Waking Up is Hard to Do

Done wrong, mornings are the worst.

Have you ever deliberately thought about about mornings through an anthropological lens? 

Who wakes up early? Who wakes up at 2pm? 

Of those who do either, what do their lives look like? 

And of those, which are choosing to rise and which and forced? 

I often joke about how much I dislike greeting the day. 

A large part of that is because I know how lovely mornings can be. 

My senior year, I would wake up, go work out for half an hour, come back and sit on my balcony, eat breakfast and journal/do my devo. 

Then I would get ready for class and leave. On time. 

More importantly than anything else, NO ONE WOULD TALK TO ME. No one else was awake either in my house. I was alone. 

It was the most beautiful beautiful beautiful part of every day and I looked forward to it each morning. 

For that hour and a half or so, I had flawless, unadulterated silence. I could start my morning fresh and lovely. 

It was important to me. 

Doesn't matter what time I wake up, someone in my house is already awake and interacting with me, verbally or nonverbally. I cannot handle it. So I stay asleep an extra hour and a half, wake up sleepy, and barely make it on work each day. 

But I love my job. 

Other people I know dread mornings for very different reasons. 

When I waitressed, I knew so many who worked the night shift, stayed up all night drinking and smoking pot (and doing lots of other nighttime activities), waking up at 2 in the afternoon, showering, and making it to their 3:30 shift. 

Because why would they wake up? Wake up to hangovers and empty time and too many thoughts of, "What am I doing with my life?" The people I knew couldn't wake up early because they didn't want to think. What they live is not a life. It's a pattern. It's a schedule. And they don't even make the schedule themselves. 

When I lived alone, I never greeted the morning. My eyes opened to text every few hours of the 24, but there wasn't a conscious decision to get up, get out, get going. 

I've known many others like that as well. Early nights and late mornings. Because we don't want to be awake at all. We don't want to exist. And we can't stay to a schedule. Not ours nor anyone else's. 

Then the early risers.

The at-home moms, the at-work moms, the working fathers, the multiple job workers, the interns, both sexes of the unmarrieds. Driven, determined, potentially robotic, but steely and resolute nonetheless. 

Their actions are measured and backed by a goal: I will pay my rent, I will buy 10,000 diapers, I will get that promotion, I will take care of my family, I will get this recommendation, I will fill I will build I will win. 

What's ironic about the life of the sleepers and the life of the sleepless is that it is often driven by the same thing. 

Very often, on both poles, is the desire not to think. To work, to exist, to make what's needed to survive (or thrive), but not to really live. 

I'm sure there's balance out there, and I'm sure there are those who fall outside the categories of observations I've noted here, but I find that without careful measurement and very conscious efforts of spending time alone to unknot my thoughts with myself and the Lord (especially at the start of the day), I lean and fall into the pattern of doing life and avoiding active participation in it. 

Snow Dump

Despite the fact that we had 70 degree weather all last week, Arkansas decided to grace us with winter. HELLOOOOO SNOW and ice. and sleet. and uck.

My dear housemate Sarah left me a note saying she went ahead and walked to work to get out her angst about the whole affair.

I had to unbury my vehicle.

My response to frustration is laughter. It's kind of disconcerting actually.

While I was attacking the multiple inches of snow and ice coating the Big Blue Whale, I repeatedly laugh-yelled "THIS IS RIDICULOUS", as I knew that once I got to work, I was to be leading an outdoor campus tour for a group of students.

During this treasure hunt, two of the littles from across the street came outside to throw show in the air and squeal with happiness.

Talk about perspective.

Me, the cranky adult, super annoyed at the super inconvenience to my two mile commute and minimal effort lifestyle, thinking only of how the ice was going to destroy a perfectly decent February morning and visit.

Then the littles, delighted at the prospect of school being out and having all day to play, build snowmen, have snowball fights, make snow ice cream, sled, and have fun! It felt like that scene in Father of the Bride II where the father looks out of the car window of horrible parent-child interactions while the mother looks out her window to picturesque scenes of parent-child affection.

Snow is the same then as it is now, but my response and sentiments toward it have become increasingly...icy (forgive me).

And yet, no matter how in my way and underfoot it is (literally), I can't help but quietly stare at it glitter and make my campus and my office and my home feel magical and wintery and right.

