Continuing the journey (Wed – Dec 12)

12 Dec 2012 Leave a comment

by Lucia in Change, Transformation Tags: , , , , ,

I find myself eager to create some kind of trackable framework that will guide my choices and focus in the coming weeks and months of this journey, yet I keep getting stuck. There are so many things I still want to do that require a little bit, if not a lotta bit of courage.

HPIM0979The one year mark was really just another step along the way in a journey that is endless.

I got to thinking about the Serenity Prayer yesterday morning – especially the second request: God grant me…the courage to change the things I can. I’m facing some decisions and some necessary steps around finances that are scary right now. And I’ve been wrestling with some depression. Not the truly overwhelming kind, but the kind that keeps my energy level just low enough that I’ve run out of steam by the end of the work day. Getting any tasks done beyond dinner and planning for the morning feels daunting.

In the morning, when I’m getting ready for work, I’m inspired and eager to write a post. I make a mental or even physical list of some tasks I want to get done. Fill out the student loan repayment paperwork. Order this or that item online. Finish categorizing the expenditures I downloaded from my bank account so I can figure out a budget. Start checking out some of the roommate websites so I can begin looking for a better living situation.

It all sounds really good in the morning and I eagerly await the time when I’ll be able to tackle these projects. Yet by the time I get home, especially from my 3-day-per-week job, my brain is mush and all I want to do is fix dinner and relax in front of a DVD for an hour or so. Then an hour turns into two or even three and it’s time to get ready for bed and the next day.

The idea of giving up watching DVDs in the evenings continues to cross my mind as a worthy goal. After all, I could get a lot done in the two or three hours I have free each evening if I wasn’t distracted by some movie or TV show. I’ve toyed with the idea of tracking my abstinence in this area, but I’m not convinced this is all that different than my original goal of wanting to clear out the clutter. One year sounded like an adequate period of time to make a significant difference in the amount of clutter that surrounds me. Yet I look around my room and the only thing that seems noticeably different from this time last year is me! (Which is a very good thing. :-))

So I’m still thinking about how to shape this new leg of the journey. (Or would it be a “log” of the journey?  ;-))

I brought an old photo of me to work to scan into a jpeg file recently. It was taken when I was around twenty. I’m sitting on my then boyfriend’s bed, holding a beautiful Mexican West Coast rattlesnake. Yes, you read me – a rattlesnake. A “fixed” rattlesnake that is. If she bit me (which she wouldn’t – she was really quite gentle), I would receive no venom.  (Btw, I would be disinclined to perform any venom-ductectomies on vipers anymore, but back then, it seemed okay.)

It's amazing what can become comfortable in the right circumstances

It’s amazing what can become comfortable in the right circumstances

I’m reminded of the fact that when I first met my boyfriend, I was terrified of snakes – ANY kind of snake. When I was over at his place, I would sit on the end of his bed, just inches from the (open!) door, ready to bolt if one of the snakes he took from a cage made a move toward me. Even when I saw the young kids who lived next door to me eagerly and fearlessly stroking the snakes my boyfriend held out for them to see, I was still ready to run shrieking from the room.

Yet, over the course of the first year we dated, I started learning about his snakes. I learned about their habits and their temperaments, and I watched him handling them and staying safe. Then one day when I was over at his place, he was holding his boa constrictor when the doorbell rang. Without thinking, he simply handed it to me and went to answer the door. It was the first time I had even touched a snake, yet I found myself fascinated and unafraid! In fact, I was soon eager to hold any of the snakes that were gentle and not at all inclined to bite!

In barely a year’s time, I had gone from being truly terrified of these beautiful creatures to being fascinated and unafraid of them – and I couldn’t even tell you how or when it happened, except to say that it happened incrementally. The more I learned about them, the less I came to fear them.

It’s been well over twenty-five years now since I’ve held a snake. I daresay I would have to go through another period of getting familiar with them to feel brave enough to touch one or hold one again. But remembering that transition from absolute terror to comfort with them makes me wonder – what do I fear now and what will it take to overcome that fear?

Reflecting on the journey – Day 366 (Mon – Dec 3)

03 Dec 2012 2 Comments

by Lucia in Change, Spirituality, Step Talk, Transformation Tags: , , , , ,

HPIM1935I’m starting this post, not knowing if it will actually become a post. My internet connection is teasingly inconsistent. In the cone shaped icon that reflects the signal on my computer, there are four “arcs,” rather like the bars of a cell phone. The signal swings, at times, between one or two tiny arcs and the full cone of four arcs. And my computer is old and slow in general. But this is the last day of my one-year journey. I need to honor this day in some small way. It’s been a long and challenging twelve months.

