Today I am continuing to rest in the epiphany I have had a few days ago. I am sticking with remaining in the background and supporting ..not leading. After so many years of leading this is going to take some work on my part. I know that little demon will keep saying “show them how it’s done!” I’m not going to. My journey’s path is to share my love, my experience (without taking charge) and (I hope) my wisdom. Time has taught me many lessons, some totally unwanted, but I have lived and learned through each one.
This part of the journey will be a stretch for me. I know how much I love taking over but I will try my hardest to bite my tongue when I start to get off the track. I know that I still have much to learn. I learn so much from the blogs that are shared with me. I also see places where I hope my experiences can help others.
It is easy to get off track and anxiety and sadness can kick in and cause me to question why I am at this point? IBSD can knock me down and send me scurrying for help and medicine but I am changing one day at a time.
The hard part for all of us is consistency. Habits can only be changed by making new ones. Those new ones must be done day after day after day. Then they become the habit and the old one is gone.
Do not be afraid if nothing changes as soon as you would like. Keep plugging away each day. The change will happen. We get impatient and give up. Don’t…..change will come!
Perspective is a funny thing. Each of us has our own. Ours is like ourselves. It is unique. Different from anyone else. Initially our perspective came from our family. As children we were influenced by how the people around us felt about things. Probably, at least initially, accepting their point of view. As we grew and our horizons widened we began to measure that perspective against the wider world. We were influenced by our teachers, and our peers. We began to question the ideas we learned from our family and measure them against what we were learning. We began to make our own choices or match those of the people who influenced us.
Today I was very disappointed. On Tuesday’s I have lunch with two wonderful people from the church where I worked. While there I asked the pastor (who is an interim) if the “weekly” (lands in the pews each week) could include the address of my devotional blog Hear God in Other Voices. (heargodinothervoices.blog) He said that other people had asked that their addresses be included and that it couldn’t be done. This is not his being unkind but it is just policy and probably shouldn’t be his call at this time anyway. New pastors are coming in August and it really is up to them.
Today I have rested in a bubble of calm. There were errands to run, food to buy etc….but these are “normal” things. For the last six months I have been living in abnormal and abnormal has not been fun. So many unanswered questions were hanging in the air and I don’t do well unknowing. Not I can see a path ahead …and yes I can obsess about it but it feels right.
Madeleine L’Engle (one of my favorite writers) says that before she gets out of bed in the morning she signs the cross and says: “God be in my head, God be in my heart, God be at my left hand, God be at my right hand this day.” What a wonderful way to start the day.
Today we went to see the movie Jurassic World. If you have seen the other Jurassic movies you get the gist of the story. I have pondered since the first movie on the theme that runs through them…”what are we doing to our world?” As part of my nursing career I worked for a while in Neonatal Intensive Care. That was a long time ago and yet we were already struggling with many ethical issues. Were we saving babies whose quality of life would not make sense? When is enough…enough?
Down somewhere deep inside we know what we would like/need to do be healed. If we are afraid of social situations we know, on some level, that exposure could help us. If we have anxiety because we spend our time thinking ahead and imagining a dreadful future we know that we have to find ways to shut down that kind of thinking. If we have to count how many steps there are from our kitchen to the dining room in order to eat then we need to find ways to let that go.
I am proof that things can be different. I hope that knowing I survive no matter what and move forward to the next day will give someone courage to keep on. After 77 years I am still here and life is worth living!
There are so many things that people were blamed for in the past that we now realize are an illness. Addiction is one. When we talk about addiction we immediately think about alcohol or drugs. Recently I have wondered if these addictions begin as an attempt to assuage anxiety and or depression. It is one way to medicate these problems. I also think that many people have no idea why they feel the way they do and taking a drink or an illegal drug seems to be the answer. It solves the problem for the moment and the only trouble is that it adds another dimension to the picture.
For too long both those with addictions and those with mental health issues have been second class citizens. As we learn more we are discovering that a much larger percentage of the world’s population suffers with some mental health problem. I think that the number will grow as more are recognized. We are definitely not alone. Much has been hidden for a long time with people unwilling to share.
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