MIA

Yes Mandy, tonight I am in a foul mood as well. So...this will be reflected here. I am grumpy because I am missing people tonight. I am missing people who have passed on. I miss my grandma and my great grandma. I wish that I could talk to them again, because they would let me complain about the knuckleheads in the family. But...they had power, especially Great Grandma and she would then knuckle down on the knuckleheads.

I miss some people who I have not actually met. I miss Socrates. I would love to sit down with that little man and have him tell me to snap out of it and get out of the cave and go learn something and "stop trying to be a politician and please everyone, eventually they will kill you for it."

I miss people who are still around but because of circumstances or distance or something someone said or just plain busyness, I can no longer have them in my life. I miss my Russian literature buddy. I also miss the one who ran off into the sunset with my Russian literature buddy. (Those of you who know the story, I am sorry, but I do miss them.) I miss my sister whose life is so crazy (as is mine) that we just never seem to be able to be together. I miss those who have moved away physically and those who have forced to move away figuratively because I am a dork and I do or say the wrong thing, in the wrong way.

God is making it increasingly clear that the things that I need to face over the next period of time in my life need to be faced alone and that there will be more folks that will come up missing for me. I do not understand. While I am definately one who needs her solitude to stay sane, I so do not want to be alone. I suppose that the answer may be that He is inviting me to turn more fully to Him, and I am trying. But sometimes, I get grumpy and I get tired and I feel like I do my best to help a number of people and then I have a Ray Kinsella moment and I say, "What's in it for me?" In other words, this entire blog post is just one big pity party after a rough day filled with me learning just what a dork I can be! Guess I better go and find something POSITIVE to self medicate with (I said positive, Andy!) before I really dig myself into a state... Sheesh...

Whew! Trying to keep up with a fast moving train of thought...

So, I cannot sleep. This means that I want to either eat (there is a canister of vinegar Pringles calling my name), watch a movie, read, or play on the computer. I chose to start by getting on the computer. This led to a series of thoughts that I am still trying to process, so I am going to write them down. Feel free to try and follow along, but my advice is to RUN LIKE THE WIND!!

Okay, so I get on the computer and I check the blogs that I follow and I see that my friend Terry has posted something new. I check it out. Terry makes me feel so inadequate, she is funny and FILLED with moxie and she is so REAL. She just returned from Nicaragua, where she used her skills as a nurse to bring comfort, medical attention and aid to those in need. And in her day to day life, she is an in home care nurse who deals regularly with the terminally ill. She and I only see each other during baseball season, but I am better for having known her and I love that I recently found her blog.

So, I am sitting here reading her blog and feeling like a lowlife for not charging forward and changing the world like Terry does. Then, I see that I have messages on Facebook and email and so I turn over to them. These messages are from young people whose lives I have been lucky enough to be a part of, for a short time. They are messages of thanks and humor and they make me smile and then tear up. I am so not worthy of these thanks. I am, in so many ways, a fraud and a hypocrite. This line of thinking makes me frustrated and agitated so I walked away from the computer, said a prayer, an admittedly angry prayer, and headed to my bookshelves. I pulled down the book that I am reading right now, for the third time, Brooding by Andy Williamson (great book, I recommend it VERY highly). I start reading where I left off, reluctantly, because I am a place in the story when something hard to take is about to happen and I know it is coming. But then I read the following line, "Tyler also knew - despite his own anger and bitterness at the Lord - that he had just been used by Him to help this lost girl find her way. This fact greatly humbled Tyler and shook him to the center of his being." Oh...yeah...

As I sat there considering this sentence, I was suddenly reminded of something that ugly little dude that so often pops into my head said, yep, Socrates. I pull down Plato off the shelf and start searching for what is niggling at the back of my mind and I finally locate it in "Apology". The quote is as follows, "The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be."

Oh, okay...I get it, God. I need to find the humility to realize that as broken and twisted and screwed up as I often am, I can still be an instrument for You. I can find honor in being what I pretend to be and what I want to be, even if I am not perfect at it. And in so doing, I can do some good and I can be an instrument.

I offered words, along the lines of that previous paragraph in a much less angry prayer and felt that familiar tug of the spirit to return to the book I was reading. I started flipping through the pages and came across a passage that I had marked that lit up like a neon sign. These are the words that God offers to the heart of one of the characters in the book. "Do not confuse your perception of yourself with how I perceive you. Don't confuse my love for you with your fickle love for Me. I love you as you are - not as you should be. Accept the fact that you are accepted. You are my beloved child. I delight in you. Trust me."

Whoa...now there are real tears, the good kind...I love these kinds of processes where I can see connections and move from anger and agitation to feeling loved and of worth. Of late, feeling that kind of worth has been difficult for me and so I appreciate, with all of my heart, the peace that is mine, at this moment. Now...I think I can sleep...

The hills are alive with the sound of...mantras...

Every day I try to get out of bed and face the hill shown in my photo. It looks so tame in this shot, I am kinda embarrassed, but it is a tough haul for me in the morning (there is a bend, it is twice as long as I can show in this photo). Most days it takes all three of my inspirational women, Boudica, Sarah Connor and Trinity and all of their combined muscle and a lot of swearing to get me out of bed, but I try. And I am always rewarded. See the gorgeous shot of the clouds enveloping Mt. Rosalie that I get to see on my way back each day, as the sun is rising.

I have a number of very steep and rocky "hills" that I am facing in my personal life. I cannot talk about openly these on my blog but they are always with me, especially on my still, morning walks. Today as I walked I contemplated the fact that Kate keeps bugging me to come up with a mantra. Yesterday, after reading my blog post about my exercise inspirations, I got a message from a friend, telling me that he also thought I needed a mantra and he had a suggestion for me. "DON'T TAKE ANY SHIT FROM ANYBODY". Hmmmm...been chewing on that ever since. And I like it! It works for me because "anybody" can mean myself and right on down the line to everyone else in my life. And it is short and to. the. point! (Side note: I was raised with ranchers and drillers, my language can be colorful. But as my friend Curtis' grandfather used to posit, 'God does not count it as swearing when there are cattle or machines involved.' Well, I am certainly a cow, so I am thinking that this exempts me from being held accountable for this...)

So...now I have a mantra as I face the hills in my life. I am going to try it out today. I believe that I do need that default in my brain to keep myself from being overwhelmed and to shock me into keeping my head clear and to plan and face whatever it is that God is going to ask me to face.

Motivation

I am working so hard right now to try and get myself in shape and get a handle on the weight monster. I Have made some progress this week and I am pleased with the progress. I was thinking about the three photos that I have posted for myself as inspiration as I work towards being healthy. They are a photo of a painting of Boudica and one of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator and one of Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity in Matrix. As I was contemplating these tonight as I was on the eliptical, something struck me. Yes, I posted these photos because of the physique of these women, but I realized tonight that there is a great deal more to these choices for me. I want to be like these women (characters). I want the strength that they exhibit. There is Boudica, queen of the Iceni, revenging the rape of her daughters and fighting the Roman invasion and coming much closer to this goal than anyone ever would have believed. Then there is Sarah Connor protecting her son and the entire human race. Same thing with Trinity, with the added spiritual element and belief in prophesy and mission that she offers. As I work to improve myself, I want to do so for health, but more than that, I want to do this for empowerment and strength of purpose.

I have to say how much I appreciate great characters. In books, in movies, and in some television programs, I have found inspiration and drive. This week I have been introduced to some very real characters, in a great novel and I am so grateful tonight for the motivation that I am finding there as well. Now...enough rambling...back to work!

(See Roxanne, this post does lend itself more towards the sill side of things...)