I went to the grocery store for the first time since we got back from vacation today.
Normally, I shop like it’s Armageddon. We have a household of nine and it stinks to run out of stuff. As usual in the weeks leading up to our trip, I let our pantry supplies dwindle to leave less that might go to waste or be nibbled on by mice while we were away.
The second week of our trip, we watched the news as things slowly ramped up. When we arrived in JFK just a little over a week ago, the airport was deserted.
By the time we got home and the Chaplain did a grocery run, we picked up a few things here and there as we slowly got a list together for a bigger grocery run and reoriented to life in the Northeast again.
We ran out of pasta and toilet paper around the same time the grocery stores did.
A couple of years ago, I started feeling called to adopt Surrender and Acceptance as my themes for the season I was in. My natural tendency is to be super controlling and neurotic, so those ideas were appealing on a conceptual level, but they didn’t feel easy to lean into.
Yesterday was The Longest Day. It happens once a year when we come back from our trip to Tobago. We fly in to JFK, then drive back up to Albany, and no matter how wonderful the weather is or how smooth the drive, it seems to take forever.
This time, everything went nearly as well as it could have. We made it through the whole process and home sooner than we’d hoped, on a beautifully clear sunny day.
At a rest stop on the drive home, I ended up stuck in a bathroom stall with a two-year-old who was terrified of the toilet, and discovered too late I was in a stall with no toilet paper.
Personal growth.
You realize there is something in your life that you want to change.
You’re aware of it for months or years. You do a ton of work.
That thing you want to change doesn’t budge.
Some other things get better – you’re more authentic, less reactive.
But that thing you would really like to change? Still there.
The most challenging posts I write are the reflective ones that pop up between the sewing and book posts every so often. Sewing and book posts follow a kind of formula – I just tell you what I did or read.
Translating thoughts and feelings into something readable isn’t easy. I didn’t start this blog because it’s easy to write, though, and I’m trying to use this year to challenge myself to do things that I’m afraid to do, like write, possibly badly, to express ideas and truths I’ve discovered.
In that spirit, I am rounding up three books into one post – three books that are so unlike one another that they usually would have each have garnered their own post. I’m combining them so I can spend more time writing those other, more difficult posts that force me to work harder and hopefully challenge you, the reader, to do some mental exercise as well, at least once in a while.
