The Pulling of Opposites

I didn’t write yesterday, and wasn’t planning on writing today because words seem to be hard to form.  My energy is on the low side, and I’m in a bit of a lull. Yet, I blew through the things in my “to-do” list before 8:30 this morning.

Then I saw this quote from Brene Brown in FB Memories and thought, yes, this is it:

Opposites are pulling at me constantly. I cried in church, then later was full of joy when walking the labyrinth.

My wound is healing but there is a great deal of swelling, making my belly feel sore and heavy. It is slowing me down and yes, feels a tad concerning. I’m going to my doctor tomorrow.

Last night my Lectio Divina group had a dinner. A lovely woman named Vicky gave us all reversible Christmas placemats she made. I was touched by her generosity and artistry. Okay…no opposite there. The evening was perfect.

I hate running the heat, yet today I keep turning it on and off.  Everything right now is too hot and too cold. Not quite me, but fully me somehow. 

It’s exactly what Brene says: stretch-marked and strong, worn and willing.

It’s okay to not know what this is about, and just go with it. Everything sorts itself out in time, right?

Coming Out of a Long Struggle (Lectio Divina #2)

Something changed for me yesterday.

Prompted by things that have been happening, some communication I was doing with Jim, and reading that was inspiring me, I came back to myself.

At one point, I looked at my blog from September. I was particularly taken with the one where I had a picture of Alice in Wonderland looking at herself in a pond. At the time I had just been moved to a different hospital and I was wondering who I even was. I didn’t have my rituals. I wasn’t able to see my husband. I felt pretty lost. 

Somehow revisiting that time was good for me. I realized how far I have come from those days, and suddenly I just felt settled into the way things are. All day I felt it. I was doing a lot of reading. The company came and picked up all these oxygen supplies that have been sitting around here. Adios to that! I had a good trip to Target. And I went to Lectio Divina.

There we had a reading (find it below)where two things stuck out to me.

Struggling means living.

Divided parts/ integrated whole

I wrote this prayer:

Dear God, when I turn to you, you never let me down. In my anxiety and struggle, you gently lead me. Listening with faith, trusting your wisdom is what works. It’s the connection. The ability to have someone point the way. Intuition is God— is You. The miracle is always in the moment – – the miracle to release the struggle and feel alive. The miracle to heal the wounds, be energetic and free. There are a lot of people in the world who speak inspiring words. May I listen and honor the wisdom that comes my way over and over. Acknowledge them. Be grateful.🌻

So that took care of the struggle part.

Then I started to reflect on the parts versus the whole. I reflected:

I just looked at the scar on my arm, I thought of the bruise still on my right breast, and the open wound by my bellybutton. These are parts, but they don’t divide me. They are somehow integrating me into wellness.

Then I thought of Alice again.  I used her name to write an acrostic.

Alice was looking and I tried to look, but could not see.

Lately that is changing. I feel more like me.

In my tears and writing and walking and reading and chores and music listening, I’m coming back.

Can’t say anything will be the same as it was, but why would I want it to be?

Everything is temporary… Even the me I am today.

Up-n-Down

My friend Becky told me that it would take two weeks before she would really grieve when her parents passed away. I’m coming up on two weeks and I’m starting to notice a difference in myself.

For a while, I’ve just been caught up in nice memories of Jim and our life together. I’ve been taking care of things and seeing friends and rejoining a church. All good.

But today, for some reason, it’s been a bit up-and-down. I’m starting to remember more traumatic things from the past several months. For example, my car accident. I really have not thought a whole lot about it in quite some time, but today things were starting to pop up.

I know it’s trauma. I know there’s a lot of healing to be done. I’m doing my very, very best to take care of myself.

And I have help. A little while ago, I received a booklet from the leader of the Lectio Divina prayer group I attended on Monday. She included a very nice letter with it. The booklet is called A Time to Grieve, and I already read a little bit of it, and it has very comforting words. I do need to say that when I received the book and the letter, I cried and cried and cried. And I think I really needed to do that.