It has been a year since I began this journey of facing my fears, testing myself, as it were, to see if I have the courage to change. When I consider my first posts and my seemingly worthy goals of clearing the tangible clutter from my life – or my room, to be more realistic – it doesn’t look like I’ve made a lot of progress. But when I look at the changes in how I respond to things, I am amazed at the difference. My sponsor commented on this when we met this past weekend and I mentioned that it had been almost a full year since I started my blog. Her observation was that the changes in me have been “huge.” A very nice thing to hear – and to have affirmed.

HPIM1937

I began this blog because I was tired of being ridiculously burdened by too much clutter that makes every move (and there have been lots) difficult and exhausting and highly stressful. I had come to realize that the reason I have clung to so much stuff and acquired even more is fear. I have been afraid to let things go because I thought I might need them and I knew I might not have the resources to replace them. One of the most annoying things someone can say to me is, “If you haven’t used it for over a year, you don’t need it!” Argh!!! The retort that leaps to mind when anyone is thoughtless enough to say that isn’t worth repeating.

The problem is that anytime someone would say something in this direction, a part of me would wilt in defeat, feeling the shame of being afraid to let go of my stuff and the deeper shame of being unable to afford a place that would allow me to get all my stuff out where I could actually use and enjoy it – and, yes, clear some of it out. I really don’t need everything I have in storage – I just don’t have the energy and time to plow through it when there’s nowhere to put any of it.

But I’m ranting. Forgive me.

HPIM1938As I was saying, I began this blog with an idealistic intention of clearing the physical clutter out of my life. Yet what I’ve actually been doing is learning to respond differently to the things that used to leave me paralyzed or quaking in fear. And I suspect there is a direct cause and effect going on.

When I began clearing the clutter not long after I wrote my first post, I started with the small things, the easy-to-discard things. At least, they had become easy to discard by that time. Without realizing it, I soon found myself letting go of somewhat (emotionally) “bigger” things.

HPIM1942Somewhere along the way, I began to let go my tendency to overreact in various situations. That was a more subtle process that began with small shifts and progressed until I found it easier and easier to let go of something I wished would have happened differently. That in itself has felt like a miracle!

As I consider the timing of this blog, it occurs to me that the idea for it began forming a few weeks before I had to move out of an apartment I’d shared with a friend, a few weeks after I’d begun my 7th Step – asking my Higher Power to remove my shortcomings. Actually, the approach I took was to look at my shortcomings and imagine the positive flip side of them. That’s what I asked my Higher Power to do, I asked for these character weaknesses to be transformed – and that’s what’s been happening.

I have to wonder if we sometimes underestimate the power of opening even a tiny door of willingness, a small window of trust. If I clench my hand into a fist, nothing can get in. But if I simply relax my fingers a little, before I even open my hand to become a receptacle, a space forms between the fingers and the palm – a space into which something else may come. Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing this past year – learning first to simply relax my hand and my fingers, then gradually, little by little, letting my fingers unfold.

The willingness to change does bear fruit

The willingness to change does bear fruit

Graceful Moments – Day 354 (Thu – Nov 22)

22 Nov 2012 Leave a comment

by Lucia in Body/Health Talk, Change, Spirituality, Transformation Tags: , , ,

In a moment of grace this morning, I felt the nudge to get up and wash my dishes. I had thought to wait a bit, to make sure everyone was up and awake. In fact, I had just started a movie that hadn’t yet finished the credits when the urge to get up and do them came.

I scooped up my dish-washing paraphernalia and dishes and went quietly to the kitchen. It was after nine, but I hadn’t heard signs of wakefulness from my upstairs housemates. I washed my dishes, laying them on a green terrycloth towel to drain. I was in the process of drying them when my landlady/housemate’s daughter and her son arrived, loaded down with the fixings for their Thanksgiving dinner. I finished drying and scooped away all my stuff just in time for her to start using the sink to bathe the turkey.

A graceful moment.

A little while later, I noticed my landlady outside my window. I first presumed she had taken the dog out for a potty break, then noticed she was looking at something. She turned around and walked back to go inside. I was vaguely aware of a brief glance in my direction. It dawned on me a couple of minutes later that she had gone out to see if the clothesline was available. I had put some towels in the dryer, because I, too, discovered the clothesline was already in use. She has a thing about using the clothesline instead of the dryer. I felt grateful that I truly did intend to hang my towels outside and that I wouldn’t have to hear her tell me again that she wishes I’d use the clothesline. And, I confess, a small part of me wanted to say, “So there!” – which is a not-so-graceful response.

