I have so many posts I want to write, have started writing…but my brain just can’t seem to write them. I thought I’d be further along in shoulder surgery recovery by now – further along in lessened pain. I’d be back to me, just in a sling. Back to writing.
But five weeks post-op, I still find myself either lowering the Tylenol when the vertigo it triggers gets too bad and wakes me up throughout the night…or in pain from less Tylenol which then gets too bad and THAT wakes me up.
Full disclosure: lots of tears and lots of swearing at stupid little stuff in the last week from lack of sleep.
Category: Peace
Worry is like a rocking chair: it moves you around a lot but doesn’t take you anywhere.
“Overcoming an Anxious Mind” Devotional, YouVersion App
“Three weeks in, three weeks out. Three weeks in, three weeks out.” I found myself repeating that in my head as I was face down, cheeks mashed into the little cutout on the PT table.
I have shoulder surgery scheduled in three weeks and I’m in a lot of pain. Even though PT didn’t heal the tendon, the ultrasound heat alleviates some of the pain so I’m continuing to go to appointments. Three weeks until surgery; hopefully, three weeks after that and the worst of the pain will be over.
As I drove the two miles home from PT on Wednesday, I passed three senior housing/assisted living/memory care facilities. I turned right next to one and I started wondering, “Where will I end up? How long can we stay in our house? Where will Cody be? Who can help us with our house?”
Are you sensing the worry? To reference that first quote, the rocking chair was a movin’!
We live in Minnesota. Minnesota has some serious winters. This winter we’ve had some serious snow. And we have to rake it off our house after each snow fall. Needless to say, that hasn’t helped my shoulder.
So when I started getting anxious about my future living conditions, it was with a torn shoulder tendon and snow and shoveling and roof raking in mind. (Have I mentioned I’m only 49? Yep, I’m worrying about something that will not likely happen for decades. Many decades.)
Amidst all that worrying, God has sent me multiple reminders this week to pay attention to what’s right in front of me instead. I actually read my daily devotional with the rocking chair quote right after I got home from PT…and my drive worrying about my living conditions 30 years from now. Then God sent this beauty:
I went on vacation this week. Well, a staycation. Ok, I spent a few hours relaxing on my deck. But I nursed three mugs of tea and just sat. It was amazing!
…
I have tried for ten minutes to figure out what to write. I type, then I delete. Because, I finally realized, that morning was so relaxing that I just really can’t write about it. Writing about it feels like it makes it work and that morning was not about work at all.
So, I’m going to share a few of the pictures that I took over the course of 2 1/2 hours of sitting on my deck – a very quiet, still time that calmed my body and started to restore my soul.
I enjoyed just being present to what came into my backyard. To the little gifts God sent my way that morning. I hope you find a few moments of peace as well. And maybe a chuckle about the squirrel that Cody thinks was smiling for the camera.
The secret of the healing power of beauty is learning to receive it as a gift.
John Eldredge, “Get Your Life Back“
“And just like that, it’s gone! I’m sad – that was beautiful,” said Cody, commenting on the gorgeous sunrise this morning.
It didn’t start so great as he sat at the kitchen table while it was still dark outside. Suddenly, there was a huge flash of light. “Lightning?” he said. “Well, it’s not supposed to“ BOOM!! “rain today…,” I said.
Ok, apparently it may rain today. Sure enough, as the sky lightened, we saw rain clouds over us. We also saw an amazing pink sky that was making our backyard and even our living room pink.
I took a picture and then, as the color changed ten minutes later, another picture. Ten minutes after that, Cody opened the east-facing front door and the colors were gone.
As we were on our way to school, we turned east and faced straight into the sun breaking through the clouds. Cody commented on that beautiful sight too.
“We aren’t storm chasers – we’re cloud chasers!”
Last week, I came across two social media posts in as many days that mentioned Wendell Berry. I didn’t know who he was so looked him up and learned he’s a writer, among other things. The search also showed one of his poems, “The Peace of Wild Things.” In reading it, I realized I had heard it recently in a podcast, the speaker reciting it to himself during his anxiety attacks.
Berry writes about waking in the night with fear (with nightmares lately, for me) and going out into nature:
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.
“…forethought of grief…”
Wow, does that resonate.
All the “what-ifs” that give me a pit in my stomach.
Thanksgiving. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Christmas rush starting. On top of our ongoing trials.
Are you a finding yourself a little fried today? Stressed, anxious, worn out? Me too.
I found this meditation this morning after a very frustrating search on my phone’s apps and then YouTube to just find something calm, something to help me hear God.
Then she said I may not hear God!
She said, “He wants to hold still with us in silence.”
And my phone died.
I looked up at the ceiling.
I laughed.
And I sat in silence with God.
Check out the meditation here.
I love photography and I love sunsets. This spring I got the great idea to combine the two and document the sunsets from the same spot on the first days of spring, summer, fall, and winter to see how the sun moves throughout the year. You may be wondering “Why?,” but it sounded cool to me.
We live half a mile from a public beach on the east side of a large lake – a perfect place to set up a tripod and take a sunset picture from the exact same spot for all four seasons. It’s also a great spot to just sit and visit with friends.
Two of my friends decided to join me, not so much because what I was doing excited them but just because they are my friends. Sitting on the beach watching the first summer sunset and chatting with each other while I basically ignored them (sorry, ladies!) sounded good to them.
I don’t know anyone who has died while serving in the military, but Memorial Day always makes me remember friends and family who served – and likely knew fellow soldiers who died.
My grandpa served in the Pacific theater in World War II and decades later still suffered from nightmares on those few occasions he would talk about it, for example the night he told my dad about his service when my parents were first dating in the 1960s. Grandpa showed me a photo album one sunny, summer afternoon in the 1980s…it had a red padded leather cover…and black and white pictures of the devastation to human life that front line war wreaks. I can only assume he had nightmares that night too. More than 30 years later, I still haven’t forgotten those images.
I make certain you always have everything you need.
That is a paraphrase of Psalm 23:1 from a YouVersion Bible app devotional I recently read called “God’s Promises for the Hungry Heart.” The devotional paraphrases four verses each day to make them more personal and relatable. That sentence jumped out at me, but not because it resonated. It jumped out at me because I questioned it.
Everything I need?