My own road back to self-esteem began when Mom died. I was 58. I don't know all that happened along the way. I had ups and downs with my confidence for years and years. I tend to take things personally, and to run way--literally or figuratively--when everything isn't the way I expect it to be. I wasn't always like that but I may have been sliding downhill in my 20's or 30's.
I'm not alone. My way out was to eat, or get mad, or to retreat so far into myself that nothing could drag me out. Yours may be alcohol or drugs or long, long drives; you might throw yourself into projects. We all need to escape once in awhile. I spent a good many adult years living an oxymoronic existence--too afraid to change, too discontented to remain, too weak to follow through.
I could tell you exactly the day things began to change for me, but it is unlikely you would believe such a simple thing could change one's life. Suffice it to say it began with a tornado, although I didn't realize it at the time.
So I began, and finally came to what I thought was the end of the road, but it was only a T-stop. I have choices to make once again. . .I can't go back (well, I could, but that doesn't make sense even to ME). I can go left or right. . .decisions, decisions. . .but wait a minute. . .there is another way.
Remember what I said about perspective? It's all in how we look at things. The trouble with looking is that we are too close...we see only part of the picture. I see a clear-cut T-stop. I don't see so clearly straight ahead, the third choice, because it looks like wilderness instead of the paved road. But there is a third way. . .not easy, not yet defined.
I see clearly the you-must-choose ways. I see the jobs on these roads, the roadblocks on the way. I can see the directions posted as I turn the corner. I don't like either set of choices. Not that they are illegal, immoral or indecent; they aren't hard to live with, just different. . . or maybe it's because the choices are so indifferent.
I have always led a safe, predictable life. I've been restless, especially now that the boys have been on their own for so long. I've lost my focus. I have gone ahead, not with a dance or a song, but with a sluggish crawl, burdened with the stuff I have allowed to accumulate. I have looked at the choices I thought were available to me. I saw them all as must-choose, must-do. I vaguely heard the voices--both inner and belonging to others--that told me there was another way to go. I heard them, even wrote about them--but I wasn't listening. They push, they pull, they suggest, all in directions I'm not wanting to go. They all speak the truth as they accept it, but none of it is my truth.
It came to me tonight, wired as I was on caffeine and aspirin, that the reason I was having such a hard time moving forward is that I don't like the set of options I have chosen to look at. They don't offer excitement or challenge. They offer a way to stay where I am, not a way to get to where I want to be.
So I'm going to stand in this place for awhile longer. I'm going to check out where I want to go from here. Tom-Tom and MapQuest won't be much help, nor will the loving suggestions of friends who have as little imagination as I do. I know they mean well, but the truth of the matter is that they are mostly as incapable of moving as I am, or maybe they are really content. I'm not. I want more. Hubby says I can never be satisfied. Maybe he is right. He's a good man, and he sees my urge to do something about my discordant brain. He thinks sometimes that he is the probem, but the truth is that it is me.. Once again, I want to scream in frustration.
It begins tonight. I will revisit my dreams. I will spend time in prayer. That journey I began that I thought was done will begin again, perhaps as a private journal this time instead of a public one.
We rarely have only two choices. Sometimes the third one is hard to see. I'm going to look for it.
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