Yet, it still felt like a graceful moment. (Or at least a “Whew!” moment. ;-))

This week has been sprinkled with moments of grace, serendipitous occurrences that suggest things may have started coming together for me. Sunday evening, I opened an envelope from Guideposts to give a friend of mine a subscription to their magazine. In the envelope was a postcard with an angel. She’s holding a young boy who is clinging to her, eyes closed in trust and comfort. It was just the image I needed to remind me of the prayer request I had sent in. There were several things I asked prayer for, but this image reminded me especially of my desire to see my son. (We live just far enough apart to make visiting difficult and we’ve both had some financial limitations to further inhibit the desire to see each other. It’s been over three years.)

I’m keeping the angel postcard where I can see it often to remind me of this particular prayer. Another graceful moment.

Tuesday, I finally bought a book I’ve been wanting to get for a couple of years now. It’s written by Phil Porter, one of the co-founders of InterPlay. It’s called The Slightly Mad Rantings of a Body Intellectual Part One. I’d only read one short excerpt from it before, which is posted on the InterPlay store’s website and seems so classic-Phil.

Later that evening, as I was noticing how uncomfortable I felt from having eaten too much and how squishy the jelly-roll around my middle has become, an unexpected and startling proclamation popped out of my mouth: “I love my body!” In that moment, I did love and appreciate my body, yet as recently as the day before I had been unhappy with the mushier parts and wondering if I would ever again feel good about my appearance.

The very next day at lunch, yesterday in fact, I opened the book to one of the first pieces. The title caught my eye and made me laugh: “lumpy thighs.” Perfect, I thought! As I read, I was surprised at how much it spoke to me. The short piece talks about learning to spend more of our time celebrating our bodies and ourselves just as we are, instead of spending our time trying to “fix” ourselves. I realized that in that unexpected statement of the night before, I had begun to celebrate my body just the way it is. (I highlighted almost two thirds of this piece.)

I “just happened” to buy that book hours before I began to redefine how I see my body. And I “just happened” to turn to a reading in it the next day that helped me to recognize – and claim – this shift in perspective.

Another moment of grace.

There’s so much more going on that I haven’t even attempted to capture here. Indeed, I barely capture it all anywhere. Could it be, as I close in on the one-year anniversary of my first post, that more has been happening than it seems? That I am being transformed in ways I didn’t even realize?

Patience has its rewards

The Countdown: 30 days till the journey is “done” – Day 336 (Sunday – Nov 4)

04 Nov 2012 Leave a comment

by Lucia in Change, Faith Walk, Queer Talk, Recovery, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I began this journey December 4th, almost a year ago, expecting to regularly and frequently be going through the paper piles and doing lots of other things that took more courage than I felt I had. With only 30 days remaining in this year of breaking through my fears, it could be deflating to look around my room and notice the many places those paper piles have not only not shrunk, but even grown. Then again, if I take a look inside, I am in awe of the ways I have changed and been changed.

My hope for these 30 days until December 4th is that I might use this time to consider what has happened – hopefully with frequent, perhaps shorter posts (it could happen!), and I’ll try not to worry about adding pictures when I don’t have the time.

I spent the past three days with a group of amazing and wonderful people, mostly transgendered or genderqueer in some way. Most of them active and involved, even being the leaders in their various faith communities. Being around them never fails to inspire me to continue the inner work I am doing. I’d like to share some of what I wrote in my journal this morning, beginning with a verse from Psalm 90: “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.” (NKJV)

In the past day or so, I’ve been thinking about new beginnings and how this day that begins the 30-day countdown of my ‘blog journey’ feels like a new beginning to me. Interesting, how it doesn’t feel like a journey to a new beginning, for the new journey has already begun.

This verse reminds me that God has been with me throughout this year of challenges and changes. The conference felt like a time of introspection and renewal. My trans friends and colleagues rekindle my desire to do ministry even as a I also appreciate that the “be still” process needs to continue. The author of a devotion I read talks about lying in a tree house as a kid, looking up at the sky, and not needing words to talk to God. She speaks of her experience as one of being in a “sacred space.”

