Bring me your naked muscles

I've embarked on a whole new thing. After swallowing my pride about acquiring yet more education, I've decided to go back to school. This time I'm nearly %100 sure that what I'm doing will be something that I will like, maybe even love. I am leaning toward love.

After how many years of disliking one's work, I am going to risk that there is actually something out there that fits me. I honestly think I'll be good at it. No more sitting all day in a chair, answering the phone or staring mindlessly at a computer screen.

I might have more time, more money for the things I really do enjoy and want to do. Write, take a trip once in a while, ride horses (not just clean up after them). Oh yeah and pay off all the debt from the what am I doing, things will get better years.

The next year won't be the easiest. I'll be working full time while I attempt to go to classes, study and complete the necessary practice hours for certification. That's where your naked muscles come in. I'm sure if your lucky I'll be kneading some sacrificial volunteers.

So get in line right behind my mother. You will have to wait till sometime in later July or August before I actually start using guinea pigs. Classes don't start till June. Hallelujah it's a new day.

Old Job, New Bedroom

So I didn't get the job I applied for. I found out Thursday after work. They were gracious about it and even apologetic for having drug me through the process and then hiring internally in the end.

After crying for a while, mostly over the miserable thought of going back to work the next day with no hope in site for an exit, I felt ok. I started to move forward again.

I've just been in a waiting mode ever since I applied and I've been putting some things off I've wanted to do. On Friday when I came home from work I had so much energy I reorganized all the furniture in my room. I've been dreaming for years of having a room that was just a bedroom, not my office or computer room or TV room, but just a bedroom, a peaceful place where I can relax. I packed up all the things I thought I couldn't live with out, but can. It was really amazing because for the first time in five or six years everything has a place. There was no random object left that I didn't know what to do with. I even went through the pile (you know the pile) that keeps shifting around for months because you don't know what to do with it. There isn't a piece of paper left laying around haunting me.

The walls had remained undecorated because they are plaster and require predrilling holes in order to hammer a nail into it. I got over the obstacle asked the neighbor if I could borrow their drill and hung pictures, curtain rods and a decorative sconce. I'm giddy, I love my new room. I even allowed myself to purchase a few throw pillows and some sheers.

So even though I'm still here in the old job I've got a new bedroom that makes me happy every time I walk into it.

The Waiting

It's been one of those days. I actually pleaded with God at lunch to not have to come back to work. I tried to argue that I've been responsible and I’ve faithfully come back at least a thousand times. Couldn't he come up with a legitimate reason for me not to return this afternoon? Please, please . . . pretty please?

Well I'm back and the whole thing reminds me of something I saw yesterday.

I took a little walk in the afternoon to try and wake myself up after a nap. I was walking down one side of the street and from the other side of the street, down at the other end of the block, I could hear a child wailing and crying. It was immediately recognizable as a sort of self pitying, I didn't get my way, my life is ruined, cry. I looked around thinking there would be a few children hanging about; maybe they had gotten in a fight or something. As I tried to make out where and what tyranny might be unfolding, I saw a lone boy riding his bike up the street toward me. The more I looked and listened the more I realized that all this noise was coming from him. As he wailed and peddled and shouted his way closer, I began to make out what he was saying. "I hate her, I hate her, she's the worst mother in the world, I hate her!" He spewed it all the way by me without a flinch. I don’t know if he didn’t see me or he just didn’t care.

Along with all sorts of other things bubbling around in me as I witnessed this, was the cringe of recognition I had as I felt his strain to find a curse deep enough to match the disappointment. In someway too, there was the bolstering to try and convince himself that she really was the worst mother in the world, maybe evil incarnate.

What a relief it would be if she was. There would be no requirement, no responsibility to obey or honor such a person. He could be free to disregard her and go and do or be whatever he liked without question.

So as I drove back to work today under the unction of responsibility to my employer this little boy’s cry leapt to life in me. There was this seizing of self pity and anger. I actually shed a few tears as I drove onto the premises and walked very slowly back inside. I might have been tempted, like the boy, to accuse God of being unloving and even cruel if it hadn’t of been for something that happened about forty minutes earlier at the beginning of my lunch hour.

I left for lunch in a hurry eager to get away from the phone and to hear myself think without interruption, maybe even to hear what God might be thinking about my situation.

And here’s the situation, as best as I can say in a short space. It’s really more that I’ve been in a state of intense longing lately. I won’t try to name the nature or circumstances of it all, but you could say I’m in a state of meta-longing. One of the keenest things I’m longing for these days is for a deeper intimacy with Jesus. Which I’ve been cultivating for awhile, but the longing has gone deeper than what I can get at and so I’m waiting. I’m waiting for God to do what I cannot. By the lunch hour today I was distressed by it all and bordering on exhaustion with it. I left work and went to Whole Foods full of my angst. As I’m wondering up the prepared foods aisle I hear Tom Petty singing this refrain,

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Everything in me looked up, expecting God to be right above my head. And the dawning came over me. "I’m not lost to you? You know? You know, you see and you know and now I’m crying, I’ve got actually tears in my eyes right here next to the sushi. You love me and you haven’t left, you followed me to the grocery store and you know about the waiting. Thank you . . . thank you."

The Lord is relentless and He loves me, even if I have to go back to where I don’t want to be and do what I don’t want to do. One day I won’t, but God knows that the waiting is the hardest part.

A skirt in the wind

Of all the days to miss the loop hole for wearing a skirt to work (yes it's mandatory to wear a skirt where I work unless the forecasted high for the day is above 40 degrees) today was not the day.

