Friday morning

I am so incredibly thankful that it's Friday.

This week has been insane, and I'm rather badly in need of a couple of days off.

I'm heading out to do errands after work tonight.

Ikea (we need an end table to put inside our front door, and a lampshade to put on the lamp we're going to put on the end table inside our front door.)

My parent's house to pick up mail.

Chapters - I'm looking for a particular children's book that is proving to be a bit difficult to track down.

I slept more peacefully last night than the previous few, but am feeling more tired and groggy this morning than the previous mornings.

I find myself playing the same songs and sermons on repeat these days. Needing to hear the encouragement, the challenges, the messages they offer to my heart over and over and over.

I'm debating weekend plans. Perhaps another afternoon movie? Or a trip to the mountains? The farmer's market for fresh produce? Maybe time spent doing something creative? A bit of cleaning? Hanging the art on our walls now that I've unpacked the last boxes? A trip to goodwill or some other thrift shop to donate the excess that I've pared down from the move? Maybe just sitting in my favorite park with my journal and a book? Church is in the plans, that much I know.

In any case, there is work to be accomplished at the office before any of those things can be truly considered, so perhaps it's time to focus and accomplish that!

Stillness

The ability to simply "be still", I'm discovering, is not the easiest thing to develop. That was the thought that hit me as I was driving to work this morning.

By all accounts, I should be good at "still." I'm an introvert, who prefers quiet and alone to noise and people. Most of my happiest moments are alone, or with the few people with whom my relationship is so natural that I feel as free as if I were alone. In fact, I force myself to schedule social events in my daily life most of the time, and, while I enjoy them as a general rule, there is still often the sense that time alone would have been equally if not more enjoyable.

There are moments where I am easily able to move into stillness. And moments when stillness is the space in which I am able to live.

These last few months have not held those moments.

I've felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins. The stress of hunting for a place to live, the relief of finding one relatively easily. The stress of packing, then moving, and then unpacking. The end of wedding central with a wedding out of town. Family obligations. Dealing with moving various utilities to our new house. Taking care of the need to upgrade and renew my drivers license. Wondering if the money would hold out in the midst of somewhat higher than usual financial obligations. Anticipating another out of town wedding that will hold both joy and some very big challenges for my heart. Working through some very challenging relational issues. Some frustrating health setbacks. And God working deeply in some very raw and painful spots in my heart. Intense and vivid dreams. Launching a new product at work, and this week having a week where because of a vacation, I'm juggling my own job and another job with full-time responsibilities. Hot weather that my body doesn't handle very well. All coupled with many weeks where sleep was fleeting if it came at all. I've felt almost manic in my desperate attempt to juggle it all, and my continuous reminders to myself to "not be stressed, these things don't matter hugely in the grand scheme of life."

There have been "oasis" moments. A conversation with a new friend in a coffee shop that unexpectedly went to the deep places quickly, and reminded me of the things my heart loves. A period of time sitting in a mountain-top meadow, praying. A beautiful wild rose, shielded by a stone and the roots of a tree, near my favorite lake. But the moments have been a bit fleeting, and I am weary.

I've known for a bit now that I was running on fumes. That I was becoming deeply soul weary. The crash came suddenly, but not totally unexpectedly last night. I'd simply been hoping that it would wait to come until after this long weekend full of obligations.

It didn't.

So. I'm thinking about stillness, and how, after a season that has been nearly manic, it's hard to settle back into that place of stillness. About how I'm banking on a few short days off to be restorative, but how I realized this morning that if I can't manage to find stillness before those days, I will be unlikely to find it then. About how I fear that though I desperately need to meet Jesus, he won't show up in the time I've set aside for that, and how I fear the bereft and broken way that will make me feel. About the rational voice that reminds me that I'm in trouble if I'm only meeting with Jesus in the rare times when I can carve out a few days for him, and that I'm not meeting with him in my daily life.

