Random and Crazy

It's been the kind of week full of random and crazy things.

Things like getting vaccine injections in both arms (plus a TB test in one arm).

(When was the last time you stood in line at a pharmacy on a university campus to buy a vial of vaccine?)

There was the mask fitting.  I have to get a mask fitted to wear in case of certain sorts of outbreaks.  The office seemed a little odd, an impression that was cemented when the young man, about my age who had watched me come in from where he was sitting in the waiting area and was trying to catch my attention opened the conversation with "So you have to get drug tested too?"

I so wanted to burst out laughing at this poor guy's attempt at attention getting flirtation.

I wanted to laugh equally hard when, a few minutes later, I found myself sitting in an odd room, with a mask over the lower half of my face, while a woman pumped smoke out of a little vial, waved it at my face and instructed me to turn my head all around, and inhale and exhale.

There was the challenge of wearing new jeans to work.  New jeans on a day when I shouldn't have had to do anything but sit.  New jeans that I thought would stretch out just a bit faster, in that way that all jeans eventually stretch out.  Nope.  And of course, I spent the day bending, lifting boxes, and continually adjusting the slightly uncomfortable fit of the jeans that will be perfect when they just stretch out a bit more.

That was the same day that I packed a pair of ballet flats to wear around the office, allowing me to shed the warm and cozy boots I wear for my commute by transit and on foot, through the snowy city.  Oh, did I say I packed a "pair" of ballet flats?  Well, if pair only indicates two, then I suppose I did.  Two different left shoes!

And did I mention that through all of this I've had a voice that croaks and squeaks? The remnants of the cold that had me flat in bed last weekend.

It's been that kind of week, and honestly, I just have to laugh.  It's good to know that I'm still collecting random and crazy stories!  (I mean really, I've read some bad opening lines, but, "So you're here to be drug tested too"????!!!)

Now

I talked yesterday about my brokenness and mental illness soapboxes and about walking honestly.

And then I came across this post from Anne Jackson earlier this week.

She wrote about the story of now.

I don't like my now story.

I talked about story at the beginning of the year, when I was reading Donald Miller's book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years."  About wanting to write a better story with my life.

If I look at my list, I have to admit that a lot of those plans for the year died when I lost my job and unexpectedly found myself duckless and changing direction in life.  Even U2 had to be indefinitely postponed (though I suspect that Bono's back surgery is not directly correlated to the ending of my employment tenure).

I started telling a different story when I enrolled in some university courses for the summer to begin to move towards a career in nursing.

And God had some story ideas too.

His involve healing and freedom.

And a process to get to those things that is anything but pretty.

Unless of course, you're using "pretty" in a sentence such as this, "It pretty much sucks, actually."

My now story involves a lot of days that are spent in tears.

In an seemingly constant and intensifying battle with fears that have controlled me for years.

Fears that are fighting hard to stay as they surface in new ways and I desire freedom and healing.

It involves stomach aches, and panic attacks, and frustration.

It involves relational tensions and discussions about boundaries and other things that involve my heart and stir insecurities.

It involves insecurities and self-image and self-worth.

And working to change long ingrained mindsets.

It involves identifying lies, and working through the (seemingly endless) process of replacing them with truth.

It involves family, and faith, and friends and sleepless nights and cloudy days.

This is my story of now.

And my gut response would be to go with the earlier statement - it pretty much sucks.

But something in me knows that this is good.

That God holds my hand and walks with me even in this.

That His hands are in these things surfacing now, when I don't have full-time employment to cope with too.

That He is offering freedom at the same time as directing me down this new path towards nursing.

It pretty much sucks.  But it's good.  Dichotomy and mystery.  Healing through pain.  Freedom after the fear really intensifies (and it encourages me, oddly, that the fear has intensified, that it is trying to hang on.  it seems to only do that when there is hope that it will really and truly go.)

This is my now story.

A Better Story: Hope List for 2010

I've talked before about Donald Miller's latest book, "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life".  I've read all of Miller's books, and next to "Blue Like Jazz", this one is definitely my favorite (it may even beat out "Blue Like Jazz" - I can't quite decide!)

