Change

I am working on a new way of saying no, that is not my original list of No's. Or my latest idea to say, "I'm not feeling up to it."

It is closer to things like,
- Its tough to say
- I will see if I can get to that
- I need to check
- I'm not sure
- Feel free to send me an email and I will consider

Part of me knows I just need to put time in to wait. I need to be comfortable with silence. Negotiators would argue that the person to speak first is the one that ends up not getting what they want. So if a question or task is out there, it is the first person who can't take the silence to do it. I do like doing some things, but I just can't yet differentiate which or manage to have a healthy balance. Here is a story in a few chapters that speaks to what happens when we consider change.    

• Autobiography in Five Short Chapters^[1]
  
  
  
  
  Chapter I
  I walk down the street.
  There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
  I fall in.
  I am lost ... I am helpless.
  It isn't my fault.
  It takes me forever to find a way out.
  
  Chapter II
  I walk down the same street.
  There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
  I pretend I don't see it.
  I fall in again.
  I can't believe I am in the same place.
  But it isn't my fault.
  It still takes a long time to get out.
  
  Chapter III
  I walk down the same street.
  There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
  I see it is there.
  I still fall in ... it's a habit.
  My eyes are open.
  I know where I am.
  It is my fault.
  I get out immediately.
  
  Chapter IV
  I walk down the same street.
  There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
  I walk around it.
  
  Chapter V
  I walk down another street.
  
  
  
  
  ----------------------
  [1] A poem and highly popular self-help and recovery text by Portia Nelson.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Ordering By Doing Nothing Urgent

I have not blogged in a while, due to my lack of ordering. I have not given myself permission to sit or read or write since before my camping trip. I haven't claimed any structured writing time, and have been constantly taking on other's stresses, their childcare needs, their moves, their hard days as if I am the only answer. My beautiful line, "I'm not feeling up to it," does not seem to compute with my bobbing head. We have been to cabins, had people here, camped, and said good-bye to the many who  transitioned to better lives outside Ann Arbor (which feels like everyone at this time of year).

I sit here between returning from a weekend trip, having family guests, leading the singing for Kids Camp and feel uncertain about what I should be doing in this moment between events. Writing seems somehow wrong, a waste as I avoid the to do's that will swallow me any minute. Beyond the set items, I keep thinking I need to be available to fifteen different people, supporting their immediate needs. The truth is I just don't trust that God has them and he is taking care of things (or maybe that they are capable of taking care of themselves?). I keep praying backwards for each of them, but the knot in my stomach doesn't loosen.

Oprah talked with Brene Brown about perfectionism as a way to avoid shame. In the article it says, "I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it." It's all about other people and avoiding. 

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Life-Lessons-We-All-Need-to-Learn-Brene-Brown/2#ixzz2X9sV3Wv2

I am struck for the hundred and fourth time about how God is gifting me and that success or enjoyment in any of what I have, is a good goal. Just writing a sentence is a good choice. Believing I can sing and remember the words and I can be enough for my kids even when I am not there for a day, is a good choice. I don't need to feel guilty for not being enough, apologize for not doing more, try to squirm away from eyes, wait for a person to come and tell me a better way. I simply need to claim my own capabilities, and fight for living in the joy of imperfection, of chords strums or frog notes, sitting with my coffee and bottled water and listening to the buzz of a near-by air machines trying to fight back the heat.

Being Loved

I spent three coveted days with myself, as I sat in the presence of my closest friend. She listened, asked questions, and looked for deeper truths, what meanings lay beyond the obvious emotion or habitual response.

As we sat around the fire she made a comment that she was confused when we used to spend pleasant days together in Chicago, and when talking with others, I would retell bits as traumatic. As she spoke, I froze and my mind fought to find the shut down button.  I breathed hard and accepted the words. I tend to turn life into a dramatic debacle, even on the trip creating a list of what went wrong, no poles, rain, cold temps, etc. I began to ponder what telling the ugly version of my life might be about.

I change my stories to fit my audience. I also lie to everyone in the process. The stress of being exposed for my shifting perspectives hit hard as her words settled inside. My scripts spin like a kaleidoscope that doen't know when to stop. Thankfully, Melissa has spent a long time learning how to stop, and she helps me to do the same. We are able to sit in the pondering, in what Aquinas says in an end good, that of knowing. I want to know and share my stories consistently.

