i am human

As I have been so busy as of late blogging has most definitely taken the back burner. However, I've come to love this blog space, even if no one else ever reads it! For me it has been a place to write, to think, and to share; a place that challenges me to be more honest with myself and Jesus about my own process and journeys through grief and simply in the everyday aspects of life.

Over the last two months I have taken applied for PhD programs, taken the NCE, taken the NCE, taught lectures from everything having to do with the sensaton & perception, to feminist therapy, to substance abuse; I've written tests, graded tests, graded more than a desirable amount of papers, given study sessions, and eaten more than my share of pizza and other foods on my "do not eat" list.....plus countless hours of babysitting, evenings & overnights at SGI, trying to have a social life in there somewhere, all of course accompanied most often than not with my Starbucks side-kick!

But in the busy-ness of the last few months I lost conscious connection with things that I'm grieving and preparing to grieve - hence the eating of too many foods on my "do not eat" list. Now on the other side,  not only do I get to deal with the realization that I wasn't dealing with some grief, but I had to do some squeezing to make my jeans fit :(

The current grief is more of an anticipatory grief. No matter what happens in the next few months, I will be faced with grief. I will either be grieving the loss of expectations in a PhD program and grieving all the expectations that result from there, or I will be grieving my Arkansas-life, family, friends, and all things that have become comfort for me. On the grand scale of most difficult things grieved, I know this isn't the top. Its more the process of my body, mind, soul, and spirit knowing that it will be grieving, but getting lost and stuck in the ambiguity of not knowing what I will be grieving, which makes it difficult to prepare for, which hits at my desire for control, and major dislike for being blindsided.

Thus its trying to find the balance in living life, while be open to grieving through ambiguity, without hiding out, distracting, or being in denial, all while giving God the control and saying "God, your will be done."

The waiting was much easier before I realized that my efforts at waiting were really about avoiding grief and trying to be in control.....see I really am human, and remain in constant need of being on the journey, just like the rest of humanity.