You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘decisions’ tag.
THOONK! An empty silence filled the kitchen and dread immersed me within its hairy tentacles. I had finally done it: splotches of applesauce on the kitchen floor, its loosened cap still in my hand.
With breakfast completed, I decided to put off the clean-up—however I would manage it. After sipping some lemon water at the sink, my not-fully-awake hand knocked over the pitcher onto the counter and floor, soaking my furry slip-ons. I was done.
Yet, instead of calling for my neighbor, I began to strategize: paper towels, a wet dish rag, my indispensable grabber, my bare feet, and my stool. No matter that I was weak and short of breath, I would take the needed time, apart from my routine. It would work, and it did.
So, what does this say about my commonsense, about my need for help, yet, going it alone? Often, I find myself in problems of my own making, the residue from decades of living in denial. Happily, this condition is lessening due to my continuing decline. Neighbors are only too delighted to help out whenever I ask.
Yet, doing it my way is still rooted in my psyche and speaks to an essential trust seamed with cracks and debris.
I’ve still much to learn about letting go and letting God take charge. My transition requires it, or at least my willingness to learn with each spill, of whatever kind.
“I write to shine a light on an otherwise dim or even pitch-black corner, to provide relief for myself and others.” Words taped to the desk of the memoirist, Laura Munson, author of This Is Not the Story You Think It Is – a Season of Unlikely Happiness (2011).
Housewife and mother, she had managed to write fourteen novels that failed to attract the notice of publishers. Yet, she continued honing her skills until the sea-change called for a different tack.
Stung by an unforeseen marital crisis, Laura reaches for her journal and writes over a five-month period—jottings that later become raw material for a memoir. Her readers she calls “gentle friends.”
Backstories of her twenty-year marriage, their two children, and life in a farmhouse in a Montana glacial valley open the memoir. In the writerly process, Munson explores her own darkness, especially her nasty inner critic, “Sheila, her twin sister.”
Graced by grandmothers practiced in creating beauty in their homes, Laura does similarly in her vegetable and flower gardens: her response to her children’s needs and her mate’s identity crisis, as provider, triggered by a failed business venture.
Humor and honesty, the hallmarks of successful memoirs, are found in this one.
This Is Not the Story You Think It Is – a Season of Unlikely Happiness was listed on the New York Times Best Sellers List, and was promoted by Oprah and the Today Show. With its writing, Laura Munson changed.
It began four days ago. The doorbell rang, followed by a brawny lineman wearing a hard hat who attached black placards to our front door knobs. We learned that –
“AT&T is bringing our fiber network technology to your neighborhood! With AT&T fiber, the future of the internet is here!”
We also learned that with this technology, we can expect: “Ultra-fast internet starting with a 1000 Mbps connection, speeds 20times faster than the average cable customer, a reliable connection with less waiting or buffering, and a better Wi-Fi experience with expanded coverage and support for all your devices.”
On the flipside of the placard, we learned that crews would need access to easement areas in our back yards.
With the placards in place, bucket trucks, pick-ups, and other trucks with hitches rolled into our neighborhood and the work began. More linemen from Universal Communications scaled ladders, mounted bucket trucks, attached more power lines to the existing poles. Grunts and shouts accompanied the work, with frequent adjustments to their hard hats.
All of this wearies me. True, information is valuable, however we receive it, but who says it must is be continually accelerated? Already, the globe suffers from psychic and physical constipation—a frightening engorgement of the psyche that buries spirit, the wellsprings of life. No matter that EMFs fry us, as well.
Yesterday’s AT&T telemarketer underscored this condition. Ostensibly offering me still more services, her voice wobbled with exhaustion. She, too, was weary.
Heart Whisperings 