looking through me

Tag: hope

January 4, 2015

Red Rock Canyon

Too many days the walls inched closer and the oxygen level dropped to the point of fuzzy, frustrated thinking. I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t face another day of throttling the urge to scream. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting in more hours at work only to have it chase me home and point out all the areas I was struggling to hang on.

There was no fight left in me. So I fled.

I made for the hills. Or at least the rocks. The red ones.

Somehow when life felt like a game of bowling with boulders—and I was one of the pins—escaping up to the desert canyons saved me. The quiet, the stillness, the colors, the sound of pebbles crunching underfoot and my own labored breathing reminded me I was alive. I was more than a job. I was more than failed intentions. I was more than a body going through motions and an internal critic screaming, “I don’t belong here.”

Surrounded by the enormity of nature I could gain perspective. Today would soon be yesterday. These rocks would remain. The frustrations threatening to overwhelm me faded in a landscape subsisting on the scarcest traces of water.

Away from the voices—mostly my own—questioning me, doubting me, demanding of me . . . and away from the Sisyphean tasks of teaching, I could breathe. My eyes could rest on beauty. My body could sweat out the stress and draw in new energy. My ears could hear peace and translate it for my soul.

No problems were solved. No epiphanies manifested before me. No circumstances changed. But the stillest of voices spoke through my senses: “In the refuge of the rock you are no more and no less safe than in the midst of your every day. I will never leave you.”

 

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January 1, 2015

resolution-less

“Do you make resolutions?”

A valid question in the waning days of December, yet my response was a too quick “no.”

And I don’t. That’s true.

I love lists and measurements and achieving. I do. I really do. My pride swells at the sight of checkmarks in the boxes of successes, but it tanks at each empty box of failure. The hodgepodge of items—checked and unchecked—leave me feeling empty and less than. Less than the people who master their lists. Less than the people who don’t need to write down what they’ve already finished just to have something to cross off the list. Less than the person I think I should be.

Because lists leave me looking at me. It’s constant me, me, me. Did I finish _____? How long did I keep up _____? Why didn’t I _____? A better person would have _____. I compare myself to others, to my perception of others, to others’ perception of me, to my perception of others’ perception of me.

I’m all legalism and no grace. I forget resolutions regarding spiritual disciplines are not successful when I am disciplined; they are successful when I am transformed. I forget my worth is not tied to a piece of paper I’m too embarrassed to share because what if I can’t do it and someone might think less of me? I forget not everyone is thinking about me. I forget to be present because I’m too busy managing my façade.

Goals are good. Resolutions are good. Lists are good. My warped tendency to become consumed by anxiety and self-loathing because of them is not good.

So as I learn to extend grace to myself—to see resolutions as a loose structure and not shackles, to give thanks for progress without condemning shortcomings—I enter another year listless but full of hope.

 

 

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