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Several years ago, my daughter and son in law began looking for a home for themselves and their family of three children. They had outgrown their little starter home over the years and with the addition of more children, more toys, and more worldly possessions, the walls started closing in around them. Looking for a new home had become a necessity, not a luxury.
I was single at the time, lived in the home where I had raised my daughter after divorce, and was as settled in as a hibernating bear. My rhythm of days, weeks and months had emerged and there was soon an almost spiritual sense of ease for me there. I knew pretty much where everything was in the home, having lived there so long and it was no feat to lay my hand on anything I needed, even in the attic, within record time if retrieval was required. Since the day I moved in around 1993, the utensil drawer was under the counter where the microwave sat. There was a small junk drawer near the fridge containing a messy mixture of small tools, garage door openers, bits of this and scraps of that, keys that matched “something” and random screws, washers, nuts and bolts in a beat up box. Next to it was a drawer of herb informational manuals, canning books (I had not canned in years by this time), a few old recipes, parts to a Vitamixer used during my catering days, and a manual for a bread machine I no longer owned…but it had good recipes in it, so it made the cut. I will insert here, I no longer cooked to speak of due to my singleness.
Cabinets next to sink were for dinnerware and glasses, and flatware? Underneath that cabinet of course to ease the Thanksgiving and Christmas family gatherings both in the setting of tables, and washing and putting away of the clean dishes afterwards. It had always stayed the same, never varied, for over 20 years. And now I was offering to break the synching of my surroundings and develop a rhythm with 5 other people. I offered the short term solution of helping them liquidate their home, pack up and come live in my home a short time while searching for new digs, and then planned to help them re-establish elsewhere under their own new roof as I went back handily without much interruption to my own years old rhythm. But God had other plans.
My children and grandchildren stayed in my home with me for 4 rather unsynched years. During this time there were many struggles, both concerning the squeezing of bodies into my 1900 square foot home, along with all the possessions necessary to the raising of children and homeschooling, 4 vehicles, tools, lawn care equipment and everything else you can imagine and maneuvering the normal struggles of combining 2 families with different ideas and philosophies of life to a great degree. My daughter, by default, did most of the cooking in that home during their tenure, so she rearranged the kitchen, with my permission of course, to suit her cooking style and needs. With such a large family, preparatory ingredients were crammed into every available space, sippie cups and plastic items replaced my dinnerware, corn flakes and 25 pound bags of organic flour and rice were shoved under the buffet in the kitchen. The laundry room cabinets held an assortment of light bulbs and washing powders and such as always, but also embraced an invasion of back stock of juices, snacks for the allergy-impaired grandchild, and containers of shelf stable soy milk. We worked around a day sleeping Daddy during those years, constantly hushing children, daughter always having to remember to get her clothing and necessities for the day out of the bedroom before Dad went to sleep so as not to disturb him during the day. Little things…all little microscopic things…added up to a big deal if we forgot the pattern of life and neglected to sync up all the players in this drama.
I had my space which included the master bedroom and bath. I sold furniture, downsized what I had and relocated my office there often replete with all kinds of grubby boxes full of trinkets I dragged in daily as I was selling on ebay. I made you tube videos there when day sleeper was up and baby #4 wasn’t asleep (she arrived in the midst of this chaos). The bewitching hour was between 3:30 and 6 when this could take place, but bath time conducted right next to my room for the big kids overlapped this time frame, so that added to the background noise in my videos. I learned to just throw out the disclaimer “my grandchildren live with me, you may hear them” and plow on. I trained my audience as I trained myself, to sync with the current wild rhythm of those living with me.
Somehow during all this turmoil and craziness, we decided we liked living together and began talking about moving to a larger home together if we could locate one with an apartment or mother-in-law’s wing so I could have privacy but we could all be available to each other as needed. We listed my home, and it sold within 3 days, with the stipulation of us clearing out within a 3 week period of time. We had not yet located a new home, although we had looked a bit. Appropriate living conditions were scarce especially in the case of a proposed separate space for me. I saw my many years home going away (I had signed the contract which was a full price offer, a no brainer), we had no interim housing to be found for a family as large as ours, and we had no new place to go. The nomad lifestyle was beginning to look a bit grim. I began to doubt the overall plan and its wisdom. I was frightened by the feelings I was having of my old safe place of life being torn asunder from my control and my spiraling off into the unknown abyss of who knows what. While we were packing for a life change I was beginning to doubt heavily, we all fell sick, one after the other, with a mysterious condition that slammed us to the mat and stopped all movement for days on end. Packing chores were slowed, the two estate sales we had planned were conducted by a sheer miracle in between the sicknesses, son in law could only help on weekends due to his work. We also had a myriad of issues with plumbing, a broken garage door, and car repairs, and I am sure a lot of things that I have just blanked out on now. Looking back I can almost feel the moving anxiety creep up even when I read about that period of time. I felt out of sync, out of touch, and was fast running out of hope. But as with everything else in my life, God had plans to help me adjust and sync to my new normal in spite of my old fear of being out of the control of things. It was a big emotional timeline moment of “let go and let God”, and I had to trust Him with the process.
And when I let go, almost as quietly as a feather on a spring breeze, my soul began to sync with God’s plan, rather than mine. We all began to fall into sync from the oldest down to the baby. We found temporary accommodations at the Hilton. We located our dream home in a 48 hour period of selling my home. Our raw emotions began to heal, and we felt ourselves sync again with each other and our surroundings. We got packed, all things fell into a peaceful place, and now a year later we live in a perfect combination of privacy and easy availability to each other.
