This Too Shall Pass

My thoughts have indeed been quiet! I haven't blogged here for 3 full seasons. Summer is trying to find it's way to us now, although not very successfully here in the Northwest. Today it felt unbelievable to wake up to rain...only 2 more days until the first day of summer and it's raining?

Not just a little shower, but overcast skies and an overall very early Spring feel.

In truth my thoughts have been ANYTHING but quiet for the last while. In fact part of my absence has been directly related to so much going on in my head that I cannot even figure out how to sort and catagorize it. And that spills over into the physical plane, therefore most of my unused time is spent figuring out how to keep up with our family of 5 and the unending quandry of how to stay on top of the laundry. (okay that was lame, but forgive me for my brain is still quite foggy)

So today I will focus on one thought, or at least attempt to do so; how can one reconcile the inner life with the outer life?

Inside there can be any number of plaguing emotions, concerns, or just an overall jumble of

inconclusive lines of thought; swirling around like a cat playing with a ball of string which now has so many ends loose it can no longer be unraveled and rolled back up without great effort and time.

On the outside the elements of this life continue their clamor of urgency. If plans aren't made a head of time many things become not just urgent but downright crises. Simple things that when one's mind is clear, flow smoothly and without a bump.

A good example of this happened to me yesterday; my mind has been living in that fog for a few days now with all of the high pollen days here. I wasn't having itchy, sneezy symptoms (yet) but that haze of no-motivation, can't-put-a-string-of-words-together-coherently, can't-remember-what-I-just-did-with-that-thing-I-had-in-my-hand and many other less obvious symptoms had fallen over me bigtime this week.

My goal for the day was to get some food in our house again, having waited too long to get to the store already, our cupboards were pretty bare.

I had made a meal plan (which took me a truly unreasonable amount of time; when I was on the computer looking up recipes I kept getting distracted by random links and had to really focus to remember what I was on there for.) I had made a list based on said meals...and I needed to take one of the kids' friends home 8 miles away before heading to the store.

We had just gotten my new-to-me car back after spending $25oo on repairs and I had only been through one tank of gas so far. In fact the indicator had beeped at me just the evening before so I decided to go ahead and take said friend home and then stop and get some gas near her home.

I dropped her off and headed toward the gas station. It was already late so I figured I could just pick up a few main things and some rotisserie chicken for dinner and then shop after the weekend. I was only a block away from my destination and suddenly my car had no steering, no brakes and no power, but it's still accelerating! (at about 2 miles per hour) I was freaked! Thankfully I was on a side street so the danger level of this crisis was much lower. I waited for the car to come to a stop and tried to start it...nothing at all.

My first thought was, "Oh no, not again! The car is breaking down right after we just put all that money into it."

Then it dawned on me, "I bet it ran out of gas!"

Relief and embarrassment washed over me.

I called the friend I had just dropped off and her dad came to bail me out :) (Thanks Steve)

Now I had NO time and NO dinner and it was already time to be back at home serving food.

I decided to just pick up some chicken and some soup and then shop after dinner. On the way home the car was acting really weird. When I was on our block the brakes had no power and I had to press with all my might to get the car to stop!

As we were eating our rotisserie chicken I nonchalantly mentioned the whole story to Doug. Now it was not just one worried mind and emotions, but two!

The reality is, I am safe. The car isn't stuck somewhere on the side of the road. We are here eating food.

But the inner turmoil is: 'how much is this going to cost?' 'what else is going to go wrong?' 'how are we going to pay for this?' 'why didnt' you get gas before driving so far?' how long is he going to be mad at me?' "If only I had planned better.' If only I had gone shopping yesterday.'

But in the end we found some stuff on the internet that helped us figure out how to reset the car's computer 'brain' and it 'remembered' how to idle and power the brakes again and all was fine. But there was certainly a tense hour or two in our household as we tried to navigate through the fine line between our inner and outer worlds.

I did end up shopping at Winco from 10:00pm till 11:30pm. (and my sweet Zaky went with me because he was worried about me getting into trouble again :)

We got food for our cupboards and everyone woke up this morning feeling content and happy and the peace had returned to our home and minds. Even the rain couldn't put a damper on that.

So my question is, why can't we just skip to the peaceful part everytime something comes up?

We know that it will work out and if it doesn't it wasn't going to anyway? Why do we always get so worked up and worry and fret over what will happen and who is going to get mad about it? Why when my mind is in a fog can't I just accept that my mind is foggy and make exceptions for myself. This too shall pass. I will look back at how we made it through. From very serious to not such a big deal, we do get through. If we could just omit the emotional freak-out it would be so much easier and much less complicated.