The Slow Roll into Re-Entry

I remember that my wise yoga teacher told me once that it is always a good thing to change states of consciousness slowly. I do believe that where I was this time last week and where I sit this morning qualify on several fronts as different states of consciousness, and I am trying to heed her advice, but finding it a little challenging my first morning back into the day job.

The temperature here is 19 F this morning.  It snowed again yesterday, and it's promised to us that it will do so again today, tomorrow and Wednesday. All the things that I left on my desk are still here and more came to join them in my absence.  The loss of my client's husband weighs heavy on my heart this morning as she will lay him to rest today. 

The BE was not only all of its own wonderfulness.  It was a marker for me.  I don't know how many times I said to someone, "when I get back from the BE..." or Right after the BE I will..." meaning that this is the time I will "officially begin to transition from here to there, from now to then.  There is much to be done.  The CPE application to complete and mail, a house that needs some serious curb appeal, and a "marketing campaign" for yours truly for the next gig, whatever it might turn out to be and a visit with the Bishop and his Missioner about how the church might use me in a new way.  Just writing all that makes my stomach do a slow roll that has nothing to do with a week on a boat.

We did make a good beginning this weekend.  The stairway is painted! Much of the credit for this goes to my sweet husband who figured how to get the horrible wallpaper off, which we accomplished before I left. While I was cruising he did the skim coating and mudding and sanding and sealed and primed it. So yesterday we finished it up with the final touches and put on the lovely goldenrod color. Just for perspective...this is a project I started six years ago with the initial wallpaper stripping.  It stalled and sat. Three weekends of teamwork (mostly the R half of the team on this one) and it's done! Thanks be. So one down and...well let's just say "a few" to go on the house front. "Be not afraid," this too will be accomplished.

This project thing reminds me again that I am not alone.  Not alone in this world with my projects and my worries and my tasks, and not alone at all in any sense.  It is one of my biggest faults that I keep somehow managing to forget that.  In the "this world" sense it has some logic of long habit at least.  I did have to rely on myself. But how I extrapolate that to God who has never once asked or expected me to make it on my own, well that's another thing entirely. 

I bought a little silver bird in Mexico to add to the things on the chain I wear on my neck (a cross and a shooting star).  The bird is to remind me not to fear, as"even the birds of the air" are in God's care, so I am. As I think about Lent this year, I want to work with that fear, that anxiety...to release myself more and more into the care of those loving hands of God who have my name tattooed on them.