Bad news first.
I have been working way, way, too hard and too much
mired in old patterns of trying to please people
(patterns which criticism seems to trigger and
this has been a year of criticism at the church).
So I stopped working out.
I started eating too much (stress-eating).
For the most part, I stopped dancing.
I stopped going to see my chiropractor in November. Too busy.
Then a few weeks ago my back and neck were in such a sorry state that I went back to my chiropractor. It turns out a rib in my back was out of place. This has happened since high school and I can usually tell, but it had been so long since I'd checked in with my body that I didn't notice until there I was on my chiropractor's table for the first time in months. I felt it. I told him. He put it back. My muscles, used to it being out of place, did not like this. One bit. They started yelling. Oy. Major spasms, stiffness, pain.
Several treatments later, driving out of his parking lot, I remembered something my mentor told me years ago. If you are serving a contentious church, you need to take care of yourself to the point where it feels like pampering, until it feels indulgent! How did I forget that? So I called my massage therapist and booked an appointment. I called my sweetie and said, "Let's go away for a couple days during April school vacation!"
And that brings me to the good news. I have a sweetie! We met online last summer and in person in August. His name is Rich. He's a civil engineer and works on road construction projects for the state.
He's a middle manager, oversees several projects at once - so he knows all about having lots of responsibility and no real authority. Like ministers. Ha ha. And he's very sweet and very grounded and wise, and affectionate and generous. I am one lucky woman. He has made this year of criticism bearable.
Recently I re-discovered this poem/prayer with them by the wonderful, the awesome Howard Thurman. It speaks volumes right to my soul. And I love the "Gentle Father" towards the end.
I Need Thy Sense of Time
Prayer by Howard Thurman (1951)
I Need Thy Sense of Time
Always I have an underlying anxiety about things.
Sometimes I am in a hurry to achieve my ends
And am completely without patience. It is hard for me
To realize that some growth is slow,
That all processes are not swift. I cannot always discriminate
Between what takes time to develop and what can be rushed,
Because my sense of time is dulled.
I measure things in terms of happenings.
O to understand the meaning of perspective
That I may do all things with a profound sense of leisure, of
time.
I Need Thy Sense of Order
The confusion of the details of living
Is sometimes overwhelming. The little things
Keep getting in my way providing ready-made
Excuses for failure to do and be
What I know I ought to do and be.
Much time is spent on things that are not very important
While significant things are put into an insignificant place
In my scheme of order. I must unscramble my affairs
So that my life will become order. O God, I need
Thy sense of order.
I Need Thy Sense of the Future
Teach me to know that life is ever
On the side of the future.
Keep alive in me the forward look, the high hope,
The onward surge. Let me not be frozen
Either by the past or the present.
Grant me, O patient Father, Thy sense of the future
Without which all life would sicken and die.
Last week Rich and I spent two days in Maine. I came back to dance at the New England Folk Festival all weekend. By mid-day Saturday my heart had begun to sing. I can still hear it, through the criticism. Oh yes, nearly pampered. Almost right.
