Let’s Try This Again

Well, what can I say? Even once a week seems to have become an impossible goal for me to meet with regard to blogging lately. It didn’t help that I was sick again.

Last time (before Thanksgiving)  it was some sort of digestive flu thing. This time (after Thanksgiving) it was a Perfect Storm of a cold. I still have the last dregs of its symptoms even now at day 12. 

The timing was perfect though. The first two days, when I was still not sure it was a cold, I had to drive my mother to the doctor for a white blood cell stimulating shot. I did that wearing a mask. Saturday, when I usually take her to the store, it turned out she didn’t need to go, which was a good thing because symptoms had begun by then and I don’t think the mask would’ve been up to containing them. Sunday was unbelievable. I could barely function for the sneezing and nose running. My hubby has it now. I hope and pray I won’t get it again. I don’t think I can unless the virus mutates…

Anyway, between that, and trying to catch up on the catching up I was doing when the cold hit, my time and energy for blogging have been more at a premium than ever. And the last time I worked on Sky was last Tuesday. I am at least continuing to move along with The Artist’s Way. I’m starting Week 10 today.  Though I have yet to complete today’s Morning Pages, nor did I do an artist’s date last week (unless wandering around Bookman’s Used Books for an hour looking at books counts) (I guess I can say it does). I did none of last week’s tasks — we were to read our morning pages for the first time since starting them, highlighting insights and actions. I only got the first week’s worth read and never got back to it.

And believe it or not, I’m still fighting about writing the pages. I don’t think I like having to write 3 pages whether I have anything to say or not (although I do always seem to come up with something). And then later, when I do have things to say, there’s no space in the journal that I’m using (specifically designed for morning pages, with three page increments marked out and quotes from the topics of each week’s reading used to embellish the pages) so I have to add overflow pages…  On the other hand, I’m kind of thinking that just the process of writing three pages of stream of consciousness might well be beneficial, just not in the way one would think.

God seems to do be doing a lot with me  along that theme lately… That the purpose in things done or things that occur is not what people see, or what I see but something else entirely. That God’s way of molding us into the image of His son is not anything like man’s way would be (not that man could even do it, but we seem to think he — we — can). That the sufferings we endure change us in ways we can’t really perceive and maybe can’t even imagine, and certainly are not changes we would be able to work in ourselves no matter how much we might want to.

That’s partly come out of the things I’ve been learning from The Artist’s Way.  I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve been highlighting, underlining and writing in the wide margins of the book’s pages as I’ve read and Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion was heavily marked in.

Dare I save further comment on that for tomorrow? Well, one of the “guidelines” I’ve been following lately is “Try it and see.” So I will.

And hopefully I’ll be back to write some more tomorrow. Here’s a teaser, the first paragraph from that chapter:

“One of the most important tasks in artistic recovery is learning to call things — and ourselves — by the right names. Most of us have spent years using the wrong names for our behaviors. We have wanted to create and we have been unable to create and we have called that inability laziness. This is not merely inaccurate. It is cruel. Accuracy and compassion serve us far better.”

 Those who know me or have read this blog for any length of time will recognize not “laziness” but “indisciplined” as my term of choice for why I have been unable to create.  Which is perhaps just another word for the same thing, and just as wrong…

1 thought on “Let’s Try This Again

  1. mylittlebub

    That part where you said that God is doing things we don’t understand or couldn’t possibly do for ourselves in order to mold us into the likeness of Christ, was very meaningful to me. That statement takes truly confusing and wearying situations and brings a wonderful perspective to my mind. I don’t understand what I need in order to grow or the sequences of pressure and event that are needed to mould and shape me or bring me to a frame of reference for new thinking but God knows and so sometimes we are brought to places of seemingly inconsequential distress, wandering, pain or confusion. We leave those places changed in ways we can’t see. To think on it positively in the light of a good and purposeful outcome is just what I needed right now.

    Thanks,
    Mary

    Reply

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