Do I enjoy being miserable? I think so. I think I thrive on it. I think it makes me feel more alive. When I’m comfortable and content, something inside of me dies a little. I can’t handle the stability. I can’t tolerate the sameness of everyday, ordinary life. I need to keep pushing against the edge. I need challenge and adventure. I need the constant stimulation of something new, something different. I need gravity. Astronauts’ muscles atrophy without gravity. They can only stay in space for so long or they will die. Bees die when they’re taken to space because they need air resistance to flap their wings. Without resistance, they die. Without resistance, we die. We may not always enjoy misery as it comes into our lives, but we need it. We need mental and emotional gravity as much as we need physical gravity. Everyone has their own tolerance level, and each has their own measure of faith. We each experience life’s gravity in its fullness as we grow stronger in equal proportion with our ability to exercise grace.

Now what? I’m stressed. I’m trying to breathe. Everything’s going to be okay. My old coping skills don’t work. Binging on anything: junk food, alcohol, screen time, theater of the mind (AKA sexual fantasies), only makes things worse. I’ve learned that the hard way: experience. The last thing I need right now is to be throwing up, to be lying in bed wishing I could throw up, or to be lying in bed wishing I could be put out of my misery permanently. My new coping skills: breathing (trying to calm my nervous system with slow, deep, steady breathing), “dancing” (slowly moving, waving, stretching my body parts to expend excessive nervous energy), and happy future tripping (trying to come up with creative ways in which I can be a blessing to someone else). I obviously need a lot more practice with these coping skills. I feel like a toddler just beginning to learn how to walk. I stumble, fall, and wobble all over the place. And I need constant reminders to even try walking instead of merely scooting along the floor or remaining stuck in place like a beached whale. Now, I walk, or attempt to, one wobbly, feeble, baby step at a time.

So, what am I going to do about it? My life circumstances are hardly ideal. I could say as much on any given day of my life with only varied degrees of euphemistic undertones. Getting kicked out of my own home – high degree. Needing to side-step dog poop on the stairs out of my condo in the city – low degree. Bluntly put, life circumstances are rarely, if ever, ideal. If you’re looking for something to complain about, you don’t have to look very far. Now that I’ve stated the obvious, it’s time for me to choose. I can freak out. I can shut down. Those are pretty much my old standard operating procedures. However, I can also choose to change my mental state by expressing what I’m grateful for and doing something that brings me joy. Shutting down is so much more comfortable and freaking out is way more familiar. It hurts to push myself to take a different path. It’s easy to wish that I could be happy right now; it’s hard to actually do something about it.

Is witness enough? It’s not my job to save the world. Thank God, that job has already been done. I don’t have to come up with some fantastical idea that’s going to end world hunger. I believe it could be done if people in positions of national leadership would simply cooperate and follow nature’s lead in agricultural production instead cursing nature with mass industrial production, but I couldn’t even get my four children to cooperate at dinner time in my own house, so I definitely don’t hold out much hope for selfish, greedy, imperialistic adults. So, if nothing world-changing is expected of me, then I don’t have to actually do anything. And, even if I could do something huge, something that could alter the course of human history, something awesome and noteworthy, it really wouldn’t matter. Human beings are here on this planet for one reason: to live. We live, we learn, we love, we experience life. We bear witness to the life we experience and to life as experienced by others. Everything else is just history.

What the heck is the point anyway? It’s thoroughly disturbing how often I catch myself asking for more purpose, for more meaning. Like it’s not enough to be alive and breathing. Thursdays used to be my favorite day of the week. When my elder two girls were little, their father and I would both take the day off from work, drop the girls at daycare, and head to Kentucky Kingdom. There were no lines in the middle of a weekday, and we would literally run from the roller-coaster exit to entrance to jump back on the next ride. You couldn’t get me near a roller-coaster when I was little, but as I got older, I began to look forward to the rapid drops, sharp turns, even the spiraling upside-down, okay, especially the spiraling upside-down. Maybe the roller-coaster metaphor doesn’t work for you, but something does: a dance, a game, a theatrical presentation. However you frame it, life is meant to be enjoyed, sharp turns and all.