Stillness is not my best skill when I'm coming off a time of driving, nearly manic stress, but I'm going to make an effort at it for the next couple of days. I'm going to try to do things that my heart loves, and that I find restful. Please don't laugh at me when I tell you that one of those things is a trip to Ikea to buy some much needed organizational supplies, followed by unpacking. It's starting to bother me that there are things scattered around our living room, and it will help me to be still if I can get that last bit of unpacking off of my plate. So, I'm going to take my time shopping. I'm going to rest and read. I'm going to intentionally (more than ususal, since I do this nightly) spend some time in scripture. I'm going to restore order to some places where my stressful month has left havoc - physical and emotional spaces.

And I'm going to practice stillness, push into it, rather than backing away from it, remembering a moment just recently where my heart was nearly still, and I turned away from the calming things, back towards that driving mania and stress (and paid for it at the cost of a night of sleep.)

Cozy.

My roommate just came into the living room and remarked that I looked "cozy".

I suppose I am, though mostly it's the lamplight that's doing it. Throwing that atmosphere of cozy warmth, and compensating for the fact that it's now well past dusk, and too dark to count on natural light for seeing.

I finished another book tonight. I'll be adding it to the list in my sidebar shortly. Anne Lamott, was, I think, just what my heart has needed this last little while.

I made a quick trip to the scrapbooking shop after dinner tonight. I had a coupon, and wanted to buy something to organize my cardstock. I'm still working on sorting and unpacking the last several boxes. Most of what is left contains craft and scrapbooking supplies, and I am hoping that if I store it in a way that is organized, but also visible, I will feel a bit more regularly inspired to make use of some of it. Organizing what's left is going to require another trip to Ikea, but I know what I need now, and think it's totally doable to get this all sorted out.

It was a really nice break to not have to cook dinner tonight too. My roommate made frittata for us (and it was great). That meant that when I got home from work I could relax, instead of immediately diving into cooking and cleaning up in the kitchen. I sent a few emails, and did some reading.

The ability to relax like that created the mental space, too, to finally sit for a while with a journal. I've been avoiding my journal this week because there is so much going on in my mind and heart and it seemed overwhelming to try to write and capture it.

As I sat down to write, I remembered a piece of advice from Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird: Some Thoughts on Writing and Life" and decided to just capture what fit within a "one inch picture frame". I gave myself permission to only journal about one pressing topic, and it is helpful to me to have finally written it, and prayed it out in writing in the pages of my journal. It feels someone more sorted within my head.

Yes, there are still many topics that I need to capture in those pages. And yes, there are still so many thoughts outstanding within my heart, so many deep things that Jesus is speaking and nudging and causing me to wrestle with as they surface, but for tonight, I captured that which was most pressing, and in that I found some rest.

And now, now I'm off to run through my nightly devotional routine, and then to rest. Sleep was deeply marked by intense dreams, filled with themes that grabbed at my heart last night, and I find myself tired. I'm praying for rest and dreams of Jesus tonight.

Friday Evening, Into the Weekend

I spent a few hours tonight driving around the city, with my roommate in the passenger seat coaching me on the "bad habits" I identified while taking a driving lesson the other night. Things like keeping both hands on the steering wheel at all times - things that probably are never going to matter again if I can just manage to pass the road test I've scheduled for tomorrow.

We also managed to smoke out our apartment while trying to make toast for sandwiches for dinner. Several smoke alarms later I'd managed to set up a fan to blow most of the smoke out an open window.

So, tomorrow morning I have a tech coming that I'll have to refuse at the door. (Again, let me say as I did at the start of the month, DO NOT EVER USE TELUS TV.) Hopefully that will finally settle all the details.

Then the road test in the early afternoon, a bit of down time, and then a big family shindig - the quarterly, "everyone who's had a birthday in the last several months or has one in the coming few weeks" (including me!) party.

Somewhere in there I need to do some cleaning, and build the utility shelf I bought at Ikea last night. And sort through my scrapbook supplies to put on the utility shelf, so that they're not just sitting in boxes on our living room floor.

Oh, and maybe I'll do a bit of reading. Hard to say at this point.

In any case, I haven't been feeling well today, and I think I'm heading for bed.

See ya tomorrow!

And on into evening...

I was out the door around 9:30 this morning, heading first for the requested Starbucks stop, and then to Mom and Dad's. I got to Ikea just before it opened, managed to find someone to help me load the box I needed onto my cart, and then into Dad's truck, and then I came home.

