One more sucker punch today just to see if I could handle one more. Bring it on! I am getting stronger by the day, it seems, in an endless line of losses and absolutely ridiculous attacks to bring me down.

I guess when you have faced life mostly alone as an adult, raised your two sons solo, and never made what would appear to be a minimum living, you do learn to toughen up. For years I felt like my emotions ruled me, but I am now noticing they are a gift from God, which when I use them appropriately and for His purposes, are also a gift to others.

I hear from many friends that this blog is an inspiration to them and they encourage me to keep writing. I really never thought anyone was reading it and I was just practicing over the past two years. I have come to the point where the practice has become part of my life.

There is no number on the amount of times we can be knocked down and get back up again. Personally, I have lost count. I often tell my friends of a certain age that I am like the proverbial Joe Paluka punching bag of my youth….. there was a layer of sand at the bottom of a child-sized plastic blowup character and kids, mostly boys as I recall, practiced getting out their frustration on it. Whatever punches they delivered, he went down but he popped right back up…as if to say “yeah, you thought that would take me out, huh? Well you were wrong! What else you got?”

I know that I am not alone in feeling like I am starting over at a point where I had hoped I would be slowing down, not speeding up! We are a tenacious bunch, and we will live to see ourselves at the front of the pack, as we continue to run the race that is set before us. I think it is only when I see how many are close by my side in the exact same race that I am encouraged to keep running, and if I falter it will be one of them who will catch me and encourage me on. I am very blessed indeed.

Anyone who is trying to make a major change in their life or do something they have always wanted to do knows the force of resistance they will meet head on when they try. We make deadlines we hope we can meet, and then struggle to meet them. It is as if there is a force equal to our desire that resists our accomplishing it.

Is that a law of physics or something? Seems like there is a floating memory in my head somewhere…it will come to me later and maybe I will come back and add it.

Anyway, you can be sure it is worth pushing against, just doing that one next thing, in order to get there. It probably represents the best thing you have ever thought you could do. In church we used to refer to resistance as the devil trying to block you, but I think it is a massive wall that you are trying to break through. That’s why I have come to the ‘remove it, one brick at a time’ way of dealing with it. Break it down into manageable pieces that you can move. Sneak up on it. Come in the back door and surprise it. But do something different, even if you have to fool yourself!

I bought six composition notebooks a few days ago and headed each cover with a different category where I am trying to make changes in my life. All of it on one list has always been overwhelming and confusing to me. Now I approach them each differently, not being upset if I only record progress in one book a day. Hopefully, my results will be magnified by separating my thoughts and actions to different goals. After a while,  I will be able to look back and see!

I am thrilled and continually amazed at how God is always working in our lives, behind the scenes, making plans for us when we are ready to turn situations over to him. It is like seeing a row of lined up dominoes start falling. Because someone took the time to line them up, it only takes a mere nudge to the first one to begin a long line of reactionary moves right behind it.

Yesterday I saw about four major things change in my life. Seemingly minor things, from the standpoint of actions, but major in terms of life and spirit. It took a thought change and a focus toward being entirely willing to put my circumstances and my future totally in the hands of the One who has never abandoned me. When I was able to do that, He began (again) to move heaven and earth on my behalf.

My worries never get me anywhere but stuck. While I am fretting and trying to control my destiny, God just keeps working backstage, setting up the dominoes. He knows I will eventually get to the end of my strength and surrender to His, and that is the nudge He is waiting for….the dominoes begin falling, and I just sit back in wonder at the good He can accomplish in my life so quickly.

As a child I remember saying “I give up” when I was seemingly losing in play with friends or siblings. Those are good words to remember when I feel like I am losing a battle in my feelings or thoughts. I give up….you take it from here Lord. I know He will, and it will come out far better than I could ever have imagined.

Isn’t it amazing how we actually can start life over every new day if we want? Looking backwards we can’t change a thing, but looking forward…..endless possibilities!

A very close friend and I both picked up a book this week that had to do with doing one new thing a day, to move yourself closer to a goal. Just one thing! Even a tiny one can begin the forward movement and get you unstuck. I have done my one thing, which is to make a list of some goals and begin writing the things that would move me toward them. Picking one small thing off one list each day does not look so overwhelming.

