Crawling Over The Edge

Rearranging the furniture is one of my favourite past times. We've lived in this place for 5 months now and every so often I look around and tell my husband I'd like to rearrange things. "Why?" is his incredulous reply. "Because I can," I tell him. Well, that's not totally true. I used to be able to do it myself, before my spoon supply became limited. I'm entirely at this man's mercy now if I want the couch to call a different wall home.

Neither one of us can bring ourselves to move the bedroom furniture around though. Moving the bed would eliminate the view of tall Poplars waving 'good morning' to us. This past week a terrific wind blew off their remaining leaves and now scarecrow like limbs stand in stark contrast to the sky. I wonder if they feel their nakedness as acutely as I feel my own.

When getting a hide ready to tan one has to scrape the skin smooth to get all the flesh off. I swear God's scraping my skin off. Okay, that's an exaggeration. And, no I don't think he's gonna tan my hide. My God will always embrace me. But I do feel like I am trying to squirm away from the hands that hold me. I feel like I am a two year old having a temper tantrum. I twist my body away and stand there with my arms crossed and a scowl on my face. God, this growing up is hard and some days I just don't want to do it. Okay, that's an exaggeration too. I want to grow up. I struggle with wanting to dictate how and when it happens. "Thy will be done" often gets said through clenched teeth. Most days I eventually tell myself that going through this stuff is the road to being a grown up so either suck it up or shut up.

My current read called Praying Naked has this to say to me:

" Suffering is a face-to-face encounter with something you don't want to face. It's your resistance against truth. Against reality. Against the very truth that would liberate you if you would only face it.
Suffering is nature's attempt to help us face illusions we don't even suspect we harbor."

and this:

" Most people claim they want a cure, but what they really want is a painkiller. They want relief from the pressure: "Give me back my health, my good looks, my youth."
They don't really want to escape the kindergarten of life, the baby playpen. All they want is someone to repair their broken toys."
~Praying Naked: The Spirituality of Anthony de Mello by J. Francis Stroud, S.J.

I suspect that the illusions I'm harbouring are getting rearranged within me and that I am crawling over the edges of the baby playpen. Because, with God's good grace, I can.