I thought of the “sacred spaces” created through the differing faith expressions shared at the conference. There were people from Pagan, Jewish and Christian traditions, among others. Diverse experiences of the Divine were made available to all.

I don’t know that I have ever had the experience of being truly unwelcome in a particular faith group or 12-Step meeting, although my ACA/Al-Anon mentality can sometimes leave me thinking I might be unwelcome. Most, if not all of my trans friends have been rejected from these places that usually claim to “welcome” all who feel drawn to be there. Being around them enables me to show my support for their journey and deepens my own as I consider the courage they have needed just to be who they are.

This day does feel like a “new beginning” for me. The ten(!) hours of sleep I got helped, I’m sure. Yet it’s more than that. It’s even more than being thirty days away from the end of this 366-day journey.

It’s about having learned that I can “be still” and let my insides transform so that my “outsides” can begin manifesting those changes. It’s about learning that letting go in countless small ways is teaching me how to let go in bigger ways and how to let go with even greater ease.

It’s about discovering that even trusting God happens incrementally; that it’s not a simple decision I make, after which I can heave a sigh of relief, check it off my to-do list, and call it “done.”

It’s about learning to dream again and discovering that it’s the dreaming itself that’s important. I don’t have to know if or how any of these dreams may manifest, let alone when; it’s simply important that I do the dreaming and, through giving myself that permission, experience the growing belief that I am loved by God and I am just as worthy of experiencing these dreams as anyone else – as are you.

It’s about learning to trust, one day at a time, in God’s provision for me, in God’s love for me. And as I trust, I find I do have the courage to take those next steps of my journey through life.

Note: Your comments, experiences and reflections are welcome and appreciated. This is a place where “cross talk” can be a good thing! 😉

And for anyone who might notice: Admittedly, the math of my day numbers in previous posts doesn’t quite add up from the day I began this blog journey, but I needed to keep it simple. I adjusted the day count around the first of the year, adding 20 rather than 27 to whatever day of the year my calendar said, in order to make it easier to track. Yet this is, in fact, day 336, not day 345. 🙂

A break in the wall – Day 317 (Tue – Oct 23)

23 Oct 2012 Leave a comment

by Lucia in Body/Health Talk, Change, Spirituality, Transformation Tags: , , , , , , ,

Do you ever have trouble deciding what to do? Not because you don’t have anything to do; rather because there are too many things to do. That’s how it feels for me right now. I keep floundering. Do I go through mail? Do I organize my shelves? Do I do Step work for my next meeting with my sponsor? Do I start my Step work for the other programs in which I’m less active? (Everything goes back to Al Anon for me, so that’s my primary program and the one that helps me with the others.)

Do I read? Do I relax? Do I blog? What is it exactly that I’m “supposed to be” doing right now – besides hiding from the emotional turmoil just below the surface?

In the past ten days, I have been through an upheaval of body memories and emotions. Old memories are surfacing, clarity is arising around those experiences, and possibilities for positive change are determined to filter through the confusion of unexpressed grief, fear and anger to let themselves be known. I tried writing about this, but I find myself talking in circles and don’t quite know what to do.

Without going into detail, I had an experience of recognizing on a deep level the abusive nature of a previous relationship. I had spent years discounting how I had experienced it because it wasn’t physically violent in direct or tangible ways. Therefore, it couldn’t really have been abusive, right?

“WRONG!” my body tells me.

I’m still trying to sort through the myriad thoughts and feelings that have surfaced and continue to unfold. Later this week, I’m going to work with a dear friend who is trained in areas that will help me to process this. We’re going to do some InterPlay work with this because I need to work on a body-spirit level and avoid getting stuck in my head. I’ve already spent too much time analyzing and compartmentalizing my experiences of this. It’s time to listen to what my body has to tell me about how this did (and still might) affect me.

The thing is, as difficult as this has been (I know there’s a ton of grief just waiting for the right window to open so it can spill out), it has also led to the deconstruction of certain beliefs about myself and relationships. In short, I have realized that something I believed about myself might not be true and that I may have the ability to move more gracefully into a new relationship than I would ever have thought possible.

That realization itself leaves my head fairly spinning, as I continue to integrate this new information.

Perhaps I’ll be able to talk about this more later. As I continue to discover what is and isn’t true about myself, I know it will reshape how I see the world and what I see as possibilities for my life. For now, I’m grateful to discover that pulling out a single stone from the wall sometimes leads to an avalanche that creates a new door to a brighter other side.

(Am I making any sense at all today?)