Now I spend my days working around GiGi’s bungalow, as the grandchildren dubbed it, or enjoying the playful antics of my grandchildren from the garage window where my business items have been relocated along with my office. The rest of the family lives in the main house and there is no more disturbing the sleep of either the adult or baby who both sleep through the sync of my daughter’s homeschooling and housewifely days around them. There is a peacefulness here, a joy, a thankfulness due to the synching of the souls that came together, pushed through difficulties and came out the other side pretty much unscathed and content.
We all fight God’s path to synching our lives with Him and His choices for us. In our relationships, jobs, or daily decisions, we find ourselves stepping away from our best because we try to control everything. We tether ourselves to what we believe we should be doing rather than deferring to the power of the Savior to give us who and what we need, when we need it. If what we see doesn’t fit the plan we had, we convince ourselves it is not valid, it is a distraction, it is not worthy of contemplation.
But we are so wrong. Divine interruptions sync us to our next moment.
When we see obstacles, God sees opportunities. When we see chaos, God sees comfort. When we see a disruption, God sees our innermost desires fulfilled. I had to allow for the total upheaval of my former life to realize it was no longer working for me, even though I really thought it was. It was all part of the grand plan for the move to be difficult to prepare for, so we could feel confident in the combining of homes and family later. It had to “not feel good” for a while, in order to feel perfect later. Un-synching from old beliefs and thoughts is like childbirth. Much are the pains of the labor, it gets messy, it feels scary and unplanned, and even a bit out of hand and un-synched for a while. But as we let God do His work, and we stay out of the way…the letting go of the ashes of our old life is ultimately and only where the synching beauty of our next journey can begin.
It is 82 degrees here in the South today, so my daughter piled all four grandlittles into the Mommy wagon and headed for the zoo. They homeschool, so you can do that. Work sheets came out as soon as they buckled in and math, language will be accomplished on the way to the zoo, then maybe Shakespeare by audio on the way home. Home education is all about working with what you have, when you have. In the end, homeschoolers are by far more socially adjusted in most cases having their experiences shared by people of all ages, and academically they give any institution a run for their money with results due to the one-on-one time and investment the parent/teacher is willing to make coupled with the way the student is taught in the way he or she needs to learn and not “by the book”.
The Memphis Zoo has changed a lot since I was a child. I have photos of myself sitting on the concrete animals outside of the rhino area, very low fences surrounding the exhibits that could easily be stepped over and conquered by any inquisitive 3 year old. The caged animals like lions and monkeys participated with their ticket paying captors, peering queerly as we pitched popcorn and other approved goodies into the cages, we in turn watching them sniff and eventually devour our offerings. Often you would see one or more of the animals in cages lumber past, never acknowledging the crowds, the food, nor the clamor for their attention. It was as if they had been desensitized to the life around them. It makes me wonder if it was due to their imposed surrounding more than their actual brute nature. Some had been brought to captivity, some had been born there, but both groups had succumbed to their fate. Of all the zoo’s exhibits, these were the least entertaining, least engaged, and least animated of the animals. They usually had the smallest crowds due to their uninviting nature.
We as people can easily become much like these sad ones. We allow ourselves to disentangle from society and even often family, friends and loved ones as we castrate our emotions, and go into self-protection mode if we ever experience a hurt. We wear the countenance of an unapproachable being long enough and others actually stop approaching. We have unwittingly but by design become an emotional eunuch in our cage of self protection.
God created the animals on the sixth day in the Bible, which is the same day Man was created, but animals were created first. They were to be food, perform biological duties like procreation within their species but eventually they would consume each other in an effort to remain on the planet. Even Man himself consumed the animals. The sole purpose of the life cycle of the animals was to live, procreate, die without any emotional investment or ties.
But Man had other purposes, among them to care for the planet, vegetation, wildlife. But when Woman and others appeared on the planet, Man’s job broadened to take charge of those under his care. They were to be fed, clothed after the Fall, sheltered, and loved. What was Man’s expected ROI (return on investment) for his care? Respect, honor, submission, and ideally a return of gratitude and love.
Many of us have grown up under the authority of emotionally distant parents or been involved in relationships that encouraged an air of emotional distance between us and another person. We quarantine ourselves off later in life as we imitate what we knew growing up, even though we didn’t like the emotional distance and ignoring of the basics that occurred in our primary relationships. We become emotional eunuchs, much like the animals….pacing back and forth, watching but never participating in any valuable way with anyone around us, or worse…flying under the radar so no one would notice us, reach out and make us interact in a socially edifying and building kind of way for either ourselves or others around us. We float through years and eat, sleep, drink…sometimes too much…just trying to survive to the end of our personal loneliness and pain. We don’t strive to deal with anything or anyone. We take no chances and encourage no conversations. We create faux protections against getting hurt if we happen to let the cloak slide and someone sees inside the real “us”.
Emotional eunuchs all have one common trait…they all live a starvation life by choice and call it fullness. Ironically, the world often sees them as full, content, accomplished, functioning humans because that is the exhibit emotional eunuchs invite others to attend. They pull the “correct” people into their own circle who are willing to buy that ticket, nothing more, nothing less. And many times a higher price is paid than first imagined.
God said, right before Eve was created, one of the most important statements in the Bible in my thinking, right next to verses about God’s gift of salvation. He said “ It is not good that Man should be alone.” Usually this is seen through the filter of the man/woman relationship, but I think it is broader than that. I believe it is simply we all need each other whether we think so or not. Emotional distance taught doesn’t need to be caught and carried on into our own lives. We can choose to break that cycle as a deep and lasting way to worship our God, care for our fellow man, and love ourselves as God commands when He admonishes to love our neighbors AS OURSELVES.