*

All that aside for now, I do want to say that I took a big step today. Actually maybe two big steps. I decided it was time for a trip to Costco and on my way there took the overpass from Gladiolus Drive to Summerlin Road. That is something that I had been avoiding ever since my accident, because sometimes it’s hard to merge there and one time somebody nearly ran me off the road refusing to let me in. I always get a little nervous going there. But it was absolutely fine today. There was nobody I had to merge with. 

And then, as I was approaching Costco, a song came on the radio that just seem to have the perfect words. This song came out right at the end of my freshman year of high school and I loved it from the first time I heard it. These words telling me that things will get easier, and even being referred to as a child, just felt so perfect today. I have added this song to my special playlist that I listen to many mornings. Hopefully you know this song, and can sing along, keeping me in mind as you do. I appreciate it 🌻

Owned

I have absolutely no time to write today. Heading to the hospital in a bit. And nothing was presenting itself, anyway.

Then in FB memories, this popped up (click on image to read):

To say I’m being owned by the journey is an understatement. I cannot count all the times I cried today, including when trying to secure a doc appointment and they made excuses why they can’t see me. My tears got me an appointment.

I seriously did not know our healthcare system was this effed up.

Also in FB memories are pictures of travels Jim and I took over the years. It’s making me nostalgic and sad, but happy, too. They are great memories.

Off to journey through this day. Can’t promise there won’t be tears, but I’m still riding on faith, hope, and joy every time I can remember. I feel the prayer wind of people everywhere praying for us. I just got to keep in mind these days won’t last forever.

Lifting

 

For two weeks now

I've been moving slow

 

Can't hold much weight

in my right hand

 

Have to lie on my back to sleep

Feels so rigid

 

Every day seems to bring

a new crisis

 

To stress me and

raise my blood pressure

 

When I need to be resting

It proves impossible.

 

When the caretaker gets injured

the whole house suffers

 

It's a constant weighing of

who is best to do what

 

And it's usually me

 

It is so hard sometimes to not feel sad

for my lost summer

 

I long to do my yoga

Walk in nature

 

Sleep on my side

Not worry about Jim

 

But all this proves

impossible

 

I know my body and 

yes, I am healing

 

People do care, and they

have been here

 

I really don't mean 

to be ungrateful

 

My injuries make it harder

for me to deal with 

my husband's terminal illness

 

And now here is where

I remind myself

 

It's only been two weeks,

Helen, give yourself a break

 

When no one is here to lift me

I just have to lift myself

Value, Rightness, and Truth

 

Today in my reading, I came across this quote from Trappist Monk Thomas Merton:

Do not depend on the hope of results...You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, and truth of the work itself.

This brought to mind immediately what happened at our school this week. I will begin with a conversation I had with a student named Charli.

 

Charli is in my intensive reading class and has been the hardest worker consistently all year. She put in tons of extra time on her iReady pathway, pushing herself to "low 8" status, which is great for a 7th grader. Right where she should be.

But Charli did not score proficient on the exam. She came in at a level 2 again. I could tell the promise of results had hurt her. She had been given false information: Do THIS and it will equal THAT.

To add insult to injury, there were other learners in that class who did score proficient, who did not do as well on assignments or put in the time on iReady. Yes, it can be puzzling. But only if you think standardized tests -- especially adaptive ones -- are true evidence. I have been savvy enough all along to know this is not necessarily true.

I explained to her that it could be, because the test is adaptive, she answered something wrong and it dipped her pathway. I don't actually KNOW, but I do know that is possible. Now I've heard there is a way for them to see exactly their ups and downs on the adaptation, but I haven't had a chance to talk to her about that yet, or figure out where to find it.