Room for Fear and the Challenge of Facing It – Day 300 (Sat – Oct 6)

06 Oct 2012 2 Comments

by Lucia in Change, Paper Walk, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , ,

Was it only yesterday morning that the words “Be of good courage” provided the emotional release I must have needed? It seems longer ago than that…

I have been letting go of many things, including expectations around how much time I have in the mornings. For more than ten years, I have spent at least 20-30 minutes every morning doing a little reading, then reflecting on what came to me, filling page after page in my now dozens of journals.

With my recent, self-imposed (though much appreciated) early work schedule, I don’t always have time to write in my journal in the morning. So I’ve been trying new things. One of them is to simply read something that helps me to hear God’s voice. Usually I read from my Al Anon literature, like The Forum magazine or Hope for Today (one of the daily readers), or I read from an inspirational resource, like the Daily Guideposts devotionals or the Guideposts magazines. I like hearing other people’s experiences, how they’ve made it through the difficult times and how they celebrate the rejoicing times.

It was the third devotion I read yesterday that brought on tears as I recognized the depth of my loneliness. I hadn’t actually noticed it while trying to work on the challenges in my life right now. In fact, I would likely have told you that I’m not especially lonely these days. But there it was!

As I reflected on these feelings on my way to work, I noticed that clearing out so much unneeded stuff from my room last weekend had actually created room for more feelings and more fear to emerge. It was as if I had begun disassembling the wall of protection I’d hidden behind for such a long time. Without all the conspicuous clutter and my constant concern about what to do with it, my mind had room to turn to other things. And the next “other things” are the many stashes of paper living in various spaces in my room, from orderly boxes to random piles.

It’s within the paper piles that the scary stuff lives: the stuff that brings up emotions, triggers fear, and generally intimidates me, sometimes even overwhelming me when I think about addressing it. If I open the piece of mail from the credit card company, for instance…here, let me grab one right now and open it…

Okay. This one is a “REMINDER NOTICE.” (They capitalize that to make sure I don’t think it’s some other kind of notice, I suppose, or perhaps to make sure that I am, indeed, “reminded” that I promised to send them $25 a month.) It’s from the “RECOVERY DEPARTMENT.” (More caps.) Of course, “recovery” for them means getting as much money from me as they can before they give up. “Recovery” for me means learning to let God lead me through this maze of challenges as I am restored to sanity.

What happens for me, in the very process of facing the unopened envelope, is that I’m afraid I will open the envelope to discover that something is happening that is the very opposite of what I want to happen. So I procrastinate and let the papers accumulate. Then last weekend, I had to go and do what I realize was a remarkable amount of cleanup in my room. So much so that I really have no more excuses to not begin plowing through the stacks of paper.

The words I read yesterday, especially “Be of good courage,” came on the heels of newly realized feelings of loneliness. They became both the reminder that this work must be done alone (for the most part) and the encouragement for me to hang in there. At an InterPlay retreat last Saturday, I was encouraged to ask someone to simply come be with me while I sort through stuff. Just thinking about that possibility brings up fear and uncertainty, because I know that having someone with me as a supportive witness would intensify the experience.

Rats! Here come the fears and the tears, as I am reminded that there is a reason I’m being led through all of this inner work incrementally, one small step at a time. It is hard work. And it is often intensely emotional…and powerfully cleansing when I have the courage to take even the smallest of steps.

I can only do one piece or take one step at a time…

It’s scary around the edges – Day 294 (Sun – Sep 30)

30 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by Lucia in Change, Paper Walk, Transformation Tags: , , , , , , ,

My room has gone through a transformation today. The transformation isn’t quite complete, but the difference between how it looked when I woke up and what it looks like now is huge. When I got up, one side of my desk had a chaotic pile of stuff that needed sorting, clearing out, and organizing. There were cloth boxes full of silly things, like jars and baggies, as well as boxes with my printer, paper for the printer, and other random stuff.

My primary goal was to clear this space and set up my printer. But I kept looking at the disaster zone on top of the desk and wondering if I might possibly be able to do something about that today as well.

As I continued to nibble on the pile throughout the day, I noticed a feeling of uncertainty hanging around the edges of my thoughts. I was afraid to think about it too much, because the reality is that I don’t know what it feels like to have a space that isn’t chaotic. Sure, I have corners and places within the room that are organized and fairly neat. But for decades, I have also had piles or boxes that are an accumulation of un-dealt-with stuff, especially papers. I would wager that I still have a few pieces of unopened mail that are older than my son (who is an adult) stashed somewhere in my oldest (and biggest) storage unit. (I have three.)

