- A new phone cord at work. After years of one that tangles and pulls the whole phone set with it when I lean over to answer a call, this new, untangled one is truly lovely.
- I loved this. I might have to visit a village where books grow on trees! :)
- What was probably the last "brother/sister date" before my brother is no longer a single man.
- A drive outside the city.
- A baby foal, alongside it's mother
- just talking and driving
- doing a few errands together
- a sleep without a nightmare
- seeing deer as we drove
- knowing that even though it doesn't feel it, the meds will kick in soon, and I'll start to feel better.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Daily 5 - Day 264
Today's Daily 5:
Quoting the Saints
A collection of quotes from various saints that have built up in my inbox the last while...
Cling to his most sweet Mother, who carried a Son whom the heavens could not contain; and yet she carried him in the little enclosure of her holy womb and held him on her virginal lap. (Saint Clare of Assisi)
Advent is such a beautiful season. It is a time for renewal; it is especially a time for forgiveness, because God brings his forgiveness to us in the shape of his Son. (Catherine de Hueck Doherty)
Prayer is an uplifting of the heart, a cry of gratitude and love. (Saint Therese of Lisieux)
Mary's pregnancy is a period of unbroken contemplation, of continual attention to the Son. And yet, it is a time of action, for she went to Elizabeth in order to bring the Son to her, the gift she had received from God to hand on to others. (Adrienne von Speyr)
Those who hearts are pure at the temples of the Holy Spirit. (Saint Lucy)
You must refuse nothing you recognize to be his will. (Saint Jane Frances de Chantal)
To surrender oneself is more than to devote oneself, more than to give oneself, it is even something more than to abandon oneself to God. In a word, to surrender oneself is to die to everything and to self, to be no longer concerned with self except to keep it continually turned toward God. (Saint Marie-Victoire Couderc)
If you invoke the Holy Spirit with a humble and trusting heart, filled with good desires, he will descend with his blessed light and inflaming fire. He will come and penetrate into the very center of your heart, purifying it, changing it, enlightening it, inflaming it, and consuming it with the flames of his holy and divine love. (Saint Frances Xaveir Cabrini)
Our body is a cenacle, a monstrance: through its crystal, the world should see God. (Saint Gianna Beretta Molla)
I would advise those who practice prayer, especially at first, to cultivate the friendship and company of others who are working in the same way. This is a most important thing, because we can help one another by our prayers, and all the more so because it may bring us even greater benefits. (Saint Teresa of Avila)
Love is a mystery that transforms everything it touches into things beautiful and pleasing to God. The love of God makes a soul free. (Saint Faustina Kowalska)
Cling to his most sweet Mother, who carried a Son whom the heavens could not contain; and yet she carried him in the little enclosure of her holy womb and held him on her virginal lap. (Saint Clare of Assisi)
Advent is such a beautiful season. It is a time for renewal; it is especially a time for forgiveness, because God brings his forgiveness to us in the shape of his Son. (Catherine de Hueck Doherty)
Prayer is an uplifting of the heart, a cry of gratitude and love. (Saint Therese of Lisieux)
Mary's pregnancy is a period of unbroken contemplation, of continual attention to the Son. And yet, it is a time of action, for she went to Elizabeth in order to bring the Son to her, the gift she had received from God to hand on to others. (Adrienne von Speyr)
Those who hearts are pure at the temples of the Holy Spirit. (Saint Lucy)
You must refuse nothing you recognize to be his will. (Saint Jane Frances de Chantal)
To surrender oneself is more than to devote oneself, more than to give oneself, it is even something more than to abandon oneself to God. In a word, to surrender oneself is to die to everything and to self, to be no longer concerned with self except to keep it continually turned toward God. (Saint Marie-Victoire Couderc)
If you invoke the Holy Spirit with a humble and trusting heart, filled with good desires, he will descend with his blessed light and inflaming fire. He will come and penetrate into the very center of your heart, purifying it, changing it, enlightening it, inflaming it, and consuming it with the flames of his holy and divine love. (Saint Frances Xaveir Cabrini)
Our body is a cenacle, a monstrance: through its crystal, the world should see God. (Saint Gianna Beretta Molla)
I would advise those who practice prayer, especially at first, to cultivate the friendship and company of others who are working in the same way. This is a most important thing, because we can help one another by our prayers, and all the more so because it may bring us even greater benefits. (Saint Teresa of Avila)
Love is a mystery that transforms everything it touches into things beautiful and pleasing to God. The love of God makes a soul free. (Saint Faustina Kowalska)
Conspiring Against Me
(with my tongue in my cheek...)
