Butt Glue

It's sunny and windy and I am exhausted.
Last day of Catechism classes today.
Last day of the month, too.
A month where I've managed to show up daily to write here.
Some authors call it butt glue.
Get your butt in the chair and show up to the blank page.
Often I type away and then delete it all,
having gotten whatever I need to get out of the way
off my chest.
Other days I run out of time and simply type away and go 'oh well'
and hit the 'publish post button'
Today is like that.

Being Me

The last few days I've been leading a women's session at church using resources from this site. These daily meditations have added greatly to my journey and I have several of them saved on my MP3 player. I listen to them at night if I can't sleep. Some of the music is especially soothing and several of the meditations continue to challenge me months after I originally heard them. I decided to use them as a resource to begin discussion in our sessions this week.

It's been nearly 5 years since I facilitated an adult class of any kind. The last time I did and every time before that, I did so with an unhealthy amount of ego and agenda. I had a certain way of viewing the world and more than a bit of disdain for those who weren't as enlightened as I thought I was. Since then I've had several mentors show me what it looks like to not be ego or agenda driven. There is an expanding of oneself that can happen when given the freedom to simply be on the journey without an accompanying judgement that where that is, is inadequate. Everyone has a certain way of viewing the world and I'm feeling less threatened by someone else's point of view.

So this week has been my first experience of not making facilitating all about me. My first experience of being able to accept that these meditations that so feed my soul, might not be everyone's cup of tea. It's been a bit of a surprise find that I can enter in to something like this and not have an agenda or have my ego running the show. I think I'm more comfortable in my own skin than I've ever been. (Skin that is sagging its way to China, but comfy all the same.)

Part of being me is telling relevant bits and pieces of my story when it's appropriate to do so. I did a bit of that yesterday. I wasn't planning to before we started but at one point it seemed to be the next right thing. I then realized these women I worship with every week know next to nothing about my story nor I theirs. I left the church yesterday afternoon having no idea how my sharing was received and didn't give it a second thought. Not having to check and see if I was still okay as a person based on other's reactions is becoming less foreign all the time.

Today one of the women shared in our group time how my candor yesterday had helped her. I smiled and told her I could only do so because I no longer feel shame about those aspects of my journey. I couldn't have known beforehand that sharing these bits and pieces of my story would resonate with any of them. This particular woman has her own story which overlaps some of my own.

I don't know about you, but I have a continual need to know that I am not alone in my humanity. That my struggles are not unique but common. I feel relieved when I feel less alone in the journey. The blog world has helped me in this for sure. But today I feel less alone in my face to face community and for that I am grateful.

The Skillful Master

"The cruel chisel destroys a stone with each cut. But what the stone suffers by repeated blows is no less than the shape the mason is making of it. And should a poor stone be asked, "What is happening to you?" it might reply, "Don’t ask me. All I know is that for my part there is nothing for me to know or do, only to remain steady under the hand of my master and to love him and suffer him to work out my destiny. It is for him to know how to achieve this. I know neither what he is doing nor why. I only know that he is doing what is best and most perfect, and I suffer each cut of the chisel as though it were the best thing for me, even though, to tell the truth, each one is my idea of ruin, destruction and defacement. But, ignoring all this, I rest contented with the present moment. Thinking only of my duty to it, I submit to the work of the skillful master without caring to know what it is."

~ Jean Pierre de Caussade in The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Don't Confuse Me

I've no idea what today will bring.
Do I ever?
I'm praying to approach the day with an open hand and an open mind.
It's much easier and much worse to have a tight grip on my activities and attitudes.
Rigidity comes easier than suppleness.
So today I'm starting out
acknowledging that God is God
and I am not.
I can so easily confuse the two.

Ready To Give

"Be prepared at all times for the gifts of God and be ready always for new ones. For God is a thousand times more ready to give than we are to receive."
~ Meister Eckhart

I read the above quote just before heading out to work at Cathechism classes at church today. After only a few hours sleep last night I was not at all enthused about going. My bed felt far too comfortable and my body weary. But I read this and prayed to be open.

