Sleeping on fire

I lay on my stomach
Reading
As though life is normal
But the little nicks
And cuts
From shears
Where no one can see them
Burn against the fabric
Reminding me
Though unseen
That they are there
Anyway.

Why do I do this
To myself
To my own flesh
Which God himself
Formed and planned?

Because it feels
Good
The pain
The hurt
Can feel good.

At first
Because I could take
No more
But now
Because ritual
Because
Symmetry.

Anyway.
Formed and planned
Can feel good.
Safe and stable
Ritual
And symmetry.
All I want.

The Hurt

There is fear in uncertainty. I’m beginning to wonder if my life will be anything beyond one big bundle of fear. Everyday, every week, month, season, year, there is some new panic that grips me. Growing up, I never thought I’d have to worry about having a roof over my head. I never expected I would have to watch what I spent on food. I never thought my education would be an expense that would put me into a pit of debt so deep, that I would never be able to crawl out of.

There’s a sinking feeling as I realize I very soon may not have a home. I may have to quit school even before completing my first semester of graduate school.

I do not know where I will find work. I do not know where I will live. I am angry and scared and hurt.

It’s not my fault!—I want to scream. And to some extent, it isn’t. A series of poor decisions mixed with extraordinary bad luck and unfortunate events utterly outside of my control. All combined to result in one stinking mess. My life.

I wonder how I can recover. How I can scramble by. I’m scrappy and I roll well with the punches most of the time, but it has been a life of cowering, of “yes sirs” and “no ma’ams,” aiming to please others so that they will feed me, clothe me, house me for just a little bit longer. I wonder if I will ever be free. If I will ever be truly happy. I wonder if there is a way out.

A way out. Because I fill trapped. I am powerless, so miserably at the mercy of others that I stay awake at night wondering if the best way out is to end my own life. I contemplate killing myself. I fantasize about it.

The thing is, when you’re completely dependent on other people for your livelihood, you realize that you are a burden. What good-natured soul wants to be a burden unto those she loves?

Suicide begins to seem like a gift. I can take away all my own pain and suffering and also relieve that of the ones I love. I can stop taking from them. I can cease to be a burden.

Lord, what can I do? I feel abandoned. It was just supposed to be one year. Is there some other calling you have for me? Some other purpose that I have been ignoring and this is your way of breaking me to your Will? Please, I beg of you. Just tell me what you want from me. Your wretched servant is listening and willing. But she must hear you, and she is terribly deaf and negligent. So be not subtle. Send your message in the thunder and lightning. Please Lord. My strength is fading. And I am afraid.

Meeting the end

I told my Beloved yesterday that I no longer wanted him.

I listened to him cry for over an hour, unable to speak. He utterly lost it.

But he does this every time I try to leave him. Five years of the same reaction. And it still hurts me. Remember…sitting in the parking lot of the Harley Davidson dealership, seeing him completely break down and tell me, for the first time that he loves me.

Whatever you want, I will do, just please stop.

I don’t know what it is about my Beloved crying that is so abhorrent to me. But this time…this time it will not move me. I have told my parents that I want a divorce. I am going to meet with him this weekend to discuss what we will do. I cannot be his any longer. I cannot live this lie. I cannot submit to him.

Oh my God, I am sorry, but I cannot do Your will. I cannot submit to this man. I cannot remain his wife. My vows and words are meaningless, because I have a weak and selfish heart. I have never been able to be devoid of self…no matter how much I desired to be.

Broken. Utterly broken. A mockery. A failure. A sad excuse for a Christian woman. A selfish and ugly thing.

Yet this time I will go through with it. I will leave him. It is something I thought myself incapable of, until we were apart, until I could see my own potential. Until I realized, I want the world. Want to wander the streets of London. Travel America from shore to shore. Write my first novel. And second. And third. And twentieth. Dance until four in the morning. See opera. Do research. Live.

Live free.