Sadly, the consistent “before” state…

For too many years, I have often felt overwhelmed by various pieces of my life and things like mail and other papers have multiplied and accumulated by – quite literally – the boxful. What kept lurking around the edges of my thoughts today is that once I’ve sorted through the miscellaneous non-paper-pile stuff, I will no longer have an excuse not to begin working on the paper piles. And that scares the pee-waddlin’ out of me! Dang! Just saying that “out loud” magnifies the fear bubbles coursing through my veins right now.

So many things have been coming clear to me in the past few weeks. The first significant “aha” was to realize just how much shame I have had around having so much stuff. I honestly didn’t realize I felt shame. I readily acknowledged a bit of embarrassment and the fact that it has been burdensome and inconvenient come moving time (and I’ve moved a ridiculous number of times in the past few years), but “shame”? Yet there it was!

Acknowledging that – and sharing those feelings with trusted friends (including my Al Anon sponsor) – must have created cracks in my walls of defense. Little by little, other insights followed. I realized – I mean truly realized – that this is a lifelong journey. There will always be more stuff to sort through, more mail to deal with, more papers to organize. This isn’t going to just “get done” and that’s it. This is a part of life! You probably already “get” this, right? But for me, for the first time in my life, it felt not only okay that this isn’t a task that will be “completed,” it felt pretty good. I don’t know if I can explain it, but it did feel good to realize this.

Not ideal, but so-o-o much better!

The next realization was that I didn’t have to deal with everything all at once. I can’t begin to guess at how long I’ve held the notion that I have to deal with all my stuff (i.e., the countless boxes in storage) all at once, in one continuous marathon clear-out-and-organize session. Otherwise it will never happen. (Can you relate?) But it suddenly dawned on me what a huge step it would be if I were actually able to go through and organize, sort and clear out just the stuff in this room. OMG! That feels like a mountain in and of itself!

So today, I tried not to think too much about what comes after I get my room into a workable, working space and just kept plodding along. It felt pretty good to throw away lots of things I really didn’t need. Small things that didn’t take up much space, but made for a lot of clutter come moving time. And you know what? I discovered there actually is a desk under the clutter!

I don’t know what it will feel like in the morning, and there’s certainly more to do, but for the first time in the month since I moved into this room, I’ll actually be able to sit at a desk to read and perhaps even do some journaling before I head to work. I’m sure the fear will resurface when I get to the rest of the stuff, but for now, I’m going to enjoy the progress I’ve made. 🙂

Who knew it could look like this!

Challenging Choices – Day 288 (Mon – Sep 24)

24 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by Lucia in Change, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , , ,

The trouble with change is that there are so many choices to be made as a result of the change. Moving, in particular, presents its own challenge because virtually everything has been thrown up in the air to land in a different place. Sadly, my desk top and the corner to the left of it still look like that’s what actually happened. This is where the challenging choices come in.

Did I mention the room is quite small?

It’s the end of a day that started before 5 a.m. when my alarm clock went off. I’m tired. I probably shouldn’t have followed dinner with that delicious Trader Joe’s Greek yogurt. (I feel too full, which doesn’t help.) And I’d like to start getting ready for bed in about half an hour so I can get a reasonable night’s sleep before the alarm goes off early tomorrow morning. I have clothes to get ready, things to put away, and breakfast and lunch to plan.

I find myself faced with too many choices. I could (and probably should soon) bring my check register up-to-date. I realize I’m not at all certain what my balance actually is. (Online banking is helpful, but too often misleading.) I would like to start putting things in the desk drawers, rather than having them scattered on top of the desk or temporarily perched in various other places in the room. However, before I can put things in the desk, I’d like to remove the old and grimy-looking drawer liners and replace them with fresh, new contact paper. Plus the drawers stick when pulled, so I have some sanding to do. There are still a few boxes I need to sort and clear out. The bookshelves are only partly organized – some things are where they may stay, other things are temporarily hanging out till I can put them in more convenient places.

I could check my email, write in my reflection journal, read some Al Anon literature, relax and watch a DVD, make a call about tomorrow’s possible lunch date, write a blog post (clearly you can see which choice I made this evening), or start early preparing for the morning (picking out clothing, cutting up food for breakfast, and so on).

It’s a mystery to me how I ever used to be able to do so much before and still get my rest! I used to have a three-hour window between getting up and getting out the door; now I have a two-and-a-quarter-hour window.

