Grateful for a pandemic: it's my best life

As I lie in my bed on day 45 of stay safe stay home, reducing the curve with masks, I am brought to tears with gratitude, over again, for this pandemic.

 

Sounds gross huh? But its not. It is the circle of life

Some are hurting in ways that I am not blessed with in this situation. So the guilt doesn't lag too far behind to remind me of all those who are at a loss at this time. But that is not what this post is about- I want to focus on the gratitude.

My logical side reminds me that I've shared that type of getting bad luck and misery in other points in my life, when others were not; I don't need to feel guilty for not having some now. I too have held my share of burdens that  living a moral life brings and if it's not my time right now to shoulder the burden, then the things I can't do to make it better for someone else with humanity is open to me. 

To serve, be grateful, pray for those I can't help and makes sure others are taken care of in the way to Lord will have me do. Is my calling in this situation.-and live fully in gratitude.

My mental health needs often are connected to teaching. I do love my job, and even like it most days. However, there are invisible needs in that profession of service.

Teaching school takes so much it of me that it usually takes 60 it the 78 days of summer break to recoup my soul, to remember who I am, to have stories and thought dance back into my head. It is my mini personal pandemic. I often get well meaning yet callous people making comments to me about teaching as I figure non covid suffers do to those who are sick. 

 This year I have the gift of having more days to myself, less of  the ones that burden and take from me with words of uncaring or power mongering coworkers, broken students and demanding calloused parents piled upon the chores of home and family. 

For this I am grateful.

This pandemic has been the biggest personal blessing to my soul. 

I will not invalidate those gifts because someone else is struggling. We need a world in which those who hurt can coexist with those who are blessed.

Becoming more with less

I use my time differently than a few short months ago.

 I have found more moments of deep breath- a sign that I cam content with my world.

 I have more moments of pause to smell the roses. 

I have more moments that I can say, I should get up to do that, I feel pretty good. 

I have more patience

I find more things funny

So what is my less? How am I doing more with less?

Less hours given to a job that doesn't care or give back. 

Less time away from my family

Less frustration almost tears moments. 

Less crappy comments that hurt.

I am doing so much more with less in my life.

I am more a child of God and who I am meant to be.

To what extent are men a condition for God to give his message to mankind

Today I had the pleasure of listening a former student play in church.

 I clearly remember how he battled English class as a freshman, but his was such a gift that my class only needed to be a stepping stone to his calling. I didn't understand that then. I didn't get how he didn't need English the same way that I was trained by BYU/NAU to think he did.

 He had a very wise mother as his champion when he could have gotten sucked into the mundane expectations of society.

 It was from her that I was taught in my first of many experience that not all have to learn on the same path in the same way.

  It was the first time I saw him today since then.

 I couldn't recognize the young man I taught, but I could see how he grew into his part to be a conduit to send Gods message of peace, love, the atonement to as many as would accept it.

The unstuffed brain of youth vs the middle aged paunch of disappointment

When we are teenagers our  lives are ahead of us, a clean slate, undefined personalities.  The world is our oyster.

It's sounds wonderful from a middle aged stand point to have an fresh book of possibilities where mistakes, habits and events haven't molded our life. A do over.

What we have forgotten is that we struggled with identity.

 That fresh page has also a disturbing lack of substance. Shakespeare seemed a master of remembering the human condition at all ages of all genders in all levels of society.In Romeo and Juliet his older wise character Friar Laurence meet with an impulsive young man, Romeo, out of the norm early one morning.

 Friar surmised that either Romeo has not gone to bed the night before for youth are never bothered with so many worries that they are up all night thinking for their heads are "unstuffed" with anything of real worry or he was  or nutty

Young son, it argues a distempered head

So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.

Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,

And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;

But where unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain

Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.

Therefore thy earliness doth me assure

Thou art up-rous’d with some distemp’rature;

Or if not so, then here I hit it right—

Our Romeo hath not been in bed tonight.

Copyright ©2005-2017 by PlayShakespeare.com.
Visit http://www.playshakespeare.com/license for details.

My point in all this is to say we don't know who we are and by the time we have a clue, our habits sadly control us much more than we control them.