I sometimes wonder what to talk about, especially if everything is great. Do people fall asleep at a story of a wobbling liquid surface, soft sand and little boys trying to dig themselves under it. I gravitate attention towards stories of bee stings, falling off bikes and scraped up faces.

But God knows the truth (and so do close friends). I am hoping to just notice what is happening today. Hoping to see what my mind settles on, outside of organizing itself around someone else's life. I want to hear my voice, hear God's. To place everything else in my pockets to be sifted later. I want to let go of my defensive strategies, and capture the energy in Melissa's voice as she photographs a 38 foot sailing boat that might become her new home. Our conversations gravitate towards grasping aliveness and considering the threat posed by carbon dioxide. I go to sleep with my neighborhood looking dark, my boys breathing heavily, my unmade calls and chores in a pocket and rest knowing Melissa loves me both as I am today and for who she sees me becoming as she dreams up bigger living. Thank you God for showing up to reveal your love through her!

Prayer for Me

I recently went to the Christ the King (Catholic Church) Adoration room, a place where people adore Christ 24 hours a day. The idea is that God is more present there and so they have someone there at all times to worship God. On a poster are the words of Jesus to Peter, "So you could not stay awake with Me for even an hour."

The line makes me think of what I understand to be Catholic guilt. The sense that I am behind and my priorities no matter what they might be are off. So I am excited about the notion of committing to an order. I am working to create an internal space where I can hear God (cultivating this relationship).

It is harder to put first, but has started with prayer (which I adjust each time I pray it).

God, You are God of time, space, living, Me.
May I see you in your glory and praise You!

You imagined me, coded my cells, built my guts, knit fingers, colored eyes and breathed air into my belly. Your fingerprints marked my understanding towards you.

You know My days, my history, cast me in and pulled me out of fires for my good, out of a greater love, a greater desire I might feel your palm on my shoulder, know you knowing me intimately.

You continue to direct my ideas and plans. You want me to thrive, to hope big and to live anticipating and resting in your Promises fulfilled.

Help me order my mind to see your working in me. Open my ears to your wispers of truth and speak up, when I am deaf. May I find quiet, claim sanctuary at your table as your daughter, where you pray for my days, you support my knowing your good gifts and you dream for my tomorrow.

May I know the fullness of your love and cling to you as you guide my ordering. Examine my thoughts for truth and celebrate transformation. Protect my heart as you shift the voices within me to hear a wholeness of vision.

Speak through me, experiencing your Spirit work with boldness.

With your hands, may I attend to my self, laugh, weep openly, show up as yours, expressing myself in appearance, trusting and expecting your foot steps leading me forward.

May I live your calling - seeing my gifts, strengths, and passions towards
- loving you, me and everyone else
- sharing who you are within me
- Building relationships towards mutual freedom
- Blessing Children
- Drawing, Writing, Singing God as I turn towards your face and it glow on my own
- Owning doubt/limits as sidelines to experiencing being knowing and loved, soas to move towards you, awesome God.

Listening to the Voices

I recently spoke with a good friend and former English teacher who is now a LifeCoach, named Gwen Griffith (you can look her up on Facebook under LifeCoach Gwen Griffith). During our conversation, she shared some of her initial process and framework, which include identifying the various voices in one's head and labeling those voices. She mentioned that sometimes voices outside ones head sneak in, which rings true for me.

In 2008, my Master's Program team and I  worked with Professor Michael Skelley on internal voices, trying to listen for different parts of our selves. We invited different parts of ourselves to be heard and voiced through a several hour meditation. The process is called Genpo Roshi and is called "Big Mind" (bigmind.org). His main focus is on Mindfulness Meditations and he is both trained as a Jesuit Priest and works with a lot of Buddhist philosophies. One of the most amazing pieces beyond my classmates trusting one another to listen and share these bits, was how we thanked each voice for its intention and doing its job and then asked he to allow other parts of ourselves an audience. It is the lightbulb of boundaries or ordering or the realization that we are made up of so much more than what yells the loudest and that we can train to use an inside voice or help to take a rest.

