Pocketbook

I may not sure other women are like this, but I don't like others to get into my wallet...at all! The deeper or larger the request, the less likely I am to let you wander on your own into my wallet to retrieve it. See all those little pockets, those are mine, I have designated them for their purpose and no one gets into those credit card, money slots, picture holders but me.  

I am very particular when it comes to selecting a wallet, hunting it down with care and precession.  I have known this about myself for many years, it has been a running gag/sore point in my relationship with Hugh, although mostly just a joke.  There is also the "dirty purse shame" that threatens me but this is completely and all together another issue that we will avoid today.

I am not sure why I carry this weird sense of ownership about my wallet and my money...something to do with it being mine, that I earned what is inside, that I established as a teenager as some sort of "adult-sized" indicator that I had money I had earned, and a place to put everything.  There was identification, pictures in their spots to prove people liked me, products had been purchased and I had receipts to prove it...just don't go rummaging through my wallet...I will retrieve what you need...keep your sticky paws out of my beloved wallet.

A couple of years ago, I started carrying around a $2!  After watching a good but rather low budget film, it became a reminder to me to extend love, kindness and good will.  It sits in my wallet, unused.  It purely a reminder to choose.

Suddenly and without warning, someone took my $2 bill.  I have replaced it but I have had a rush of thoughts and emotions about it and all of them have surprised me.

Curiously, I had been asked just the day before it was taken if I had any change and had fibbed because I wasn't to be without my $2.  Now today, it was gone.  The range of emotions came fast and without brakes. 

Anger

Indignation

Hurt

after a few hours, Sorrow

Fear 

Feeling alone 

Shame

Violation 

Grace

Forgivenes

Eager for the growth I would experience because of being violated

As each day of my life gets smaller and I am forced to let more people into the little pockets of my life, I wonder myself what I have tried to tuck away that seems of value to me but that will be exposed and opened.  Many of these things are of high value and need the protection I have given them.  When all is said and done, every little pocket, chosen with care by me, will hopefully find love, care and kindness.  

The $2 bill may not be the original but the intent to remind me of goodness and kindness remains the same and the grace and forgiveness abounds.  I, we are all on the fast-track to learn about grace and forgiveness. I won't be robbed of the joy a new reminder brings. I do know that it will take a little more effort on my part.  Do I want joy, laughter and grace? Yes! 

If yes, I am on the fast track to have those things even when I am violated...even then I pursue all that I hold true and open up the hidden places to show you who I am.

dark...part two

night...you know, the time between when you go to sleep and when you set your alarm to go off, that time when it is dark and your desire is sleep.  If we must be up, it is typically dark but maneuvering our rooms is easy comparatively  because it is an area more known to us. We know we left our shoes at the foot of the bed...step carefully around known obstacles.

I see better in the dark so don't feel pity for me here.  I actually create dark during the day hours, closing blinds, leaving off the lights.  There is no profound, spiritual reason for this: as with most symptoms I am having, I am losing my vision due to cancer pressing on my vision centers. I am very light sensitive, so I create darker environments to make myself more comfortable. 

And, yes, there is wrestling between the dark and the light and it is on-going. The wrestling happens in the light and dark. The day-time wrestling match is more public, is shorter, quieter.  Please don't feel pity for me in this wrestling match because I feel no pity for myself.

And the wrestling happens in the dark too but I see better in the dark remember.  It can be a suffocating, choking, pressure-filled place.  I don't feel depressed or blue.   I feel I am being healed.  I am being prepared.  But there is stretching and pulling that must happen.  I am being prepared for the life I have been trying to truly grasp for a long time come.  I am fearfully and wonderfully made, I am His workmanship. Soon, I will know it inherently.

So in your prayers for me, don't feel sad for me in this dark wrestling match! It is dark because it must be. And rest is always part of the equation and rest comes with joy and peace. Rejoice with me in it! There are sad moments that bring me to my to my knees saying goodbyes and surrendering to the processes of comfort.  It is dark because God shows up in the dark and I want to be where He is.

It is dark here because I am being prepared, for healing, for a full understanding of who I am created to be. No pity please.  I see well in the dark.

dark

Pitch-black

Unseeable 

Dank

Suffocating 

Scary

Dry

Pushing against

Pushing back

Boogeyman 

No light

Blind

DARK

I am wrestling with God in a dark place.   I have been very aware of the darkness, but as my wrestling match continues I am even more aware of the match itself, and all the descriptive ways I feel as each wrestler enters the ring to work out.  I know very little of how these matches get scored or how to win but I am in the ring, it is dark, it is often suffocating, there is sweat.  Sometimes it feels less like a wrestling match and more like a garden patch...fresh soil in, bulbs planted in the cold, moist dirt, then wait for the sun to shine, roots to take hold and the push back against the process from bulb to beauty.

What it feels like in the dark wrestling match from dirt; dank, moist and suffocating, to what will be a push thru to victory and beauty, dirt on my head, some sore muscles and maybe a bogeyman or two.

My dirty dark place is the why and the how, the on-going observation on the process of a body going from life into death, the acceptance or non-acceptance at times, saying good-byes and hoping it isn't the last good-bye, the curious wonder of each symptom or non-symptom.

The dark cries each night as I ponder and I think about the end of this life's journey as my family and friends continue on their longer road without me in it...that is a wrestling match only God and I can maneuver.   In the dirt, in the pushback, with the bugs and the mire, when all I can do is cry out, He is in it with me, dirty, sweaty, pushing back, crying out too and we wrestle until a rest is called.  After rest...and maybe some more rest, we wrestle again until a peace of some sort is reached.

But in the dark, wet space we are wrestling together to some sort of calm and peace until I need to push back more and understand. And the peace will come, in its time, in its way but through it He and I will find our way.