Since the kids are able to access their test scores very shortly after they are done testing, this has created a situation where the rest of the day they are asking each other about their test scores. This is fine for those who did well. But for those who didn't do as they hoped or expected, it is devastating.

This is doing nothing to help the mental health crisis we face, let me tell you.

What I want Charli to know is that her efforts were good for HER, even if it didn't result in the score she had hoped to attain. When I read the Merton quote, I thought about the value and the rightness and the truth in doing consistently good work with effort and persistence. It is devastating to think we are teaching these kids there is only one result that matters. The true results show up in the rest of their lives!

I recall when I taught Advanced Placement Literature. We would read books and poetry and discuss and present and write papers and try to improve those papers. There was a learning process involved. Students in the class could get an A and still not "pass" the AP exam [there is actually no pass score...just scores that can give you college credit and some that don't.]  Even if they didn't get but a 1 or 2 on the AP exam, they worked the process, they learned, they tried, they took risks. 

 

But at the time, someone out in the know-it-all world was screeching that their grade in the course should equal their score. I thought it was the most asinine thing I ever heard. How can the learning process equal the end score?As an educator, it makes no sense to me. What was the course for if not to learn how to read deeply and communicate ideas and write more fluently? If they already knew those things, why would they need the course? It's like saying athletes should excel perfectly in practice or they don't deserve to win the game. What?

 

In my reading I also noted this from Parker Palmer:

 

Once one has eyes to see it, wholeness can always be found, hidden beneath the broken surface of things.

 

So my message to Charli is to turn her focus to wholeness of learning. There are many things broken in our education system, and I've long felt standardized tests are part of that brokenness. Don't get stuck below the surface where the cracks are. Stay the course of the value of what you are learning, the rightness of what it can bring to the world, and the truth of who you are as a human. Those are the things that matter. Those are the things we must elevate. Those are the things we can trust.

On Saying Yes (Journal entry 3.15.24)

 

A lot has been going on in my heart and mind, and things have calmed down for me considerably. Every day a new layer is added, and I want to write about it, but the amount of information and inspiration tends to get jumbled. Yet, I feel it is important for me to document.

It all started when something I wrote in 2015 showed up in my Facebook memories. It's called "For All My Midlife Friends" and if you intend on reading the rest of this blog post, you should read this first.

For All My Midlife Friends

Coming across this blog post, one I have long forgotten, made me see it will require an update. But thinking about the huge challenges I now face, I don't even know where to start

Here is what I wrote in my journal on Friday morning. I plan on continuing this thread over the next few days, so I hope you will hang in with me. I can always use that support!

From my journal:

Saying yes to going to college and becoming a teacher was scary and exciting.

But saying yes to not being fully in school and all that goes with Jim's health issues is not easy.

I want to say NO NO NO.

Let me work. Let him breathe.

But I cannot. And it hurts when I do because then I have to surrender to reality again.

IT SUCKS.

But saying yes right now feels like a failure.

Why? How long have I known surrendering to what is works better than fighting against it?

Revisiting the poem this blog post was written about "Calling" by Nancy Shaffer.

It's about saying yes to your calling.

And haven't I've known since January that I do, indeed, have a new calling?

Here's the rub--when I heard a calling to be a teacher, there were steps to take. And I had help.

Right now, I can only take one step at a time. There is no planning ahead. The uncertainty kills me.

I told my school my intent is to return next year. Then I wrote:

Reality: I don't know what will happen.

Living the in-between is tough. Having zero control is tough. Not being able to look ahead and say, "Next year, I'll do such and such."

And I don't have a helper.

I am alone in this.

I have to be the one here, watching things.

I hear that the nurse visits might stop. We need them!

Okay...phew. Shed some tears. Feel better....stronger.

Like I can do this.

*

While I was writing this in my journal, I was listening to the new Kacey Musgraves album Deeper Well. The lyrics of "The Architect" seem to fit well for what is happening now. Seriously, I'd love to speak to the architect! 

Check it out.