How’s this for dazzlingly large…not!

Does it truly make that much difference to have my “kitchen” scattered in three locations (bedroom, kitchen and garage) when my bedroom is only five steps from the kitchen and the garage is reasonably close (although it won’t feel that way in the rain)? At my aunt and uncle’s, my bedroom was down a long hallway from the kitchen and my refrigerator was just past the good-sized dining area. Yet I seemed to have been able to get more done in the morning and to have consistently had time for my morning journaling. What am I missing??

It was more convenient to have all my refrigerated food indoors, where it only took a dozen steps each way to retrieve one more thing if I forgot it. It is challenging to have to stop and carefully plan everything I need so I only have to go to the garage once (hopefully) while preparing breakfast and lunch – especially because it’s dark out when I’m fixing all this.

But what bothers me more than anything else is the frequent sacrificing of my reflection and journaling time. That’s my time spent talking to and listening to God. That’s the time when I ground myself for the day. That’s the time I depend on to be reminded that I am not alone on this journey even though I often feel alone. At least in terms of human companionship.

I dislike having to make choices between multiple things that are important and/or multiple things that I want to be doing. I dislike having to rush or forego my journal time with God if I’m going to prepare food that adequately nourishes my body (except that I haven’t found time to properly evaluate the foods I’m preparing and suspect I need to overhaul my breakfast and lunch choices). In short, I dislike – sometimes intensely – feeling under a time crunch both morning and evening and keep wondering how on earth I’ve been able to do seemingly so much more in the past…

Yet despite this frustrating time of adapting to a new and, let’s face it, rather inadequate living space – perhaps even because of the challenges, there are incredible moments of letting go that seem to come with greater and greater ease than ever before. Could it be that this is the winepress and I’m the grapes being pressed to yield the best part of the fruit?

One bona fide perk of this tiny room – the view out the windows lined up along one wall!

Changes, Challenges and Choices – Day 283 (Wed – Sep 19)

19 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by Lucia in Change, Recovery, Spirituality Tags: , , , , ,

I’m finding it hard to get started again with my blog posts after such a long gap and after not having internet access on my home computer for nine and a half months. But maybe that was a necessary “gestation” period for something more to come.

Interesting how things change in ways we didn’t expect (or want). It felt so right deciding to move into this place. And actually I believe it was the right thing to do. It’s just that I had hoped for a place that felt far more welcoming and comfortable than this has been so far. There are moments when I feel like the whiny Israelites, complaining that they got what they wanted, only to discover they didn’t like what they got!

I’m living in a room that is about 8′ by 12′. The distance between the twin bed on one wall and the desk on the facing wall is all of 34″ (almost 34″ that is). On either side of the desk, unfortunately, there are still piles of my as-yet unsorted boxes and such. I’m having to be very patient and gentle with myself these days. I arrive home from work with little energy for tackling such tasks as organizing my room. But little by little I see progress. I just didn’t expect it to take so long.

The changes that come naturally to any move are unavoidable. Different room arrangements, different furniture (in my case, at least), different logistics of where things are in relation to each other, both room-wise and stuff-wise. Following my initial move into the downstairs apartmentette, I schlepped all my things into my newly painted room, with it’s newly sanded and finished floor and a new 5’x8′ rug bridging the gap between bed and desk. I made the move pretty much all in one day, which was exhausting. But it was really nice to simply get it done.

Unfortunately the transition has been difficult, fraught with challenges. The short version (of the most annoying challenge) is that my bedroom still serves as my pantry/kitchen extension and the kitchen is essentially only a place I can use…a little. I have been allowed one small shelf-drawer – the bottom one of a lower cupboard. In other words, I can keep a few things on a shelf-drawer that’s just a couple of inches above the floor. Aside from a teensy area (less than a square foot) in the kitchen refrigerator and a few things that are now in the freezer (which was less than 1/4 full and appears to stay that way), all of my things that need freezing or refrigerating live in a tiny refrigerator in the (non-attached) garage!

The refrigerator is, thankfully, not on the garage floor. It is perched atop a makeshift cupboard which is my “pantry.” (Swell…) It’s too vulnerable to outdoor multi-legged critters from various insect families, so I’m only keeping things there that are in cans, jars, or seriously non-perishable and virtually all of them are in small plastic tubs to deter invasions. Thus, things like my boxes of cereal and granola need to live on the built-in bookshelf in my small bedroom. (So much for lots of book shelf space.)