I was unable to find freedom in my servitude, in my submission to my vows. For this man, this controlling, self-serving man, there was no other alternative. This is how his world operates. I was just another cog in a wheel of his clock…

So after five years, that which should have never been, will be over.

May he forgive me. May God forgive me.

A handsome stranger

I have been living with my aunt and uncle on the Island. From there I commute into the City every morning. I always resented my cousins treating my brother and I like we were from some foreign country where people live in barns, but lately, I’ve been very proud of the fact that yes, I have rural roots and grew up down the street from a dairy farm and think of apple picking as being just as American as apple pie.

That aside, my aunt has been my confidant. It’s a habit from childhood. Except now we’re both married and no longer living with our parents.

Maybe I’ve been saying a little too much, but I needed someone to tell. Some feelings are just too much to keep between your heart and your head.

I told her about how I wanted to call the wedding off. How I panicked. How my Beloved is not so beloved to me after all and I think I’ve made a horrible mistake. He isn’t there when I need him. He makes all the decisions independent of me. He doesn’t love me the way I always thought my husband would.

I’ve told him all these things too. Sometimes he says nothing at all. Other times he promises he’ll do better. I don’t known what to think. Maybe I was too young. Maybe I really did marry him because I was financially dependent on him. I’ll do whatever it takes for you to feel that way about me again, he swears.

We’re so different. We have different values. Different upbringings. Different moral codes. Different life goals. Different faiths.

Is there someone else in your department?

The question catches me off guard and my knitting needles stutter. I look at my aunt curiously and ask her what she means. I know what she means, but I need to hear her say it. As if knowing what she’s referring to will mean that it’s been on my mind. Will confirm that it’s something she does need to worry about.

I worry that you’ll meet another man in your department. Someone you do have things in common with. Is there anyone there who would tempt you to stray?

No, I lie. There’s no one.

Oh God. Eyes squeezed shut. Pretending. Praying.

I sit next to him in class. The Soldier. We were natural friends in orientation because neither one of us is fresh from our bachelors but we both had the same major. He’s handsome. I think he’s my husband’s age, but he isn’t getting wrinkled from stress or losing his hair to genetics and overnight shifts. He’s smart. The study sessions in our department tend to focus around listening to him explain everything. He’s smarter than me. Wittier than me.

Remember the moment it hit me that my husband has all the decision making power…and yet is less intelligent than I am. Remember the hurt and the disappointment. Like I had been duped.

We flirt. I didn’t realize it was happening until today. That moment when two people who have been skirting around the edges of attraction finally make real eye contact and it lasts a little too long and they really see each other.

I remember that moment from the night I met my husband. Remember all the things he seemed to be. Confident, powerful, smart…just like the Soldier. Older, a man, not a boy. A strange and elusive thing to a nineteen year old girl. I had known him for 30 seconds and looked up into his eyes, took in his cocky grin and realized I was staring into the face of my future husband. That feels so long ago…it is five years ago from this past Friday. It was a Friday night then, too. He was different then. He’s more withdrawn now. He could never replicate his behavior from that night the way his personality is now. I don’t think my husband has aged well. I realize with much guilt that maybe it’s because of me…

I confess to the Soldier that I need to take up an extreme hobby to compensate for all this hard work. “Like skydiving?” someone asks. Like MMA, I reply. The Soldier offers to teach me jujitsu. I’m excited to accept. The thought of getting to pretend-attack things makes me feel better, like I’ll have something to channel my rage into.

After class we discuss where we can have lessons. Maybe at the gym? “It’s kind of intimate,” Soldier tells me, as though the regular campus gym is not the place for it, and I babble something as if I can cover it up, but his word is stamped on my mind.

Intimate. Like, the gym is? Or the lessons?

It occurs to me that he will have to touch me during lessons. He’s made mats a requirement. He’s not only going to touch me, he’s going to pin me. That’s what that means, right? I’m not sure if I’m wary or excited. I spent all class in high strung mode noticing him noticing me noticing him. He swivels slightly in his chair and out of the corner of his eye watches me fidget with my engagement ring,

I look at my aunt. “There’s absolutely no one,” I say, straight to her face. With certainty.

