Stress hits in the strangest ways

Suffice it to say that the past two weeks have been quite the nightmare. A bit of unexpected news knocked me for a loop, and the clean-up was extremely distressing… and a couple of friends have been in hospital… and I said yes to commit my workplace for a fairly major event the weekend before Thanksgiving… which necessitates a major push of preparation NOW (and ought to have been begun a month ago?) …

I thought I was handling everything well, overall. The dreaded news that hit me hard has actually had some elements of relief to it – I can now relax; what I had dreaded in anticipation has come in fact and is not so unbearable as I had expected. I have a couple of highly competent people holding my hand and coaching me through the upcoming Event. My friends are out of hospital and recuperating well.

Then, last night, I was looking at the dishes stacked by the sink, trying to motivate myself to deal with them. “This house is definitely showing too many signs of being inhabited by an emotionally distressed individual!” I told myself.

But the worst was yet to come. I glanced in another direction, and my eye fell upon…

The iron, sitting on top of the piano, where it has sat since I had the sewing machine out… ten days ago.

 

Some wonderful advice

God bless Penelope at Penelope’s Oasis for sharing this post a couple weeks ago.

“Don’t be afraid to take a wrecking ball to your life in order to redesign it” is bold advice, but completely fitting and even, sometimes, necessary.

Middle age and personal disappointments provide a wonderful impetus for evaluating my life. Having just turned 52 this past week, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting, myself. Am I doing what I want to do? What I value? Where do my daydreams take me? What do I want to be when I grow up?

There’s an image that keeps coming to me – I’m looking out the window across a green lawn, shaded with large trees, and looking at an expanse of water – a Sound, perhaps, if not the ocean. Where is it? I feel as if I’ve seen it before, perhaps on my way to Ocracoke, but I’ve never been inside a house that overlooks so much water.

What in-between steps can I be taking to make my dreams a reality? If I need something pretty to look out at while I work, what can I do on my own to give myself a pretty view?

I’ve taken the wrecking ball to one dimension of my life – one that meant a great deal to me, meant more than I can tell anyone, but that simply had to be left. It doesn’t hurt as badly as one might think. Oh, yes, it’s scary, and there’s a bit of grieving that goes along with it… but there are compensatory graces: I know I made the right and responsible and honorable choice, and I know this “amputation” will allow me to draw closer to what I really want to achieve during the time God has given me in this life – and, consequently, to what I want in the life of the World to come.

There’s no virtue in being a victim, having one’s life scripted by people who want only their own good, their own convenience and pleasure. God gives us a great deal of free choice and the opportunity to make good each and every day.

Be bold. Be adventurous. No one else can do it for us.

Sharing a wee gift

Yes, it’s my birthday. As my friend Margaret says, I’m 25, but I’m dyslexic.

Here’s something my friend Reba posted for me over at Facebook – It’s too precious not to share with everyone!

More LOL-wisdom

See? I’m NOT the only one!

Angela Messenger has mices problems, too…   But I bet her problem didn’t START with her cat!

noodling – nothing important, just Thankful

I can’t go into details, because this story involves someone else – a couple of somebody elses, actually – and I don’t intend to cause them embarrassment.

Let’s just begin by saying I am highly intuitive. Some people might call me psychic, although that’s not a term I care for at all. Sometimes I just know things – things I haven’t seen, or been told, or read… I just know them.

For several weeks I had deep unhappy forebodings about a situation. I felt weighed down by what I perceived was happening. I saw what I thought was the worst possible thing that could happen, the one thing I didn’t think I could bear, and I begged God to protect me from having to face that one thing I thought I could never bear.

Then this week I learned that the thing I dreaded has happened, and the thing I thought I could not bear, I have to bear. There isn’t any choice. As in my favorite passage from Rosamunde Pilcher, below, there isn’t any way not to bear it, except to stop the world and get off, and there is no practical way to accomplish that.

The remarkable thing is that, now it has happened, it isn’t so unbearable as I thought I would be. Once the initial blows had landed – and they felt rather as if I’d been kicked in the solar plexus; when I thought it couldn’t get worse, a new blow landed that was worse than the ones before – I took my bearings and discovered that I can bear this loss after all. Not only that, but I can bear not getting the answers and the resolution that might make sense of the tragedy.

Detachment won’t be easy – it goes against my basic nature – but it is do-able, I can see that clearly now.

God’s hands are large enough to hold the individuals involved – and tender enough to soothe the aches and sorrows of a broken heart and grieved soul.

A wonderful idea!

And for your musical entertainment…

I got to see these guys – the L.A. Guitar Quartet – perform (and perform this particular piece) at the Eastern Music Festival a couple years ago.

Red and the Pledge

Thanks to Donna E. for sharing this with me this morning. I have tears in my eyes; I’m sure I watched the live broadcast of this show – my parents watched Red Skelton religiously.

Praying for Kim M.

Woke up to find an email about a woman named “Kay M.”, from Pennsylvania, who died suddenly on Saturday. She’d become ill on Thursday, nausea and vomiting, had gone to the emergency room, been stabilized and sent home – her husband got sick on Friday – Saturday she told him she was very weak, and he called the rescue squad, but she died in his arms before they arrived. I’ve emailed the friend who sent me the email, asking if it was flu.

“Kay” and her husband have eight children, three in college and five being homeschooled at home. The youngest is only six years old.  As you may imagine, the entire family and all their friends are in complete shock. Please hold everyone in your prayers.