Most of the time I am a person who just keeps going. I am a person who takes everything in stride – the good, the bad, the ugly. So when I am confronted with something that makes me not want to keep going, I am at first frustrated and want to scream “Get out of my way!” and then I realize that perhaps this is something God has put in my path to slow me down and I ought to pay attention to it. That’s where I find myself today.
A lot of little things have cleared the pathway to feel. My dog ate one of my Nativity sets (the one that came from Brazil and given by our exchange student). Bad dog. The next day I came home to find the entire Willow Tree Nativity set on the floor. Arms everywhere, one of the wisemen lost his head, animals had ears clipped. Disaster! I suspect at least a joint effort between cats and dog being rowdy. Broken stuff. And then . . .
Everything in my house works, but it doesn’t always work right. This frustrates me. I like things to work the way they are supposed to. For instance: My bathroom does not have a fan or heat. The suggestion given me is that I can just open the wee window for ventilation. That’s fine on a cool summer morning, but when it’s 20 degrees outside?! But the space heater and open window are my current fix. Not happy. But when the contractor gets around to me, it will be taken care of.
Also, my garage door. The opener wasn’t working. Had an unsuspecting contractor friend come over to give me a book and he spent an hour trying to fix it, thought we had it, but nope. I’ve used my garage two times since I’ve lived here. So – because I like things to be right – I bought a new garage door opener. Someone recommended a fella who could install it. He has finally had time to work on it. Guess what! The new opener is having the same problem as the old opener. Yesterday I discovered that I would rather not push snow off my car when there is a perfectly good garage just sitting there! But not yet.
Today, my body hurts. My bionic knees don’t like the cold and the mystery of would it be icy or not on the track as I walked Tully made me anxious. And we haven’t even really begun winter yet! So all of these things, plus grief have brought me low. And I am FEELING SAD! There. I said it. And I might be having the start of a pity party!
I think I’m going to let myself feel the sad. I’m going to allow it to accompany me through my day. It won’t own me. It won’t tie me up so I can’t function. But it can come with me. And if I need to carry it for myself, maybe for today I don’t have to carry anybody else’s feelings for them. And for today, that will be okay too.
Speaking of things not working right. I have a robo vacuum which I named “Hazel”. Remember that sitcom from the 70’s? I want to report that she is drunk most of the time, jumps the boundaries I set for her, she will not go directly to her dock when I tell her to, and I often find her laying around where she shouldn’t be. But when she works, it really helps with the dog hair dust bunnies! So “Go Hazel!”