As I find myself time to time slipping back into the old cages, I try to keep short accounts with myself. Why am I displaying old behaviors? What is the hot button being pushed emotionally for me right now in this particular situation and is it valid? Where have I castrated my emotions and need to experience some healing and give myself grace to “be not alone”?
Every day we are given a chance, as that three year old, to step over the low lying fence of our inhibitions, draw near to the cage keeping us out and others in, and become the key that unlocks the door for all of us. Then the world changes, and we begin to engage with those around us in a more meaningful way. We may get hurt, we may not. But we are not meant to live a life alone. It is a big ole beautiful world out there, waiting for us to join its creation. We may find the key, or be called to be a key for another, or perhaps both.
Today marks the third day of confirmation hearings for a new Supreme Court judge. Many in the public have had no contact or very little with the nominee and her positions, although she has operated within the legal field for years, and distinguished herself among her colleagues. She has finally come to a place to “get noticed” at the highest level in her chosen field by the recommendation of others. This has come when she already has a full life, it will not make or break her and her own path personally. Confirmation will only allow her to be a factor in the lives of others. Most Americans know who she is without knowing her in a deep way at all. As per the past confirmation hearings, there has been a very public discourse which included heated questioning, haggling over minute or unfounded issues, and often glaring disregard for the real matter at hand…a choice of a justice as viewed though a lens of better or worse.
It is politics after all.
But this method of determining of who people say they are, as opposed to who they really are, is vital in the justice confirmation process, and will result in the right choice. Why? Each nominee has been scrutinized through all types of means to get a clear picture. We could lob a few easy questions or allow the legislature or President to just assign our judges, but what would we really end up with in the end? Would this give us the unwavering confidence in those chosen to make good legal decisions on our behalf as a people? Likely not, it would be a superficial relationship at best, a constant exercise of keeping our fingers crossed, hoping we haven’t made a grave error in the choosing.
I have been thinking lately about how this corresponds to all life relationships, whether marriage, friendship, business or otherwise. A new someone enters our life almost daily unless we are a social hermit. During the covid crisis, this has been the case for many, the “hermitizing” I mean. I have even wondered if the pandemic and enforced necessity to stay at home more was merely a divine interruption, encouraging more self reflective opportunities for each of us. It would be interesting to take a survey to see how many of us have used our quiet time to reflect on past choices, relationships, and pursuits, and our part in the success or seeming failure of them.
I have been fortunate to reconnect with not one, but two friends from my high school and college years recently. With the college friend, I have had some conversations that are fun and silly, exclusively lighthearted, but will really provide no lasting depth to our current relationship. I have enjoyed each exchange, true. But I haven’t had to commit much to thought afterwards when we talk, and I have come to realize even in college, when we were very close and knew all about each other (or so I believed at the time), our friendship was very myopic /nearsighted. It only dealt with things that were instantly at hand and then quickly gone. We never really delved into who the other was, so I guess that is why when we each ceased to be there for the other (that friend moved away during college), it really left no deep impact on me one way or other over time. I married early, set forth on that portion of my life, and that friend went off into the sunset for 40 plus years.
In contrast, the high school friend I remembered, but didn’t know well at that time. We shared some classes, teachers, but never really were in the same circle of influence as far as peers…or so we thought. When we started talking recently, we have found more and more people we were each friends with during that period of time, albeit separately, but our own paths never really entwined in a distinctive friendship then. Our conversations have become very different than mine with the first friend. Although both started out the same, lighthearted and simple… the second friend and I have strayed into a bit deeper conversations, some that have caused me to think, and challenged me somewhat. Also in contrast, those conversations are more likely to come to mind during the day than the ones with the college friend.
It’s funny. I can’t really tell you what the college friend have talked about because it has lacked imagination in its nearsightedness and was more a rehashing of what was, and not what is or will be, and is the same friendship it was 40 years ago in all likelihood…here today, gone tomorrow, no harm and no foul. We were nearsighted then, we are nearsighted now. I am okay with that, and unchanged by the truth of it. It is what it is.
The high school friend’s conversations? More hyperopic /farsighted, kind of like our interaction during school days. The mutual friends and experiences then are acting as lenses to see each other in a different way now, and is giving me a different perspective on so many things over the last 40 years including these two people. I think back to how many friends I had both in lower grades of school and through my high school years, dated a lot, was involved in a lot of organizations and so forth…but rarely were any brought very close at all by choice. Even today I have very few people that I am close to or let into my circle, but my general public would think otherwise. I seem to be the person who is friends with everyone, “socially butterflying” here and there, but in reality not close to most in a lasting way.
In reflecting on both these friendships, I wish I had applied a “better or worse” lens back in school and college in making all my friendships. I regret I didn’t utilize more of even shallow friends to help clear my vision to see situations more clearly before they came to fruition. I think it may have even affected some of my latter decisions in life if I had developed a better discernment muscle then with a “confirmation hearing” of sorts on each relationship right at the beginning. I may have asked more piercing questions, watched others longer, reflected on my own inadequacies more deeply and honestly instead of focusing on the here and now when looking for just and good companions on my life path.
But then again, in not applying a ”better or worse” lens then and instead using past experience as the lens now I will see everything much more clearly. I love living my days now with an ability to simply look at things and people up close, and also far away, but with no more crossed fingers at my sides. Clarity delayed is still beneficial, even if the better must come after the worse. Perspective and time gives us a real and unadulterated look at ourselves in communion with what may be around the bend in the road. And it is often truly eye-opening…
The old saying is “God has a sense of humor”. If you ask me, He also has quite a sense of timing when dealing with His children.
