Source: lh4.ggpht.com via Nicole on Pinterest

I can easily forget all this.  That God created this job for me on purpose....and that He will give me the ability and the strength to do it welll. 










submitting at JumpingTandem

How Many Times

There are days when words don't roll in easy.  Not because of lack.  No, the words whisk inside my brain, they just don't always make much sense when strung together. I cannot knead them into smooth form. There is no outline.

And, too, I get to a place every now and then, when I'm just sick and tired of my words.  Sick and tired of a lot of things.  My words, my moods, my surroundings.  And then I figure out that it's me I'm sick of.

Sometimes, the meeting of God means the ushering in of tears.  And I thought I was ready for it all but it's hard, healing.  I've cried more in the last week than I have in the last year.  These words written are what I fear.  Which bring apprehension and sometimes self-condemnation, even self-hatred. That fear I can taste that I'm opening myself up to sympathy I don't want.  Because it touches such a sore spot for me, letting you in.  To exhibit any weakness, to show raw truth.  But if I don't, then what?  I only postpone the pain.  So, I come here and I choose courage and I share because I'm asked to and then I can more easily let it alone.

Yesterday, I skipped church.  I shouldn't have.  I wanted to isolate and be sad, I guess.  I wasn't choosing joy.  And this morning I had a dreaded doctor's visit.  Not dreaded because of any news or tests, just a routine visit to get set up with a doctor now that we've moved.  I didn't want to go.  I'm sick of my sickness.  I'm done with it.

What does this mean?  That I've allowed God to heal me or that I've decided to not let it define me?  No, unfortunately.  It means I've stopped taking my medication.  It means I was tempted to sabotage my appointment by not registering online. It means I listened to the doctor outwardly but inside was really hating him because it's somehow his fault that I have to be there.  And he listed about a million things he wants me to do.  And I said okay.  But I don't feel okay with it.  I'm angry.  I'm angry that I have a disease that means I have to do anything.  And when those stupid tears came in the sterile office and then we had to have the dreaded conversation about anti-depressants I felt like dying.  Wow, dramatic much?

Okay.  My ten second ( I know it was much longer than that) pity party time is up.

So, I came home and I was still mad.  And I had so wanted today to be okay.  I wanted yesterday's pain to be done and over and yet here I was in my tomorrow, still feeling ick.  And then I read Ann Voskamp's blog like I usually do.  And it was about Sara, whose heart I only last week discovered.  And she chose joy.  And, I, who am mostly fine, too often do not.  I need to.  How many times do I have to be reminded?

So then, now I've had my little rant.  Yeah, life's not fair.  But what did I read the other day?  It's not fair for all of us therefore that makes it fair for all of us.

So, I pray and I write and when sick of myself and my words, I listen to what God is trying to tell me.  I accept His words because they are gentle.


Counting the gifts:

His gentle words,
poetry
doctors
healing
tears
hearing what I need to when I need to

Submitting at

a holy experience
macro monday
the creative exchange

Here

I am here but elsewhere.

It is Wednesday night but I will post tomorrow.  I am in a hotel room.  My wonderful husband read my last blog, the sentence about how I wanted oh, a weeks vacation and this is what he did.  Booked me a room.  A room of one's own, I have right now.  And it's almost nine o'clock and I am just now able to process any sort of coherent share-able thought.  This whole deal was last minute.  He told me and I packed and came.  And then sort-of freaked.  I brought every writing notebook I own and my drawing paper and my laptop and my homework (which I did first) and then I had somewhat of a silent neurasthenia.  I don't know what I was expecting.  Maybe a breakthrough, but not a breakdown.  I felt this maniacal idea bobbing over me that I had to heal.  Right now.  Today.  Get it all out.  It was going to be dramatic.  God was going to send me into tears and then lift me up with secrets of my future...or something like that.  I was also going to finish my novel.

Suffice it to say, none of that happened.  Really, I just tried to ignore the horrible aching of homesickness and rationalize my fear of leaving the room to go to the pool, while begging God to show me whatever it was He wanted me to see.  Finally, I gave up and listened to music and drew and I think I did hear a bit of what I was supposed to.  And then I called up my old roommate and talked through some of the craziness and it helped.

"...good communication is stimulating as black coffee...."-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

So here I am.  Here.  Wherever.  But here.  And I think the freak out was good.  Because I realized that, while maybe there's a part of me that's a contemplative, that craves this alone time, the bigger part of me is now so deeply tied to my husband and my children and my home and the routine.  Perhaps the creative is nourished better even when I'm allowed to slip away throughout the day to blog, or write in my notebook but with space and time galore I sink a little under it all.  Lindbergh also wrote, "Reeling a little from our intense absorption, we come back with relief to the small chores...as if they were lifelines to reality-as if we had indeed almost drowned in the sea of intellectual work and welcomed the firm ground of physical action under our feet."  Maybe I need the chores, the physicality to experience the soft touches of the deep.

I am seeing things I've never seen before.  I am still on the cusp but I don't necessarily have to dive head first into it all.  Maybe just to announce that I am healing is healing.  I can set aside the notions I've had of facing things head on.  God's got it covered.  It will be revealed in His timing....if it needs to be.