Coming to the bread

I wake and my heart is breaking. It has been two weeks since I have seen my husband. I am low on sleep, having been up til midnight working only to get up before the sun does to be early on campus and continue working. The workload never seems to end, and it only grows in difficulty. The family I live with, they’re weathering their own aches and pains and through this all, the spirit hurts.

The train ride is dull and cool in the air conditioning. We all do our best to exist in a crowd but pretend we’re alone. No one wants to get to know anyone else. We are purposeful strangers, bumping into each other unapologetically because that is just how it is.

My own attention is on more work. The hour-long train ride into the City is when I get my reading done. Is it Weber today? Or Skinner? Or some portion of the IPCC report? I lose track. Yesterday was clouds, today is risk assessment. I’m learning the science behind why some poisons are allowed and others aren’t. It’s supposed to help explain to us how we’ll actually get the world to care about what we’re doing to God’s glorious Earth.

The only thing that distracts me from my reading is when we pass through a rain storm. The rain is startlingly loud against the windows and metal of the train.

From the train, there’s the walk to the subway. A quick glance at the flashing board and I see that my line has just arrived. I run up the stairs and throw myself on the car. I don’t take chances anymore. Last week I was polite and the doors shut themselves on me. Unlike on an elevator, where the doors open and then slowly close again, the subway car doors just keep trying to close on me. It hurts but I’m not going to cry in front of all the New Yorkers who are just staring at me.

No one makes friends on the subway either. I transfer off the express to the local that takes me to campus. My nose is still nearly pressed against my iPad. Maybe if I stare at each word more carefully, I’ll learn it better. I’m still crushed by the 75 I got on my homework last night. That sort of grade has happened before, but…I’m trying so hard this year…

On campus it’s not raining, but the drainage is so bad that I had to walk on a curb separating the walkway from the lawn in order to get to the library with dry feet. I pretend I’m walking on a balance beam, like I’m graceful or something. It’s even less fun than when I’m a girl because instead of getting made fun of for being clumsy should I fall, I’ll land in a puddle and get soaked.

There’s a tour group of high schoolers piling into the library. I say “excuse me” repeatedly and push myself to the head, flashing my ID card. There’s too much work to get done to even pretend to these high schoolers that I enjoy being here.

Sometimes when there are parent-prospective student tour groups, I scoul even more, as though I might discourage them from this misery.

I’ve thought seriously about suicide twice since the semester started…and I’m three weeks through the semester,

The computer lab is pretty empty. For this school’s standards. The library is packed, though. Every day, every hour. I’ve been there early, late, middle of the week, and Sundays, and it’s always full. My reaction is always the same, “What a bunch of nerds…”

The irony of that statement is not lost on me.

I print my paper. It’s one I’m remarkably proud of. As an undergraduate I wrote an essay about positive liberty, but I’ve matured since then. As a freshman undergraduate I thought positive liberty was superior because it allows the individual to rationally make “higher” decisions and project herself towards higher goals. Now I’m disillusioned by liberty in general. It’s overrated and service is underrated.

I turn in the paper and rush to serve.

By noon ten or so of us are gathered on our knees on the cold tiled floor of the campus chapel. I pray fervently that I will stop being selfish. I pray I’ll be forgiven for continually putting myself first. I pray that Jesus will get me through graduate school. Maybe if He helps me I’ll accomplish what I need to do without turning into a monster…or a vegetable…

I cry during the Scripture reading. I cry during the Gospel. I try to hide the fact that I am sobbing during the homily. And I have never been so grateful to receive Communion. For some reason, on this day, when I am filled with such pain, it is like receiving the Bread of Life for the first time. And I feel lifted and reborn with Christ in me afterwards.

