Sacred Life Sunday: Blooming slowly...

three and a half weeks ago, my dear hubbie brought this plant home. it was a mass of rich green leaves and little white buds. slowly, oh so slowly, the bright pink flowers with the sunshine centres have emerged...

you can see there are still plenty of buds awaiting the right time to bloom, but i'm worried the rest of the plant won't be alive to support them - the flowers are dying as quickly as the new ones appear...

this is such a clear image of where i'm at in my journey of recovery...

most days i feel quite energetic - much more than this time last year when i was sleeping most of the time!! my mind is very busy - i'm reading a lot, thinking a lot, planning a lot... but this is also the most frustrating time!! my physical limitations are even more apparent, with no major improvement in my walking or my right hand... it's just too easy to focus on all that things i still cannot do!!

and too often in my thoughts, i'm afraid to admit, is the deep melancholy of 'just how much time on this earth do i have???' i want to be doing, writing, studying, making the most of my days NOW, while i have the time, but i'm so physically limited... i'm afraid i'll never be able to achieve even half of the things my mind wants to!

i know part of this attitude is the onset of midlife anxiety, but it just feels much more acute when i feel so let down by my own body!! i'm so worried it simply won't support me enough to really bloom, to be the person i want to be...

but this is where i need to heed my own counsel...

i'm trying to raise my kids to keep hold of the mindset they were born with, and are already starting to lose (aged almost 13 and 10) - the only important time is right now!! i want them to remember that feeling when they were two years old, jumping in puddles, without a care in the world, where every little thing was sooooo interesting, where a walk to the end of the street was a great expedition, and it took two hours to look at and smell and touch and taste everything (until mummy quickly took it out of your mouth!!)

this is what the plant's doing. it's not worrying about all the buds yet to bloom, it's just living... it doesn't worry about all it can't do, it just is... and this is where i need to be - letting my whole person just be... not trying to plan, to achieve, to make some mark... just living, and being, and oh, so slowly, blooming, moment by moment...

Wellness Wednesday: Questions...????

I feel as if i've been on retreat this week... my lovely dad took the kids home with him at the weekend - their first sleep-over at grandpa's since they were little (he recently bought two single beds so they could stay - what a hero!!!)
so while nick's been at work, i've had total solitude for almost 10 hours a day... and this wonderful book has been keeping me company :o) here's a sample:

what question is at the heart of your pilgrimage and your life? what question were you put here to understand? we’re after questions that do not arise solely from the intellect but from a crying need to know, an existential thirst... what is my purpose? to whom do I belong? what can I believe in? who are my teachers? what is the name of the dragon in my life? what changes must I make? how can I use my talents? how can I serve the world? where am I going and how can I get there?... (p. 151)

these types of questions have been in my mind my whole life, i realized. i've always been a seeker, a pilgrim, a wondering wanderer...

occasionally i've found short-term answers - reading thomas hardy's jude the obscure (oh, the irony in this book title!!) aged 14 and knowing i wanted to go to oxford, and enjoying every minute of my 3 years there... childhood dreams of africa coming to fruition aged 22 when i raised the money to live and teach in kenya for a year... dreams of marriage and more foreign travel when i met Nick, an american, there... dreams of motherhood which took 7 years of loss and heartbreak to become two beautiful, amazing children...

but now, aged 44, recovering from the stroke, i'm brimful of questions... from my journal just yesterday:

all I’ve accomplished this morning – sorting more books to list on amazon, doing one speech test on the tablet pc, and making a cup of coffee – has left me exhausted!!! will I ever get back to ‘normal’ health? will I ever stop feeling so exhausted all the time? will I ever be able to write, work, contribute to my family and justify my existence?? how can you plan anything when you have no energy to carry it out?

and as i've been realizing deep in my soul for the last few years, i already know the answers...

I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer

(Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 1903 )

Wellness Wednesday: Looking for inspiration?

one of my absolute favourite authors has got a new book out this week!!

i 'discovered' SARK about four years ago, and just devoured everything she'd written! her handwritten, colour-bursting books were just what my delicate, creative soul needed! she gave me permission to just write and draw and colour and just be a little girl again with my trusty wax crayons :o)

it still took a couple of years of hidden scribbles before i felt brave enough to show the world little glimpses of my soul... and as i writen here i'm still trying to be brave enough to show what my left hand can now do...

i can't wait to read her new book - i'm sure it will give me a much needed creative boost :o)

hang on to your hat!!!