We are a very small parish. There are only 3 children who attend Mass with any regularity. So it was wonderful to hear the sounds of over 20 children fill the sanctuary this morning and even greater to see them enthused throughout the day. Many of these children's grandparents or great grandparents were once regular attendees in our parish. Through quarrels and misunderstandings quite a few of their descendants stopped coming and those hard feelings are still festering. Insensitive priests, misunderstandings between parishioners, and who knows what all, lies between the faith of the generations. Only yesterday I heard the story of one family who left the church because of a mean spirited comment made by the priest in the midst of the Mass. A comment he stopped the Mass to make. I don't blame them for walking out 30 years ago and I believe that there comes a day when one has to take responsibility for nursing a grudge for so long.

One of the activities the children did today was to go outside and pick a rock to symbolize how hardened we can let our hearts get. Then they used play dough to make a shape that symbolized a softer heart. During the course of the day I over heard one little girl look resentfully at a group of boys, who were doing their best to make her miserable, and say, "They make my heart so hard." I hear you, sister.

I have my own issues with hardening my heart. Every day is an opportunity to release a bit of that hardness. Today was no exception. After classes were over and I was on to other things, someone commented on one of my glaring character defects while I was in the midst of repeating it for the umpteenth time. I found myself shutting down emotionally lickety split. It wasn't too long before I was sitting in silence and brooding. I thought to myself, "I'm nursing a grudge." My next thought was about how I really had no desire to let go of it....nursing it felt rather good. Then I thought about where nursing a grudge would lead me and I prayed for the courage to let it go.

One of the best pieces of advice I heard in these Joe and Charlie Big Book Study talks was about resentments (step 4). There they say that the original hurt at the hands of someone else - the first time, they did it - no problem - it's only natural and human to feel the hurt. But the second time I replay the situation in my mind, to feel the pain again - I'm doing it to myself now. And every time I replay it I make what they did a little bit worse and what I did a little bit better. This is the way an alcoholic mind works, anyway. The way my mind works.

So I'm in the process of letting go of today's hurt.
Before I shut my eyes tonight I will have worked it through and let it go.
I'm not always so willing to do the next right thing.
But hanging onto my hurt will only harm my recovery.
And I can be stubborn in the weirdest of ways.
Remaining pissed off at someone, while knowing full well that the consequences will do more damage to me than them, is enough motivation today to make the smart choice.
I'm grateful to know that choice exists.
I often don't want to follow through on it.
But I'm still grateful to know it's possible.
Sounds like a gift to me.

Ripped Open

It's the middle of the night and here I am on the page about 6 hours too early. That's going to mess with my day tomorrow. C'est la vie. My compounded tiredness of the week caught up to me and I chose to nap in the early evening. At this moment I'm fully experiencing the relationship between cause and effect.

Yesterday I went to church an hour early and enjoyed sitting in the sanctuary alone. I set up the altar for Mass and then sat in my pew with the lights off. Daylight streamed through the old fashioned single pane windows, keeping me company. It was a very peaceful place to spend time in contemplative prayer. A real stillness settled within me. For once the stillness was bearable and even soothing.

Eventually people started to come in for the Mass. First the priest and then little by little, we gathered. I can always tell when the priest comes in because the first thing he does is turn on the lights. Sometimes I wonder what big city people would think of our relaxed ways out here in the boondocks. The Mass starts when we figure all the regular attenders who are going to show up, do. If that means it starts 5 minutes late then, oh well. If that means there's only three of us, oh well. Today we had 15 or so gathered around the altar for the Eucharist.

One thing I especially appreciate about this priest is his emphasis on a heart relationship with Christ. He often talks about the emptiness of praying, attending Mass, receiving the Sacraments without those things coming out of a heart relationship.

Today, as he was emphasizing that point, I gazed at a statue of the Sacred Heart Of Jesus. Often when I look on it I remember a day when I felt like Jesus told me he wanted my heart open, exposed and touching his. It wasn't a pleasant image - more like my chest had been ripped open and Jesus then grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me close so his exposed heart could mingle with mine. I don't exactly know how the cause and effect of that translates into daily life, but I continue to find that image a comfort, a challenge and something to ponder every time I gaze upon His face.

Feeling The Feelings

Life's given me opportunity in the past 12 hours to put the AA program into solid practice. Thank God a person has options instead of just knee jerk reactions. I can still feel angry mighty fast. There's a saying around the rooms of recovery that the program works if you work it. Last night I felt the anger (got a bit teary, too) and then decided what to do with it. In days gone by, I acted out faster than thunder follows lightning, be that phsyically, verbally, or emotionally. I fought pain with pain.

