slip sliding

The nearer your destination the more you're slip sliding away.  
Anticipation is not my friend. 
What I would not give to be less of a cliche'?   
Actually what would I give to be different and what would I sacrifice to receive the answers for my questions?  
How uncomfortable in my comfort zone do I have to be before I'd give up what I have or who I am in order to remove the fearful nearness of my destination.




I do know that the preciousness of things close to me quietly erupted beside me this afternoon and I was once again reminded of the gifts planted on me, in me and nearby.   
I was gladly forced gently into regarding things that can be missed and would be missed greatly, but as luck would have it, were observed and taken in and then taken to heart.
Just when I begin to not notice, I'm confronted, kindly and thankfully with the reasons for everything being as it is and I know then that things are as they should be and not any other way.


"A love so overpowering I'm afraid I might disappear."  For that, I might consider giving something up.   For that, I would sacrifice, but already I know that a thing like that isn't something that comes along, it's not something you give up for, it's quite the opposite, it's what you call in, it's what you take on.  So again, I cannot change a thing to make that part of my mid-solved equation.  I know, innately, that it's here, I just have to give it my full attention and not make a wish about it, but just chose to recognize it.
  
So what would I give to alter my reality?   Not a thing and that in and of itself is the reality of my existence.  

Third time may in fact be a charm...

My third Christmas on my own ~ I've decided to call this, "The Year of the Rat".   Though it is in fact the year of the rabbit, here we have our own reasons - - -

Days ago, while searching through the seemingly endless cabinets in my garage, I came across a rodent.   It was dazed and slow to move.  Gathering all my gusto, I dislodged the rat, nest and all, from the shelf it occupied.  I took it and it's cozy bed made on top of the box of Christmas lights I'd been searching for  and I let them be, hoping IT, or as it turns out, SHE would hit the road and let me gag my way through sweeping up her shredded paper bedding before I tackled the likely tangled strands of half working lights shoved in the box she rested on.   She would not budge.  She, chubby and wide eyed, stayed put. Suppressing my natural urge to scream and flee myself, I instead remained composed, found a broom and a dust pan.  She was scooped up, but as luck would have it, my luck that is, she promptly began to give birth to several rat babies right before my very eyes, while in the dust pan.  

Yes - I know.  Why does this happen to me?   What am I?  The stable keeper in Bethlehem?  

Christmas spirit kicks in.  An empty firewood box makes a decent new home, especially when it's stuffed with the stinky paper nest and mom, plus babies are carefully placed inside of it.    The whole fam-damily is relocated west  and outside of my garage, to which I realize they will quite likely return to once again pillage and deflower my cabinets, this time in mass and not just a single mother, stuck in place, struggling, overwhelmed and alone.  Yup.

What has changed in these three years, these three Christmases?   Lots has and then again, maybe not all that much has, but more then likely what's changed is enough for now...

This year my children strung the lights on the outside of the house all by themselves and they've managed to withstand the raging winds that seem to want to pull them down.

I've accepted that one sugar cookie can actually handle a half a bottle of sprinkles without collapsing.   I no longer make futile attempts to dictate the amount of decoration on each and every cookie.

My heart only skips a few beats now when a mom beside me at a holiday program says, "See, your daughter is actually smiling and having a good time", a comment said with sweetness, but for me, the mother of a child with Asperges, can never really be sweet to hear.  I'd like her smiling to be typical and go unnoticed, not seen as extraordinary.    Now that would make life sweet.

Somedays I'm more afraid then I ever was, but other days I'm not afraid at all, not one little bit.

I still wake up and wish that I could kiss my mom good morning on Christmas Day.

But I never wonder anymore if I did the right thing.

Time moves slowly still and somehow goes by too fast.

Recently I went to sleep on the other side of my bed and interestingly enough it felt surprisingly right.   I plan to try it again, hopefully soon.   

I love my family and appreciate all of my friends more then ever.

Night sky and the stars still move me, still touch me at my core,  just the same as they always could.