Today is February 4th.
On this day 20 years ago, a relationship was invited into my life that proved to be life-changing…not in a good way. It almost proved my undoing for the next 5 years. But looking back on it today, I realized I found out a lot about myself through all that period of time. Ultimately it made me into the person I am today, who is pretty content because she learned what she didn’t want as much as what she did want. This was my moment “for a reason”.
On this day in 2005, I had my first date with my future husband. We are still friends, albeit as he says “on different journeys”. This has been my moment “for a season”.
On this date in 2011, I officially began the Got Junk In Our Trunk estate company where I helped countless people change their own lives with a skill God gave me years ago, that I didn’t even really know I possessed.I continue in a different way matching people up with cool finds, loving my job, planning to do this as long as I feel physically and mentally able. It gives me a creative outlet for writing, which is a first love for me. This has been my moment “for a lifetime”.
Today is February 4th…I am staying in, working on my lifetime stuff, enjoying the birds and reflecting on why I am who I am today, why I am where I am, why I am not where I want to be. Maybe I will look back in 10 years and think “On this date in 2020, XXX took place and changed my life.”
Hopefully it will be something good.
I am very much a Type A personality, so I really don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I kind of resolve all during my waking hours.
That said I do make plans, have wishes, hopes based on what transpired or didn’t transpire in my life over the last 365 days (next year I have an extra day to consider).
2019 saw a difference in my family with the birth of grandchild # 4, Marjorie. We are finishing up her first year on January 4th and all the “getting used to her” is pretty much a given. I hope 2020 to spend more time one on one with her so she will remember me when I am gone. I may or may not see her grow up and marry and have children and reach her own family state , so now is a more important time to spend with her than it was with the others I think at the same age.
2019 saw me downsize my estate business, then pretty much close up shop on it. It was and is a good feeling and one of the things I determined to do in 2019. 2020 I want to move forward with the online selling, but not
necessarily gear up volume as much as be pickier with my purchases, redeem my work time with more focusing, set myself some work hours that “cut off”. I want to make more money, but work smarter this year!
2019 I sold my home of almost 27 years and moved into a totally different home, city and lifestyle. The last few months of 2019 saw my time fly away, and my body groan with the physical necessities that moving entails. In 2020 I want to ease back into the master plan….more Rhonda time in my little bungalow, time to read, reflect, write and do things that have been on the back burner for years. 2020 will see me saying “no” more often than in the past to good things because I want only to say “yes” to the great things. That may be difficult. I love to go and do and see and experience. But I have really noticed since moving and settling in a new home, I crave the time to just feed the birds, sit outside, take walks, investigate things. You cannot do that if you are #1 not home, and #2 not engaged in your own life at home. I plan to allow myself to get diverted less often, and focus more on my simple pleasures. I may lose playmates here and there, but I guess that will have to be ok. I have found that like my own company.
I want to choose more wisely how I spend my minutes and with whom… for those become hours, then days, then years. It doesn’t mean I don’t love others, I just need more white space in my life so I can love better, and that most likely involves me not “attending” every event, or filling in every calendar page, or scheduling time off.
I want to find my place to plug in at church, meet new people, do new things…but only if they fit the master plan. That’s only fair to us both.
Lastly, I want to put away the last remnants of the past that have held my mind in bondage and free myself up to be ok with the Lord, ok with my fellow man, ok with myself. I am over “it” whatever “it” is or was, I am on to new things. No more ruminating over things that were not great at the time, but gave me good checkpoints for the future I want to live.
As I move into my 60th year (dang that is a long time to live, eh?) and celebrate that birthday, I want to do so gracefully and choose now to do so in “quietness and trust, gaining strength”, as it says in Isaiah 30:15.
My word for 2020 as my page turns? Calmness.
Some days I find myself in a funk. Many times I can determine what placed me there, other times not so much. More often than not, the heaviness and big black cloud overhead is caused by my choices during the current day, or even a series of choices from the week leading up to the yucky day. It takes some real time, effort and skill to grow a beautiful mass of feeling sorry for yourself.
Bad feelings are bred in many ways. It is found in how we talk to others. It is found in what we spend our time on. It is plopped down in the middle of who we embed ourselves in the company of on a routine basis. If we spend our time procrastinating, steeped in idle gossip, or giving into Debbie Downer head talk, then it is no wonder our days go from ok to “meh” in about 3.2 seconds.
I was reminded of this recently when a cable repairman came to my home. I was not in the best of moods but this older man was pleasant enough and kept up a friendly chatter although I was really not in the mood to establish a conversation with him. I just wanted my cable fixed. I had been having the same issues for many months, had been dealing with modem problems, resorted to using the hotspot on my phone just to get my work done at all, and I had finally just bit the bullet and resorted to calling the cable company out to repair it. I had gotten to the point when I sat down at my computer, no matter the time of day, I was already feeling a rising anxiety thinking I may or may not be able to complete the online work I needed to do in the session because I would lose connection halfway through so many times. I had been the same old route over and over…I knew the most common scenario by heart. Start and stop…start and stop…
My repairman was of Hispanic nationality, and had a very thick accent, so I found myself having to listen a bit more intently to understand him when he was explaining what the problem was with my internet. All I knew was I had a deep frustration over the modem clicking on and off eleventy-million times a day. But he was going through the whole gamut of what the problem was, why I was experiencing the issues, how he planned to repair it and what the final result would be.
