Funny

You know when you hit those walls in your life when you just reach your limit (as I've documented in some recent posts) and right then you get some resources dropped in your lap? I like those moments.

This morning I got my weekly online newsletter from Yoga Journal and the title was "Grace Under Pressure" and one of the articles was about rising above challenging situations. Selfless Gratitude tackles the need to rejoice in life even during times of suffering and suggests doing this by cultivating a sense of gratitude. That way, when your focus is drawn to all that is wrong with a situation you can counter it with gratitude for what is good. That's totally boiled down, but you can read the article if you like. I realize I could stand to cultivate some gratitude in my life from simple things like why I'm grateful for my husband to why I'm grateful to be employed and I'm guessing approaching things from that perspective will shift how I view the tough stuff.

The next resource that I stumbled on is a book called Broken Open: How Difficult Times can Help us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser. She was a featured columnist in the Oprah newsletter that I also get by email. I read her column starting yesterday and ending today. I needed to return two books to Borders and they had a copy of her book so I could do an exchange and leave with something I wanted to read. A quote she lists in the prelude was food for thought right away : "And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom." She uses it in the context of being on the verge of leaving her unhappy marriage, but I think it speaks to the element of change and how change evokes fear in all of us. The same experiences that seem so difficult at the time are the same ones that can break us open and move from bud to bloom and realize our full potential.

I feel that way. The life I knew was over and I'm headed for an unknown new destination. So, rather than going with the flow of the change, I'm partly hanging on to who I was to try and maintain some semblance of self and partly wanting to know where I'm going before I get there. All of that means I'm not here, actually present to the experiences of this moment.

Ben and I talked a bunch about this kind of stuff last night and in particular of his pending job change and what that will mean for us and our family. He had a suggestion this morning that I look at the situation of his job shift and its ramifications on our life as having plan A, B and C as he is undecided about what field to pursue and I struggle with the possibilities of where those fields may lead us. I actually think my doing that will contribute to the problem at hand. Outside of acknowledging that the situation exists and will resolve itself in any number of ways, I can't let my brain try to envision scenarios or attempt to run a program to project what our lives will be like when A, B or C come to pass. My work is to accept the "In Between" and not live in it.

I envision the In Between as this small, cramped room with gray walls. To be in the room you have to contort yourself and no matter how you rearrange your position, the view is always of the same hazy, gray walls that offer no clarity. I spend too much time in this room and not enough time taking in the real, verdant world around me that I live in every day.

Both the article and the book speak to the need for a spiritual dimension in each person's life. I don't mean religion here, but spirituality. I realize it is hard to have one without the other, but I do believe you can be spiritual without being overtly religious or needing to go to church every week to find a sense of the spiritual. In "Broken Open" Lesser writes from the position that each being has a soul, that soul is trying to speak to you and will continue to until you find a way to listen to what it is offering in the way of direction.

Again, I'm offering a book review without having read much of the book. But the few pages that I've read show me that this is a resource that will be helpful in this time as I contemplate how to embrace the changes in front of me and ride the wave of life along to the next pit stop.