Once the tour was over and we, the counselors, were frozen but pretty cheerful, as per always (thank you, coffee), and I picked me up some marshmallows and designed a yum recipe for cocoa (two parts powder sugar to one part cocoa powder, dash salt, almond milk), I settled in to my blanket and my fate.

Hello snow.

Theology of Suffering

This semester, I'm taking a class with one of my favorite college professors. Part because I miss school and part because it's his last semester, and I never got to take this course.

It's called Critical Concerns with Adolescents. I justified taking it because, hey, I work with adolescents, right?

It's a more interactive, feelingsy style class structure than I was anticipating or like, but it's been nice to get out from behind my desk.

For one of our recent meetings, we had to write our personal theology of suffering.
He wanted our answer to the question: "What do you believe about suffering?"

My definition of suffering.

I think of this a lot, as I have since I was small and trying to reconcile my own feelings of social isolation with the more "pertinent" suffering of my best friend with her rough neighborhood and her parents that yelled.

That struggle continues now, as I see the ways that I have "suffered", which seem so...insignificant in comparison to my friends and people I love a lot.

How do you bring something to the table if you don't believe in its validity while, at the same time, can't help but feel its effects?

I didn't know my answer when I started typing, but that's often how it is with me. Give me a pen, and I can tell me my thoughts. I swear my mind is trapped in ink.

What I came up with is this:

 Suffering is anything that causes division, be that be division of self, division of mind, or division of emotion.
It is a felt, abstract concept, not one that can be put in a concrete way. Because of this, there is no empirical way to measure suffering on a straight measure.
What is suffering for one might be nothing for another. However, both of them get to “count.”
I come into contact with this word and my own struggles of literalism when I talk to my boyfriend.
Neither one of us have very clean stories. But they’re both messed up in different ways. And those differences affect us and our relationship strongly, as we struggle to work out our past hurts.
We have both suffered.
But when I come to the table with an area of woundedness, I feel as though my pain is insufficient compared to his and, therefore, doesn’t get to be counted as legitimate.
I was never married. I have never struggled with addiction.
I had some rough relationships. I was desperately lonely for a very long time. I know what it feels like to crawl into myself and die a little.
But those are not measurable to one another because we are different people. We have different stories.
I don’t know what it feels like to have a spouse leave or really anything else that he’s experienced.
But we both know what it feels like to have your heart divided. We both know what it feels like to be divided from those we love. We both know what it is to have our minds turn against us, to lose control, to feel a chasm open up between ourselves and the Lord.
For other people, it’s a literal division from body parts, division from the capacity to function “normally”, division from social spheres, division of parents, division from whole families, division of self. We feel it all. So, while we may not understand everyone’s exact point of “suffering”, we all know what it is to feel something less than whole. 

Yoga Best

It's time to accept the fact that there is not going to be a time where the prospect of going to yoga at 6am will appeal to me. Especially in winter.

But I'm always glad I have gone.

Our instructor always has us dedicate our time to someone, which feels weird.
It shouldn't, though. since I spend most of the "mindfulness" time praying anyway.
Dedicating the time is more akin to intercession.

Usually, I don't plan who to pray for. When we start the whateverit'scalled breathing (ujjayi breathing) and starting stretches, a lot of times someone just shows up in my mind. It's not work at all to pray for them, it just kind of happens.

Yoga and prayer are a funny couple, as yoga a lot of times involves a lot of pain and struggle and "almost", almost getting that pose right, almost getting that anxiety out of my muscles, almost about to break my wrists and, consequently, my neck.

There are so many times when I pray that I feel a space of contentment, of speaking the words I know.
It's not until some event comes along that I push in to my heart to speak, meaning the words more intently, much like a yoga instructor pushing you deeper (horribly) into a certain pose. Tell you what, there's nothing like the feeling of poisoned needles into your lower spine to wake you up to talk to Jesus. HEYO

Nothing like God doing something similar to push you in like direction toward him.

Sometimes I wonder if that's all right, though.

I have been told before and have come to think of myself as a good woman for a crisis.
Stress and I handle one another pretty well actually. I'm extraordinarily productive and focused, if not a bit edgy.
When given a challenge or serious opposition, some fire licks inside and I kick it into ninth gear.
It's the straight shots, the easy doors, the mundane office work that gets me dumps water on me, however.

How do you learn to serve God in the shavasana as well as the mandukasana?