I was wondering why he was even taking the time to explain all of it to me when he said ” You know…this cable company…they have new rules. They take us through the big hoops. They have us come out again and again. It fixes no problem.” He shook his head and then said “I been doing this cable company 10 years. I know what fix it, they not know how to go in straight line.” I must have looked confused for a moment because then he said ” I tell my wife ‘it make no good sense. They do this (reaching over his head with his right hand to touch his left ear) to fix when they could easy do this (reaching with his left hand to touch his left ear).’ ”
I laughed so hard when he said that. And you know, later after he fixed everything and left I had thought “Yeah, that’s just what I’ve been doing for months. Just creating chaos and hardship for myself.” By not calling right away I had spent months working in frustration and anxiety when I could have had it fixed, as it is now, and running like a champ.
I began to think about how many ways I frustrate myself. I listen to others fuss and complain about people they work for instead of just changing the subject quickly. I entertain idle gossip about another business owner or friend instead of stepping in or stepping up and shutting down the conversation in lieu of something more uplifting. I let paperwork pile up and then sigh when I see the stacks of unfinished business on my desk on a day when I could have been outside in the garden or spending time with my grandchildren. Rather than stopping a gossiping offender, I let others’ conversations go on hoping they will just monitor themselves and quit on their own. I become the dumping ground for them, then they walk away and I feel like a garbage can because I have heard too much, and it raised my level of stress internally, and they didn’t even realize what that conversation had done to both me and our own relationship. Rather than taking an hour daily to work on paperwork, I think I will eventually get to it, and shove it to the side waiting for a block of time that never comes.
It’s time to change that. No more creating chaos by doing or not doing something the simplest way. I am bound and determined to find my path of least resistance that I have waiting for me out there! Most of the time, the path to my inner peace is the the one closest to me and speaks to me, I just need to lend it my ear.
Do you ever have the days you feel like you are hitting a rock wall? I do. Sometimes it is weeks, months or even years of it. I have a problem, an issue, a long time “thing” that bugs me or controls me or worries me. It makes me fret, moan and groan and become otherwise hyper-focused on it. I spend money, waste time, flap my jaws and talk about it, purchase books, magazines, and sit in webinars about it, cry into my beer (or diet coke) with friends and try to solve it…but when all is said and done, I seem to never really get anywhere in taking care of the problem or the root issue.
My health, in particular my weight, was one (and only one) of these kinds of issues for me. I’d get to the point of really dedicating myself to it. This was the scenario….I’d back way up from the rock wall issue of my weight, look at it hard, steady my focus on it. My adrenaline would run high. I’d hunker down determined to tackle it, the ball would get snapped, and I’d take off and fly down my field…only to hit the rock wall with my shoulder and fall back flat. As I lay there dazed and wondering why the latest thing I tried didn’t work, I’d let my failure to succeed become my failure to even try anymore.
But one day, I had a simple epiphany, if you will. I realized the rock wall was really me. I started to envision myself not running, but walking at first. Then as I got closer to the rock wall, I’d jog, start to sprint, and then by the time I’d hit the wall I’d be running full force. I was expending all my energy before on the front end of the running and by the time I actually reached the wall, I was hitting it with the least amount of force I had left in me instead of the other way around. So I decided to do little things, not great huge sweeping things like cleaning the pantry out of all the bad food. I’d just give up one favorite item at a time and replace it with a new one. That was a start, it was walking it out and not trying to run before I could walk easily. Once I got started, I could see it coming easier and I increased my speed, I started losing weight very consistently, and found I loved the way I felt because it wasn’t exhausting me mentally or physically to do so.
I also changed the way I viewed the wall (me). I started to see myself after I busted through the impending wall, rather than my running and approaching it. There is something magical that happens inside when you do this and see yourself through your problem rather than just approaching it. You see success instead of experiencing the moments of “will I be able to do this?” And you say “Yes, I CAN” a whole lot more.
I never really connected why this time has been so much easier for me to lose and stay focused than the millions of times before until I saw this picture of my grandson Isaac from the park the other day. My daughter said he went through the rock hole, came out the other side and said “tada!”. The hole was already there, he knew he could do it, he went through easily, and tada was how he felt. He didn’t wonder if he could make it, he just DID IT because he saw himself through it already. In the past I had seen myself in every way, but never already through the rock wall. This time…I saw the hole in the rock and I saw myself coming through the other side. And I love living my new tada life! 🙂
Today was a day I had been working up to for a week. Don’t know why, don’t really know where it started…but a minute at a time, experience here and frustration there had finally culminated into a day Alexander would have been proud of. You know the guy I mean…”Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”.
I got up with a full slate of things to do, not only today, but really the entire week. This was my first real work day since the holidays, and I needed to hit the floor running. But discontent had become my friend over the last several days and my mood was negative to say the least. So being chipper and positive about going back to work today…even work that I totally enjoy…was not destined to happen.
Early last week I had made several sales through the resale sites. But I had also had more than my share of stand ups and real flakes I had been forced to deal with, and each one just added fuel to the cranky fire. I’d have a good talk with myself, pull up the bootstraps, and then another would bow out on their pick up or pass on an item too late for me to offer it to another person. This had not been my experience at all with the resale sites, so it was discouraging.
From there, a chain of things began to happen. I found out something about someone close to me that was upsetting and a cringe of new disappointment in this person every time they crossed my mind began a pattern for the week. A different person criticized me with absolutely no cause another day and I felt angry and fed up and had a whole lot of head talk going on, and more than once said “to heck with it AND you”. A third group of circumstances happened, and I felt taken advantage of and unappreciated. I wasn’t sleeping well, I was waking tired and anxious. I would wake feeling like a fat lady was sitting on my chest, and I hadn’t felt that in years. To top off the week, I was balancing the checkbooks and realized I somehow taken money out of my account balance as if I had paid a bill online, but then forgot to pay it, so a late fee occurred. I hate it when that happens, don’t you? There were other things, but today…well…it was the grandaddy of it all. Or at least it felt that way on the heels of all the other incidents.