The day doesn’t get any better, but in my heart I’m constantly conversing with Jesus, now that I know for sure that He’s right there within me. I can feel how sorry He feels, because He doesn’t like that I should suffer. He’s compassionate.

He suffers with.

Com
Passion

I’m so tired that I’m staggering getting onto the train ride home after class. Earlier in the week, it was so bad I almost fell onto the tracks. I’m so tired, but I think of Christ carrying the Cross, and the weight of my sins and I think, “I can get through this.” I just don’t want to sin anymore, because when He felt my suffering, I could feel His, I could feel how much it hurts to carry my sins, and I don’t want to add to that.

Maybe, I think hopefully, maybe I’m improving. I’m not like those other Christians, who have this beautiful moment where all the sudden they are with Christ, and unable to sin anymore and unable to turn away from Him. My relationship with Him has been full of fits of rage. It’s imperfect and disappointing.

But today…today maybe I’m getting better.

Because once more, I cannot stand to wait to receive Him.

Two and a half

I step into the lounge. It’s not packed, but there’s a half dozen or so people from my department all sitting, legs stretched out and arms relaxed, around the circular table that is normally loaded up with books and lap tops. We have a quiz later, but we have a different class first, and everyone is all smiles and waves when I walk in.

We talk a little about what will be on the quiz. No one is worried because it’s open book–it’s tomorrow’s quiz everyone is in a panic over. But that’s for later when classes are done for the day and we can begin cramming.

There’s a girl in our department I’ve been meaning to talk to. As far as I know, she’s the only other married person in our program. She’s been married for three years—long enough to know what I’m going through but not so long that she’s forgotten what it’s like.

When does the fighting stop?

She looks a little confused.

You know, the newlywed fights. About not getting to do whatever we want as individuals anymore. When do they stop?

She smiles and then she laughs. She glows more like a newlywed than I do while we’re discussing marriage. “Oh. That.” The way she says it makes me feel better, like it’s something every married couple actually does have to work their way through. “That’s all over after two and a half years.”

I swallow. Two and a half years?

She’s still smiling. Like this is a good thing. But two and a half years is half the time my Beloved and I have been together! “After that it doesn’t even come up anymore. You just think as a ‘we.’”

I let that sink in. With time and patience, my Beloved and I will overcome our selfishness and become a “we.”

The way she tells me is so casual, and yet so positive. Like she was talking about growing pains instead of obliterating selfishness. I don’t want to not be selfish. I want to seek my own pleasure. I want to choose my own path, and no one—not even my husband—is going to tell me what to do.

I’ve been pondering this. Aside from all the reading, and the bumpy subway rides, and the late nights doing thermodynamics problems, I’ve been thinking about my own selfishness. I’ve been thinking about my happiness. I’ve been questioning my decision to get married, and I’ve been debating a new choice I have to make: do I go on to get my PhD?

It really is what I have always wanted to do, but for a while my husband has been discouraging me from going for it. He hasn’t flat out told me not to do it, but he isn’t enthusiastic, and he’s always coming up with alternatives. The real message is that he wants me to go into the workforce.

It’s frustrating and it makes me feel small and bruised. To teach, to do research, to be respected among academics…that’s been my dream since I learned it was a possibility.

But my Beloved doesn’t want me to do it.

It’s hard to admit…but I understand why. He wants a return on his investment (the money he is putting towards my masters degree). He wants his wife to be at home with him instead of four and a half hours away. He isn’t passionate about academics and he doesn’t understand the point of me getting a doctorate.

We’re at a painful crossroads here, and I know what I’m supposed to do.

I’m supposed to get my diploma come August and get a job.

It just feels like I’m getting the short end of the stick.

I wish…I pray…make me that two and a half years woman…who thinks of we, and not I.

The gamble

Marriage, I am learning, is a complicated gamble. And there is no way of knowing with 100% certainty that you are placing your faith in the right person. It’s scary and there is an obnoxious amount of second guessing involved.

I question that he was the right man.