Preparing a bowl of cereal, for instance, required grabbing a box of cereal from my bedroom, getting my bowl out of the shelf-drawer in the kitchen, pouring the cereal in the bowl, carrying the bowl out to the garage, getting the milk out of the tiny fridge to pour on my cereal, then trekking back into the house to eat the cereal. (Thank God, I haven’t yet had to do this in the rain.) I finally started keeping a small amount of milk in a small, washed & recycled plastic juice bottle in the fridge. It’s too small for my housemates to object to, but big enough to save me a few trips to the garage.

All this is to say that I am facing these and similar challenges on a daily basis – sometimes several times a day. Which leads me to “choices.”

I have to admit that it is taking a lot of very conscious effort to keep letting go and setting aside my irritation when everything about living here feels like the very opposite of what I’ve been praying for. It is only by reminding myself that this is a temporary situation and that I am blessed to have a comfortable bed and now, at long last, an internet connection that I am able to find any serenity at all. I’m finding myself truly grateful for my recovery work and for the support and encouragement I receive from my 12-step friends. I am discovering just what it means to live “one day at a time” when I very much want things to change for the better. I know they will. I just pray that it comes sooner rather than later.

In the meanwhile, I take care of myself by continuing to work my program and prepare for better things to come. Letting go, remembering to trust, and noticing my journey are all a part of the process.

Actions, Small Steps and Noticings:

  • I released my bike and was able to give it to a program friend who truly needed one (and actually rides it, unlike me ;-))
  • I bought a $20 computer table at IKEA.
  • Things go much better when I remember to be patient and gentle with myself. I really can only do one thing at a time… (Who knew?!)

Day 234 (Aug 1): Growth Opportunities (and Miracles) Abound! (Pt 1)

01 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by Lucia in Change, Faith Walk Tags: , , , , , , ,

One of the things my pastor used to say to me whenever things seemed to be going any direction but the one I wanted was, “Growth opportunities abound!” We would usually both laugh and I’d be a little more patient with whatever was going on.

I mean, does the pile ever grow smaller??

Right now one of my “growth opportunities” is having the patience to stay with this blog and its purpose even when I’m not posting as frequently as I would like. When I began this blog, I envisioned writing every day or at least many times a week. I thought by now, being as this is the 234th day of my (official) blog journey, I’d have about two hundred posts. I was hoping to share with you every step of this journey. As it happens, I have barely over one hundred posts. (Aren’t you lucky! ;-)) Then again, even though I’m not posting often, I am deep in the experience of finding the courage to change – one day, one week, one month at a time.

It seems as if there is always so much going on that it’s hard to find time to fit everything I want to do in, including talking to you. I’m beginning to wonder if there ever is a time when there isn’t “so much going on right now.” Could that actually be the norm? Is there no time when things are going well and steady, without seeming like there’s so much or “too much” going on, even as the growth continues? I’m beginning to wonder. I’d be curious to hear about your experience with this.

Waiting…

I’ve known for about two months now that I needed to find a new place to live. My aunt and uncle, quite understandably, would like their guest room freed up for family who will be visiting in the coming weeks. I’ve mentioned it to various friends and colleagues the past several weeks, to invite prayer, suggestions or other possibilities. I off-and-on considered checking Craigslist to see if there might be anything at all in my price range (which is pretty far below the typical market rates in this area). I had no idea whether or not I’d be back to only 14 hours of work per week come August. Such financial insecurity hardly invested me with confidence.

Likely inhibited by my limited internet access (as in, the computers at work or the library), I kept forgetting to even look online. Yet it felt like I was doing what I needed to be doing. When I get done with work, the last thing I want to do is sit at the computer and engage in what might well be a fruitless and/or deflating search for the seemingly impossible – a place I can afford in a place I would want to be. Whenever I started to feel like I should get my rear in gear and hit the internet, my whole body-spirit would scream, “NO! That is NOT what you’re supposed to be doing right now!” The resistance was palpable and the notion of “should” invariably came from a place of fear.

I may have mentioned that I have a necklace I’ve been wearing virtually every day for months. It is a simple metal disk with the words “Be still” on it. It is my constant reminder to stop trying to make things happen and to instead let go and let God lead me on this journey. So I continued to let go the beat-the-bushes urges, continued to mention my need for a place whenever the subject arose (or I felt the urge to bring it up), and continued to “be still” and trust that God was doing something that I could not do for myself.

I’m ready

And the “miracles” have started to unfold…

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