Grey

The sky keeps spitting white stuff today.  Nothing sticking to the ground like yesterday, but cold and damp white stuff.

It's not helping that my neck and back tightened up painfully overnight for some reason, and left me with a headache to fight off too.

I have a government employment insurance session to attend this afternoon.  One that may or may not be fully necessary, but is somehow mandatory. 

It's one of those things that highlights, somehow, this season of deconstruction.  Months after I lost my job, and am finally within reach of a new position, my government benefits kicked in a few weeks ago, and last week I got a letter informing me that I needed to attend this session.  And, now, after a crazy summer of studying, after a wild and ongoing emotional ride, going to a session like this is almost like having the deconstruction of my life waved in front of me like some sort of macabre flag.  "Look, your life looks like nothing you ever expected!"

I feel grey today.  Not particularly down, not black and blue.

Just grey.

Blah.

Like the skies outside.

Like the boredom of a government information session.

So, I'll take the train, and read a book, and maybe some scripture, and I'll look for color amidst the grey.  I'll make the effort to focus on the the things that remind me of joy and life.  And I might just come home from the session and spend the evening taking a bubble bath or sipping a big mug of tea.

Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 58

Today's Daily 5:

1. 1 year and 58 days of making these lists.  Because the last few days have been hard, and showing up here for a year and 58 days is a big deal tonight.
2. sourdough toast with butter and blackberry jam
3. a smooth job interview
4. praying friends
5. driving to do a few errands this morning without having too much panic
6. errands that went smoothly
7. drinking a big mug of rooibos tea while wrapped in blankets and pausing, before the day got hard
8. watching a couple of kids movies
9. making some necessary calls that I'd been procrastinating on
10. being reminded in a couple different ways that tomorrow is another new day
11. Shake the Dust - I know, I've linked to it over and over the last year, but I watched it again tonight and needed to hear that.  "this is for the people who are told to speak only when spoken to and then are never spoken to."  Shake the Dust.

Shake the Dust

I was watching and listening to this video again from Anis Mojgani.

Shake the Dust.

For me (yes, in spite of the rougher language at moments) this is a powerful image.

Shake the dust.

From life.

Brush off the cobwebs.

These last few weeks have been full of deep aches and brokenness.

In my own heart, and in those around me.

Carrying deep burdens of prayer.

Choosing to love when I'd really rather not.

They've been hard weeks, and I've been feeling down.

Some of that is just physical.  A change in medications that my body is having trouble adapting to.  The wear on one's body and mind from the kind of intense weeks I've been having.

Some is emotional and some spiritual.

I feel cobwebby.  Trapped in this crazy circle of feeling miserable and overwhelmed.

And I came across one of my own old posts, and was reminded that I've been here before.

Shake the dust.

Choose to celebrate hope.

Choose joy and life and peace.

Choose to be grateful for the healing that comes and is coming.

Choose to focus on all of those things instead of the brokenness.

And choose to trust Jesus with the brokenness.

In me, and in all whom I love.

Shake the Dust.

And really, really live.

Daily 5 - Day 222

Today's Daily 5:

1. 222 days of this.  Mostly just because 222 is a fun number.
2. Got a treatment at Mom's tonight.  It helped my aching neck and shoulders.
3. Actually finished a chapter in the book I'm reading for review.  (It's like the never-ending book, so I'm pleased when I finish a chapter.)
4. Bought groceries for the week and carted them home via transit (and via a stop at Mom and Dad's).  Found everything I needed, got great service from a clerk in the vegetable department, and managed to fit it all in my backpack for the train trip to Mom and Dad's.
5. Supper at Mom and Dad's - handmade BBQ'd bratwurst (in buns) from the tiny German butcher shop in the town Mom grew up in, and roasted vegetables.
6. The feeling of a hot shower at the end of a kind of rough day
7. Checked my aeroplan miles tonight.  I have with 100 miles of enough for a trip either East or West later this year, depending on which destination I decide that I prefer.  This is a totally exciting prospect to me - free (or almost anyway) flights!
8. Still loving Anis Mojgani's "Shake the Dust"
9. Got caught up again on The Amazing Race tonight.  My favorites are still the cowboys, but I'm liking the police detectives too.
10. Mom had a blow dryer, with a diffuser to lend me for a bit.  This is fantastic news since basement living in the (very) early spring has made it a bit less of an option to let my hair air dry, and because my blow dryer quite literally sparked and nearly blew up while I was using it last night.  At least with a borrowed option, I don't have to rush out to buy one, and can wait until my next pay cheque.  I was thankful, too, that when sparks quite literally flew last night, neither my hair, nor the carpet was even singed.

