Listening Inward (When will I learn to hear myself?)

Seems like the cool temperature in August are pushing me to an early reflection on the next season. The season of delivering a new baby into our family, to the learning year, to a calling outside of basic existence. I drove to Songbird cafe, collected my latte and day old muffin and then reached for me phone. Missing. Its been left behind to ring at the house when the kids and babysitter try to reach me, or my husband or the contractor, or my dad in the ER or my friend who i'm to visit with this afternoon at a still TBD location. And yet, I'm here and have paid in coffee money for a right to sit in a chair and write this blog.

I begin again somehow, as I force myself not to panic or jump up and run home. I seem to have to remember who I am. In the bigger picture I have to wonder at what I have already accomplished in my almost 40 years that makes this one hour my own. I have tools inside my skull that could help me if I only did some reflection.

My first tool is shutting out my phone stress. I must counter the chaos, crazy making acquaintances, dysfunctional habits, co-depenent defaults, email requests for help from my neighbors, my dream of being a different person, etc.  What I long for today is awareness of myself, of my relationships that are open to raising understanding and my desire to consider better questions. I want to choose where my hope comes from, consider God mattering in my life, and what motivates me to love well. I consider my thousands of hrs in therapy, my art group addictions, my love for buying self-help books, Gretchen Rubin's invention of a year or Michael Gelb's, How to Think Like Leonardo or Julia Cameron's, Artist Way, or organizers that promise simple ways to operate. I idolize the people who are tackling the world through successes in art, congruently holding to their truths and drawing others into the power of belief.

How can I be someone else, but also me. How can I be satisfied and still me? My answer is begin again. Attempt, like an essayist to fill a well with many ideas, cull through and wonder at their potential and live in the balance of trying them out. I want to try out what I have already tried out, yet one more time.

So some possible goals, because I struggle with commitment:
-Wake at 6 AM, walk 40 min, write 30 min.
-Pray from Book of Common Worship 5 minutes in the morning and at night
-Create rhythms for the week - groceries, same 5 foods, laundry day and kids activities fun and stick with them
-Say no to almost everything else for today.

Do these have any substance? Is there a place for play and fun within the work here. I think this is where an hour of artist date or time alone is also key. It begins today and it happens first.

Can I stop here or pretend that I can suddenly finish a story, read Bleak House and take on 10 new committees in my neighborhood. The prayer is simplicity. Letting go of habit and urgency and doing what is next for today, which is currently being alone with myself. Available to God. Free to laugh or cry, work or play. Lord, may I listen inward!

Lewis's Inner Ring

As a child, then teen and even now as a married adult, I watch other couples passionately kiss or hold hands or seem to be "in-love" and I feel envious. I want there deep togetherness.

In literature there is this sense of a characters connection and disconnection with others and inside themselves. With the release of the movie InsideOut, everyone likes to talk about kicking there sad character to the side, or labeling their internal feelings to explain themselves. To label myself, I struggle with attachment and belonging and feel I am forever trying to get inside someone else's inner circle.  I so want to belong to someone, that if I did not have my eyes on a God who is loving and good, I would buy into living under another's ego identity or would pay to be an insider in someone else's world.

This morning I read C.S. Lewis's essay, The Inner Ring and can't help but want others to read and then for us all to discuss. I firstly love that he writes about whatever is on his mind and that this topic matters to him. Very quickly he states that if your goal is being in, then it means playing a game and involves keeping others out, turning one into a scoundrel. This morning in my journal I saw myself in this light. I walk around imagining that there is this camera crew, or a neighbor, who is following me and noting all my great assets, like my thriving garden bed, my choice in reading a classic Dicken's novel, my kids and I out playing Fours Square at 8 AM, my roles in the neighborhood to help others, etc. I imagine acquaintances envying me and wanting to be in my circle. I am desperately trying to matter and be someone, even if it means I must pretend all the time.

 In my own world the circles apply to writing, to singing, to making pictures. There are groups and people I can pay to make me better so I can be someone who others want to know. If I get the right connection, follow the right method and schedule, then I can get the attention of important people. There is so much fluff in the way I operate, that I am either kicked out or run and hide after the honeymoon game of being cool and looking good passes.

So leave sit to Lewis to explain that the work is the joy and that doing what you love has nothing to do with Inside, but rather that it leads to natural connections and free expressions and the flexibility of others always being welcomed to add to the experience.

So often I walk into a space and say, I don't belong or I really want to belong so what do I have to do to get inside. A family member told me recently she did not feel comfortable around our family, because of our judgement. Another friend visited my church and felt it was too big and impersonal. Even within Co-Housing, the community I live, there are owners and renters and circles of people labeled for participation, or status. I want to talk about the game of an inner ring, because maybe I want to change.

