Day Two…
Today I am tired. I am very aware of my usual tendency to do, to move forward, to be restless.
Today I took a nap.
I reflect on the morning. I got up this morning and got the three children out the door to Palm Sunday service outdoors. It was cold. We sat on folding chairs, a clouded sky and wind blowing, holding onto our order of service. I was following along, hearing the sounds but only half listening. I constantly turned my head to make sure that my three children next to me were content. This was not a “so nice for us all to be together” sort of way. Rather it was in fight or flight waiting for the moment that one of them ceases to be content, so I can swoop in and take responsibility for it. Moms do this, humans do this.
Is it fear of conflict? Is it a desire for those we love, or for ourselves to not feel uncomfortable? For me it is a little of both. For many others I sense it is too, because, for many when someone else in their life isn’t comfortable, it can mean that they themselves are not safe.
How to live in a world that holds the dark and the light? The discomfort is often feared. We run from it. We avoid it. But in doing so we aren’t present, we are always on edge. Many times, the discomfort is there to teach us, to allow us to bear witness. As humans we are capable of all the emotions. How do we see ourselves as human and those around us as human? How do we teach ourselves and others to sit in discomfort, shine a line on it and hold loving space for it?
Acknowledge it.
With all my love-
Jennifer
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Day three
It was a day of connection, with Sean and myself. I stood in line with Sean while he waited for his first vaccine. It was sunny, we joked, talked a little bit of logistics, people-watched. It was how we were when we were dating over twenty years ago. We were agenda free. We were both….present.
What a word, present.
I have noticed a slight light-headedness coming to me when I get up. A side-effect of my first vaccine, maybe? What I have also come to feel is my jaw in a clenched position – a lot. Just now writing this, brought an invitation of awareness and yep, clenched again. What am I holding? What am I bracing for?
What am I bracing for?
What is keeping me from being present?
I ask now for grace and love for myself as I open up whatever I am trying to protect myself from. Whatever is holding me in the future with a jaw-clenched agenda rather than present in the sunlight.
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Day Four
Doing the work so that we might find peace, rather than finding peace in the work. The thoughts of “I will be happy when…-the goal is achieved, the work is done, the weight is lost.”
For me, it is sitting with excitement and a bit of fear of the work ahead of me. The projects, the commitments, the things I had so much energy for in the beginning. I engage and complete and then get the whispers from spirit of my next action. I turn my head to check and see if it was actually me spirit was talking to. Me, really, do THAT? Do I really have it in me? I just got done the other hard thing, and now there is more?
That keeps me from being present, anticipating it is going to be hard. Hard is uncomfortable. Past or future feels better, sometimes. Eventually you are called to do what you, only you can do and you have to be present to do it.
With all my love-
Jennifer
