Present moment awareness or the space between (the past and the future) - this is something I will be working on for many years to come.  Sometimes I feel I have it, then it slips away as quickly as it appeared.  I don't live in the past as much I as used to; it is the future that steals my attention away.  I am a planner, a scheduler, an organizer.  I keep a daytimer (paper of course because I love the feel of pen/pencil on paper) and I can tell you almost to the exact minute how much time most things will take me.  I used to plan my day out utilizing the half hour system (as those close friends of mine know how much I love increments of five).  I plan my week out as well, goals for the month, etc.  I have gotten better at leaving room in the day for the unplanned to occur and small miracles to sneak in, yet if the schedule goes too far off course, you may find me curled up on the couch in shutdown mode.  Shutdown mode also occurs when I am feeling overwhelmed, which usually means I have over scheduled myself.

Being unable to reside in the moment can create what I will refer to as the "limbo" state.  This is where I do not know the outcome of something that is coming up in the future (see it's the future thing again).  I am not fully present in the moment because I am worried about the upcoming event and it's outcome.  It usually involves situations where I have no control over the end result, I just have to sit patiently until the matter is resolved however it is going to be resolved.  I experience something similar when I am stopped at the top of a ferris wheel where, instead of looking around at the beautiful view that I am seeing in the present moment, I am focused on when it will get moving again because I have a fear of heights and all I can think about is when I will be going back down.  I am not in control of the stopping and starting, there is nothing I can do to get it moving again and I seem to be unable to just be.  In this case, I do know the outcome, I just don't know the when.  I can get lost in this state and wind up missing chunks of my own life.

I have always been uncomfortable with the space between.  If conversation is lagging, I try to fill in the pauses.  I feel like my life should be filled with anything but empty space or it is not being fully utilized.  It is hard for me to let my vessel empty before filling it again, which is where meditation really helps.  It is in the silence where I can be empty and yet full of the Divine.  I know that it is in the space between where the present resides, not the past and not the future.  It is in the space between where miracles can happen, I just have to let myself rest there for a few moments.

So here's the deal.  I have stuck faithfully to writing a post once a week since I committed to writing a post once a week back in April.  This week things have not gone according to plan.  This week, life got in the way and here it is, a day after I usually have my post up and I don't have a post.  Along with celebrating birthdays and the holiday this weekend, some other things came up that were definitely not expected, things that picked me up and shook me about, rattling my brain right before spitting me out onto the hot, hard ground.  Yep, life can be like that, hence the phrase "you gotta roll with the punches".

I was hell bent on forcing a post, not just because of saying that I was going to do a post a week but because I felt I was breaking a promise - not only to anyone who comes to read my sometimes silly rants but to me as well.  I didn't want to have something else to add to my "didn't follow through with" list.  I was going to try to roll with the punches but I am out of shape and didn't do my stretching exercises so I have made the decision that instead of doing something out of guilt that won't bring me joy, I am calling it a night and going to bed because I am tired down to the marrow in my bones.

The good news is I know the faithful readers who come here to read the words I put together will understand.  It is me that needs to lighten up and realize that this is not the end of the world, just the end of a very exhausting week, in so many ways.

So here's to a week of gentle rolling.

Tonight I watched a movie called "Sympathy for Delicious".  The main character was not an actor I was familiar with, Christopher Thornton, who also wrote the story.  It was the directorial debut of Mark Ruffalo, who starred in the movie along with Juliette Lewis, Laura Linney and Orlando Bloom.  The story centered around a homeless, paralyzed man living out of his car right beside a homeless shelter.  He goes to a revival and ends up coming away with the ability to heal by laying his hands on the sick.  This is not a gift he is comfortable with, so uncomfortable with it that he tries to keep it a secret.  The priest, played by Mark Ruffalo, finds out about it and decides to recruit him to heal all the sick that frequent the shelter and hang out in the neighborhood.

I am not going to say a whole lot more about the movie because this isn't really about a movie review but about the feelings it stirred within me.  I thought about the obvious gifts that people are blessed with.  We have musicians who share with us with the gift of music, artists who share the gift of their art, writers the gift of their ability to tell a story.  You have teachers who's gift is the ability to teach, doctors the gift of helping the sick get better, caretakers the gift of caretaking, and the list goes on. These gifts are shared never hoarded.