I went to the shop and had a no show on a pick up, even though I had reminded the person and could see they had picked up my message, but chosen not to reply to my “we are still on aren’t we?”. I was frustrated to the hilt and mad. Never mind that the other three folks showed up just as they said they would, were happy with their purchases and complimentary of our shop. I was laser-focused on the one who didn’t keep her word.
Then, I decided to stock the floor a bit and two items I had purchased just today crumbled in my hands today before I could get them out on the showroom floor. Frustration again.
Swinging by to get a soft drink and head out to try and find costuming for my granddaughter’s upcoming theater show, I climbed back into the car. I still don’t know how, but 30 ounces of that 32 ounce diet coke came out of the bottom of the cup, filled the cup well in the van, went into my seat (you remember how cold it was today right?) and started seeping into the carpet. And no paper towels or anything to mop up the mess in the car was to be found. I had pulled into the parking lot of Goodwill, the third place to try and find costuming, and had not found one items on the list as yet, and her show is next week. I was fussing in my mind because we had just gotten the list last week, I don’t have time for this, yada yada. Then the coke thing. Sigh.
I pulled out of that parking lot, narrowly missed getting sideswiped by some lunatic on a cell phone and barely missed a monster pothole on the other side. By this time, I was getting to the point of DONE.
I pulled into the parking lot of the thrift store where my friend was working and begged some paper towels, vented a bit, then got in the car to make one more attempt to find the costume pieces I needed. As I sat there for a minute, I felt like I was going to burst out in tears, and I am not that type in most cases. But I had just saturated to the point I didn’t want to do anything, be anything, or care anymore. And I actually sat there and voiced it out loud saying “What on earth is going on????” It is humorous to say it here, but I suddenly felt like God said ” I was kinda wondering the same thing, kiddo…what on earth is going on in you?”
So I sat. I didn’t analyze, I didn’t rant and rave, I didn’t cry, I didn’t try and figure it out. I just sat and let whatever it was just drift away in that moment. And I started to laugh, just a tiny snicker at first, but then it got the point of a hard, deep laugh. Yes, Rhonda…what on earth was going on in you? Pretty much nothing that I would even remember a week from now, but I was letting it ruin and rule a potentially great day and all because I had started a stream of self-pity a week ago that I had failed to stop feeding somewhere along the way. It had grown fat and lazy and had begun to think it was here to stay. But in that one moment of laughter, I decided it had to go.
I prayed to have a good day from there forward, and even threw in a little prayer I’d find the items for the theater show. And you know, I did…in the very next store there they were. Hanging side by side were the three pieces in the correct sizes. I wasn’t in that store 5 minutes and was done with the shopping. Before the pity purge I had about talked myself out of my next item on the list….standing in the Wally World returns line….but changed my mind and took a chance since I had made the start on turning my day inside out. That return line was ginormous, long and winding around four registers and down the front aisle toward the doors. I hesitated for a moment, then took my place behind an older gentleman. Everyone before him and everyone after me in line were complaining and fussing, sighing heavily and so forth, but I was silent and watched him as he greeted each person that passed by the returns line, tipping his cap to the ladies, patting kids on the head. He was in the same yucky line as everyone else, was making the best of it, and it wasn’t affecting his personal day at all. But he was affecting mine, and I was grateful for that little old man where I may not have noticed him at all if I had been standing there an hour earlier. I would have been too busy sighing and griping myself.
On the way home I thought about that little old man. He may have had the same kind of week I had been experiencing, but he chose to allow the good parts, like sweet cream, to rise to the top and just enjoy his God-given day, and went even further to help others enjoy their day too by his pleasantries By reaching out to involve them as they passed by, he was the person who gained the most.
So, I made a decision to do the same. I picked up the phone, sent a message to my daughter and told her I was going to pick up my granddaughter for a few days. Yes, even with this really packed out week of errands and getting ready for a shop sale this weekend pending on the schedule book, and a house that is way messy and needs my attention. I did it because Lorelai needed time with me, but I really did it because I needed time with me. I knew reaching out to someone else was one of the best ways I would get that Rhonda time. I needed to reach out beyond myself, my feelings and my frustrations and just enjoy myself and the gift of “today”, and if someone else reaped the benefits, well that was ok too.
I picked Lorelai up, and we got in the car. She looked at me, put her soft little hand on mine, and said ” GiGi, I am so glad I got to see you today.” I teared up…that is what I always make a point of saying to her when I see her…”I am so glad I got to see you today”. And I think probably God said the same thing to me today, too…and maybe added the word “finally” at the end…
I recently joined a ladies gym. It has been light years since I was a member of one so this is kind of a “new” experience for me in many ways. Times have changed, there are trainers on duty to help you instead of manuals placed on each machine (yeah it has been a long time since they did that, right?), music is piped in, and the treadmills and ellipticals have TV’s mounted on top so you can watch your favorite programs while you sweat. Yes, it has mightily changed. But one thing remains the same…it has to hurt sometimes to feel better and move forward.
