Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhh!
Yesterday it was wooooo hooooo and a ride on the bull, today it is a long shrieking free fall ; the kind where your stomach is in your mouth and the wind squishes your face into funny expressions as you hurtle toward the ground. Some people find it exhilarating to plummet through the sky headed toward the land as it looms ever closer. I tend to find it terrifying. I am only faintly aware at this moment that I am indeed attached to a parachute (or perhaps a bungee cord), but that’s easy to forget as the earth is rushing up to meet you. You close your eyes and pray (silently because the wind would snatch the sound from your mouth should you try to open it to speak) that you’ll feel the bone jarring snatch as the chute opens (or the you reach the end of the cord) versus the significant splat if it doesn’t. Of course, if it’s the splat you won’t be aware of it anyway.
YIKES! This blog is about gratitude??
It’s been that kind of day–I’m not sure even Mama thought there’d be days like this, but probably so. Mama was pretty smart after all. I have run a gamut of emotions today, with the exception of anger, which is good. Today I was stressed out to the max, sad in saying good bye to people, and doing a lot of letting go. I am exhausted in most of the ways one can be, and perhaps in a few that I haven’t even thought of yet. But as always, I am conscious that my life is good in so very many ways. Over these months of struggle I’ve held this tension between what has indeed been for me a very difficult and trying time with the knowledge that my life is so very easy when viewed from various perspectives. For many people around the world and even people in this country life is a daily struggle for survival, that having a roof over their head, food to eat, fresh water to drink, shoes on their feet would be luxuries that they can only dimly imagine or dream of.
This is a conundrum. It is not about diminishing my difficulties, particularly as a means of feeling better by comparing them to those of others: “Yeah, my life sucks but at least it’s not as bad as that person’s.” And it’s not about guilt: “Yes things are hard, but they could be so much worse. Think about all the starving people in Africa…” I guess it’s part of the sense-making process that I spoke about in a blog a few days ago. I look at my situation in comparison to those of people around me, looking at things in different contexts and multiple viewpoints and frames of mind. It’s a means of figuring things out.
I am on the verge of breaking through to my “what’s next.” It’s literally right around the corner. I have a little bit more uncertainty, stress, wakefulness, sadness and other emotional states that I will inevitably go through in the days ahead. It sort of goes along with the territory. But all is well and all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well. Two hours ago I sat, head in hands, sobbing. I was simply feeling the pressures and weights of things still to be worked out and many more hours of physical work ahead (not tonight, but over the next days). Gratitude is still there, though, in the midst of all the other emotions, and in the end, gratitude almost always wins out.
I have no idea at the moment how the things that are up in the air at this moment are going to land. But I do know that things will work out. I’ll be back here tomorrow, God willing, continuing to walk this path of life, navigating it as best I can with a grateful heart. Thank you for walking with me.
