Today was rainy and cold. Really depressing weather. When we lived in the north I preferred snow to this rain. It chills you so. I have been helping out in the office of the church I used to work for. The only people I see are the administrator and a friend. Both are very dear to me. My friend and I do some simple tasks to help out a little. It is wonderful to see the two of them and we have lunch together.
I don’t know how I would survive without friends. It seems that women are more likely to have close friends than men. I am sorry about that because a dear friend can make life more beautiful. Two years ago I lost my lifelong friend and I still miss her. She was the last person alive who knew me as a child. Friends store memories for us. As we age they are the ones who can say “remember when?’ The two at church have known me for over 20 years. My other two close friends have known me for over 40 years. A lifetime!
Friends grow close through shared experiences. We have all had our share of illness, loss, crisis etc. We have all had good times. We understand each other’s faults and good points and accept each other totally.
I see friendship as another example of God’s love. God loves us and knows everything about us. There is nothing that we can do that will separate us from the love of God. Which brings me to one of my favorite Bible verses.
Romans 8:37-39 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Today I have been sad. For the 20+ years that I worked for a church I have seldom been sad. Now it seems to be a recurrent state for me. I am still grieving over the losses of the last few years. I suspect that it is really ok to feel sad from time to time. We are entitled to grieve over things. Many people do not understand grief and think that it follows the same pattern as the stages of accepting dying. This is not the case. Grief is an entirely different thing and doesn’t follow a precise pattern. For that reason it can sneak up on you when you least expect it.
Nevertheless waiting is what I am doing. I need to remember Life is what is happening while waiting for life to happen (a familiar saying). I will continue to work to embrace where I am and live in the now. If you read any of the mystics such as Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen (sp) or the desert fathers you learn that they lived in the moment. I suspect that God is telling me that I am not waiting but living each day. I will learn much during this time if I just see what is directly in front of me. The journey continues and yes at times we are entitled to be sad!
This week has been sort of up and down. For me it wasn’t a normal week. This week we celebrated Thanksgiving. I used to love this time of the year with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now I find myself with mixed feeling.
I am not sure there is such a thing as a perfect Christmas. At least not like the ones in the ads. The problem is that the perfect Christmas happened 2000 years ago and the conditions would never be shown in an ad. What we are longing for is right in front of us. It is the birth of Christ. It was not in a beautiful home but in a stable. If we can spend our time with that in focus it changes everything. Celebrate that Christ was born to show us the way to God.
Since daylight savings time is gone for a while the night comes faster. One minute it is light and the next the curtain comes down. I really don’t like getting up in the dark so I don’t like daylight savings time. As we head into fall I have more trouble waking up in the morning because it is dark. I am a person who needs light to function. When we lived in the northern US I realized that I have mild SAD (seasonal affective disorder). I spent a lot of time on the glassed-in sun porch.
Today has been a good day. Tomorrow is my birthday and two friends took me to lunch to celebrate. Another good memory made. Memories are precious things. I hope that each of you have some good memories. In the dark night when I can’t sleep I try to pull up good memories to lean on. Whether from my childhood or more recent those memories are mine and no one can change them.
When I was visiting people with memory loss connecting with them was not easy. I would always read with them the 23rd Psalm or say the Lord’s Prayer. Those things never seemed to go even if they didn’t remember their family. God’s love and care for them remained with them in these words.
Many people say getting old is not for sissies. They are completely right! As we age we have to learn to accept the fact that we can’t do all the things that were so easy in the past. Even though I am quite active and do heavy gardening and walking there are some things that are not the same. One of the things that is hard to prevent is losing core strength. That’s what puts us at risk of falling. With yoga I do balance exercises but I can tell a difference in how sure I feel. I have learned to make sure that I hold on to something if I am at risk. Things like this make me see how I am aging. Am I sorry? Well I would like to live longer but I don’t think forever. That would be a dubious choice.
When my grandmother was alive she would say that God gave her a hearing loss so that she could opt out of any conversation that she wanted to by turning off her hearing aids. She also said that she could’t see as well so that she didn’t have to see what she looked like. She was good about putting a positive spin on things.
Wow has this become a depressing blog but I don’t mean it to be. I think living with all of this is part of life. If we are blessed to live long enough we will face these issues. Accepting that we are human and having a limited time here reminds us to make the most of each moment. Enjoy each phase of life and treasure what it offers. If I am lucky I will see a great grandchild. Who knows?
It is not easy to shake a problem that has plagued you your whole life. For the last week I have been battling mild anxiety. I have no idea why. It has, however, kicked up my IBS which is very aggravating. There doesn’t seem to be any specific thing that I can blame this on. Everything seems to be fine. So,,,I am striving to continue on and just accept that it is what it is. I have not worked on my strategies for handling this enough and now I can see the result.
A friend of mine told me today that she is moving to be near her daughter. She feels that since she is aging it would be best to be near her daughter. She is moving to an independent living place. We talked about this major change in her life.
The thing about divesting yourself is it’s the little things that get you. My friend has saved cards sent to her that are special and she is deciding let them go or not? It’s these kinds of choices that break us. The mementos of life….they carry so much meaning and to part with them is painful.
Ironically we are a society that fixes few things. If my cell phone breaks maybe I will turn it in to get recycled or maybe I will just throw it away. Most of our small electronic things will be trashed instead of fixed. There is hardly anyone who runs a fix-it shop today. We see things as disposable.
Are we going to become disposable? Are we moving into the era of 1984 and Soylent Green. (If you haven’t seen or read these do so) As we grow older and are perceived as having nothing left to give will we just be ended and recycled as in Soylent Green?
worry-less-journey 