Somehow hope

It's Monday again, and I'm struggling.

I'm feeling lonely.  A bit isolated.

Wondering about the state of a relationship that is precious.  Telling myself that I'm just being neurotic.  And then going on with the neuroses, seemingly unable to halt them.

I'm missing my roommate.  I process best aloud, talking with someone who I know is safe, and she was great for just letting me talk, get the crazy events of my "i work in a soap opera" days off my chest, so that they could dissipate and I could breathe again.

These days I live with Grandma, where every thought needs to be filtered, because any information she garners, she can and will share with everyone you know.

Let's just say that verbal processing isn't so much an option right now.

At least not at home.

Home.

That's a whole other topic.

The room looks like it's mine now.  I've unpacked most of my things.  I put together the "altar" spaces yesterday, unwrapping all the little items from their boxes and arranging them across the surfaces.

But it doesn't feel like home, and I wonder if it ever will.

If it will ever be anything other than "Grandma's basement".

If it will feel safe.

My happiest moment of the weekend was just before coming fully to conciousness this morning, when, just for a moment, I lay there and thought I was in the bedroom in my last apartment.

I watch for that apartment each morning as I go past it on the bus.

That was a happy place for me.  A place of healing.  A home.

And now God has led me elsewhere, and I'm struggling to be at peace with that.

It's not a particularly unique struggle, but right now it is consuming my days, my thoughts.

I find myself longing for something else.  Feeling unsettled, and "inbetween."

If I think about it too long, the tears build behind my eyes and I wonder if I will survive this latest step.

This move from a place that was healing to this whole other painful, awkward place.

Ironic that it is taking place during Lent.

The first Lent in several years where I am struggling too, to find my footing.  Not fasting in any of the traditional ways.  Forgetting at least three times a week to pick up the Lenten reading books I'd committed to using, and then guiltily "catching up" the following day, usually while I lean against the counter in the  tiny basement bathroom, waiting for the toilet to stop running, in case it doesn't stop and I need to take the lid off the tank and mess with things to make it stop.

It's Monday morning, and mostly, I want to cry.  Because my heart hurts.

And then I want to whine a little, too.  Because while I trust that God is in these places, too, they make me antsy and uncomfortable.  They hurt, and I don't like them.

So I listen, over and over, on repeat to Anis Mojgani's Shake the Dust.  Because the human heart beats a hundred thousand times a day.  And somehow that is hopeful.

And I ponder over and over these lines from Richard Rohr "Memory creates a readiness for salvation, an emptiness to receive love and a fullness to enjoy it. Strangely enough, it seems so much easier to remember the hurts, the failures and the rejections. It is much more common to gather our life energy around a hurt than a joy, for some sad reason. Remember the good things even more strongly than the bad, but learn from both. And most of all, “remember that you are remembered by God.”

Because I am remembered by God.  And there is hope in that too.  Even in the moments when I don't like what He is doing, I am remembered by him.

And because, in the absence of someone with whom I can process aloud, I can show up here, and write out my thoughts, and talk myself into somehow hoping, just for a little bit longer.

Daily 5 - Day 207

Today's Daily 5:

1. This quote from Richard Rohr that I posted earlier.  Remember the good things even more strongly than the bad, but learn from both.  That's kind of the goal, really, of the daily 5 - to re-shape thought to remember the good more strongly than the bad, to celebrate it, and not let my life be only shape by the lessons learned in the bad times.
2. Shake the Dust.  I've been listening to it over and over today as I moved around my space, accomplishing things.  Somehow that same message - to live again.  It's one I'm clinging to right now.
3. Toaster waffles for breakfast.  With butter and pancake syrup.
4. Went for a walk by myself in the sun today.  Yes, it was down city streets, to pick up some lunch, but it was a walk, alone, in the sun.
5. It was a better day as far as coping with "life at Grandma's" goes
6. Banana cream pie
7. Freshly washed sheets and pajamas
8. Got a lot of unpacking done.  The room almost looks homey now.
9. Playing some random online games for a while
10. DVDs or online TV playing as I sorted and unpacked and cleaned.