I remember how I used to have to break down chores for the boys to make them less overwhelming, but now I am the overwhelmed one, and the process still works! Onward, just do the easiest or the next important…your choice, the next best thing! Then feel good and congratulate yourself!

It’s funny, but I was with a loved one who is deep into twelve steps last weekend, and it got me noticing how often we are so focused on minding someone else’s business, we forget to work on the one person whose life and character we could effectively change.

It is such a habit, however, that one really must be vigilant! It crops up all the time and I don’t think we realize it. If we could get a handle on that, I feel that tons of relationships would instantly improve! What heaven on earth that would be, really. There is usually so much more we love about a person than we don’t like, but often focus so much on the things they need to change so that we will really be happy, we stop noticing.

In walks single lady who lives alone for a weekend and all I could notice, with two different sets of friends on two different weekends, were all the tender loving things their spouse was doing that they had lost sight of. Clarity comes real fast when there is no one but yourself in the house….no one to blame for undone dishes, toilet seats left up, trash not put out.

I may hire myself out as a visiting therapist who comes for the weekend and lives with you. Don’t know of anyone doing that, but I seem to do it naturally. Instead of a homewrecker…I’m a homesaver! Hmmmmm. Might be a need for that! And I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and eating meals with people and watching movies together. I am also a great guest right now because I have no furry companion to worry about while I visit.

But I did go to the animal shelter today to see if a dog was calling my name. There was one whose eyes met mine for a long long time. Hope I do better with the shelter match program than I do on Match.com! I have higher hopes it will come out right for both of us, but I am going to let him miss me over the weekend, just to be sure (actually, he’s not up for adoption yet, I am not that heartless). When its time, if it is meant to be, we will begin our relationship. I’ll keep you posted!

Why isn’t there a “So sorry to hear you’ve lost your home” or “Our thoughts and prayers are with you as you try to find a new job in this economy.” Somehow a regular sympathy card just doesn’t do it.

And where are the occasions to mark these losses. Should we have a firepit gathering where we burn the deed we didn’t pay off? There is no funeral to mark or signal the end, or even the beginning, of the mourning process for these things. I feel like people are suffering all around me, and yet we have no celebrations, or un-celebrations, to help release our grief.

I know I am sounding a bit morbid here, but for anyone going through these rough times, the grief just sneaks up on you when you least expect it, while you are trying so hard to bundle it up and leave it by the curb with a happy face and a ribbon on it. Sometimes you just need to give yourself permission to feel sad and cry. I have.

I am really noticing the effects of what I call “show up love” in my own life lately. I have recently been through a series (eleven to be exact, but who’s counting?) of fairly severe losses in my life, all within an eighteen month period. Now only one of these involved the death of  a loved one (my furry companion of over a decade) but all were, upon reflection, small deaths of hope, future, dreams, and optimism. What I failed to notice was that I had not allowed myself to recognize that and to grieve. Everyone knows to come to a funeral, but what if there is no body, no date, no place to acknowledge the event happened? Does that mean it didn’t happen? There is no Hallmark card for losing your home, your living, your dreams. People just continue with their own lives while you are trying to push your grief as far away as possible. It is still there, and sensitive people see it and hear it when they are with you.

Strangers were also more prone to notice than close family members (sons excluded), as it turned out. The fact that I seemed so isolated and people seemed to run the other way, as they do when you are going through a divorce (as though they might ‘catch it’ if they got too close) brought the pain to a head. Someone who has not lost their home and been thrown into turmoil trying to quickly make sense of another, cannot understand, but perhaps if they thought about it? What would it feel like to experience that situation? Is it not possible for us to truly walk in another man’s shoes for a brief time? Is there no way to step into their situation with them and look for ways to bring comfort?

I have found that it is. That there are good souls all around who can just be willing to re-arrange their priorities and just show up in my life. After hearing some unpleasant news before a recent unexpected surgery, my son was at a loss to cheer me up and get my mind back on the best possible outcome. Just then my cousin walked in the room, bright and cheery and full of tales of the parking garage and my whole countenance changed because hers was so bright and uplifting. I went into surgery full of hope and it went well.

She just showed up. And by doing that she changed everything for me. It often isn’t something major that is required of us. We all bring a new outlook and a new pair of eyes into a situation. When we step into someone else’s space and look at it with them, right where they are, right where they live, when we come to walk with them through it, we open all possibilities to see something they might have missed. The mere holding their hand going through it or letting them know you will be there after, makes all the difference in the world. Maybe especially when they soldier up, “there’s no need, really, I’ll be fine.”