Some days I wonder if we stayed together for so long because at the beginning there was trauma that forced us close. I worry that I moved in with him just to avoid moving back home, where I had to fear alcoholism, and terrifying tempers, and being thrown out on a whim. And then I became financially dependent on him. And then came the pressure to marry him from family because we were living together.

Now I remain unbelievably financially dependent on him. Without him, I would have nothing.

I worry.

Is it these things that resulted in our marriage?

I question.

His family is more important than me. He never defends me from his friends. He is controlling with money. He does not give me much say in things.

I want to call it quits.

I wonder if I wasn’t so beholden to him…

Would I?

I try to remember my vows. All I can recall is the first line, “I vow henceforth to be your faithful wife…”

I said things that sounded wonderful. And they even resulted in a sonnet. But I cannot recall what I pledged to him. A life-long promise already forgotten. I cannot recall what he said to me.

…the words start to form in my mind…oh yes. I made promises about asking and granting forgiveness. I swore to always keep his truest self in mind–his Mt Tabor self. I start to recall…that I promised brave love, bold love, beautiful love.

How can I blame him for my doubt when I have not even upheld my marriage vows, less than two months since making them? I have not been forgiving. I hold grudges from planning our wedding. I have not seen him for his true self. I focus on his faults, on the grudges. I complain about him while he is hours away, working to pay for my fancy degree, unable to defend himself. That is not brave. Certainly, falling in line with the conventions of society does not make for a bold love. And all this together is pure ugliness…

How can he be his best when I do not let him? How can he be a good husband when I do not adhere to my vows? Is he not the one man in the world who deserves the benefit of the doubt?

Maybe it would just be easier to quit. But it would not be better. It’s a gamble made purely on faith. And yet, with faith, is there not victory? If I have to gamble on a man, I am glad it is my Beloved.

Post-nuptial blues

The living room has really been getting to me. I know there’s great sadness and suffering out in the world, but right now I’m not yet able to get passed our living room. Boxes and stuff—I don’t even know what it all is!—have taken over the room to the point that I can’t walk three feet without stubbing my toes.

Things are not good right now.

Leading up to the wedding was pure craziness. We moved to a new state, four hours away. My Beloved started a new job. Then after the wedding I immediately had to start planning for grad school (still haven’t found a place to live in NYC yet). Orientation starts in twenty-two days. There’s been the insanity of buying and putting together new furniture (three trips to IKEA with a fourth in the works), and unpacking and finding a place for all our belongings in our much smaller apartment.

The world started spinning faster and faster as we got closer to the wedding, with everyone’s demands and having to depend other people and relinquish my need to control everything down to the last detail. The stress literally broke me into insensibility. I was easier to deal with, but I wasn’t all there.

My hope was that the world would slow down to its normal rate after the wedding, but it hasn’t.

Is this inevitable in marriage? Was I destined to become a moody miasma of negativity once I said “I do”? It’s like the wedding is over, but my adrenal glands don’t notice. I’m defensive and easily annoyed. Every little issue we had as a couple before marriage is now a personal insult.

“He did that on purpose!”

“He just doesn’t care!”

“He never thinks of me!”

I know what is happening. I know what I’m doing and how I’m acting, but I just can’t seem to stop. The moment I manage to calm myself down and say I’m behaving immaturely, I stumble upon something that makes me go, “See! Look what he’s done now! I was right all along!”

Today I am conquering the living room. The entertainment unit, with all its shelves and cabinets, has been assembled. I can now, at last, put things away. So I begin, with happy determination because organizing things gives me pleasure. But I seem unable to stop myself from noticing certain things.

I made sacrifices in what I brought to our apartment, knowing how much smaller it is. And yet, there are whole boxes of DVDs and CDs that I know my Beloved will neither watch nor listen to. There are whole boxes filled with things I can’t identify. There’s a guitar I know he hasn’t touched in years and that I bitterly note will never be played again. And yet here it is, in our living room, taking up precious space.

