Turning Around

When things get busy and all of a sudden it has been several weeks since I've talked to a good long-distance friend, it becomes harder to find the time to call and reconnect. A few minutes, a quick conversation while making dinner, it just won't do. In my mind, I need an hour reserved for a good, conversation covering all the bases...and where's that hour? Not to be found. So the call gets put off.

The house needs to be picked up. And then it needs to be picked up and vacuumed. And then the piles have grown and dusting is called for. After a while, I realize it's time to clean the bathrooms, too. The kitchen floor-- it needs more than a Swiffer! The longer the list grows, the more daunting it gets. Suddenly, I feel the need for a whole day, all alone in my house, just to clean. Spending 15 minutes on picking up seems useless when the task is really so huge.

Same with my soul. The more disconnected and tired I get, the less tending I do to my inner world, the less effort I put forth meeting with my Father. Predictably, I become more emotionally thin, more out of sorts, off the rails. The soul-work ahead looms and calls for so much more than I have, I just don't do it. I'm so out of touch I'm not sure taking a small step forward would be any use. So I don't. Until I just can't live "like this" anymore and I have to try. There's a stripping that precedes this; I recognize my bad patterns coming to the foreground, my pitfalls rising to the surface, my sadness, loneliness, emptiness growing. Autopilot is malfunctioning, has already sent me to a place I don't want to be. Manual piloting is much harder, requires more skill and awareness and attention, but it's my only option short of staying here.

So here I go.