Today I prioritized peace and rest over everything else. I think it paid off for me, too, which hopefully helps me to continue to do the same thing. Habits are so hard to form!
I’ve been teaching self-care workshops for a lot of years now, and they’re so much fun for me to do. I can speak for three hours right now about self-care practices, and you know what? I’d have some pretty well-informed things to say! You know what else? I don’t use a lot of the strategies that I teach people to put into place in their own lives, because…it’s so much easier to teach stuff than actually do it yourself!
My Spiritual Formation group last night was really great (as usual). A big part of the conversation was about the ways that we can try to clutter our minds and our environments less, so we can feel less oppressed by all of the stuff. We talked about change and about transitions and about rest. It gave me so much to consider. At one point, I chose to share with the others in the group about my newly-found commitment to rest on my days off. Rest is something I care about deeply on an intellectual level. I always have! But to actually just sit and be, without anything else planned and without feeling like I’m ignoring important tasks by not focusing on anything besides rest, has always been really difficult for me. It’s so easy for me to do all the things (at once) and so hard for me to just stay in one spot and try to focus on one thing to the exclusion of all the other things.
I spent a long time out in Kellie’s garden this morning. It’s been a little while since I’ve sat there for an extended period of time, and I think that’s probably because it’s started to get some weeds and other plants that we didn’t plan on. I have been strongly determined to not work on weeding the garden. That might sound lazy or dumb to some of you, but I feel a lot of trepidation and dread when I consider pulling out some of those weeds. I want it to look perfect, but I also want it to feel comfortable to me and others to hang out in. When the path is covered by stuff, or when the bench is overshadowed by the rosebush that needs to be woven better into the arbor, it feels bad. I don’t feel like I can do it justice to do the weeding myself, because that’s always something I’ve done a really bad job with. But beyond that, when I consider starting to weed her garden I feel a wash of exhaustion flowing over me. It makes me feel frozen and just plain bad to think about doing it myself, so I haven’t. And when I see it with the weeds, it makes me feel worse, since I feel like I’m letting Kellie and her memory down by not doing it myself.
My dad has been working to find someone willing to do garden maintenance for an hour or two a week for a few months now, and I’m so happy and excited that we’ve gotten someone who’s willing and passionate about gardening to sign on. I have very high hopes that she’ll be able to get things into shape very soon. But for now, I just need to force myself to be there in that space anyway, regardless of how it looks. Because I feel her there—I feel her everywhere, if I try hard enough, but that garden was built and grown for Kellie since her death, and I’ve spent so much time talking to her out there that it feels like a sacred space. Some of her ashes have been scattered out there, too (theoretically—if you’re a member of law enforcement, this was just a joke. I’d never scatter human remains in a garden in case that is legally questionable).
It was a really chilly morning today—in the mid-40s—and the brisk air actually made it more palatable for me to spend time outside than it would’ve been if it was 80 degrees and sunny. I enjoyed listening to the wind chimes and carrying on an ongoing dialogue with Kellie, as I love to do. In times like that, the gap separating me from her—wherever she is—feels thinner and more porous. I can almost imagine her sitting out there with me. Almost.
I’ve gotten many counseling referrals over the last few weeks (more than in the last year or two put together) and so I’m in the process of scheduling and getting to know several new clients this week. It’s always both a joyful and a scary process to acclimate yourself to someone else’s life and challenges and belief system, and it’s such a gift to me that folks trust me to care about them and hold their cares with love and compassion in the midst of the storm that brought them to me in the first place.
It’s also a challenge to have extra emotional energy to spare, in this season of my life. Since new clients require a lot more emotional energy than long-term clients, that’s one more area I need to be cautious about at the moment. So many areas to be cautious about, I know—the exhaustion is exhausting, though. If you don’t be careful, it sneaks up on you and leaves you so wiped out you’re gasping for enough air to make it through the hour, or day, or week. Slow and steady does it, sometimes.
I’m happy about seeing one of my favorite musicians in Cleveland tonight (Martin Sexton). I know that I have many favorite musicians, and I don’t feel bad about that. Life is short, oh so short, and we need all the good things we can possibly pack into the few moments we have on earth. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen him play, but probably at least ten shows, across the last twenty years? This was the second concert ticket I bought after she died, because I knew how seeing him again would make me feel, and I knew I needed that.
Here’s a clip of Martin performing one of his songs that still makes me tear up, despite having heard it hundreds of times.
I don’t know what your day has been like, and I don’t know what’s going on in your head at the moment. I can only speak authoritatively about what’s going on in mine, and it’s been a real mixed bag. That said, in spite of all the tears, I’ve had a great day today. I’m glad to be alive, I’m glad to have the privilege to carve out work-free chunks of my week, and I’m overjoyed to get to see this guy share some of his heart with me again.
XOXO,
Matt