A break

It has been raining for days, so today when it stopped for a bit, I took the dog out for a walk that we both needed. The rain coupled with a very long cold I had has gotten me back out of the habit of regular exercise, and I hate that.

Since trying to become a runner, I feel like nothing I do is good enough. I need to do everything more often, faster, don't stop, do it better, you suck. When I take the dog for our half-hour walk, I'm still thinking about walking a bit faster to take some time off, or running a bit, or doing farther. I think about what my running friends are doing that day and I consider myself a joke.

I spend too much of my life thinking I'm not good enough and need to change. Too much time feeling guilty.

On today's walk, I was trying to walk quickly, and I glanced out the corner of my eye, thanked God for the beautiful hills, and almost kept going. But I made myself stop, turn and look at the green, and stand there for a minute, doing nothing. That's when I realized all this crap. Well, re-realized some of it.

This was heavier & longer than planed, and I'm sorry. I'm mostly in a very good place right now; today is just off. Lack of sleep.

Unreachable

I'm staying at the house of some friends while I'm in class these two weeks, and the house must be lined with lead or something, because I get no cell reception (even outside, sometimes) and the internet doesn't work everywhere, like in the living room.  Well, it's temperamental and moody.

It's kind of a beautiful thing.  Sure, I wasn't able to get online last night and write this entry, but I also can't get any phone calls and spend less time online.  Fabulous.  Maybe I should climb on my roof at home with a roll of tinfoil.

I'm reading!  A lot!  Well, I'm also watching a lot of Angel, but that's really okay since I'm getting other things done, too.  Not that my phone rings much at home, but it does from time to time.  I get e-mails or facebook postings from people asking me to do things, and I should do laundry or clean the house or something.  Here?  It isn't messy, there's plenty of room to put the things away that need to be put away, and I can't do anything with anyone.  It's gorgeous. 

Perhaps I need to learn to block out my time better when I'm working on class.  The only problem with that is that I'm almost always working on class, and I do have a life, relationships, and ministry to consider.  But maybe I should block of certain days- maybe 2 per week, at least- where I never make plans and I don't answer the phone.  I also won't feel guilty about housework.  This is something to think about. 

What are you trying to say, God?

You know how sometimes a topic comes up from a few different places and eventually you start to notice?  That happened to me today, but it was all within the space of less than two hours. 

I spent the night at a friend's house last night, and on my way home this morning, I was talking to God about my guilt about food and budgeting.   With the way we're trying to eat right now, I'm finding that we just can't afford to eat organic, local anything.  It's all just too expensive, and I feel tremendous guilt about that, especially the meat.  We have spent a great deal of money this month on food, and we're not done yet. 

This naturally led into feeling bad because we haven't been completely sticking to our budget.  Even though we are doing things very differently than we did before, and there is money set aside for things and we're mostly being wise, I get all tense about the times we do spend something that hasn't been planned for and I think that we're sucking at the budgeting and we're going to slip back into our old ways and God is completely disappointed in us. 

So that was the car.  Then I came home and read my Bible.  I'm going through a study bible/devotional thingy, so I was reading from Numbers 35 about the asylum cities that God had the Israelites set up.  In pondering what that shows about the personality of God, I thought of fairness, justice, loving, etc.  I saw that I don't have to feel guilty and horrible- he's not disappointed in me.  He is fair and loving.

Then, at church, Pastor Doug was talking about freedom from guilt.  Cool.
Then, at Core tonight, Christy was talking about the sacrifices and offerings set up in Leviticus & other parts of the OT, and in looking at Cain & Abel, phrased the lesson as "he doesn't want your blood, just your best." 

So I haven't completely wrapped my mind and heart about the application for this.  Yes, I obviously have the food & money guilt that I was mentioning, but it feels like this is about something more than that.  I need to sit with it for a while and pray about it.  It appears that I'm more infected & affected by guilt than I realize.  It's also possible that I expect too much of other people and place guilt on them instead of giving them grace and fairness. 

Wednesday if often Blergday

Today has not/did not go as planned.  I wanted to and needed to get some things done before my volunteer job, so I set my alarm for a reasonable hour.  Unfortunately, I had my earplugs in entirely too well, and I woke up at 12:09pm.  Ugh.

So, my fabulous day of doing dishes, working out, then lazily reading while volunteering turned into hurry-hurry-chaos-hurry.  I only read a little bit, because it was just a busy day.  There was a National Geographic camera crew at ADI, so people were constantly in and out of my area of the building, and people were actually coming in and wanting, gosh, help!

Then I got to feel like a complete noob trying to wrangle a design program on a Mac since my lovely student helpers were MIA at Big Time.  I was stupidly printing multiple pages when I only needed one (of color! my little tree-hugging heart was bleeding), and couldn't figure out how to fix that until the last name tag (yep, it's 2 words today) was printed.  Then I fumbled my way through a database, having to go back and find almost every person I put in to add something that I forgot.  When one of the students finally showed up, I made her enter the last two people as a punishment, though she knows what she's doing and it took her about 2 minutes. It's not like I'm 85 and know nothing about computers!  I'm intuitive, dammit!

So, I'm at home again instead of being at the gym.  I was feeling harried, and I am going to sit and start anew tomorrow.  Dishes are clean, laundry is washing, I'm sitting with my husband.  I shan't have guilt.

Reading:  I'm working on Storm Glass by Maria V. Snyder, which is not really a sequel to her "Study" series, but kind of is.  There are some overlapping characters and it is set in the same world, a few years after the last book of that series.  I'm really liking it so far.  She doesn't write in any sort of sensational way, but I get sucked into her stories.  They're earthy, but not slow.  I wish I could describe it better. *

*edited because I used the wrong they're/their/there.  I told you it was a blerg kind of day.