing that can be the greatest theft in the life and mind of someone with ADHD is the ability to live in...this...moment.
I remember being in high school and my dad getting so frustrated with me that he said "Sarah! You don't have to worry about EVERYTHING!" True but incomplete. I SHOULDN'T worry about everything, but I kind of didn't have a choice. He wasn't frustrated with me. He was frustrated FOR me because he could see that I was completely caught up in finding solutions for problems that didn't even yet exist. I distinctly remember feeling frustrated for the sake of the neighborhood where we lived and mapping out a plan for its revitalization....I was 15. I shake my head now, but my diagnosis at 31 helped give a lot of context.
But I'm here now. I'm not 15 anymore. I'm old enough to be the parent of someone at least that old. I'm not a person sloshing through futility with the mud of my lists and plans and dreams and concerns. I'm learning now, and will until I'm dead, how to let my brain sit and organize all the puzzle pieces so they make a picture instead of a mess. Some of my learning has been in realizing that I am able to engage the beauty and purpose of this moment - just this one.
I am a very typical type A. I'm very driven. I'm a multiple time entrepreneur (1st go around I co owned a web design firm with my dad. Lots of free lance makeup work. Current pursuit is my store). I...do not give up. Stubborn. Iron will. Whatever you want to call it. (My husband is an iron will as well. Iron sharpens iron is never more true than in our home. Oh life...you are a funny thing, yes?)
Sidenote: above are all very prevalent characteristics of people with ADHD. So if your child is failing classes, doesn't focus enough to do well in school and seems to be chaos personified, take a seat and let your heart slow down. She's gonna be just fine, honey. She's gonna rise up and push till she gets what she wants. You just teach her how to figure out what it is that she wants!...also get a psychiatrist to help. Listen there are experts in this field for a reason, and if your brain functions differently than 93% of the reported human population, there is nothing run of the mill about you. You (or your child) are going to need the help of an expert. What you have is rare and precious. Treat it as such.
Now with all this tenacity comes, like I said, a very busy mind. If we learn how to harness it, we do realize that we have this moment, and there is beauty in it.
I used to think of "living in the moment" as having a cast of very selfish hedonism over it. Really sort of lumping together "living IN the moment" and "living FOR the moment". I'm a bit sad now that I did that, but I have discovered that I have more chances, right?
So I'm beginning to live life differently. I'm not just quieting my mind. I am aggressively eliminating noise. If there is something that does not grow my spirit or actually attacks it, I cut it out. I disallow it. Listen some of this is hard. Negative self talk that was supplied to you from a place of disease that is rooted in hell is hard to choke out, but it can be done. All of that is a root that, if you don't feed it with opportunity and the air of your own lungs, will die. Every time.
Now I am coming back to a place that my soul has visited before, but I see it with new eyes as often happens when we get a little older. I'm noticing intricacies in my circumstances that I've never noticed until now, and Truth Himself is giving me clearer vision about the things that surround me here - in this place to which I've come before.
So now I see. I see the new things blossoming in my path. I notice roots that cannot be allowed to grow. I can smell the fragrance of all that I'm meant to become from the heart of the One Who writes my story and holds me in His hand.
Listen my eyes will always dance when they are given an array of dazzling tasks and dreams. That part has pushed me through some very stormy days, so I hope that parts always thrives. But I've added this now - this thing of being here and being now and looking around hard, so I soak in every bit - to live in this moment, because there will never come one like it again, and this one holds for me a purpose.
