lifefullyinhabited

Another chapter begins.
My mom went to her eternal home a month ago today. There are so many thoughts.
So many emotions.
Thankfully, very few regrets.
So many blessings.

I will be grieving for a long time. I have never been without my mother before. She was with me my whole life.
It is still, after one month, so impossibly hard to say good-bye to her.

There have been moments in life when I truly felt like “now I am a grown-up” or “now I am really an adult”.

This past month I have felt more like a child again, in a helpless, dependent way. I really don’t want to take on adult responsibilities for the moment.

It is so draining to do mundane things like pay bills, go to the grocery store, clean up dog vomit on the kitchen floor.

It hurts to do just about everything. And it is worse to do nothing.

Thanks for listening.

I didn’t even look at the temperature this morning. I know it is cold, I know there are wind chill factors going on. I am not sure I am conscious. I just got to the gym.

It felt like sleep-walking, the “am I really here, doing this?” experience.

And it also felt like this is exactly what I am supposed to be doing.

So, another day, another work-out. If I had gold stars, I would put one on the calendar.

I’m feeling like I need a reward for my accomplishments this week. Something non-food.

The sky was a beautiful deep pink on the eastern horizon as the sun was rising on my way out of the gym.
That beauty was kind of a reward. I never would have seen that if I would have stayed home this morning.

(deep sigh)

Another below zero day outside. So what, I made it to the gym anyway!
My trainer’s words rattling in my head, “Use the gym as your escape from stress.” That’s what got me here today.
Stress. Who doesn’t have it? It doesn’t matter what the source is. Stress is stress.

So, I go the gym today to work off stress. Ten minutes into a strength training workout, I am not thinking about stress.
Only thinking about breathing. Counting reps and breathing. Nothing else exists in those moments.
When I leave the gym, whatever was stressing me out doesn’t seem as insurmountable.

I am starting to feel a tingling in my muscles that lasts the whole day after working out. I like to imagine that my cells are waking up. They have been apathetic and lazy and ignored. Now they are working and processing, and alive! I am a little sad that I have allow the sleeping lazy phase to linger for years.

But I am processing, changing, waking up. Maybe I’ve finally come alive to the marvel that is “my body”.

Not as cold this morning as I trudged to the garage. Also, I’m going to the gym a little later in the morning. This is a good sign, because I’ve been awake long enough to have changed my mind about going, and I still made it to the gym. The workout felt easier today, my spirits a bit lighter. I really enjoyed, yep, I said it, I enjoyed this workout.

I enjoy knowing that the rest of the day I don’t have to have that nagging feeling bothering me “you really should work out today. you know you need the exercise”. Now it is done and over and the day is mine.

That’s it today. No whining or complaining or excuses. Must savor this moment.

I crunch through the frozen snow on the porch and squint up to the sky, clear, dark and cold. A 3/4 moon silently judges me as I make my way to the garage. The thermometer on the porch checks in at ten degrees below zero. It’s hard to breathe the subzero air. It’s like tiny needles piercing my lungs.

What in the world am I doing, leaving my warm nest at 6:45am? Why did I pick today to be the day to overcome inertia, to start a journey of going to the gym every day, no excuses.

And as I breathe that question, the answer already settles in: because if I can make it to the gym on a day like today, I can make it to the gym any day. No excuses.

It’s too cold, its too dark, I’m too tired, my feet hurt, my feet don’t hurt but they feel like concrete blocks, it’s too early, it’s too late, and on and on the excuses pile up.

I’m tired of the excuses. So I decided to just get over it and get to the gym. Everyday, no excuses.
Maybe that’s too ambitious. Maybe I’m setting myself up for failure.

But just maybe it will work. And maybe I’m setting myself up for success. At least I have to try.
Because if I don’t try, I’ll get what I’ve always got.

Disappointment and failure. And I’m really tired of that.

As I settle in the car, I have an out of body feeling, like is this really me, driving to the gym through the polar vortex. The same woman, who, during the last polar vortex two weeks ago wouldn’t leave her bed.

I enter the gym and it is surprisingly warm and cozy feeling, like a womb. After 30 minutes of walking on the treadmill, my feet are loosening up and no longer feel like concrete blocks. I experience what may be an endorphin rush. Now I am enjoying the music and the movement.

Forty-five minutes of movement and its time to head home. Leaving the gym, standing a little taller, almost smiling.

The sun is rising, cars move along the roads shrouded in exhaust fumes in the polar air. Like a migration of dinosaurs, confused dinosaurs, going in every direction. Trying to escape the cold.

My shrouded, huddled dino-mobile chugs along on one of the migration routes and squeaks back home. You know its cold when the snow squeaks.

No disappointment today, I am victorious today. I have overcome a mountain of inertia.