While I was working on some of the weights one morning, I met one of the staff for the first time. She wandered over and said “I am the in-house trainer here….can I show you a better way to do that?” Of course I wanted her to instruct me and she proceeded to tell me that the weights I was working with for my back were set too light because I was doing it too easily. “It has to give you a bit of hurt, you do it slowly unlike the cardio machines, and you have to feel the tug and a bit of a burn to know it’s working like it is supposed to work for you.” I had already thought this, but was going by someone else’s suggestion on the weight amount. I moved the weight amount up to almost double per her suggestion and by the time I finished I knew I had been through a real workout, unlike the other days where I in essence was really sitting on my rear and just flailing my arms around more than anything. Nothing productive was happening at all and I was thankful she caught me early. I was willing to listen, and I could stop sitting and start really feeling progress and the moving forward that I was wanting to experience. I had not joined a gym to just sit down…I had done enough of that in the years since my last gym attendance. I thought about it and if I had not redirected and had hung on to the first way of working out, I would have been disappointed and hurt by not progressing steadily. A lot of wasted time and effort would have been all I had to show for the time and personal investment I had spent. I had sat down long enough….for years…I was there to get moving again before it was too late for me.
This got me to thinking about one of my favorite characters in the Bible, Job. Here was a good man who had everything; land, talent and skills, wealth, position, a large beautiful family, respect of his neighbors and friends…everything. Then one day, it all changed. Every good thing in his life was taken from him, and you find Job sitting on top of the ash heap mourning his losses at some point, and he looks as if he is settling in. Victim mentality? Perhaps, or maybe just giving up. But as the story goes along, God sends him people to talk with him, and he comes to a personal awareness of his position and the incredible waste he was participating in. He evaluates his current life, or lack of it, sees the wisdom of shaking off the dust and is found eventually moving on again. It was hard, and even at times almost unbearable for him to move on…but move on he did. He had come to the realization he could choose to find out God’s Plan B for his life, or he could sit on his ash for the rest of his days, a bitter man with no one or nothing.
I know I have spent far too many years sitting on my ash. Not that I didn’t have reasons to embrace my own season of mourning. I have had failed marriages and companionships, a company I have recently sold that was worth one fourth of what it was three years ago, financial woes that would have put down most people I know. There were strains in all kinds of emotional areas prompted by mean-spirited people, stratospherically chaotic circumstances, or… I am unhappy to admit…. encouraged by myself and my poor choices in many cases. I have ignored health and reaped the sad effects of my ill choices in diet and exercise, given up too much personal power in some of my relationships with others, and stockpiled years of stagnation in situations where I was living a victim mentality rather than a victor’s life. Most if not all these seasons went on far too long, in far too hurtful a way for everyone, and ended up with a burned, ash-filled life to show for it all. And more often than not, I found myself sitting on top of it, scooping the ash up and flinging it over myself and crying “woe is me” till I even grew sick of hearing it. I was a sight…and pretty much a real mess.
Are you sitting on your ash today? How long has it been since you were passed over for that promotion you just knew you were going to get? Did the company you had invested your working life in suddenly fold and you were in your mid-fifties and looking for a job again? Has your house been foreclosed on, your once perfect teenager been in and out of rehab for the last three years, or have you lost your only grandchild to an unrelenting disease? Are you bitter because a relationship you thought might be your forever love has not worked out, or are you still mourning the loss of your childhood because you were physically or emotionally abused?
How have you responded to those disappointments and hurts in life? When the good things started burning and the ash started piling higher and higher, did you just climb on and sit down, maybe flailing your arms around and trying to get someone’s attention, anyone’s attention, to let them know you were suffering? Those who suffered in the Bible were given a time to mourn their losses. Mourning was validation, it was good, but it was to be temporary. There is a time to feel the hurt and to experience the burn of disappointment and heart-breaking loss. But there came a moment when God directed them to get up already, brush the flakes of soot off themselves, and start over rather than sit in the ashes of their defeat for the rest of their lifetime. He wanted to give them their Plan B, but they couldn’t get it till they were ready to stand up again and start walking forward themselves first. It takes a lot of guts and more than a little emotional maturity to get handed defeat and disappointment and just decide to let it go, toss it on the pile with all the others, and set a match to it and just walk away on the path to continued personal peace. There were situations where I didn’t for a long, long time. There were moments I could, and moments I couldn’t without a bit of ash sitting first.
There are days when I am still very much a Job. I feel defeated and want to sit on my ash, be left alone unless I am moaning and groaning and needing some attention, and I just have no real desire to do anything else but be bitter and complain. But that would be a big mistake. I can’t move forward into a Plan B if I am just sitting down on that heap of nastiness and the sooty remains of what was my life. It is my time to start a new fire, burn off my old ways, and all the old reactions and responses when I am handed new heartaches and hurts. It’s time to watch the blaze burn as a bright new future opens up for me because I was willing to strike the necessary match.
Each morning, as I drive to the gym and into a new day, I use the time to assess the last 24 hours. What has been brought into my thoughts, will, and emotions that I do wish for my life? What did the prior day’s events, conversations, and offerings deposit on my doorstep that I do not want to remain a part of my Plan B? I shake off a little more of the soot and ashes and partake of a clean and fresh walk into my new journey as I hold each day, each part of my life with light fingers because I know it may ultimately end up on the burn pile. I will be real here…there are many moments of two steps forward and one step back. I find myself wanting to change my middle name to “Poor lil’ ole” when I experience an unexpected bump or even a breach in a relationship, or a dive in the bank account, or even a stress or strain physically. But those little bruises are there to build me personally and stoke a brand new fire. The only way to get a great Plan B is start building a new life, a stick at a time. Gather some people, experiences and things close to yourself if they fit the Plan, throw others on the burn pile if not, rinse and repeat.