Yet what about the hidden gifts we all carry within us?  What about the gift of a smile, the gift of a hug, the gift of listening, the gift of kind words or kind gestures?  I know that there have been times when I was so wrapped up in my life that I was unable to notice when someone needed one of these gifts.  I was thinking only of myself.  Whatever the excuse; bad day, self pity day, I chose to lock them away, keep them hidden.  Maybe I thought that by giving them away, I ran the risk of running out of them yet the thing about these gifts is that by giving them away, we are not less for it but more.  We can never run out of them no matter how much we give away.

I have not always been aware of when I was hoarding these gifts, most of the time it has been unintentional yet there have been times when I knew all I needed to say was a kind word, all I needed to do was give a hug to someone who was hurting and I chose not to.  Being made aware of that tonight has caused me some "hmmm" thinking - the kind of thinking that comes when I get an "ah ha" moment.  I can choose to be sad about my past behavior, or worse, beat myself up about it but I am choosing a different path.  I am choosing to bring those gifts out of their hiding place, to let the light shine on them so that it won't be so easy to cover them back up.  I am giving them permission to call me out on my selfishness.  So be prepared when next we meet - I come bearing gifts!

I got an email the other day from a very good friend who shared her story of leaving a school that she had taught at for 18 years to go teach at another school.  She really did not want to leave but there were some things that were going on there that were making her job difficult.  After 5 years of trying to get the situation resolved and seeing no action being taken to fix it, she made the decision to leave.  She mentioned how much she disliked change and how sad she was to be leaving but that she felt she had to do something to make her life easier.  She realized that it was her choice and yet felt uneasy about it.  She suggested maybe I could write about changes and how we deal with them, whether or not we feel we have any choice in the matter.  Since I struggle with change myself, I thought it would be a good thing for me share some of my thoughts on the matter.

As a child being raised by an alcoholic single parent, much of the time my environment was very unpredictable.  It is hard to gauge the moods of someone dependent on alcohol to get them through their day.  I am sure my control issues stem from my childhood; since I couldn't control the alcoholic, I tried to control everything else.  Spontaneity went out the window; I needed to be in charge of every minute of my day, no surprises thank you very much.  I craved routine, things that were stable, things I could count on and so change was a 6 letter word that was very difficult for me to embrace.  I have had to work very hard to overcome this.  Still, those that know me know that if you call me up in the morning to suggest a movie later that same day, I am more inclined to say no than yes, although I am getting much better at saying yes.  If there are things that are not working right in your life, be it physical things like broken appliances that you don't want to get rid of so you keep getting them fixed rather than buy a new one or relationships that have run their course, people who don't like change are more willing to put up with the brokenness for a lot longer than those who embrace change.  There have been times when subconsciously, I have created negative situations that forced the change.  I had to break it beyond repair, burn the bridge and set the river on fire so that there was no way to go back, causing such a horrific ending that it took tears shed over a long period of time before I could see that what happened was necessary to get me to move forward.  Had the traumatic ending not occurred, who knows how long I would have continued to try and grow my roots in soil that was decayed.  The Universe may start with gentle nudging but if ignored too long, that nudging becomes a push right off the cliff.

For me change is a choice (maybe not an easy one) yet it has not always felt that way.  I realize that I cannot control others, cannot force them to change to be how I would like them to be and so if the situation isn't working for me, then the only one that can change it is me, either by changing my thoughts, actions and/or reactions or by removing myself from the environment.  There have been times when I felt like I was being forced to make a change that I did not want to make but always, always, it was the right thing to do.  As I continue on my path of self discovery, I realize that change means growth.  Since I am wanting to grow, to overcome the things that I perceive as limitations, change is a good thing.  There have been situations that I have felt forced out of, resenting the change, only to have something better show up.  I needed to clear that space of the old in order to let the shiny new in.  Since we are not privy to the big picture most of the time, we need to trust that whatever is happening is happening for our own good, for us to reach the next level.  If we can embrace the change (even if it is a one armed embrace), realizing that we are here to grow, to reach beyond our limits, then we open ourselves up to experience our God given right to happiness, joy and love.  The choice is ours to make.