On waiting

A friend of mine spoke on Sunday about waiting and I could really relate when she said that we all experience waiting.  I feel like I'm in perpetual waiting, in all areas of my life - my career, my health, for love.  It seems that every time I set goals, make a plan, and set out to achieve that goal, something happens.  I feel like I'm Jack Sparrow stuck in Davey Jones locker.

And yet, I truly believe that this is exactly where I'm supposed to be right now.  

I read a blog post by Paul Tripp yesterday and can really identify when he says "waiting is not only about what you will receive at the end of the wait.  Waiting is about what you will become as you wait" and that "personal heart and life change is seldom a sudden event.  Usually it is a process".  

I'm not really sure how I have changed since my illness and surgery last year, but I have.   I think after weeks of being sick I can get rather dramatic and at some point I decided to "arise from sleep" and live life.  

Here are some of the things that resulted from my last waiting:

• I decided to stop living a life based on fear.  Before my illness and surgery, I would have never went tubing, tried to waterski, ziplined, and especially ask to speak in front of a group.

• I began the pursuit of wisdom.  This has meant that I have stopped trying to get people to tell me what to do and have started making my own choices.  It has meant I have been trying to make the best decisions I can and it has resulted in a confidence of the decisions I make. 

• I have been more obedient to the prompting of my heart.  I would have never written this post, or ask to share in front of Journeys before the beginning of this year.  

• I have decided to quit living someone else's vision of life and try to figure out who I really am.

I was thinking this weekend how my life is kinda like the treasure hunts my mother would make for me at my birthday parties.  We started with one little clue that told us where to look for the next clue.  As soon as we would find the that clue and read it, off we would race to get the next clue.  How boring would the game have been if she would have just handed us a piece of paper that showed us where the treasure was.  

I think my clue simply says:  WAIT.  But this time, instead of getting angry and trying to move forward anyway (which I usually do), or get mopey and depressed (which I also do as well), I am simply going to try my best to wait and to pay attention, because I don't want miss getting handed the next clue. 

~b~

Randoms: From Turban Squashes to Robot Coffee Makers

This is Mr. Turban Squash.  We picked him up in Keremeos, BC at a roadside market.  He made his debut on Facebook when our van broke down in Golden.  When we finally arrived in Canmore, I took him for a walk and on a whim, decided to take his portrait:

Mr. Turban Squash is watching the Canmore traffic drive by on an overcast fall day.

Opportunities

I decided to start saying yes to more opportunities outside of work that come my way and stop worrying about my career for a while.  Then my co-worker showed me a job posting which would basically be a lateral move into a position in Ottawa, but at a higher pay level.  I just found out I've been accepted in the selection process, so I guess I have some studying to do.

My friend Aaron and his band Victoria Awake are releasing an album called If You'll Have Me at the end of November.  I saw them play at Lydia's and am definitely looking forward to their CD release party.




Last week I was feeling a bit better so I worked on eating 5 small meals a day since I often can't eat a regular meal, or not at all in the evenings.  This week I'm going to figure out just how much I can reasonably do in a day.  I still want to enjoy life, despite my pain, but I can't push myself so hard that I make things worse.  I hope I am pleasantly surprised at just how much I can do.

My son told me that some guy predicted that it would be common for humans to marry robots in 2050.  I told him that if I'm still single by then, I'd like to marry a coffee maker.

If anyone knows of a nice single coffee maker that is available, send him my way.  

~b~

I hesitate

I hesitate to write this post, but my blog posts pile up in my head like a queue and if I want to blog about my awesome trip to Rockridge Canyon and my hilariously terrifying adventure down a zip line I'd better get this one posted.

On Sickness

For the past month and a half I have been sick with the worst sinus infection ever (it must be true, just look at the italics).  This means constant headaches, constant fevers and no energy.  After multiple trips to the doctor's offices and three different antibiotics, my head felt like it was going to explode at work, and my ear infection was so bad I couldn't fall asleep because my ears were ringing so loudly.  I am so thankful that my headache finally stopped before my trip to B.C. last week.  Since I got home from B.C I've been experiencing some pain that seems to get worse every day (to the point where I need to take T3's to get through the day).  It sucks to realize that I will probably be sick for a while, and to not know why I am in so much pain, or why my immune system is so crappy.