When I got here, I opened the box still in the truck, and carried in the pieces one at a time.

I assembled the bookshelf with a bit of help from L. (and only a few mishaps - including one large lump and growing ugly bruise necessitating ice on my right calf) and headed back to mom and dad's to return the truck.

The look of surprise on dad's face when he heard that I'd already managed to successfully assemble the bookshelf was great fun. Especially since I was already feeling fairly proud of myself for managing to do this mostly on my own.

Then I spent the afternoon rearranging and unpacking.

Prayerfully sorting through altar stones and memories. Tucking a few things away in storage, and finding others new homes. The whole time our smoke detector insisted on beeping every few minutes. It would seem the battery in it was dieing, but there has been a theme of alarms and sirens connected to many of the memories those altar stones mark, and to be trying to pray and listen and unpack and arrange them, with the constant background noise of the alarm was somewhat shaking, and oddly ironic.

I think I'll tackle what's left over the next few days. Our new house has decidedly less storage than the old place, and I'm not quite certain what to do with a couple of boxes of scrapbooking and craft supplies that still remain. Our living room also remains in disarray, though I think we'll be able to bring order to it fairly quickly in the next few days.

And with that, I'm off to make some dinner for L and I, and then we're heading to church.

I have a smile list brewing in my head... I'm needing to take some time to remember the things that make me smile. This last month and a half have been beautiful and full and rich and completely excruciating, and I'm feeling strongly the exhaustion and need to refocus and rest. So, a smile list will be appearing here sometime soon... maybe even later tonight!

Tired. Quiet.

Quiet. Tired.

Those two words pretty much sum it up right now.

My thoughts are actually not that quiet. They’re racing and wrestling, they’re just not forming written words very much at the moment. Or at least not written words that are suitable for public consumption.

Tired.

Well, tired says it all. Moving is a much more exhausting process than I remembered. I don’t understand those people who love moving, and do it frequently.

My roommate and I are taking it slowly wherever we can. I got rid of my much admired “loft bed” and desk in the process of this move, and, while not precisely regretting it, am definitely not going to be able to handle sleeping on my mattress on the floor for very long. I want some sort of captains bed – with drawers or a bookshelf underneath to give the bed some height and me some storage space. My roommate and I are going to Ikea tonight in a hunt for a number of little items we need to make our new space homey and liveable. I need to look at a bed, she needs a duvet. We jointly need things like picture hanging hooks. I need lavender scented candles.

Also high on my list of priorities will be to buy and put up blinds or curtains in my bedroom. My bedroom faces east, and with no window covering, I’ll be up with the birds all summer if I don’t resolve the situation. I have enough trouble sleeping without adding that.

We’ve declared tonight a “slow night”. We’ll visit Ikea when we meet up after work. We’re cooking pork chops with a cinnamon peach sauce, and probably some frozen veggies and either potatoes or couscous for dinner. We’re going to sit on our couch and watch either a movie or television for the evening. I’ll unpack the bookshelf in our living room. While we’re sitting we’ll collapse all the filing boxes and their lids that I purchased for moving, and then we’ll store them in our basement for the next time (which will hopefully not be for a while.)

Hopefully internet at home will be up and running by tomorrow morning, and I can back to a more regular schedule of blogging, reading the news, and checking emails.

Tea lights and feet propping

There are certain things that I should never be allowed to do when I am trying to be "financially responsible". One of those things is to make a trip to Ikea.

I made a trip to Ikea tonight.

You see, I have to occasionally go to Ikea. I have this thing for tea lights (those tiny little candles), and the tea lights from Ikea are the best ones around. And, they only cost $3.69 for 100. I've been going through tea-lights on a pretty large scale lately, and thought I'd take the the time to make a quick Ikea run and pick up a couple hundred more.

I also bought a footstool. Which is something I've been thinking about for a long time, but was not something on the list of anytime soon planned purchases.

But hey... it was nearly 50% off, and all told, I bought a cushion to prop my feet on, and 200 tea lights for about $40. Not too bad if I do say so myself.

And, this was a weird day, so a little retail therapy was kind of a nice way to end it!