The sun is kissing my cheek as I type. A hint of rain touched grass is floating in the window. The energizer bunny is sitting here looking at me expectantly like it's a new day or something. There's nothing like a dog to keep a person in the here and now instead of the yesterdays and tomorrows.

To Have Relationship

Last night I was cooking up a storm for oldest son's stag party today. In less than a month he will marry and I will officially become a mother-in-law. I do hope to not be one of those horror story mother-in-laws. Without recovery I am quite sure I could be.

My own mother-in-law has set me a terrific example. I've often told her that I look up to her in that regard. She has loved me through some rather difficult to love me times. Dearest one's family was my first experience with Christian people and back then I was an atheist and a sarcastic one to boot. I spent a goodly amount of time baiting them and combine that with huge cultural differences, well, let's just say they gave me a first hand lesson of grace in action.

Twenty six years have passed since then and now my mother-in-law and I enjoy a good relationship. She is one of my favourite people to visit with. She is honest about her struggle as a human being and if you ask her a question she'll give an honest answer no matter what it makes her look like. She has a great sense of humour, too. We also share a love of reading. One of the things I love the most about her is her huge capacity for accepting children as children and not as minature adults. She's more likely to laugh at their behaviour than anything. Nothing much fizzes her in that department and I'm grateful.

She's never made me feel wretched for being a terrible housekeeper. I remember her once being in my home when it was a mess and I was worrying out loud about it. She looked around and told me that it was nothing that 15 minutes wouldn't fix and that there was a huge difference between messy and dirty. She knew I'd rather be reading than cleaning and while her culture wouldn't allow the room for her to do that freely, she didn't hold it against me when I simply read instead of cleaned.

She read to her (11!) children every night before bed and because of that tradition I did the same for mine. Even some of the same books. I expect that tradition will be one that will be passed down to the next generation, too. It's such a wonderful tradition.

Last month we worked together in my garden, visiting side by side as we pulled weeds. She kicked off her shoes and walked barefoot as she wielded the hoe, fully enjoying the dirt between her toes. She is nearing 80 now and has leukemia. I've made a point of telling her what I need to....told her how grateful I am for the example she set for me. She tries to protest a bit only because of the inner struggle she had to love and accept me when doing so meant saying farewell to the chance that her son would ever be a member of their ultra conservative church. A church that espouses membership as the only guarantee one will see heaven. So, she let go of a lot in order to have relationship.

The years have mellowed us both.

An Invisible Thread

"The thing about healing is that I have no control over the twists and turns it takes. Don't know what I'm going to feel until it's too late."

I said this through tears to Fr. Charlie yesterday. There are times when 'oh, for fuck's sake' seems far more appropriate than 'glory, hallelujah' to describe the healing process.

A few weeks ago I was writing away - working on an article about women and their struggle with sexual addiction. I was free writing - typing every thing that came to mind, not having a particular direction I was looking for. Often writing is akin to playing for me. I was writing in a "let's see where this will take me" mindset. Playing with fire was more like it because in the midst of this came a paragraph from my own journey. A paragraph that, when I saw it in black and white, left me stunned. It had been 30 years since the incident had happened and seeing it converted from thoughts in my head to words on a page, stopped me in my tracks. It left no room for denial, showing me that despite a black hole in my memory when I was being sexually abused, my response in this particular situation confirmed what the black hole had tried to hide.

Instinctively I knew the paragraph would make an opening paragraph of a book. It's a sick, twisted paragraph but gut honest and pivotal to my story. I promptly printed off everything I'd written, stuffed it into the clear plastic sleeve with other material for the article, and shoved it under a pile of books and papers on my desk.

I haven't looked at it since.

But it's contents have been haunting me.

Yesterday I shared the specifics of that paragraph with Fr. Charlie, the first time I'd spoken of this particular incident to anyone. I couldn't look him in the face as I spoke because I still feel some shame about it. It makes me look more like a whore than anything.

I told him how seeing it all in black and white on the screen had stunned me. How it forced me to face that what I suspected had happened, had. That my involuntary response in the incident showed me that my subconscious knew all along what my conscious mind didn't want to. I could see an invisible little thread tying my whole story together from the sexual abuse to this incident to every other bit of my sexual story. No wonder I felt like I really need a punching bag yesterday. When we talked about forgiveness I told Fr. Charlie that I wanted to beat the shit out of this person first, then I might consider it. He gave me a 'that makes sense' look and left it at that.