When I make my assault on the dining table, I start to feel that familiar sinking sensation in my stomach that I used to get when we lived together, when I realized, “He doesn’t give a s*** about my things.”. The table runner that was my first knitting project? It’s on the floor shoved up between a chair leg and the wall. The map that resulted in me being published for the first time in an academic journal (an an undergraduate)? It’s scuffed and squashed underneath a pile of his…well, I can’t even name everything in the pile. His stuff?

Lost. Broken. Tricked.

I don’t want this. I will never want this. I never wanted this in the first place.

Ugly, ugly thoughts and feelings, and I clench them tightly in my fists. But what am I to do? This way of life lacks respect, and yes, he did something wrong.

My self is aching.

Because we now live on the opposite end of Massachusetts from New York state, getting ahold of the people and paperwork necessary to change my name has been a struggle. Maybe it would be easier to just hold onto that old identity for a little longer.

It’s not like I wanted to take his name in the first place.

I don’t want to think about that argument. The look in his face when I said I was having second thoughts about taking his name. It sounds like the right and proper thing to do. Until you actually have to do it…and say goodbye forever to that girl you’ve been for the past 24 years.

An entire person is gone. Replaced by a we. A we that is dominated by him.

Lost. Broken. Tricked.

I retreat from the living room, into the bedroom. I sit quietly and think. Because what he did was wrong, but my response is also wrong.

I start thinking of last night and how it was what I thought marriage would be like. The world slowed down until it almost stopped spinning, and I had an evening to be a wife and he was my husband.

We eat coconut ice cream in the kitchen. We snuggle on the couch. He interrupts my brooding with a surprise kiss and tells me how beautiful I am. Before I realize it, I’ve stopped brooding. We stay up passed our bedtime because the Olympics are just too exciting. When we get to bed, we’re up late having a genuine conversation with each other.

I confess to him that I’ve been miserable. That I feel like a string stretched too far about to snap in the middle…the individual fibers breaking one by one so that only a few are left.

And he tells me that it would have been easier if we hadn’t had to move just two weeks before getting married. Easier, he says, “but not better.”

I think about that in the bedroom, sitting on his side of the bed, right where he said the words. And I start to feel a little better. We didn’t choose the easier path. But we chose the better one.

Praying the name

I get the email.

You look so great in the pictures! I can tell you had fun. Judging by the dress damage, maybe too much fun

I lay in bed, my Beloved beside me, feeling my heart filling with burning rage. The damage to my train doesn’t bother me. It was a long train, and I wasn’t a prissy enough bride to actually demand my tired and sleep-deprived bridesmaids carry my train around the city as we take pictures. It’s no big deal. I don’t mind paying to have it repaired. I’m not even upset that it was my sister-in-law’s friend’s stilettos that finally put the train to death at the end of the night.

No, I clench my fists and feel like screaming my fury.

How dare that little brat…that little monster…

I have perhaps 30 seconds to myself, and I use it to take a glass of sparkling water and stand off to the side. My gaze scans the dance floor, and I can’t help but watch my younger cousins making wonderful spectacles of themselves, putting on an act only two close brothers could manage spontaneously. I laugh, I smile. This is our celebration, and it’s a wonderful success. There are only smiles on every face.

My Beloved’s sister’s son, the five year old boy who is now my nephew, runs up beside me, and in his loudest voice screams, “Boo!”

He’s been doing this all night. I am saturated with joy, but I’m starting to get tired with him. For once child, can you yield the spotlight to me? For once, can you just sit quietly and use the coloring books Mimi bought you? He was already incapable of going down the aisle with the other ring bearer (a boy 6 months younger), and when everything became hushed and sacred he could not contain himself from screaming that wretched, “BOOO!!”

I am so very tired of boo. I am tired of this boy running around the reception hall, forcing people out of the way on the dance floor, all while not being watched by an adult. I want him to go away, leave me alone, stop interrupting my night.

