Perspective

A woman I'm sponsoring is sending me her gratitude list daily. It's helpful to put into perspective my day's activities and emotions -- and to remind me of my own gratitude sources. I just came back from a trip I found to be a real joy. Obviously, there were issues with the trip, more with this trip than with some, and my own negligence and trust-placing caused some of the surprises. Still, it was an awesome experience, an opportunity to observe the world's beauty and vastness, My travelling companion acknowledged the beauty, but dwelt on the inconveniences. What a loss!

 

Perspective is important in looking inward as well as outward.

• Yesterday I got a test copy of a product I put together. Most of it looks great. My mistakes, though, are what I think of first, but they'll be corrected -- that's why we went to the expense of getting a test copy anyway! And the final product will be glorious.
• I got a check yesterday made payable to an entity that has no bank account. But hey, I got a check, and the bank can expand the allowable names on the account, I bet!
• I left a small bowl of chili out last night, necessitating it's being added to the dogs' breakfast rather than a later meal. That was stupid. But I put the majority of the unused chili in the refrigerator appropriately. Yeah, the waste was still stupid. But the financial loss is not worth the emotional enmity.

I'm okay. I'm REALLY okay. Look how far I've come! A car in front of me this morning slowed down unexpectedly to enter the AM Donuts parking area. Two years, six months and a couple of weeks ago, that would have been my car. I no longer felt any need to go there, thought "My car doesn't make that turn anymore." I amended the thought, though -- there's a fruit vendor in the same lot. But I have no need for the donuts. Thank God! One of the glories of the trip was I reveled in creation, in people, in new experiences -- not in new dishes or in stuffing all the food I encountered into me. I ate no sugar, and I didn't eat more than I needed. Thank God!

This day in history

I remember a conversation with my younger son another June 6, sometime around 2004 or 2005. Of course historically, this is D-Day, the landing of Allied forces at Normandy. I was born a Baby Boomer, have no memory of WWII, and to be honest I remembered D-Day's date then because of its personal significance to me -- not the invasion, but my own D-Day. Anyway, we were discussing the historical one and he, born in 1980, said he bet half his generation didn't know the significance of June 6. I said half of MINE didn't know, and less than a tenth of his did. All the estimates are probably too high. 

Anyway, personally my June 6 was in 1997. It was the climactic event of what I lovingly call my "hell year" from October, 1996 to November, 1997. On that day I was so tense, so earnestly trying to hold my world together, I reached up rather casually and severed by rotator cuff with sheer tension. Because of that moment, circumstances made me realize I was killing myself and not managing to help anybody else either. And I began to try to figure out how to take care of myself. But for a while I continued to do it medicating with the food, though I also met an angel who massaged me with her hands and used her words to start waking me up to "the things I cannot change" and giving me the courage to change the things I can. It was a long trip. Through a psychologist, then finally another counselor steeped in the wisdom and traditions of these rooms, and together, through ten years, God used all the events to bring me to the morning of December 17 when I told him life as I was managing was "Stupid!" And it was. But under new management it's fantastic. Thank God!

Blast from the Past

Sometimes a regression is the easiest way to really see how far you've come. I had a trip to yesterday yesterday (the first yesterday being figurative, the second literal when I started this, "poetic" now.) I acted like I used to act. I don't know what the character defect is called. "Surrendering the self" might be appropriate but I've never seen it on a list of character defects. "Fear" works, too. How well "fear" works to describe my past....

A neighboring town had baseball-size hail; we were in the path of the general storm, had no idea how badly we'd be hit. (Short answer: not even much rain.) With excess cars over garage space, we took two cars to find shelter elsewhere. The story is long and involved, but basically I was in one car near my husband in the other, and I was faced with the question of whether to move for somebody else. My instinct was to move. But I fell back into the fear, into trying to imagine my husband's thoughts, and I did what I thought was rude because I expected it would be his choice. It wasn't. He thought I was rude, too. And I was. But my big issue (especially since there was no hail after all) was what it felt like to regress to the character defect of trying to please by abandoning myself, by surrendering my will to the wrong "higher power."

This program is a miracle.

I was working with quotations yesterday for a project, and two stand out:

• "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." Nelson Mandela
• the other was not in the list but was a conversation between my son and me when I copied that to him in the IM box:
• son: The converse to the statement is also revealing.
• me: yeah. Like going home and reverting?
  
• son: like going somewhere that has changed and that revealing how little change has happened in you.