Scaffolding, Resilience, Relinquishment and Boundaries

Springtime recital joy

 

It's already feeing better

Don't let him fool you. . . he loves Oliver

One of my happy places

The Grand Canyon in March ~ Bill and Mary went

The best prayer. . . 

Please don't slip

It's Sunday afternoon at our cabin, the Little Pines Lodge. If I were a napper I would be napping. Instead, I'm writing. 

I've always, thought, if a person were to read my journals that he or she might think me a troubled person. How often we write our sorrows and how seldom we take the time to write down the joy. I'm writing to say that I'm feeling better. Joy is seeping back. My light is shining again. 

I sprained my ankle on Friday. Not badly. Just enough to set me back. I was tamping down dirt around a new shrub and my foot went down into the hole and twisted. Still, by Saturday night I was having trouble walking. 

Late Saturday afternoon we drove to the cabin after a lovely morning graduation recital and an afternoon of Zoom teacher training. We arrived late and Bill and I settled ourselves in chairs around the new furnace with a little glass of wine. I studied my swollen ankle. We went to bed and with no cats to wake me up, I slept over nine hours. When I woke up the ankle was fine. Healed. In the night the little guys in my body put up the scaffolding and went to work on fixing it. Nine hours with no weight and it was ready to go. 

Ours minds are the same way. Resilient. This weekend the mental health repairmen in my brain went to work and started fixing things too. 

What is the scaffolding? What are the tools of resilience? How do we move from disequilibrium to equilibrium? I'm not talking about clinical depression, but times when events of life reach the tipping point where it's hard to be the light. 

What's in the mental health toolbox? 

• sleep -- hands down the number one tool
• friends, sisters, husbands and mothers who listen and respond with compassion and honesty
• writing in public -- just writing the blog on Friday, admitting I was having a really tough time, went a long way towards relieving the pressure to act like everything is okay
• writing in private -- making a list of everything around me and in the news that is wrong, and realizing that 99% are things I can do absolutely nothing about
• making a gratitude list-- I NEVER take for granted my God, my spouse, my kids, my friends, my family, my home, my studio, my garden, and our cabin, but writing it all down distracts the brain from it's negative pattern -- this is proven 
• relinquishment -- turning it all -- the whole list --over to God, knowing that he loves this world and all the people in it even more than I do -- He does in deed have the whole world in His hands, I can rest knowing that it turns out it not all up to me to fix it all (see humor below) 
• nature -- God's gift of creation -- the ultimate show of resilience 
• humor -- Zooming out and trying to laugh a little at yourself, with compassion
• setting boundaries -- being compassionate ultimately means setting boundaries in myriad ways -- personal and professional, boundaries from the news and social media -- boundaries from overworking -- recommitting to boundaries is an important tool for maintaining the joy of life and relationships 

I'm not some highly read author, I just have a few tried and true friends and family who read this. I certainly don't want to write things that bring people down. I thought about taking Friday's blog post down, but, my mom always told me, if you are feeling a certain way, chances are that someone else is feeling that way too. Maybe it will be of some use to somebody. 

So, if you are like me, a mostly happy cheerful person, who is blessed beyond belief, but who occasionally get pulled down with the events of life, you are not alone. 

Thank you for all the uplifting comments and prayers this weekend. My heart is lighter and I'm ready to shine my light again. 

Lord,

Thank you for my small but beautiful circle of my friends and family who lift each other up and who helped me reignite my candles. Thank you physical and emotional healing and scaffolding. That you for reminding me that I don't have to fix it all. And thank you for reminding me to set healthy boundaries in my life. May these words lift up someone else along the way. 

Amen. 

Optimism is Fragile

 

A new creature in our yard

Just visiting

Thank you Fay! 

Religious cat

We could all use some. . . 

Live live stream

At last. . . 

Hello! 

King of the cat tree

My favorite turkeys

I've been very busy. Teaching Suzuki Piano Book One for the first time is a total joy, but 28 hours of class is a lot of prep. I have a wonderful group of teachers. Book One has always been my favorite and this course has given me a chance to reflect and solidify my ideas. Watching hour after hour of yourself teaching is also risky business. I am either a complete genius or a complete catastrophe. This is contingent not upon my actual teaching strategies, but determined by the amount of caffeine or sleep I have had when I actually edit the videos. The reality is of course somewhere in the middle. 

Between the Book One class, masterclasses, and my upcoming studio recital, I will have worked 12 straight weekends. The weather here in Minnesota is still cold and rainy. Our news feed is even more dismal. Minnesota has had a tough run. 

Mary's high school allowed a walkout yesterday. What might have been a moment of silence for a lost life, and a prayer for change turned into the F word being chalked all over the school and the "walker-outers" yelling disrespectful chants at the faculty who were supervising them. Oh, and by the way. . . the students  were given an excused absence for their profanity. Not Eastview's finest moment. 

I have found myself trying to preserve my mental health on an hour by hour basis. 

I guess optimism is fragile. 

When I'm high I'm making plans and living in the moment and noticing the miracles of nature everywhere around me. 

When I'm low I worry that I might spill my darkness over everyone around me. 

It's a good reminder to me how fragile we are. How fragile our optimism can be. How much darkness can we light? How can one person's love lift the fear of the masses. How can one person's joy assuage the anger in the street. I'm a little too fragile for that responsibility. 

I got to see the lower faces of many of my students this week. The last of the masks are coming off during private piano lessons. My eyes were wet because their teeth have changed in a year. The teeth of 6-9 years olds change and grow. It seemed to me that their teeth were all very different than the last time I saw them. I'm sure I stared. They smiled big toothy smiles at me. They stared at my mouth too. We were all just smiling. I can't stand what we have done to our children this year. I can't stand it that we have filled them with fear. It goes against everything I have tried to provide for my own kids, and everything I wish for for every child. 

Without diminishing the acknowledgment of the suffering of those who have lost loved ones, and those those health has been compromised from covid, I can unapologetically say that the contagion of fear is exponentially worse to me than covid itself. There. I've said it. 

The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself. 

I'm committed to letting my light shine, but sometimes that candle is just a little flickery. It's fragile. Perhaps acknowledging that fragility makes things a little better. A little brighter. Maybe when we sit with the darkness a little while, it can make us more compassionate. More ready for the light. When the temp gets above 50 and the sun actually shines, we will appreciate it even more. 

Every time I say goodbye to Calvin and Mary or drop them at school, I say --let your light shine.   

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. . . John 1:5.

That light is the alpha and omega. I know it will shine. I want to be its harbinger, but the wick in my candle is a little damp. 

Thanks for listening. And wherever you are on the continuum of fear and love, of joy and anger, darkness and light-- after you sit there for a bit, may your optimism be reignited. Your matches will dry out. If you don't mind, you can say the same prayer for me.