In any case, I read the book a few months back, when I was in the midst of needing to really make some decisions about whether or not I was going to stand up and take control of some issues in my life.  In fact, I distinctly recall sitting in my doctor's office, on a day when I had an appointment that ended up being pivotal in terms of the decisions that appointment forced me to make, and reading this book.  The doctor was running late, and as I sat there fighting back the panic attacks I was dealing with that day, I was reading and being challenged by the idea of writing a better story with my life.

My roommate gave me a magnet for Christmas, printed with an art piece from Curly Girl Design, that I saw on a canvas months and months ago, and have been hunting for in some smaller form ever since. The quote on the art piece that made me fall in love with it reads, "The world is full of people who will go their whole lives and not actually LIVE one day.  She did not intend on being one of them."  I loved that - "she did not intend on being one of them" - and it kind of became a personal mantra of sorts.  That I want to tell a great story with my life, and to really live. 

I'll share some quotes from Miller's book sometime in the next day or two, but for the moment, I wanted to share the list of goals, hopes, dreams, resolutions, things to do (pick your favorite term and insert it here) that I formulated for the new year over the last few days.

I'm sort of famous for making lists, and equally famous for adding a great deal of flexibility to the lists, and I'm sure that this one will grow and morph and change as the circumstances of the year shape it, but for now, I'm going to call this my "hope list" or my "better story list" and share the things (well, the formal things anyway) that I'm planning and dreaming about for this new year that is in front of me, this beginning to a new decade.

• Learn how L. makes frittata, hamburger soup, and pita chips (these are some staples of our roommate cooking, that I never make.  L. returns to New Zealand at the beginning of March and I want to learn to prepare these particular recipes before she leaves.)
• Alphabet photography and scrapbooking project (a post on this to come in the next day or two)
• Develop my photography skills
• See U2 live in concert (only a major life dream - and one I am definitely going to fulfill this year thanks to the tickets I've already purchased for a June show)
• attend at least one "real" yoga class (just because I'm curious, and because I've enjoyed the yoga videos and would like to do the real deal at least one time)
• read the equivalent of at least 1 non-fiction book per month.  basically, read at least twelve non-fiction books this year.
• continue to exercise consistently
• continue to consistently use a regime of vitamins
• cook at least 2 recipes a month and take photos of them (I love cooking, it's one of my current favorite creative expressions.  I also love feeding people.  The goal is simply to expand my repertoire and find some new creative expression.)
• work on significantly reducing my debt load (thankful for the good appointment at the bank just before the new year began that should really help with achieving this)
• continue to write Daily 5 lists, and to search for joy and things to be thankful for in the midst of the challenges of daily life
• Embrace Joy
• Choose Life (consistently - choose to really live)
• settle into and be involved somehow with a church or house church (this one is hard for me, but I'm feeling the need to really try to find community around me again)
• work on making new friends (again, a real challenge for an introvert who would prefer to spend the vast majority of her time alone, but I have been missing having community and a support network of caring, praying friends who are near enough in location to give hugs when they're needed, so I'm going to make an effort at this, hopefully via finding a church or house church)
• Continue the rhythm of blogging regularly (love the chance to just show up somewhere and talk about my day)
• Purge and simplify wherever possible (I'm likely moving again within the next few months, I have way more stuff than I likely need, and I'm sincerely wanting, within reason to really limit my consumerism and consumption)
• Save money for a rainy day (or for travelling, a new car, or a new laptop since I'm pretty sure either George or my trusty macbook are going to keel over in the next year, and since, well, I just love to travel)
• Finish memorizing the book of Philippians (considering I'm only about 15 of 104 verses in, and having a hard time finding a rhythm of working at this, this one will require a bit of discipline)
• Work on learning to be okay with (and not feel guilty about) spending money on my personal appearance (ie. haircuts, the occasional manicure or pedicure - I've felt guilty for a long time for spending money on myself in this way... it's okay to buy things like books or whatever, but to spend money on my hair or nails always seemed so frivolous and wrong.  Part of the journey of learning to really love myself for me is being willing to care about how I look, and that means being willing to spend a bit of money on how I look.)
• travel somewhere (LP/CA - you have any suggestions ??? :) )
• because of stress and illness over the past two years, I lost a significant amount of weight.  now that I'm slowly regaining my health, I'd like to maintain that weight loss (not gain it back) via the other things I already mentioned about diet, vitamins, exercise etc.
• be intentional in writing down the important stories (on my blog, in my journal - there are some stories that are important from this past year that months later I still haven't recorded because I wasn't intentional about sitting down and doing it.  I'd like to be more intentional with that in the coming year.)