Am I the only one who has moments of feeling like all of heaven and earth is conspiring against me, determined to keep me in a bad mood?
Because I've been feeling like that this last week or two.
My usual support system has temporarily dwindled, thanks to various travels of friends and family.
I was off the medication that helps regulate the hormonal bottoming out of my mood.
And to top it off, we've had almost no sunny weather. Like none. And we have a winter storm warning again today. As I look out my window it's snowing and grey. I'm sensitive to the weather, and, right at this moment, would give quite a lot for a sunny day.
For spring.
Which I believe is coming, and is here. But doesn't look anything like what I think spring should look like, or least doesn't look like that at the moment.
So, all totally random factors, but the combination thereof has been a little bit overwhelming.
(Read: All I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry and sleep for days.)
I'm sure that heaven and earth really aren't all that concerned about conspiring against me, but there are most definitely moments when I feel like they are!
Am I the only one who has moments of feeling like all of heaven and earth is conspiring against me, determined to keep me in a bad mood?
Because I've been feeling like that this last week or two.
My usual support system has temporarily dwindled, thanks to various travels of friends and family.
I was off the medication that helps regulate the hormonal bottoming out of my mood.
And to top it off, we've had almost no sunny weather. Like none. And we have a winter storm warning again today. As I look out my window it's snowing and grey. I'm sensitive to the weather, and, right at this moment, would give quite a lot for a sunny day.
For spring.
Which I believe is coming, and is here. But doesn't look anything like what I think spring should look like, or least doesn't look like that at the moment.
So, all totally random factors, but the combination thereof has been a little bit overwhelming.
(Read: All I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry and sleep for days.)
I'm sure that heaven and earth really aren't all that concerned about conspiring against me, but there are most definitely moments when I feel like they are!
Be Gentle with Yourself
Yesterday, after I'd shared the nightmare I woke from with a dear friend, one of her pieces of advice was to be gentle with myself physically. That, for me, is a helpful reminder. It seems like common sense. I'd been denied several hours of sleep, and gone through an adrenaline rushing, emotionally challenging experience - why wouldn't I care for myself. But, because sleep issues and even dreams are so often a part of my reality, I forget that sometimes it's okay to give myself a little bit extra grace.
I tried to do that yesterday.
It was, quite honestly, a pretty hard day. Even now, if I close my eyes and let it, the images and physicality of the dream return. The strange newness of a series of themes that have long been a part of my dream life. Their invasion from neutral space into very personal space.
I tried to focus on other things.
I took the advice of my friend, and prayed through some specific scriptures. Especially Psalm 91. I giggled when I emailed her later in the day to say that a passage from Acts had been coming to mind each time I prayed Psalm 91, and she wrote back to say that she'd also had that passage on her heart after hearing my dream, but hadn't shared it with me.
I ate red meat. That doesn't seem like much, but I don't actually eat a whole lot of red meat, and it's one of the things that sticks out from yesterday as a "thing done right". I've always preferred chicken to beef. But, when my body is depleted, when I'm physically exhausted, I tend to crave red meat. Steak preferably, or maybe a really good burger. So, last night, in my exhausted state, I sat in a pub with a friend, staring at the menu, debating options, and asked my stomach whether it would prefer chicken or steak. The resounding answer was steak. Which, in combination with the tomato-meat sauce over pasta that I had for lunch yesterday, means I had two full meals with red meat and hearty proteins.