But he’s only five so I smile at him, and just as quickly ignore him. If you don’t give attention to bad behavior, he’ll stop doing it, right?

Nephew is not happy I’ve ignored him. He takes a hold of my dress, the delicate silk tulle of its skirt. “Let go right now,” I tell him firmly. He laughs, and throws all his might into yanking on the skirt.

It rips.

He runs off laughing.

I stand there stunned, staring at the rip in my beautiful wedding gown, the result of so much time, and effort, and money. The most precious article of clothing I will ever wear in my life. I used what little I had left of my college savings bonds from my grandparents on this dress. I have no more money of my own; I have this dress. This beautiful, delicate, princess-worthy work of art.

And the little s*** ripped it.

With purpose. With laughter.

There’s no time to tell his parents. My aunt grabs me by the arm and I’m pulled away for more pictures. The joy of the evening washes over me and is not ruined by Nephew misbehaving.

…this new night is ruined by it though. I can’t stop obsessing over what happened.

What a terrible child! What terrible parenting! I say but it’s all a cover for my soul screaming, “I HURT!”

I can’t sleep and my mind starts to feel stretched. I don’t want to think about this anymore, but I can’t stop. I can’t let go of my negativity. I can’t stop thinking about how much I hate this little boy for his callousness, his cruelty. It’s so wrong because it’s from a child, and one old enough to know better. My rage grows.

I hear my heart tell me, “Say His name.”

The desert fathers would pray His name. Just saying it over and over again.

Praying for me to let go of my anger just focuses all thought on it, increasing it, instead of surrendering it. It hardens my heart, instead of softening it.

But if I pray His name instead, won’t I be focused on Him? Won’t my heart be His?

In my head, I whisper, “Jesus…Jesus…Jesus…Jesus…”

Over and over again, and the prayer is short, but the change is great. I feel my anger fading, and calm wash me. I am actually able to sink into sleep…with His name on my lips…

Getting in gear

The stress has not completely diminished.

I awake from my first truly restful sleep in a long time.  My dreams were odd, and at one point borderline violent, but they weren’t the nightmares that have been haunting me for the past few weeks.

The coughing wakes me.  The pain in my lungs.  I’m sick, again.  I feel that I have spent more time in my life being sick than I have being healthy.  I wonder if it’s because I haven’t been truly committed to being healthy.

Know what it takes, have read the books, bought the supplies, subscribed to the magazines.  It’s all there, it’s within my grasp, so why do I falter?

Sound familiar?  Whether it’s weight loss or writing a book or praying each day, humans falter. It happens.  What matters more is what you do after the fall.

Last night my Beloved and I watched the Russians and Americans compete for overall gold in the London Olympic Games.  He commented that he thought it was more impressive when the gymnasts didn’t land perfectly (on the balance bar) and had to make adjustments.  ”It really shows how in control they are of their own bodies.”  {My Beloved is a treasure trove of observations.}  I had to agree.  It showed real strength and poise to recover from imperfection and go on to land the next set perfect.  An absolute overcoming of fear, self-doubt, and all the things that land us in the squalor of true failure.

If young girls {and make no argument against it, those amazing athletes are still just girls with wonderful, fulfilling lives ahead of them} can stumble at the starts and finishes and in-betweens and never give up, then all of us have the potential to do so, whatever our goal.

And my goal is to change the world.  To feed the hungry.  To lead through example.

Obliterating this stupid cough might be a nice side-effect.

So I’m lining up my tools.  I’m making a plan, and that plan is a promise.  And there’s squirming room in it, so that if I mess up one day it’s not such a long way to pick myself up and get back up on the “bar.”

The promise feels good.  I’ve been making a lot of promises lately, promises that I absolutely refuse to break, so this feels like a good time to tack on some more.

Do you do this?  Do you decide to transform yourself after defeat and start fresh?  Or do you dribble off into mediocrity, and wait until January 1st comes around to set unrealistic goals that you already know you won’t keep?

Make this a time of possibility.  I’m making it mine.