I had to leave the building to go to lunch. I would have stayed but the cafeteria is closed.

So out into the wind. I got five steps out the door and my skirt was about over my head. Hmm. . . so much for modesty at my conservative job.

It's made me a little grumpy today.

Limitations

I've been facing limitations lately; limitations of time, energy, relationships and my own abilities.

At my job there are a lot of frustrating limitations. Today is Wednesday and I have to tell people that are looking for immediate help that they cannot talk to a counselor until Friday. I'm dreading every phone call today because there are bound to be a few really desperate people I will have to disappoint.

I'm coming up against limitations in relationships. The older everyone gets the harder it is to have access. In college everyone was together all the time, but now most people my age have husbands and children, everything must be planned and scheduled. Spontaneity is hard to come by and I confess I relied on spontaneity to form and maintain friendships. I have to work harder and make more intentional choices. It takes more time these day's for me to discover a person and find a rhythm in our friendship.

Last night at Bible study I was so tired that I hardly had the energy to engage anyone, but I wanted to be able to. I needed to get home and go to sleep, but I hadn't seen anyone for several weeks. I wound up staying longer than I planned talking to people afterwards, but feeling the tension of how unsatisfying the quality of my conversation was because I was so tired.

I'm feeling limitations in my abilities. I'm suppose to sing for a wedding this Sunday. I'm excited. I've been practicing the song, but I'm fearful that it won't sound good. It's work and I can feel the limitations of my voice. I'd like it to sound a certain way, but it doesn't. It's not bad, it's just not a certain thing that it seems might be more acceptable. I'm trying to drop the expectation and just sing from my heart, but it's getting buried in the struggle. I'd just like to be who I am and have that be enough. This feeling goes further than singing. Singing has a way of bringing up all my fears and insecurities. It's a vulnerable act to put your voice out in the world.

Word Filled Week

Is it Friday?

All possible words have occupied themselves elsewhere this week. They've been wrestling to arrange themselves into a brilliant and enticing manner within the confines of a job application. They've been busy voting each other off the story of Erica'a spiritual journey till only 1000 contestants were left. In the end, they had a nice mixture of perfunctory and entertaining vignettes to entice the perspective employer into voting Erica onto the island of satisfying, well paying work.

They sincerely hope to return next week with beautiful and sagacious reflections for your reading pleasure (well at least for hers).

A few things

I was late to work this morning. I wondered about when I would get coffee. I walked into my cubicle and there on the desk was a grande cup of Starbucks. My coffee benefactor had come through at the right moment. I grined for several minutes about it.

It's going to be a ruff week, there was a broadcast about marriage and infidelity. They announced that people could call for counseling. Yikes, I hope I make it out of this week with out a hefty dose of cynisism about marriage or men.

Needless to say, since I do most of my blogging at work between phone calls, I may not be posting much this week. Well see how it goes.

Coffee Benefactor

In the course of the day at work I usually walk up and down the hall several times through another department. A few weeks ago I teased someone in that department about having the same cup of coffee in the evening as they had in the morning.

I had no idea what this would induce, but about once a week since then when I come in to work there is a cup of Starbucks sitting on my desk. It seems I've acquired my own coffee benefactor. I think this may be the closest thing to a single woman's supper hero (thanks Hazel Cade). I'll often get coffee in the morning, but he seems to know when I haven't and then it magically appears, with cream just the way I like it.

It's actually hard for me to just receive the coffee. I get a little jumpy when people are just nice with out expecting something in return. It's rare, so it makes one suspicious.

Opportunity?

In the counseling department at work they also work with undergrad students as interns. I just had one of the counselors ask me if I wanted to give a 30 minute presentation to the students about working with victims of sexual abuse.

Uhhh . . . Well . . .thanks for such a little topic. Umm . . . I'm flattered. No I'm terrified. Yes, I have a graduate degree in counseling. I also happen to have that degree from a school whose founders are the gurus for working with victims of sexual abuse and yet somehow my most immediate response was I'm sure I don't know anything about it, this is way over my head. Umm. . . Why are you asking me?

Having chosen not to begin my own practice I feel a little bit fraudulent, but I should do this. No I want to do this, it will be fun to think through and it will be a chance to not answer the phone. Also, I don't think I can get away from it.

My supervisor is insistent that I say yes. Uh, better keep her happy so I can continue hating my job ; )

Amusing Phone Call

Today I got a call at work. When I asked them what state they were calling from they said,

"Los Angeles"

Work Place Kudos

Before Christmas every one in the counseling department got an "assignment" to tell everyone else some qualities that they appreciated about them. We wrote them on half sheets of Christmas colored paper. Yesterday we were given those comments to read. I have to say that one quality that was a recurring theme surprised me and that was "Joyful."

Why is that a surprise? Well most of you know that I severely dislike my work. I often don't feel joyful when I'm there. So I was relieved that joy is still present in me in my interactions with others. Phew!

Here are a few other comments that made me grin:

The department supervisor said, your "a bit mysterious"

One of the Chaplains said, "your sly sense of humor"

And one of the counselors said, "your humor and love for the things of God. Also, when you are feisty"

: ) Who wouldn't want to be mysterious and sly and feisty all in one.

Kudos to all of you in the counseling department, each one is full of something so uniquely there own that blesses everyone else. Thanks for being the reason I can keep coming back each day.

P.S. It's come to my attention that there is a concern for the wrong or right person reading this and discovering I dislike my job. Rest assured that all important parties know exactly how I feel, but are still happy to employ me as long as I do my job ; )