I worked not to indulge in sugar, and continue to fight the cycle of feeding stress and exhaustion with chocolate, and then having an even worse energy crash when the sugar high bottoms out.
I still have my car for a few more days, but I looked at the weather forecast for today and gave myself permission not to drive last night. We're having snow and icy rain again, and I didn't want to drive in that last night, or this morning. So I left my car where it was parked at my parent's house, and took the bus home from the train station last night, and the bus to the train station this morning.
I gave myself permission not to freak out over the things left undone on my "to do" list for the day. Because there were quite a few. Not only because I was so drained, but because I had plans to meet a friend that would take some time. I'm sort of task oriented, and I get great satisfaction from checking items off my list. But last night that just didn't really happen.
When I got home earlier than expected, that, too, was a gift, giving me time to quiet myself and pray through my bedroom, to calm myself and find God's peace in such a way that I wasn't afraid to close my eyes and try again for sleep. And it was definitely better to use the time for that than for checking items off a list.
For those of you who prayed last night, thank you. I slept a bit better. I still woke around 4:30, and only sort of dozed after that, but I didn't have a repeat nightmare. Unless you've had these sorts of nightmares, I'm not sure you can fully understand how much of a gift of grace and blessing that really is. I'm still tired, still drained, but I see light. There are good things happening as this week progresses.
I came across this quote on Kelle's blog the other day, and it's what I'm aiming for as this week and life carries on:
"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit."
-Dawna Markova
I tried to do that yesterday.
It was, quite honestly, a pretty hard day. Even now, if I close my eyes and let it, the images and physicality of the dream return. The strange newness of a series of themes that have long been a part of my dream life. Their invasion from neutral space into very personal space.
I tried to focus on other things.
I took the advice of my friend, and prayed through some specific scriptures. Especially Psalm 91. I giggled when I emailed her later in the day to say that a passage from Acts had been coming to mind each time I prayed Psalm 91, and she wrote back to say that she'd also had that passage on her heart after hearing my dream, but hadn't shared it with me.
I ate red meat. That doesn't seem like much, but I don't actually eat a whole lot of red meat, and it's one of the things that sticks out from yesterday as a "thing done right". I've always preferred chicken to beef. But, when my body is depleted, when I'm physically exhausted, I tend to crave red meat. Steak preferably, or maybe a really good burger. So, last night, in my exhausted state, I sat in a pub with a friend, staring at the menu, debating options, and asked my stomach whether it would prefer chicken or steak. The resounding answer was steak. Which, in combination with the tomato-meat sauce over pasta that I had for lunch yesterday, means I had two full meals with red meat and hearty proteins.
I worked not to indulge in sugar, and continue to fight the cycle of feeding stress and exhaustion with chocolate, and then having an even worse energy crash when the sugar high bottoms out.
I still have my car for a few more days, but I looked at the weather forecast for today and gave myself permission not to drive last night. We're having snow and icy rain again, and I didn't want to drive in that last night, or this morning. So I left my car where it was parked at my parent's house, and took the bus home from the train station last night, and the bus to the train station this morning.
I gave myself permission not to freak out over the things left undone on my "to do" list for the day. Because there were quite a few. Not only because I was so drained, but because I had plans to meet a friend that would take some time. I'm sort of task oriented, and I get great satisfaction from checking items off my list. But last night that just didn't really happen.
When I got home earlier than expected, that, too, was a gift, giving me time to quiet myself and pray through my bedroom, to calm myself and find God's peace in such a way that I wasn't afraid to close my eyes and try again for sleep. And it was definitely better to use the time for that than for checking items off a list.
For those of you who prayed last night, thank you. I slept a bit better. I still woke around 4:30, and only sort of dozed after that, but I didn't have a repeat nightmare. Unless you've had these sorts of nightmares, I'm not sure you can fully understand how much of a gift of grace and blessing that really is. I'm still tired, still drained, but I see light. There are good things happening as this week progresses.
I came across this quote on Kelle's blog the other day, and it's what I'm aiming for as this week and life carries on:
"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit."
-Dawna Markova
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