Counting Grace Backwards

One Month Of Rest

Reprieve is a beautiful word to both criminals and me. I've had a very long 30 months without any mental rest. From the moment Philip came home and told me he lost his job, and we sat out on our front stoop smelling the soft California evening summer air drift past us while we tried to imagine what our future might hold. What should we do? How to proceed? I could not have imagined at that quiet moment what a precious hell was waiting for us.

I've been over it a thousand times. The broken bones, busted cars, falling fillings, joblessness, debt, huge move, loss, adjustment, shut store, more debt, bloody noses, fat spilling out of my clothes like something from another planet. For a long time I still believed that somehow it would all work out. I believed in my ability to make good decisions. I trusted that if I worked hard enough and was humble enough that we would come through it in better shape than ever, that the experience would have made us richer. I tried to keep up a good attitude.

But some time right after the store closed, I realized I had stopped believing. I felt abandoned by the only things I trusted: my own inner compass, and that our weird misfortune couldn't last forever. I realized that I trusted nothing and was very very tired. Tired right through the marrow in my bones. And angry.

I have never believed nor hoped that life has anything to do with being fair or not fair. I have believed that we bring on the lives we lead ourselves. How we face adversity says a great deal about who we are at the core. People couldn't believe how well we dealt with the attic fire that forced us out of our house for five months. We took the philosophical road. Stuff is just stuff. Some of our stuff was destroyed, but none of us were hurt. That seemed to indicate that we were lucky. Many people aren't so lucky.

I have not faced our current adversity with the grace I would like to encourage in myself. I have felt betrayed and have let myself build a rigid anger against the vagaries of fortune, against the randomness of the universe that total pig-people can be filthy rich and never have to worry about whether they will be able to feed their children or fix their teeth when all I want is to be able to stay home and keep my chickens.

I try not to hang onto things like anger but to release anger you have to acknowledge it. All along the road people have pointed out to us how lucky we are, how lucky we should feel, because it could always be worse. While this "wisdom" can hardly be denied, it isn't a wisdom I want to go to bed with. It's cold, and it takes away my right to throw my fists to the sky and damn the moon for moving the ocean.

Here we are. January 2008. My life right now is a bizarre dichotomy between this intense excitement and inspiration for life which makes me want to shout from the rooftops and this deflated body that wants to crawl under the bed where all the giant drifts of dust hang out. I'm afraid to move forward. To let go of the anger. Because it feels like being defeated. If I let go then bad luck wins and I shrivel into a being I can't recognize. No one ever wants to let go of their righteous indignation, do they?

But I don't think my indignation is actually righteous. Don't bother reminding me how easy I have it compared to others because this isn't about others. This is about me. This is about how I have not acted with grace nor recognized that all these things that have happened have brought me a greater sense of clarity. I know what life I want to live. I know who I want to become. I know what changes I want to make. Without the calamities I would not be back in Oregon. The state I gave my heart to at the age of eight. I would not have started my blog which has given me better discipline and the responsibility to reach for something better and finer with my writing every day. Some days it really couldn't be more stupid, but I am improving all the time. Moving here has restored me to my life with chickens.

I have been so wrapped up in the pain that I have forgotten to see where all this change has been taking us. We may not be able to afford to make many phone calls or visit friends and family who don't live here, but we are becoming better versions of ourselves.

Life isn't a race or a contest. If it is, you aren't doing it right. I have finally come to realize that until I clean out my head and stand up and count my blessings backwards, I will not move forward. I have a lot to learn right now. Like how to regain my trust in myself. I also have to ask myself what I'm so afraid of? That we will lose our house? That we will have to get rid of our flock of chickens? That we will have to live in a mobile home park while working minimum wage jobs and losing our teeth?

So? So what? I see it now: if it all goes away I rebuild. Like spiders who have to rewrite their web every single morning after the dew has ripped yesterday's web to tatters. I just rebuild. In everything there is an unlooked for adventure.

Counting your grace isn't as easy as saying "Ah, the blessings!" and sitting back and feeling complete just because you said so. It's a process. A conscious process in which every day you look for what is good, you say out loud to yourself what is good, and you let the gratitude inform your heart. You go to sleep knowing that if you are just lucky enough to have anyone truly love you, you are capable of rebuilding whatever life throws you. Especially if you have the love of your own self.

I have had no time to rest for 30 months. To release myself from the worry of money, of ruination, of losing everything I have, and to meditate, which for me means taking care of my home, my garden, my family, and myself. If I am going to let this anger go then I need to give myself enough space to do it. Philip and I have agreed that I can take a month to rest. To adjust my attitude. To find my center again. To prepare for whatever is coming. To face it with equanimity and grace. I will not engage in any panic over what the future holds. If I feel it coming (and it will come) I will stop, and I will iron it out.

I will live deliberately during this reprieve, but probably not quietly.