Ready, set, go, its Cyber Monday!!!! Well, I don’t know about you, but cyber deals started flooding my inbox on Thursday last week. So my strategy is to not go on any retail websites. I didn’t go shopping all weekend, not even for Small Business Saturday. Cyber Monday is a non issue for me.

I already got the best deal ever. The deal of a lifetime, the deal for all time.
I have the presence of God. Everyday, all the time, for now and all eternity.

Yes, eventually I will have to shop. And yes, I know retail people have to make a living, too.
But honestly, do we really show our loved ones how much we love them by buying them the cheapest goods on the planet for a holiday that has nothing to do with materialism?

Christmas, really is the best deal ever. God gave up something really precious so we could have His presence with us always. Christmas. Period.

You can have that deal too. Wouldn’t you rather have the promise of eternity in your hearts than a cheesy sweater on your back?

So before you all go clicking with your mouse and whipping out your cash and credit cards, stop and breathe and think for minute.

Give thanks. It’s only December 2nd. There really is more to life than a retail deal. Our loved ones deserve more from us than the hunt for a deal. Maybe they just really want our real presence to show up.

And maybe for the courage to do that, we need to have His presence with us.

There is something about the sound of the dog vomiting that wakes me out of deep sleep. Some people may hear that sound and, snuggled all toasty in their bed, would just turn over and deal with it later. Not me.

So that is how my day begins today. And the cleaning up happens right away. An hour later, I find the second pile. In a completely different room than the first. And I wonder, did I sleep right through the sound of the first episode? I must be getting old.

And for this I give thanks? Well, I am practicing giving thanks in all situations. So what kind of thanks can you offer for dog you-know-what. The only thing that comes to me is that at least I am up early enough to study my lesson for teaching K4 Sunday School.

And it is the first day of a new month, which I always love. I get to turn over to a new page on the calendar. I love that. It’s nice to be awake early to enjoy this calendar glow for a few more minutes.

It is also the first day of the last month of the year. Something wistful about that. December always screams past me in a terrific rush. This year I want to try to linger a bit longer in each day.
Try to stay present in each day a bit longer. As the days get darker earlier, I want to escape to my bed earlier and earlier.

Also, I am thankful that there were only two piles of you know what.

So, what do you do two days after Thanksgiving? After the turkey carcass is dissected, after the left-overs are half gone, after the thanks are used up?

I don’t know what you do. Sometimes I feel sort of like the turkey carcass. Right about now, I feel a bit used up.

This year, I would like to try something new. I’ve seen a lot of people on Facebook posting daily things to be Thankful for leading up to Thanksgiving. But I would like to start giving thanks now.

This is the “sacrifice of thanks”, when the thanks are hard to come by.

I would like Thanksgiving to go on and on. It is my favorite holiday. And Christmas has already taken over everything. I would like to keep my Thanksgiving table decorations a few more days and not have them look stale. I would like to keep the Christmas put away until at least December 15th.

I would like a station on the radio devoted to songs about Thanksgiving. Wait, are there any Thanksgiving songs? Huh. Why not?

Why not devote just a bit more time to a thankful, grateful heart? Why not nurture the giving of thanks?

Why the mad rush into buying and scrambling into glitter and glitz?

What’s wrong with the dust and dirt of real life and the giving of the thanks in all that?

Is there a more graceful way to life from November into December than rushing off to retail in the dark of night to get a “deal”?

How about sitting in the quiet stillness of morning with a fresh brewed cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie two days old. I give thanks.

Because right now, there is nothing else I need. A minute from now, things may change. But in this moment, I give thanks.

Quote from a book I’ve just finished reading called Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge:

She’d not known that to fight with the weapon of prayer that which destroys happiness
is to have it round upon yourself.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
To pray for the diseased, the wicked, the insane,
was to be bound with their chains and tortured with their fears,
it was to stagger beneath a load as heavy as that of Atlas,
and yet somehow find the strength not to be bowed down to the earth by it
but to lift it up and up,
to straighten one’s self with it,
until again there came that sense of support.

But it never seemed to come until
it seemed that the last moment of endurance had been reached.

The language is a little old fashioned, after all the book was written in 1944 and it recounts a fictional story of two sisters in the late 1800’s. But the lines quoted here are so profound.
If you’ve ever prayed that intensity in spiritual warfare for someone. Then you understand it.
If your prayers are just worries preceded by “Dear God” and ended with “Amen”, then I’m sure this quote sounds like jibberish.

It is really work to pray the prayers of spiritual weaponry. To take a stand for someone to destroy that which destroys happiness, true happiness. To feel their chains.
The spiritual sweat is rewarded with greater faith, a fresh vision of the eternal, unseen realities.

These prayers are the marks of the spiritually mature.
Thirty plus years walking the faith road, and I’m only just a toddler in these prayers.
I believe, Lord, but help my unbelief!