Am I doing for me what I need to be doing for me? It’s so much easier to sit around and make excuses about not knowing what to do or how to do it. It’s a lot more fun to complain about someone else. It’s a lot less painful to blame something else, anything else. What I need to do is to put my big-girl panties on, roll up my sleeves, and get to work. I have plenty of things to focus on that I can be doing right now; I don’t have time to do nothing but sleep and feel sorry for myself. Regardless of my external circumstances or current crisis, I still need to eat well and exercise. I need to do my reading and writing, and I desperately need to shower. Everything else will work itself out if I just take one day at a time and do what I need to do to take care of myself right here, right now. I will get through this. I will prevail. Everything will be okay, and, more than that, everything can be really great if I stay strong and carry on.

Why is my heart restless and my mind unable to be stilled within me? I put my hope in the goodness of life, in the faith of abundance, in the security of unconditional love regardless of what challenges I face. Fear is nothing new. Feeling fear physically flood my body in the absence of any real threat or adversity is par for course in my life. Everything’s okay, and everything’s going to be all right. It’s true. I know it’s true. And yet, trying to convince my hormones is a different story. Even with medication, tears set up camp in my eyeballs eagerly awaiting the green light for a surprise charge. My chest aches, my stomach churns, and my throat constricts against my will. I force myself to breathe. I force myself to surrender. Acceptance is my only chance at joy and experiencing joy in spite of the fear is victory.

Is this what I really want? Maybe I struggle to find a sense of direction in life because I keep trying to swim upstream. Fighting the current is exhausting. Is it worth the effort? I don’t think so. Merely drifting isn’t safe either. If I make no effort to steer, I could end up in the weeds, hit a rock, or worse. I need to paddle, but I also need to allow myself to go with the flow. My stream might not always take me to where I want to be, but I can still trust it to lead me to where I need to go. So, what’s the point of trying to figure it all out anyway? Why bother to identify what I want in life if life is going to take me to the ocean regardless? Maybe it has less to do with my destination and more to do with the journey. Each day, it’s my responsibility to choose. I choose whether to enjoy the scenery. I choose how I allow others to treat me as our paths cross, and I choose how I will treat them. I choose my attitude and my gratitude just not my latitude. Life determines where I go. I determine what I focus on along the way.

• I have a future and a hope
• I have a future and a hope
• I have a future and a hope
• I have a future and a hope
• I have a future and a hope

Every time I get back on my feet, the waves leap up from the shoreline and sweep me back out to sea. Maybe life is meant to be lived adrift, in over my head, but like Disney’s Little Mermaid, “I want to be where the people are.” I want to sing and dance and walk around on my feet instead of struggling to stay afloat and trying to encourage myself with “just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” I tried to write this post yesterday, but I couldn’t. In spite of my firm belief that all things are working together for good, the uncertainty of the moment has my insides tied up in knots. It’s already decided. My girls are my highest calling. Nothing is more important to me than taking care of my children. They might all be grown adults now, but I’m still their mother, and they are still my future and always will be.

• I am super resourceful
• I am super resourceful
• I am super resourceful
• I am super resourceful
• I am super resourceful

In the days of Google, YouTube, and multiple social media platforms, there’s no longer an excuse for not being able to figure out how to do something, which has been my go-to for decades. My belief in my inability to find the information I need makes it difficult for me to see and/or to recognize the words appearing right in front of my eyes. It’s as though, if I’m able to lack understanding, I’m suddenly let off the hook. I no longer need to face my fears and do what I’m called to do with my life. We all have inner promptings, and we all have our favorite excuses we use for ignoring them. Every time I catch myself making an excuse or thinking up a justification for my behavior, I’m reminded of a sermon I heard years ago. The pastor attributed a quote to Abraham Lincoln as saying, “Those who are good at making excuses are rarely good at anything else.” It still feels like a kick to the gut and brings tears to my eyes. I want to be good at something other than rationalizing, but am I willing to do whatever it takes to get there?