Inspiration

Inspired by Maggie over at MightyGirl, I have started a list of 100 things that I want to accomplish in my life. The inspiration probably also comes from the antidepressants that I recently began taking. Better living through more serotonin. I feel like myself for the first time in years, in ways that I hadn't even noticed had slipped away. Enough of my troubles..here's the list...

1. Travel to all 7 continents (3 down after this summer)
2. Set foot in all 50 states
3. Give birth to at least one child
4. Adopt at least one child
5. Live in an historic home (>100 years old)
6. Live outside the United States
7. Backcountry camp
8. Visit all the national parks
9. Start a not for profit
10. Write thank you notes to important people in my life (friends, teachers, relatives)
11. Make a quilt
12. Take my children on an international vacation
13. Go on a spiritual retreat once every five years
14. Spend a day in silence
15. Fast for more than a day
16. Write a book
17. Get published in a professional publication
18. Provide therapy for free
19. Raise an organic garden
20. Plant fruit trees and bushes
21. Visit Greece (AGAIN)
22. Learn another language
23. Tithe
24. Make a large stained glass window
25. Compete in a 5k or a triathlon
26. Read the entire Bible
27. Read a great novel every year
28. Have sex on the beach
29. Own a dog
30. Provide a home for a homeless person
31. Serve in some sort of ministry always
32. Take a road trip with my best friends every couple of years
33. Do something selfless for my husband
34. Create a new tradition for my family
35. Do a gift-free Christmas
36. Raise a cow for meat.
37. Own a goat, and milk it for all it’s worth.
38. Make goat cheese.
39. Slaughter a chicken
40. Raise chickens for their eggs
41. Lose 20 lbs. and keep it off.
42. Breastfeed a child (my own!)
43. Play softball competitively again
44. Coach a kids’ sports team
45. Anonymously pay for someone’s meal at a restaurant
46. Donate something meaningful to my tiny hometown.
47. Forgive those who have hurt me.
48. Keep a journal.
49. Go snow skiing.
50. Tell my story to whomever asks, without apologies.

Glimmers of hope...

It has been a bleak and difficult time lately. I have more to do than humanly possible. There are classes that frustrate and leave me unfulfilled. Difficult and hurtful crappy situations permeate the lives of others whom I love. There are work relationships that make even simple tasks difficult. Clients have crises, push boundaries, or are doing good work that is still hard. My Granny is very very ill (she was in ICU on Monday until Tuesday morning) and in the hospital, while my parents, aunts, and uncles rally around her to combat her illness, unkind and neglectful hospital staff members, and their own struggles with the same brutal stomach flu. I am far away and feel helpless to support all of them.

My mother's church has the rumblings of discontent, some of it directed at her. In 10 days, my husband and I find out the fate of where we will be living next year, and then will have to face the losses associated with wherever we live. Marriage is rewarding but hard, and requires more work than not right now. I struggle with feelings of anxiety and depression amidst and seemingly endless winter that is more brutal and snow filled than I care to deal with.

But today, today was good. I am encouraged by how my family comes together during a time of crisis. How sacrificial and loving they all can be for the sake of a single member or the overall family. That my husband surprised me not only with a dozen roses, but with a card listing 100 reasons why he loves me, real reasons that one could only know after nearly 8 years together. Reasons that are idiosyncratic, intimate, and truthful. For friends who support and listen and laugh and love me, and let me do the same for them. Mentors and supervisors who invest in me and make time for supporting me amidst hard and difficult times. For making progress on dissertation and coming closer to closing a big chapter of my life in a way that feels rewarding and complete.

I am thankful for God, whose grace permeates even the darkest of places and the driest of deserts, and who knows of all types of suffering and sits well with me in it. A God who repeatedly welcomes me back, despite my continual betrayals and affairs. In this season of Lent, I am called to repentance and long long long for the joy of redemption and resurrection.

Curmudgeonly

This is how I'm feeling. When one feels this way the only proper response is to talk about for what I am thankful. These days I feel so negative, jilted, and focused on the negative.

I am thankful:

•For the beautiful roses that I bought for myself sitting on the sideboard. Every time I pass them, I literally stop to see/smell/feel/experience the roses. It’s a fleeting moment of centering that I so need right now.

•The closet in our office is organized and neat.

•The exercise of climbing a hill over and over and over only for the joy of zooming down it on a sled with my husband this evening. The cold body, wet pants, snow in the face, tingling skin feeling of winter fun.

•Having so many good choices about internship that I can say no to some sites, and still feel like next year is a gift, with or without an internship.

•Two cats named Zuzu and Pippin who snuggle in my lap.

•For the opportunity to feed, change, burp, and put a baby to bed this week.

•That I have the luxury of having someone else clean my home during this crazy time in my life.

•For having so many friends whom I love and who love me.

•For a husband who does the taxes. And laundry. And the dishes.

•For new people, old people, happy people, sad people, and all types of people who are in our lives.

•For clients who are discovering themselves and who let me weep, cry, laugh, pray, and walk on this journey with them.

•For rain.

•That I get to study something I absolutely am passionate about.

•I have plenty of food, a warm home, clothing, and books.

•I am beloved.

•Travel.

•A moment’s peace, a family who loves me incompletely but adequately, and an existence that feels purposeful.

•For the words of God, that I have accessible to me, and that can speak regardless of my lack of understanding of theology.

•For my body.

•For faith in the midst of doubt.

•For rest, sleep, and surrender.

Sunshine, rainbows, and ponies.

While you were all handing out or collecting candy, I was busy writing discussion questions for a book on signature sins. It's a really well written book that looks at our temperament, our struggles with sin that are unique to who we are, our past experiences, and how contemplative spirituality can help us to address the sins that cling so closely. I'll let you know when it comes out. (Oh...wait...let me clear something up. It's NOT my book, but the book of the professor for whom I've worked for the past four years.) But, doing so does not make me a cheerful gal. Everyone else eats candy, I contemplate sin. I guess that fits more with Reformation Day than with it being Halloween. Calvin was a sucker for gluttony, and so am I, so skipping the candy might be a good thing.

In the therapy office today, it seemed to go exceptionally well. Clients that never talk, talked. Clients that are never quiet, were quiet. And clients that considered leaving therapycame in and told me about their misgivings. That's all any therapist can ask for in a given day. It felt like sunshine, rainbows, and ponies. I never would have thought that a profession that leads me to sit with people in their various pains, false selves, and suffering could be so life giving. The honor of sitting with another in love and truth can be as uplifting as it can be full of despair. I wouldn't call the struggles of my clients uplifting, but to see that an hour a week gives some of them hope to keep fighting, changing, and growing, is a relief. It emboldens me to the goodness that we can taste in this life.

It's a busy day, and I am still working on things. I must go. Just know that there is hope, even for those of us who think we are lost causes.