my gosh

This blogging comes in spurts, doesn't it?

I'm on a couch with Jeff's pug. Jeff's mom is in the hospital, and so he's taken off or Texas to be with his family. As of the last report, things are improving, but still serious. Pray, please.

The pug is very happy for any company. He's here, sharing my lap with the iBook, dribbling on my arm and the keyboard in turns.

Last night Jeff and I went to the apple store to get a new computer that would better serve his burgeoning design and layout skillz. That means I get to inherit the old laptop, on an installment plan, even. Once this mac-baby is mine I will be so cool I won't even know myself. Ah, sweet consumerism.

(I kid, I kid. Even my computer will be second-hand. My shoes leak! I ride my bike everywhere? What do you want from me?! :) )

I've been thinking a lot about paralysis. There are times when I cannot rouse myself to do a single thing. There are other times, only marginally better, when I can only rouse myself to put on the outside trappings of life, and stumble through the day, week, month, waiting for something else to start, for some spout of energy to get me through. I coast, for shameful amounts of time. I hibernate, if only internally. I cocoon, but without any promise of metamorphosis. Sometimes I feel like I'm parked on the side of the freeway in the driving rain, watching cars shoot by, unsure if I can make it back into a lane, unsure of my courage to try, unsure if my car would even start if I tried. I hate freeways, and I can't drive, but it's a good metaphor.

Sometimes my whole life is like this, with only my close relationships spared. Work, school, daily eating/walking/breathing/doing can all pass in a blur, and the only time I feel anchored and present is when I am engaging one-on-one. I'm trying to branch out in my Quakerism, trying not to be a Quaker-In-A-Can, but I freeze at the thought of the expectations any group involvement might require of me. It's not that I fear committee work or community involvement per se, it just seems like I'd be adding a new group of people to let down, and there are times (too many times) that I can't avoid that letting-down. When it is just me and a friend, interacting, talking, sharing a beer, knitting scarves, I can be true, I can be real, I can be present, and sometimes I can even be on time.

The mantra my therapist sent me off with last week was "it's okay to make mistakes", and I am really struggling with that one. It is okay to put too much baking powder in the muffins. It is okay to put a red facecloth with the white sheets. It's alright if you overdraw your bank account by $3.58. But there are so many possible mistakes.

My mother quoted my grandfather: "Once is a mistake, Twice is stupidity." I guess my mind has always translated that as "if you can see ahead, if you have experience, and you still screw up, The End." Add to that a fear of outrunning one's guide, of assuming anything, of 'writing checks your ass can't cash' . . .

I know I am babbling, but sometimes it feels as if that's the best blogging for me. I'm so afraid most of the time. There are mistakes, and there are consequences for those mistakes. Hearts, minds, fortunes, lives, souls, happiness, futures . . . so much hangs in the balance. I could be careful, or I could be a coward, I'm never sure.

Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
Say to those with anxious heart,
"Take courage, fear not.
Behold, your God will come with vengeance;
The recompense of God will come,
But He will save you."
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
Then the lame will leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy.
For waters will break forth in the wilderness
And streams in the Arabah.
The scorched land will become a pool
And the thirsty ground springs of water;
In the haunt of jackals, its resting place,
Grass becomes reeds and rushes.
A highway will be there, a roadway,
And it will be called the Highway of Holiness.
The unclean will not travel on it,
But it will be for him who walks that way,
And fools will not wander on it.
No lion will be there,
Nor will any vicious beast go up on it;
These will not be found there.
But the redeemed will walk there,
And the ransomed of the LORD will return
And come with joyful shouting to Zion,
With everlasting joy upon their heads.
They will find gladness and joy,
And sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Isaiah 35:3-10