We talked about how was I going to honour my story. Fr. Charlie talked about the responsibility to that little girl within me to set her free. Into my mind popped a picture of her coming and sitting in a chair beside my computer. She talks and I type. She isn't sad, she feels important and listened to, and she's ready to tell it all because there's someone willing to listen, to validate her story, to not try and shush her up for speaking the truth.

I looked at Fr. Charlie and told him of the picture in my head.
Then I said, "I can do that."
I don't feel brave, just determined.
It also scares the shit out of me because I have no control over the mix of emotions that may come but I know that until I let her tell her story I will continue to be haunted by that paragraph.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Day 617

I'll be on the road today making a 200 mile round trip to see Fr. Charlie.
Some people express surprise when they find out I still see him for spiritual direction despite his move to a different parish. Many people simply move on to another SD when circumstances change.
Next month it will be three years I've been seeing him for sessions.
Maybe other people have an easier time building trust relationships.

I trace where I'm at in my recovery, in my spiritual journey, in large part to the grace of God working through Fr. Charlie. He's listened as I talked around and around in circles. He continued to believe in me long before I was able to do that for myself. In short, he had hope in me while I was still hiding in the shadows. It was in his presence that I first spoke the words 'sexual addiction'. When he didn't die from shock at the phrase, I saw a glimmer of hope that I didn't have to continue living in the shame of that addiction forever. Through many relapses he continued to affirm my journey. I'd sit there all teary over losing 90 days of abstinence, looking backwards as if I was a total failure. He looked at the 90 days of grace and held it up as a beacon of hope that 91 days was possible. I have lost track of the times he has said to me that the truth will set me free. Today is day 617.

I've learned that the sessions where it feels like no progress is being made are just as much a part of the journey as the times when huge 'aha' moments happen. (Kind of like blogging.) I remember phoning him between sessions once to tell him that it all just felt like same shit different piles. That I was wasting my time and his. He replied that going from one pile to the next was still movement. Could you just get as weary of me as I am? I wanted to shout. But he didn't.

So today finds me making a worthwhile journey.

How Do You Spell R-e-d-n-e-c-k?

There's a scribbly black line on my kitchen floor courtesy of youngest son.
Let's just say he has strong feelings about the energizer bunny being in the kitchen.
He's trained her to get out of there at his command.

Up until now there's been an invisible line that the dog had to stay on the other side of. Youngest son would say, "out" and she'd obediently walk to the edge of the boundary, turn around and sit there looking at him. She must have been pushing her luck one too many times lately though, because this past week I walked into the kitchen to see a black marker line on the floor clearing up any misunderstanding about where the boundary is. I could tell whoever made it must've been a bit irked because it was made by scribbling back and forth, back and forth all the way across the floor, as if the overlapping wavy lines emphasized the point to stay out of the kitchen.

Too bad Pugs can't read. Well, she does recognize words, we have to spell the word w-a-l-k because she goes beserk if you forget to. She gets all excited that you're going to take her on one otherwise. She looks at you with such eagerness and it's a shame to disappoint her. Youngest son is convinced she's beginning to figure out how the word walk is spelled now, too. But I'm digressing.

I looked at the line and considered having a hissy fit. I wondered how much scrubbing it would take to get the mark off the floor. I was glad youngest son's job this summer has given him stronger arm muscles. Youngest son may complain about living in redneck country but that line looked mighty redneck to me.
I looked at it and at the 35 year old flooring and said to dearest one, "He could at least have used a yardstick and made a straight line."
After all, I am a visual person.
And I left it at that.

That evening dearest one, youngest son and I were standing in the kitchen when the subject of the black line came up. I told youngest son he could've at least used a yardstick and made a straight line. A look of increasing horror contorted his face as he said, "You don't think I made the mark right on the floor did you?"
As my face registered "yes" I peered closer and realized he'd put down a strip of clear medical tape on the floor first and then had scribbled away.

Now his face included a look of "you trained me better than that, Mom"
I laughed more at his outrage than at my assumption.
I was so glad I didn't have that hissy fit.

Wait, there's more.
It doesn't matter if the energizer bunny is over at her food dish or just passing through the kitchen, whenever you say the word "out" her eyes search out the scribbled black line and once she's recognized it she looks back at you to confirm her findings. The best is when she's sitting right at its edge and she drops her head down, as only a Pug can do, well, has to do to see it, and then stares into it's depths.