In Isaiah, the Good Book says the Lord promises to turn our mourning into joy, and bring beauty out of the ashes. I am the only one who can discern when it is time to strike a match, toss it over my shoulder onto the latest pile of nonsense, and then swiftly walk away…or maybe even at times run. But, I remind myself daily I have made the decision that I will certainly refuse to go sit on my ash for long periods of time anymore. Embrace the hurt little lady, deal with it, and move on. Otherwise, I end up with only a dirty tearstained face, a burned rear, and a stinky attitude….and those just aren’t too beautiful to anyone, now are they?
Time for the gym….and time for feeling that beautiful burn.
Sometimes being adult isn’t all it”s cracked up to be. Depending on your actual job title or position you hold in your family, there is always something on the list to do and most likely someone to answer to that usually has different ideas about procedures and proper execution of items on your to do list. Stress ensues because you want to please the masses but remain true to your own ideals, implementation, or time tables for completion. There are looming deadlines, constant rushing from one place to another, screaming customers or crying babies in the background. Carpools are crammed into the front and back part of your day if you are a parent, kids have sports practices, piano recitals and birthday parties and you are their designated driver. If you are a business owner or employee, there are usually a million little bosses you answer to consisting of clients, immediate supervisors, government officials, or just good ole Uncle Sam.
The pressure to perform should be enough. The pressure to perform with success can be near deadly unless you allow yourself time here and there to regroup, revitalize and refresh. Many times this is shoved to the back burner because finances are not there for a vacation, time is not available, or work is so urgent that you cannot even think about taking time away. In my own life as a mom and eventual business owner, I worked long, tiring hours trying to make a living for my family. I knew if I didn’t work, the bills would not get paid, so it was difficult to justify taking time away for myself.
One weekend, several years ago, I got out my huge box of photos. I was looking for a particular work photo to use in an ad, and I started running across old high school pictures of friends and activities. I spent over two hours looking through the pictures, reliving those memories. There were photos of myself and my best friend, Melinda, hunched over her pool table in her basement where we spent many Saturdays. We always had a bevvy of boys there sharing root beer floats, chips and dip, and a friendly game of Around the World. Of course, even at 15, we both knew the halter tops and short shorts were the real draw.
I ran my finger over a photo of Al’s Golfhaven, where I received my first real kiss from a boy and smiled. We were surrounded by the sounds of screaming kids coming down the monstrous 3 story Sui-slide on burlap bags, the flying ping pong balls slammed into us by nearby players, and the drifting smells of popcorn, citronella candles, and sweaty pimple-faced kids….and it was just heavenly.
Other photos fell from the box in piles. There was the grassy knoll where we laid down panting after a fierce game of kick the can, a picture of myself and another friend sitting on the brick fence at the back of Graceland, feet dangling over and waiting for a glimpse of the King riding his horses. Pictures of my first day on my first job…a pony-tailed young girl behind the counter of Radefeld’s Bakery at age 15 looking very official in my pink smock and name tag. I could almost still smell the sweetness of that place when I held the picture in my hand and remembered how I washed sugar bits out of my hair every work day, and my tennis shoes stuck to every floor in the house if I wore them inside without wiping them down first. I ran across a photo of the old Katz Drugstore on the highway near my home…there was a soda fountain and I always sat on the same stool and sipped the flavor of the day, licking the froth from my lips as I chatted merrily with whomever my companion was for a sweet treat getaway that day. Then there were pictures of one of my great “loves” in high school, Alan…I was there in camo and boots, holding up the rabbit I had just learned to skin and dress. The things a woman in love will do for her man…
As I put away those photos, and pulled out the work ones I was looking for, I started thinking of those moments and began to realize it wasn’t so much the moments that made me smile, it was the time away from reality they represented that brought the real joy. Over the next several days, I determined to take mini-vacations, beginning immediately. I didn’t want to wait anymore to get enough money, or enough time to go away and get the refreshment I needed. I knew it would probably mean traveling alone, and being a social person I didn’t know how that would fit my personality. Up to that point I had never eaten alone, traveled alone, or tried an activity alone. But I found myself to be my greatest company and devoted friend. I was no longer afraid to disappear for a while, settle into me and what I needed, and enjoy life more in the process. I began to allow myself to be a kid again, throw off restraints, and redeem my time and my own life in the process. The life I lived became my “currency”….I didn’t have to have a lot of money or tangibles. I would join a group or activity and it would buy me the next experience in a way. I met people I would never have met sitting in front of a computer in a cold, dark little office. Consequently my life grew, and so did my work itself and my personal contacts.
I had been mistaken many years thinking if I didn’t work, if I “disappeared” from my responsibilities, then I would fail both at my work and my own life. In looking at the photos in the box, I knew a disappearing act was exactly what was needed. Today I take mini-vacations and gift myself with spans of quiet solitude. I can often be found reading my Kindle over a margarita in my favorite local Mexican hideout. You can find me at the lake nearby feeding the ducks and considering my next day trip. Visits to the mall and people-watching , or going to the park and swinging for a while is inked onto my calendar. My own deck has become a sweet retreat where I do my best mental manufacturing…researching places I want to go on my laptop, studying about things I want to do, foods I want to try, and odd and diverse cultures I want to learn about… and then I plan my next run in that direction and I don’t let lack of funds or time hamper my quest. There will always be time for work…there will not always be time for exciting experiences. Each of us has a magic wand over our own life. It is called choice, and all it takes is a little waving, a sprinkle of pixie dust and the magical word abracadabra….and your disappearing act becomes a place of your most memorable and cherished scenes.
So, what are you waiting for? Poof…