I have been thinking about what goes on in my mind and realize that the critical, disappointed, protective, "put others first" and impoverished guys rattle around the most. Additionally, the projected voices of older outsiders like my Grandma and the Perfectionistic "Religious" types tend hijack my attention. My kids have to yell sometimes to reach me amidst this demanding crowd and if you try to call me, chances are, I'm a little too busy with the above mentioned racket.

I am embarking on a this Project of Ordering and one of the largest pulls in this ordering is the one on my mind. One more book to throw into this mix is The Mindful Brain, by Dan Siegel. Recently my therapist pulled out a diagram from it's pages, that made me run back to the text and read. He identifies a HUB within us, which is "our ability to choose what we focus our attention on." Possible areas to attend to include, Body, Mind, Sensory World and Relationships.

I created a prayer to focus me as a starting point to this work and have others praying it for me.

More to come (as always!)!

Killing a Cat

I know someone who as a 4 year old, kicked a mean cat to death, later apologizing to the owners. This story makes people look at the ground and want to shift the subject. As I watch them shift, I feel embarrassed and responsible for their act (by not leaving it buried) and I wonder what to do to disassociate myself. Do I erase the memory, pretend it didn't happen, dismiss it's author, forgive it? I suppose in the telling, I want to pass it elsewhere, but somehow it just sits like a stone in my gut. It piles on top of things I hear every few minutes on the news or in a tragic novel or as observed in the daily toils of my acquaintances and friends.

These people are emotional, sometimes angry, sometimes bearing open wounds, often lonely, and in my interpretation, uncomfortable in the pain of enduring. I read a novel recently called The Language of Flowers, where the main character went through the Foster Care System and at 18, could not trust herself to attempt connection with anyone. You realize that there is no simple solution or right way to love the main character, Victoria and that she will always need her own coping strategies. They evolve from disappearing, to seeking shelter in her own space, knowing safe people respect and respect her distance.

I am working on a prayer that seems to be my only option at this point as I sit in the heaviness of a child's cat killing. I can't handle the heaviness and I can't get myself to do anything to fix it. So it goes to God, knowing he has figured out how to be with dark and to shine in some light, maybe a little at a time.

My Guts look like the eight worms he carries in his palm.

I suppose I always think of guts as, big piles of internal organs spilling over the pavement in the middle of a long race, or a large quantity of worms wriggling in Isaac's little hand. There is another definition, the one where you step out and do something hard and brave. This post is about the former.

I entered a Half Marathon about a month ago in an attempt to motivate myself to run more. My current regiment is to do a long run (12 to 14 miles) on Saturday mornings with a group (501) and then sometimes wake up early Thursday, if my friends initiate. Missing a few Saturdays and Thursdays, I have been running no more then once each week.

So on Sunday morning, I went into the Dexter/Ann Arbor Half with two thoughts. The first was that I would miraculously run fast and do great, no training required. The second thought was that I would just try to enjoy it and cheer and have a great time.

At the Start line I contemplated my thirty years of running and how I must be smarter at 37 and thus, know to go out conservatively. Well, that went out the window mile one, with a 7:20 pace, then a 7:00 minute second mile and some faster pacing through to about mile seven.

My mind says that at one time 7 minute pace was comfortable (my fastest half was way under that), BUT my body and current self grill me with questions: why are you running and what is this all about and is it for you or something else, do you even like to race?

My mind got more bold after mile eight, as I looked for an exit, dreamed my husband would show up with the car, thought of just running home and eventually scanned the sidelines for emergency vehicles.

Somewhere in there I did my cry to God for help. Then to know that I am loved in spite of actions, my times, my choices. My guts on the bravery side kept saying, just walking or stopping is brave. You have permission to hop out. I even thought of running up the final hill and off to the side, rather then under the arch, with the mantra that, "Running is not what defines you." I did some faster steps, only to say, No, not today. I ended up in the over 8 minute pace for the last 5 miles and did a slow jog up the final hill, which is counter to everything in my legs.

I met my amazing running partners who had phenomenal times and rejoiced with them. So my path is not set. My goal not defined. My energy divided and through it all, my legs still itch for pavement, my body sighs from a good hour and forty four minute run along Huron River on a beautiful day. Who knows what comes next? I seem to wake up each morning trying to define myself with whatever is in front of me, a guitar, a blank notebook, a pair of old sneakers, Isaac discovering spiders and white caterpillar like larvas and carrying in his little palm, eight slimy worms with several potato bugs all squirming together.