Don't tell anyone but I'm secretly teaching her to recognize the word redneck.

Solitude and Community

"Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from one's self. It is not about the absence of other people -- it is about being fully present to ourselves, whether or not we are with others. Community does not necessarily mean living face-to-face with others; rather, it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other. It is not about the presence of other people -- it is about being fully open to the reality of relationship, whether or not we are alone."
~Parker J. Palmer in A Hidden Wholeness

This puts a whole new spin on solitude and community for me. You?

A Little Bit Of Grace

The smell of rain kissed grass is wafting in the window as I type.
I'm looking forward to a walk in the gentle rain.
My Bell's Pasly is flaring today.
My chest hurts when I breathe.
I will be glad when allergy season is over.
When my immune system isn't under such constant attack.

Dearest one and I sat up late watching the first six
episodes of Saving Grace, Season One on DVD last night.
It won't appeal to everyone.
Too much sex, swearing,
and humanity.

I wonder if there isn't a little bit of Grace in all of us.

Being Found

He calls a camper his home.
His worldly belongings
divided between the camper
and his vehicle,
he's full of gratitude for his circumstances.
Fully content to be where he is on the journey.
Easily listing all he's grateful for,
right down to the little cat curled up
at his feet every morning.
The cat he tried to leave behind
only to have it find him
again and again.

I watched his peace filled face as he spoke.
Observed warmth, sparkle and peace co-mingling
like a stained glass window
illuminating his soul.
For a split moment
I let it's rays
touch me.

I had arrived at our meeting impatient.
Finding it next to impossible to be present.
Fretting over trying to fit an hour's worth of errands
into the 30 minutes left over before I had to leave town.
Where was I in such a hurry to get to?
A funeral luncheon.

Oh, the irony.

Between my friend's gratitude
and my arrival at the luncheon
I found myself in the grocery store
grumbling over the price of cat food and razor blades.

I can picture my friend
taking pure delight in feeding his little cat every day,
Smiling right up to his eyebrows
at life as it is
right here
right now.
Giving thanks for being found
all over again.

Safe Enough

"The people who help us grow toward true self offer unconditional love, neither judging us to be deficient nor trying to force us to change but accepting us exactly as we are. And yet this unconditional love does not lead us to rest on our laurels. Instead, it surrounds us with a charged force field that makes us want to grow from the inside out - a force field that is safe enough to take the risks and endure the failures that growth requires."
~Parker J. Palmer in A Hidden Wholeness

A Room With A View

Friday.
Dearest one is done working nights.
We are going to spend the day together,
travelling in his car to places north and west.
I love driving with him.
He is fun to be with.
Last night we caught a ride with friends to visit some other friends who were working nearby at a Bible camp.
As I got in the vehicle the door unexpectedly swung closed behind me.
I said, "Watch, dearest one is going to comment that I didn't leave the door open for him."
As soon as I said it, dearest one opened the door, got in and muttered in a half jesting tone, "For pity's sake I even have to open my own door."
We all errupted in laughter.
I told him it was good he was so predictable.
He is fun to be with.
Later on he went for a walk and came back into the dining hall with his hands cupped.
He motioned for me to open my hands to receive what he had to offer.
I hesitated. Was it a grasshopper? A frog?
I got ready to scream.
"Trust me," he said.
Into my hands he dropped two very tiny wild strawberries.
They tasted so sweet on my tongue.

I'm leaning against the wall as I type. Above my shoulder is a small window. Every morning the sun shines on my face as I write these posts. I read once in a book on small spaces about how people often want a bank of windows to look out in their home. The writer challenged the idea and talked about how a view, however small, has a story of its own to offer. A snapshot of sorts. There is a little piece of one of our livingroom windows that was left exposed when we put the air conditioner in. This tiny piece of glass was something I looked through whenever I did a certain yoga pose in my yoga routine. I'd turn and bend and hold the pose. My gaze out the window revealed a sturdy tree trunk and then trees in the distance behind it. I often thought about how I would be watching the changing seasons through this bit of a view. I never spoke of it. It was simply a comfort every time I did that pose.

Then dearest one covered it over with a blue file folder. Blue file folders may fade in the sunshine but they remain static. However small the view out this piece of glass, I looked forward to its stability. When I wash the dishes I look out another small window and observe the fields, the trees and in the distance, a bit of the highway as it curves up the hill. On winter days I can guage the road conditions by how much of the highway's black ribbon is visible. Other times there's a long string of lights and it tells us there's most likely been an accident. Occasionally a huge harvest moon appears for a few moments in all its orange glory as it crests the hill. The same view with subtle changes on a daily basis. All I have to do is open my eyes to see.