Maybe I can just work today, living out of Lewis's work in exploring life in light of Jesus, and mulling it over in characters and circumstances and within the worlds I embody.

Today is the Best Day Ever

Hello Me? Did I fall into a hole or get stuck in the psych ward for a few months. The winter was cold, ay? My therapist recently mandated a treatment of 60 to 90 minutes alone every day to rep are my inner-compartmentalized bits of self that continually look externally for direction that continually conflicts with other inside segments. So i'm here contemplating my existence, my meaning, my mattering in the context of me as a whole.

O depth of wealth, wisdom, and knowledge of God! 

How unsearchable are God's judgements, 

how untraceable are God's ways! 

The source, guide, and goal of all that is, 

to God be the glory forever! 

(From The Book of Common Worship)

I am one for seeing the people and work directly in my path and following its/their shadow. But not in this moment. Right now I push the eject button on my program disk (which I recognize as corrupt). I stare at a white wall. I don't want to operate from other's program disk. I pray for God to show me a new program that allows me to see me in the equation. Me choosing to be on my own team and care for my needs. I trust him to provide bread and rest and a clear race that I am capable of finishing. I can open my palms to release living based on others mandates. I can let God speak. 

As my kids wake up early, show up often and are forever ready for life and love and play, I want to emulate their freedom while also living in hopeful anticipation. As David said yesterday morning, "Mom, your best day will always be your last one, because you won't know which is best until you have lived it." May today be my best day, tomorrow even better, and the one after the best, until I reach the fourth and its more amazing then I can imaging and so on!

Christ-mas Where Art Thou

I sat in therapy this morning listing my excuses for being chaotic. I am so good at having really great stuff to fill a black hole, called saving Christmas. I think this comes from my childhood experiences of Fear and Neglect. [I have to qualify this diagnosis with the word "unintentional," because I love my parents so much and just like there parents for them, they sacrificed so much and did the best they could with what they had!]

I feel an urge to buy everyone many great stocking stuffers, ones that will make them feel loved and known. This results in me seeing people and feeling overwhelmed with my task of taking on their happiness and fearing I can't do it. I also struggle to commit to any purchase, so  I wait and feel more fear at messing up and at 4PM on Christmas eve will go nuts to try and quell all of this in crazy spending at Whole Foods and REI and Cost Plus. 

This takes me to my real question, What would make Christ be enough on it's own? I've tried to tell people I wanted nothing, but the thought of getting nothing felt horrible too. My sister and I have both had good cries at feeling mis-read when we did not get things we wanted and then feeling horrible for being sad about it. This year I even purchased gifts for myself to ensure I had a back-up in case what I am given isn't enough. I can't imagine not giving toys to my kids, but could they be ok without? If I weren't so afraid, could truly accepting a God leaving a paradise to take on complete helpless infancy to personally love me, be enough? I pray that some day it will! 

This Season Feels Mixed-Up

In this cold grey December, my family collected three consecutive illnesses, from 103 degree fevers to all out stomach issues to terrible head colds. The bugs hit every one of us in our turn, and took us out for over two weeks. Simultaneously our heat turned off for three days at a time only to return as someone knocked at the door to diagnose it, then when they left with our checks, to have it turn off again.

I kept trying to keep everyone safe and then pretended to be calm as I sat on the couch stroking heads, my mind racing on how to save these ones from their pale dizziness. At some point I gave up trying to order days or cook or live out a normal existence, unable to get a free moment to think or call a friend.

Diane Telion from Knox gave a talk at an Advent Tea about weakness due to her chemo treatments and how she was forced to let others prepare for Christmas. I sit in wonder too as I imagine the weakness in being a teenage girl [Mary] going on a long camping trip while pregnant and newly married.  She had no control or place to hide, forced into a messy delivery in a dirty cave among unknown animals. She had no people to know her or to call out to for explanations of the pain, of the pressure to push, what to do with torn insides? Then she has to nurse a baby, clean it without a laundry machine or even running water and keep the baby boy alive. [We have not record of his weight and length or the amount of time it took to push him out]

That is the moment I ponder as I am forced to sit on a coach. Maybe this is the reality God is calling us to. The one that means being helpless and unprepared and forced to settle on the dirt floor to wonder at who he is. To experience God sitting with us in our mess, with sweat beads on our foreheads and patting our back as we heave. 

As color return to my boys and husbands cheeks, they dress and eating plain noodles to sustain them for today’s adventures, and I am thankful that I don’t have to be everything. On this day, I know a God who sees and holds and settles in to love me better and for the longer haul.