Sometimes I feel like life is in slow motion, but normally that is when bad things are happening and I can’t seem to get the gears to switch into forward mode again, no matter how hard I try, I just feel stalled. Positive things seem to go so fast…I am always re-living them, going “gee, just 24 hrs ago I was with my son at his concert, or eating dinner with a friend.” But as I survey the landscape of things that don’t seem so hopeful, or for which I can’t see what is the next best thing I can do to get moving, I feel like I have run out of gas on a back country road. I am just waiting and hoping someone will come along with some help, or a can of gas!

It is true, we are to forgive and then try to forget things we perceive as wounds to our psyche. They are personal, and often not intended by the person who said them in the way that they were received. I find email and texting particularly prone to misinterpretation. Partly because there is not only no eye contact or observed body language, but also  no tone of voice to listen to for inflection or compassion.

So is a blanket “I’m sorry” good enough? I don’t think so. If it doesn’t acknowledge the perceived misinterpretation, it will never suffice. It puts all the onus on the wounded party to absorb the hurt. If the person who has been offended is brave enough to bring it up, it needs to be addressed in a non-defensive way. This can happen only where both people are willing to talk about feelings, and open to the fact they both have played a part.

This will forever be the most difficult part of family dynamics for me. So much is said in jest and in sarcasm that it is difficult to separate the true jabs from the ones that were meant to roll off your back. Some of us are more thin-skinned or sensitive, evidently, than others. Not all of us want to repair the damage. It is a place to really test our personal communications skills, over and over again. Perhaps that is where we also decide to make changes in our own delivery, to benefit future generations going forward. For that reason it is worth trying, though it can be painful to attempt it and very possibly met with total resistance.

In that case there is only one choice. Try to forgive, and try to move in a different direction. However, if given the chance to truly hear and accept the pain my words may have caused someone close to me, I hope I will always try to find the courage to sincerely apologize for the damage those words have done. The results may be truly miraculous in lifting a burden I was not aware I had added to that person’s soul.

Sometimes, I almost forget about them. Sometimes they forget about me. But mostly, they are meant to be acknowledged and celebrated. Often they only mean we have survived another year. If that has been a difficult one, as this has been for me, it may feel even more important to acknowledge that, with God’s grace, you made it!

Several weeks before this birthday I decided to make sure I didn’t spend it alone, apt to wallow in a woe is me, I think I’ll eat some worms attitude. I also decided that next year I would have a true celebration and invite all my friends and life-support people. The funny thing is, by putting that thought out there, I found that all of them checked in THIS year! I heard from so many people, the phone hardly stopped ringing the whole day. Because someone put something on Facebook, I also heard from so many people with whom I have shared the privilege of finding their homes over the years.

I had offers of dinners and lunches and overnight excursions and calls from my children and an elegant dinner out with my son. I couldn’t have asked for more. Oh yes, but there’s the point. I did ask. I put it out there that I wanted to celebrate with my friends…next year. What a surprise to me that it happened a year early!

You have not because you ask not. How true scripture often is. So simple. And yet I tend to feel that I don’t want to ‘use up my tickets’ in case there is really something important down the line. I also hesitate to ask God for something in case He can’t do it, I don’t want Him to look bad. How silly that I am worried about having God’s back! He has mine, all the time, and if He can’t do something, He still wants us to ask.

I made the comparison to a friend that when my son is out on tour with a well known band, often I would know people in a city where he was going to perform  who would love to see him play but perhaps didn’t really have the money for the tickets, or just as possible, it may already be sold out. Given that he often gets a few complimentary seats, I overcame my reluctance to ask him, and most times he had tickets he was glad to provide.

For my friends, whether he had the tickets or not, the mere fact that I asked was the major thing. They were fine if he didn’t have them, but thrilled that I had asked on their behalf. I believe it is that way with God. He can’t always give us exactly what we asked for, but if he could and we didn’t even ask, he might never know we had that desire in our heart, enough to put it out there. I assume He would feel the way my son would, when after the concert  I said” Oh, I had some good friends who  would have loved to see you”, and he would have said “Mom, I wish you had asked… I had four tickets and I didn’t know anyone in Buffalo! They just went to waste.”

You have not because you ask not. Think about it.