Freezers & Finding Capacity

 

Losing what you know is hard.

My freezer shrunk this spring. After a hard fight, my large, spacious freezer, slowly lost power and finally became more of a fridge than a freezing device. It came at the worst time, as daily highs reached 35+ C consistently, and humidity pushed the thermostat up higher. No matter how much I longed for it to return to its previous, spacious, glory, it just could not!

I am a mom with three children who had to find a solution. There was no time to bargain shop, and I am not an impulsive buyer on a good day, never mind for a larger priced option such as a freezer. I hit Marketplace and Varage Sale running, and found the cutest, tiniest solution.

She is small. So small. I easily stuffed her in the van and brought her home, anticipating the best, putting all my attention on getting her going. Next, I carefully arranged all the pieces in her cold cavern and closed the lid. It fit. Well, kind of. Each day I need something, I find myself muttering at the threshold of my freezer, as I move cold packages around with stretchy mitts on my hands, searching for that bag of peas I was sure was in there somewhere. I found that every day I needed something from her, it was unpacking and repacking all over again. It made simple things like grabbing peas, become a 15-minute commitment, minimum.

When life doesn’t fit well.

It makes me consider the way capacity works and how it affects our emotional state as well. I feel like this has been a season of squishing all my emotional capacity into a tiny space. Every time I need to process anything, it takes more time. I have to move around feelings, questions, opinions, and thoughts, to access the emotional piece I need to complete my processing. Then I need to carefully re-arrange all the pieces back together again. It makes life feel more complicated and completely exhausting.

Then there are moments when someone demands a response on the spot. Suddenly, frozen food is flying haphazardly from my emotional space and injuring those around me. It damages the other pieces that fall into crevices they don’t fit and it leaves me feeling empty and exposed.

Capacity is defined as the maximum amount that something can contain or the amount that something can produce.

My friends, we are all stretched on our capacity these days. No matter your stance, there has been increasing demand to squish ourselves into spaces that are uncomfortable and foreign. It makes everyday life seem fuller and more demanding even as we try to stick to daily basics. As we wait for our capacity to expand, we must be patient. SO patient. We must extend patience to ourselves and to others around us. Small things can push someone past their capacity so quickly. It’s not an over-reaction rather it’s survival – the body’s way of saying it is done and in need of rest.

Be kind to others and yourself, dust off grace and forgiveness, and leave some space up there in your beautiful mind.