little victories

I am determined to live life more joyfully.

Sounds good, but mere determination doesn't exactly make all the yucky stuff *poof* go away.  I still have to do things I don't like, be places I don't love, see people that I don't exactly enjoy, and even eat things that aren't exactly delicious.  With so many opportunities for suffering and misery, how am I ever going to maintain an attitude of joyfulness?  The answer lies, in part, in the question: attitude.  Nothing new there.  (It's the stuff  right in front of our eyes that's sometimes the hardest to see.)

So, I've been really working on thinking, speaking and BEING joyful.  Joyfulness, I'm discovering, involves equal parts of acceptance, curiosity, humor, and gratitude, with mega-doses of love and patience.  Tandem to all of that, you've got to keep hope alive by celebrating the little things.

So, here we go; this week's celebration of joy-full little victories:

1.  While running on the treadmill this week, I realized that MY THIGHS WEREN'T RUBBING TOGETHER.  Holy mother-load of joy.

2.  I am two weeks Facebook-sober, and I feel great!

3.  I joined a recreational racquetball league.  I look super dorky in my safety glasses and have only minimal control over where the freaking ball goes, but when I do my patented (not really) run-and-jump-smash-into-the-corner super-fly shot, I feel like a Gatorade commercial.  And that rocks.

4.  My living room is clean and tidy.  Notice I didn't say "entire house".  These are *little* victories.  There is always next week.

5.  I am learning to live in the moment and let go of worry.  One of the interventions with which I have experimented this week is strategic abandonment.  I know.  Sounds awesome... maybe even a little dangerous.  BECAUSE IT IS.  Strategic abandonment, simply put, means giving oneself permission to temporarily step away from a problem, to do something different, when working on the problem ceases to yield positive results (i.e. fun, utility, new insight, or--heaven forbid--an actual solution).  It's deciding to "sleep on" a problem... or, in my case, go to the gym, plan my vacation, clean the living room, do some laundry... anything that gives my mind a rest and my subconscious a chance to work through.  Sounds like common sense?  Like something your mom used to suggest?  Of course it does!  But how often do we dig ourselves deeper and deeper in to frustration because we are determined to MAKE THIS WORK, GOSH DARN IT!  even though it (whatever it may be) clearly isn't working?  Right.  Now you see my point. Strategic abandonment sometimes means acknowledging that I'm trying to do too much  and choosing to shift my focus for a little while.  Sometimes it means slowing down.  Sometimes it means allowing others to sit with their own problems rather than trying to save them (as if?!?) by doing more, more, more myself.  Very freeing.

6.  I actually cooked this week.  Grilled portabella and avocado sandwiches.  Okay.  So, I ate that, like, three times.  Whatever.  It was a delicious treat, and I hardly tasted the flaxseed once it was mashed into the avocado.  Delicious and nutritious.  Win-win.

7.  I made it through the week without using the phrase "acting like idiots!" during school hours.  I have decided that this phrase, though momentarily gratifying, is not really  in keeping with my commitment to 1) love purely or 2) live joyfully.  So, instead of insulting America's youth, I am taking deep, cleansing breaths while imagining the sound of sea gulls and ocean waves.

8.  I was only 4 minutes late to church today.

9.  I was able to enjoy quality time with several good friends this week.

10.  This last item didn't really happen this week, but it's been on my mind, so here it goes...

A few months ago, I had an experience in one of my counseling classes.  We were exploring the group process and how trust develops.  In the exercise, we did a series of trust falls.  At first I was terrified.  My internal monologue went something like this, "Poker face, baby.  Just do it.  Go now before you chicken out!"  After being caught enough times, though, I found that I was actually able to enjoy the feeling of falling, to let go and really experience the moment.  The last activity was a group activity where one person, blind-folded, stands in the middle of the circle while other group members gently catch, then toss again, the falling person for several minutes.  I went first.  Strangely, I  felt very much in control of myself even though there were external aspects of the experience that were clearly out of my control--the direction I would be pushed, the force of the shove, how far I was allowed to fall before being caught.  I trusted my group, though, and was able to really focus on the sensation of falling and, more importantly, being caught.  It wasn't scary anymore.  I wasn't thinking about the possibility of being dropped, about being too much for someone else to handle.  I was very much in the moment.  And it was kind of a rush.

There is a scene that I read in an autobiography  many years ago.  The writer is a Native American Indian who grew up on a reservation with his grandfather.  As a little boy, he went out one night to look at the heavens.  He saw his grandfather standing beneath the stars with his hands raised to the sky, tears on his face.  He was singing softly.  The boy crept closer and listened.  His grandfather's song was a prayer.  He was telling the Great Spirit that the sky was too big for his hands and that he could not hold it all, his sorrow was too great.  As his prayer ended, he released his sorrow to the Great Spirit's care.  

Where am I going with this?  I have no idea.  Maybe it's that I've been thinking about my own wrestle with God... mostly I wrestle and He watches.  I'm not really sure.  All I know is, I'm pretty worn out.  Sort of reminds me of when a grown man puts his hands on a fist-swinging child's head, keeping the child at an arm's length. The child, meanwhile, swing as she may, ends up throwing punches in the air, then collapsing to the floor.  I've been throwing a lot of punches in the air lately.  A LOT.  As a consequence, I haven't been experiencing a lot of joy.  I'm starting to feel differently.  I'm starting to think differently about what it means to "turn it over to the Lord."  I never really got that before.  I'm starting to get it now.