My first body conscious memory was in second grade. I can tell you I weighed 52.5 pounds. I can tell you that because I was a gymnast. In order to make team and remain competitive, I weighed in weekly. And in second grade, I was exactly 52.5 pouds. According to coach Angela, I was a little “over size.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining.” I just explained the meaning of this quote to my 14-year old daughter. She was asked to share a “silver lining” from the obvious dark cloud hanging over 2020 in one of her distance learning classes. A silver lining is a sign of hope or a positive aspect in an otherwise negative situation. It suggests that there’s hope or something good to be found in every bad situation.
Have you found yourself this year just wanting to go back? Back to normal. I don’t know exactly what that would be for me. Moments before the COVID shutdown in our home, I was sitting in a few months of transition out of a faith community we started and a position we had held in vocational ministry for twenty years.
I recently came off an amazing three day staycation with my husband celebrating 20 years married. It was a change of scenery. Moments of full presence and uninterrupted conversations. It was good food and drink mixed with massages and long hikes, without a ton of kids in tow. It was fun. It was bliss. And then it was over.
The Enneagram is not a diagnosis or a solution for all things. It’s simply a powerful tool for personal and collective transformation. And it will give you a snapshot about who my husband and I are as I share a part of our story.
“Sadness does not sink a person. It’s the energy that one spends trying to avoid sadness that does.” So what do you do when you are sad?
Recently I caught myself saying a small little statement that I once would have prided myself in. I was hanging up the phone with a friend when the last words out of my mouth were, “Get ‘er done.”
She has been in my life for forty-some-odd years. She whispers to me often. Somedays are better than others. She isn’t always welcome, but she doesn’t seem to care. She invites herself everywhere and intrudes on my pretty good life.
Has 2020 thrown a curveball in your compatibility with your spouse? Are the external circumstances creating intense pressure in your marriage? “Most marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes better comes after the worse.” ~ Anonymous
It was 4:30 pm on Monday evening. Monday. Just beginning week two of my daughter’s freshman year of distance learning high school. Week one was hard. But I had hoped by now that with a week under our belt we would have a fighting chance on this Monday. To my disappointment, I went downstairs and found my daughter staring blankly at a google classroom on a screen.