So, that's my list.  For the moment at least.  Like I said, I'm sort of infamous for the morphing flexibility of my lists, so I'm sure it will grow and shift and change.  But, for the moment, I'm pleased with it.  It was a list I wrote prayerfully, and I think encourages the things I value, and forces me to choose regularly to really live.  As I said, there will be more posts to come in the next few days surrounding all of this, but for tonight, I have a daily 5 list still to write, and then I need to quiet down and head for sleep I think.

Story

I was thinking again today about story, and how it shapes and forms us.  More thoughts on that to come in the coming days, but here are a couple of links worth checking out.

Donald Miller talks about living a good story, and New Year's on his blog.  Worth reading.  I'll be blogging more about his book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" in the coming days.

Ali Edwards chooses a word for each year, and this year her word was Story, inspired, in part, it turns out, by Donald Miller's book. 

I made a list today, of some goals or resolutions or hopes and dreams for the new year.  I'll share those likely tomorrow.

In the meantime, I also liked Dana's post at Of Wool and Water looking back and looking forward to 2010.  Here's to a year of new beginnings!

Rolling Around...

So I have this question rolling around in my head... well, maybe two actually, and they're causing some thought and some dreams...

What if there was a way to take the stories of everyday living, the crazy experiences and the mundane, and use them to really communicate the beauty and ugliness and challenges and stunning ways of life, the ways that God is intertwined in all of that?

And what if I tried to do that?

Swallowing Pills

Swallowing pills is a big part of my life these days, as with the variety of supplements and medications I'm taking to restore my health and energy, I'm swallowing somewhere around 15 pills a day.

There isn't a meal that goes by where pill swallowing isn't a part, and I was taking my luncheon batch of vitamins just now, I remembered that I had a few different pill swallowing anecdotes to share.

I have a rather distinctive method for swallowing pills. I have a rather sensitive gag reflex, and have often had trouble managing to get the pills down. I think this springs from being quite sick, quite often as a child, and from the many antibiotics that I'm allergic to, which would only be discovered when, after managing to swallow them, I'd immediately begin throwing up, and a day later would break out in a lovely rash. Benadryl was a good friend of mine through those years!

So, I put the water in my mouth first, add the pill, and then toss my head back and swallow. I can't get them down without the head toss.

My roommate L., hates watching me take pills. She tells me that everytime I throw my head back she thinks I'm going to snap my neck! This has been the source of much supper-time debate and laughter for us the last few weeks, since the vitamin regimen greatly increased.

Last night, before the whole debacle with George, I stopped at a local mall food court to pick up some supper so that I could stick to my food and vitamin regimen. I purchased a meal, and found a table to sit and eat it quickly. After fumbling through my purse and finding my little container of vitamins, I grabbed my water bottle and began the process of swallowing the five or so pills that go with supper in my world.

At the table across from me, a young woman was sitting with her son. She was talking on her cell phone, and he was people watching and crying. When I sat down he focused in on me. He was probably between a year and two years old, and his face had the scabs of the mishaps of one who was still mastering the whole walking thing. He watched in fascination as I began taking my pills, flipping my head back each time. Finally, after I finished swallowing one of them, he stared straight at me, and then snapped his own head back in imitation. His mom looked up from her cell phone conversation, and we both cracked up at his very cute imitation of me.

I chuckle even now, remembering, and will probably smile to myself every time I take pills for the next while.