Last night we met at the Bible camp a man we used to spend quite a bit of time with when we were new Christians. He and his wife were missionaries nearby, ministering to people who were raised with a different view of Christianity. Hospitable people, rigid, very rigid in their beliefs. I liked rigidity back then. It made me feel safe. Over time that has dissipated. Occasionally I still find myself drawn to it. When that happens I know I am afraid of something. Now I worship in a setting with the very same people this man spent so much of his life trying to convert. Because of this I found myself feeling on guard last night. I realized I was holding my breath and tensing my body. As if ready for flight. Which really says more about me than him. I had to remind myself to breathe, to relax. This morning I wrote in my journal that I needed to give this man the benefit of the doubt. That in the interceding years since we last met that perhaps he has softened his rigid ways, that maybe he's changed as much as I have. I believe the people who I feel the most threatened by are my best teachers. They show me parts of who I am and where I am on my journey. I usually embrace those as opportunities after the fact. In the moment I tend to want to run the other way. I hope that one day I will be settled enough in who I am and where I am that I will embrace whoever I meet.

We all look out our windows and see the same sun, sky and moon.
Depending on where we are in this world, we see them from
a different perspective.
From a different view.

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open the eyes of my heart.
I want to see you. I want to see you.

It Is Not Always Difficult

"Change is not a miracle. Change doesn't just happen. We have to make it happen. We have to work at it - but it is not always difficult. In fact, sometimes it is so easy that we don't believe that it's possible, we don't believe that we can change. The Buddha is supposed to have said that change is as easy as flipping a coin to the other side. What I believe is that if you want to change, you will change.
Maybe you are a little skeptical, and you feel like the wife and mother who went on a weekend workshop retreat and came back and told her family, "I had such a great weekend. I had breakthrough experiences. I gained all these wonderful insights." Then, looking at her family, she said, "But what's the use? None of you have changed."
If you really do experience change, trust that your family will change toward you, and if you truly embody the change, the world will change with you." ~ Paul Coutinho, SJ in How Big Is Your God?

The Shortest Path

"Many things in life are beyond our control. We can do very little about the weather, natural calamities, sickness, and so many things that happen in our lives. Often we see things as hardships, as unfair situations. But we do have the power to decide how we will respond to situations beyond our control. One effective response is the Serenity Prayer........Or we may use the Eastern way of looking for the divine presence in the unexpected. The Bible begins by telling us that in the beginning there was chaos and confusion all over the world, and God hovered over this chaos and out of it brought forth a new and beautiful creation. When my life is chaotic and I find it difficult to understand what is happening, let me allow the divine spirit to hover over my darkness, and let me wait for the new and the beautiful to spring forth in my life. Chaos is often the shortest path to our spiritual core. ~ Paul Coutinho, SJ in How Big Is Your God?

Minutae

A new day.
The sun rests on my face as I type.
Opportunities not yet known.
I can do this.

That Place Within

I'm sitting here wearing the same toque I wore for my morning walk and it's nearing bedtime. I never got it together to have a shower and carry on after I came in from outside. Dearest one is working the night shift and that often curbs my daytime activity. Not that I need a reason. Tonight is his first night shift and I've been mostly inactive for days already. A combination of that inactivity that is fully interior with the outer kind that means the newspaper's gathering dust on the floor and the laundry hamper is overflowing.

Today I remembered something I've heard in an AA meeting more than once: "pray for guidance, then do whatever's in front of you." It was said in response to some one's "paralysis by analysis". I think I fit that category. Paralyzed by thinking, over thinking. Even over thinking why I can't seem to put together a blog post that comes from that place within - that place which seems just beyond my reach at the moment.

Remembering to do the next thing in front of me means the day's dishes are drying on the counter instead of piled by the wayside. Doing the next thing in front of me - that seems realistic and possible no matter how hard it is to shut off my brain. I've been in a funk for how many weeks now? Many. I don't have a clue what the answer is other than to simply accept this is where I'm at and to remind myself it's not a permanent state.

"Pray for guidance, then do whatever's in front of you."

I was grateful I rememebered that saying this afternoon. Having the dishes washed as a result feels good.