Random Sunday Thoughts

My mind is floating this morning, jumping from big-picture random thoughts of what I want and what I should be doing, thinking, and feeling about my life to the ever-present question of what to make for dinner tonight. Too much randomness for this hour of the day.

It’s raining, which is good for the gardens, and the area as a whole, so I don’t mind too much. It also gives me a chance to wear my very cool kitten-heeled rain boots. Ah, clearly  my love of shoes is still intact - yeah! but I digress. While I don’t mind the rain, or the shorter  days of winter, my husband suffers from SAD and that adds a whole new set of challenges to the daily mix.

Not that I blame him for my current troubled psyche. Rather, we tend to bounce our thoughts and feelings off each other. So his outlook is generating a darkness of its own, which is, in part, hamstringing my efforts to overcome the mental morass and physical fatigue that has set in.

More random is that I woke up to an empty dish of raspberry gelato and a fork on my bedside table. The bowl was licked nearly clean (my cats?) but what about that fork?

Starting Over

It’s been years since I have written anything of significance here, at my jobs, or even my manuscript. Nada, really. Just a smattering of FB congrats, birthday cards and text messages. What happened? 

Where did my mojo go-go? I just spent an hour reading posts going back more than 15 years, and was pleasantly surprised to read some fairly cool stuff. Insightful, articulate, funny even. More, they all had a point. WTF happened since then? 

I feel (not a fact) as if I put creating a life for myself ahead of actually living, and drifted into a slack tide of banality. Dull shades of brown and red and sad, sad songs. I’ve heard “Wildfire” more times in the past year than I did when the song came out in ‘75. Thanks Watercolors.

Where did my wonder of the world go? When did my focus become so myopic?  Have I spent too much time trying to mold my life into what I wanted it to be that I lost focus on what God has in mind? In the effort to get my life together—build a career, buy a home, plan for retirement—I’ve forgotten to actually live and have a good time. Life is for the living, I’ve heard.

I’m past the mid-life crisis stage—I think. Yet, I feel (there’s that word again) that life’s colors are less vibrant, and the spontaneity and candor of my earlier posts is now just a dull hum of BS running an endless loop in the background of my mind.

So, how do I make my way back into the ebb and flow of life? “Finnegan, begin agin,” is a phrase I always think of when I hear of someone who goes out. I haven’t had a drink in nearly 25 years—and I don’t want to—but I rarely share anymore, and only half-listen to others. So, yeah, I feel … grrr … there is something missing in my sober life as well. Something or some way of looking at the world that I’ve lost and need to find. Something that I haven’t thought of before, of maybe just not in a very long time. 

Something…

Note to self: Hold onto what’s good, let go of what’s bad. It’s just that simple.

I like simple. 

Love ... Stepping All the Way In

A popular saying counsels us to love as if we have never been hurt. Easier said than done, especially by the halfway point in life. OK, maybe a bit past half way ... 

Elvis sang about the thoughts that run through the minds of those skirting along the edge of love - one foot in, one foot out - and how suspicion will undermine whatever drew you together in the first place destroying hope and heart alike.

“We can’t go on together, with suspicious minds ... 

And we can’t build our dreams, on suspicious minds.”

Suspicion destroys what it touches, draws us down dark and lonely roads, and leaves us in the desert wasteland of life, alone and afraid. Much like anger and resentment, it’s a dubious luxury I can ill afford.

I read once that it is better to trust and find out you were wrong, than to live a life of distrust, which undermines the very happiness we seek. In the past, that was a concept I could not comprehend. But today, I can. Trust is earned. 

 

Today, I’m holding out for the dream that God put into my heart: A true love of my very own. I won’t let the past cloud my present, nor dictate my future. God has a wonderful plan—a plan for my welfare and not for my harm. I will hold onto the hope, and the faith, and His promises that I know to be true. 

“Oh let our love survive, 

I’ll dry the tears from your eyes.

Let’s don’t let a good thing die,

Ah honey, you know that I never lied to you.

I’m loving like there is no tomorrow—stepping all the way in, with all my mind, and all my heart, and all my strength, and letting God show me that most excellent way.