I've never been direct about my faith on my blog before, but I can't imaging going through this past year without it and I can't seem to get this post out of my head.  So if God or faith makes you squeemy, you might want to skip the next paragraph or two.

Last year about this time I shared with my community at Journeys things I was learning.  One of the verses I shared was Habukuk 3:17-19, which I admitted I really didn't understand.  But I can say now I get it.  Here is the lowdown on the passage:  Everything sucks.  There is nothing and no hope for a future and yet Habbi (as I like to call him) looks outside his circumstances and rejoices and is joyful in God.  Habbi says that God gives him strength, he's like a deer, he's able to go up high mountains.  (This whole rejoices and joyful in God seemed so ridiculous to me).

After a year full of panic attacks, surgery, depression, and lots of sickness, I can definitely say that the only thing that can get me through the darkest nights of my soul is God.  Looking at the wrong things, like my immediate circumstances only brought fear and despair.  I thought I was just being melodramatic, but fear and despair is simply the product of looking to myself for control over my immediate circumstances.  But when I look outside my circumstances to God I see he is in absolute control and I believe he has a plan for me.  Seeing my situation in this way brings me such peace and comfort and all I want to do is praise and glorify God.  And I don't think that I could write that last sentence truthfully, until I had experienced all the muck and yuck in this past year.

I wish I could wrap this post up nicely by saying how peppy and energetic I felt, but that'd be a lie.  So for Round 2, I am simply going to Be Still, which is probably the hardest thing to do as I am such a doer and achiever.  To me, this means living in the moment in each day.  It means trusting that I will have the strength to get through each day and not worry about getting through tomorrow, or the next day, or next week.  It means instead of feeling stuck, I just need to see what I can do with the energy and opportunities I have on a daily basis.

And so this is how I choose to respond while I wait to get my health back:

• Adjust my plan.  I still have things I want to achieve, and there's no reason why I should give up and do nothing, I just need to adjust my approach into teeny weeny little steps, until I am strong enough to run in leaps and bounds.  

• Steward wisely.  I think it is easier sometimes to live with "less" (money/time/energy), because you are forced to be responsible and being wasteful could be disastrous.  There is little room for error.  I don't have the luxury of wasting my time or energy, I need to be spending my energy on the most important things.  I'm just happy if I can work a full day and come home and be a good mom.

It is inevitable that sometime in our life we will go through some really hard struggles, but if there is anything I learnt from my dad it is that I can have ongoing health problems in my life and still laugh, love, and enjoy life

~b~

Dreams. I am Mother. Groceries. And Other Random Thoughts

Lately my dreams have featured background music.  Last night it was Martin Sexton.  It was definitely a great way to wake up.  I won't bore you or confuse you with the details of my dream, but it included some biblical imagery.  Sorta.  Instead of the lion and the lamb, it was the wolf and the gopher.

Here is what's been going on the last few days in my world:

This is my son and I.  He calls me Mother.  As in: Mother drives me to school in the morning.  Or, Mother is sitting on the couch with me watching TV.  (He was talking with my mom).  I feel so regal when he calls me Mother.

I'm pretty sure I promised him I wouldn't share this photo, but I love how happy he looks.

Yesterday we ate lunch together and he told me that one of the EA's was going to start a club.

"Oh really?"  I said,  "is it going to be a Manchester club?"

"Kinda" my son replied.  "It's going to be a hairy chest club".

"How is that anything to do with Manchester?"  I asked him.

"You know"  he said: "Man-Chest-Hair".

Ha!


Yesterday I went to Costco and they made a big deal of running over and getting some boxes to pack my items.  This is how they pack my stuff:

Box 1: Lotion, Cheese, Spinach.  Box 2: Meat, Creamer, Butter.

Then this morning I stopped at Sobeys and when I got home I unpacked a bag.  It contained one litre of milk and one can of tomato soup.

Must be the new trend in groceries.

I'd better stop this post, or I'll have nothing to write about tomorrow.

~b~

On Fear and Avoidance

Last night I started reading Woman Food and God (Geneen Roth).  She brings up the point that eating can be a way of bolting from ourselves, how we distance ourselves when reality isn't matching up to our expectations.

Bolting.  Avoidance.

This is something that I have just realized is my main coping mechanism.  It is one of those unhealthy coping mechanisms that worked for me when I was a child, but when I use it in adulthood it probably does more damage to myself than prevents hurt or pain.