 We try then to control ourselves with expert level punishment and extreme sacrificing only to fail and have lower and lower self esteem reach time until we accept the weight or the skill level of a middle aged reject

What I have recently heard about is extreme progressiveness. It fits in with my whole goal of finding balance and getting out of my head about not accomplishing anything in life that is memorable. 

Extreme progressiveness cuts out one habit that is minor that you can also live without for-ev-er. 

Line upon line, 

 precept upon precept,

 you would build upon that until you reach where you want to be. This method takes months or years to accomplish, but is more successful than doing a full reversal of behavior. Within time, you are saying to yourself and those around you "I don't" instead of "I can't" because that is not who I am. 

You define yourself bit by bit.

If you want to stop sugars you start with something you can live without that had sugar in it.  As the weeks pass, you add other items until you aren't eating refined sugar.

Isn't slow and steady the goal of the life any way?

 If you're perfect at defining you and your direction in the first few years of life, what would be the point of the rest of the time here on Earth? 

Joy in the journey with extreme progressiveness-another way I have seen how important finding balance is in my life.

Wonderful poetry

To Love What Death Can Touch

‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.

by Yehuda HaLevi (1075 – 1141)

BK 1991

I saw an Iroc yesterday in the grocery store parking lot.

In orangey-dull red, it looked like it could have been around since high school. The cherry paint had faded with too many summer and winter days, the gloss was a dull memory and there were primer grey rebuilt fenders. Yet it brought me right back to high school- Bradly, Missy, and Brian, plus many others who live on in my teen-hood. I didn't get to think about them much because my current life took over with all the adult responsibilities that push and prod around to gain attention.  I went to bed tired from a day of mom-ing.

Today reading some short stories in class today from my sophomore year stirred up the past again- many memories. Then I started listening to 80s hair bands. - might have been a mistake for it stirred up strong memories of them again.

My heart squeezed and my breath was a little short from the sweet poignant memories-Thoughts of riding around, doing nothing and everything on a Friday night, trying not to get caught by my dad wisped around with slips of 1/2 of a thought grabbing my attention.

With each song played, a ghostly memory drifted by, barely tangible, a little out of reach for a proper trip down memory lane.  I really wish I could go through the stones of time and re-watch the good parts of that time. I would tell that girl that was me to live freer.

Here's to you 1991- I won't forget you babe, you sweet child of mine. You were a crazy train while you lasted. wish I still had parts of you.

Feeling loss for a friend

Tonight as I got home from a long drive from Prescott, I read some very sad news. At first, I thought it was one of those posts that if you comment, you have to do something stupid or embarrassing. I thought how sick to use a death to play a prank. 

I scanned various posts until the last one convinced me that it was real. A old acquaintance had lost her husband. He was so young. I felt they had not had enough years together. I worried for her. I cried for her loss and what it might feel like to lose a spouse.

That small voice reminded me that death isn't the end.

 That in many ways they will be closer than if there were in flesh and blood. All the difficulties that life causes will no longer be in their way. Naturally, my thoughts turned to my hubby. There are days when we rub the wrong way and misunderstand one another, Others we use tones that sound harsher than intended. Many times we don't apologize for the little hurts and maybe he is glad when he is gone or busy to get away from the frustrations we cause each other.

As I searched through articles from the Ensign, some of the things it said to help and  prepare are the things I think I have gotten off track:

Express your feelings and let them know how you feel. Another is to have a support system and prepared for life handling affairs alone. Some of this I can do, some I don't know. I think I have let my support system fad as I have trusted that hubs would be around forever and he is so good at everything that he is all I need.

Yet we do struggle and are not always a natural match made in heaven. It doesn't mean I don't love him with all my heart and would be at such a lonely loss if he was gone, but it does mean that I am more unsure of what would happen if he was gone.  He is so talented and yet particular in so many ways that I wonder how he would react if he were free from the earthly tether.

If or When this event falls to my lot to handle, I hope and pray that I can have 2 things 1. peace that surpasses understanding and 2. the spiritual connection that bridges beyond the veil. 

I came home early from Prescott, he stayed behind to finish roping.

 I pray that he is safe and at peace.