I'm happier now.  

Beyond Friday Morning

Don't watch me.

I don't want to be watched while I try to figure this out.

I want to explain to them that it's more then just my mindset I'm fighting.

Metal and Steal, muscle and bone are giving me grief.  

But in all truth, beyond a nagging, odd discomfort in my leg, my brain simply rejects this skill I'm trying to master.  

My brain would much prefer to veto my will and my desire to improve my double unders and improve myself.

It tells me, "This is too hard for you.  You don't belong here".  

Not only do I have to learn to string them together as I did with my single jumps months ago when I first came to Crossfit , I also have to convince my brain that I do belong here and I'm here to stay.

I will get it right, but I'll have to find something stronger then my brain to say that with.

I'll have to use heart, which is infinitely more powerful then my mind and the rest of my body and those limitations they seem to love to put on me.

Now I watch her. 

She's a new mom. 

She's an expert here, but today she's more new mother then expert.  

She's struggling and I've never seen her struggle.  

Is her body, her "new mother's body" giving her grief?  

Is her mind fighting against her? 

Is she too experiencing a wave of emotion, a discomfort she's not familiar with?  

Just seeing her continue on, find ways around the new and strange obstacles she faces, elevates her in my eyes.  She's more of a trainer/example to me then she ever was in her most powerful, elite and perfect athletic condition.  

While she fights all that she's fighting and who can know what's really inside her, just like who can know what's inside me; my doubt, my insecurity, my screws and rod, my fear and even my unstoppable and sometimes unrealistic hopefulness, I see that we both are battling similar demons, just that they're dressed in different sweatpants.

We'll both get there... heart over mind.

There is no end to the gifts that Crossfit gives me; body, mind and heart.

Thanks Jen and Mark and Aaron, Brandy, Stephanie and also thanks to Bill.

I wait

I can be lazy about things, like being patient.
I tend to want to turn the page at times, before I've digested each word, before the meaning or meat of the paragraphs are sunken in.
I can rush ahead before I'm meant to, because stopping for red lights is more work then revving up at yellow.
I want to see what comes next, as if knowing will change anything about what's happening right now.  And would it?  
Would knowing the outcome in any way affect the feelings I have today?   And don't I love these feelings? I do and after all there is a reason they are mine.
I can know this, yet it doesn't make me suddenly patient.
Nothing but patience leads to being patient.

I looked very automatically to a book, reading something that typically sets me at ease, because when I thought I was easy, I was in fact not.  I turned a page, but it felt thick in my fingers, as if two were stuck together.  I tried for some time to pry them apart, careful not to tear the paper, though it felt tough, it is not.  It's only paper with words on it.  Its only a story and a story is one word at a time, one page after another.   It takes time.  You won't understand it any better if you turn the page before its read and if the pages are feeling glued together, running your fingers up and down the tender edge searching for the undetectable rift will only lead to painful, miniscule slits, which will likely slow the process further still.
Perhaps it's best to study the words again.  Sometimes there is more to learn when you go over things a second time, or maybe more.   Maybe this page is really a poem you'll want to recite later and maybe there'll be some value in knowing it word for precious word.  Once it's understood, it's yours.
You can't always rewrite things later on, after all.
Once I tried to look to the end of my own life book to see whether or not the whole story was worth the read.  Once I thought of throwing it away, jacket and all.  But, I found that the words on the last pages were invisible, as if my eyes were filled with sea water.   Just once, force your eyes to remain open in the ocean, let the rough tide take you down and tumble you a while then surface and look for shore.  You won't see it until the salty fluid flooding your eye sockets, like a wave, recedes.   Then you can focus, then things are clear.
WWMOD?  What would Mary Oliver do?  She'd write it down.  She'd take it out of herself and separate the complicated feeling from what was meant to be felt.  She'd uncomplicate it.  She'd patiently break it down.
Being patient is an activity that is not intended to exhaust me, but it can.  I just have to learn to not let it, which again can only come in time... like all good things.