There are so many ways that I try to avoid pain, or even the possibility of pain that it seems ingrained in my daily actions.  I use my phone to surf the web or text with a friend when I'm out in public, so that I can avoid feeling socially awkward, or even have to talk to the people around me.  I have no problem changing my route if I don't feel like talking to someone I see up ahead.  I develop my relationships only to a depth where I still feel safe and in control.  I spend more time daydreaming or reading than actually doing.

Geneen Roth explains how if we as adults believe the pain will kill us we are seeing through the eyes of our fragile self.  I believe that my actions ultimately stem out of my beliefs, but I also think that my actions affirm the beliefs I have about myself.  Running away gives strength to fear.  It affirms the belief that I can't handle things.  It gives power to the idea that I am too fragile or weak to handle the pain, hurt, or embarrassments of life.  It is affirming to myself an identity of weakness, fragility, and insecurity.

In Donald Millar's blog post today, he talks about experiencing pain because it allows for growth.  For what seems like too long, I have felt stuck and unable to move forward.  But I wonder now, if I need to leave behind the me that operates out of fear and avoidance.  Before I can begin the next chapter in life, I need to leave in this chapter the part of me that continually tells my self I am too weak to handle the hard stuff of life.


~b~

Friday Randoms

Three good shows that only lasted 2 seasons:

• Dead Like Me

• Pushing Daisy's

• Flight of the Conchords

Forever Ago I Got My Haircut:

As I bonus I got my hair curled (my stylist felt sorry for me because I wasn't feeling to great). I loved my curly hair!

Twitter

I've been trying to cut back on the amount of online reading I do because I'm convinced its promoting my short attention span and hindering a lack of deep thought. And then Steve Jobs resigned. I'm sick of being the last to hear breaking news. So I finally joined twitter. You can follow me @BeckySchurman, or even better, tell me your username so I can follow you.


My Son

One benefit of having a teenager that is taller than me is that he can now reach up high to places I can't reach. Sweet. He can also carry in more groceries into the apartment than me. The years of cooking him meals is finally paying off.

One drawback to having a teenage son is that he'll say things to me like: "I'll bring my fan in and waft it all over the place" (He is talking about wafting the smell of his stinky socks all over the apartment). Eww.


Binary Solo

I bought leisure passes this weekend for my son and I. It ended up costing $101.10. I'm pretty sure I remarked: Ooooh, binary numbers, to the cashier. I blame the end of this song for my dorky remark:

Have a great weekend!

~b~

Thoughts on Life - On being irreplaceable.

During Joel's funeral service at the beginning of June, I remember sitting there surrounded by sadness and realizing the unavoidable finality of death.  I sat there questioning the point of life and why we are given this time, this life.

And so this summer I have been thinking a lot.  Thoughts about living my life, knowing that someday I too will end my time on this side of eternity.

Here is one thought that have been thinking.

Where are you irreplaceable?

In certain relationships you are completely irreplaceable.  To your friends, your family and especially your children you are completely irreplaceable.  Invest in these relationships because it is where you will make the greatest impact.  Be intentional in what type of impact you will make.  Give them your time, your attention, and your best energy.  It is in these relationships that you will leave the biggest void when you are gone.

Prioritize these relationships above your career.  You are completely replaceable in your job.  There will always be somebody else to fill your position.  Even if you should accomplish something great in your career, it will eventually be forgotten, become obsolete, or overshadowed by the next best thing.  Besides, your coworkers will remember you for how you treated them and the memories you've shared, rather than the job that you did.  And your friends and family don't care about your job title or the salary you make.

For me, prioritizing my closest relationships over my career has meant saying no to potential job opportunities that don't fit well with raising my son.  It means setting limits on the amount of time and effort I spent in developing my own skills and knowledge.  It means that I make sure I am well rested,
and that I don't fill my days with so many tasks that I become stressed out.  I want to give to others all my good energy and patience, not my crabby, stressed out self.  It means me remembering that my actions influence those closest to me more than what I say or strive to be and that these actions are a result of where my focus is.  

I want the people closest to me to know that they are more important that the accomplishments I achieve.  I want to strive to become a person who lives out my values and beliefs, so that perhaps, these values will be imparted to those around me.  I want to be be remembered for my love of life, not the love of my work.



~b~