September 30, 2014 - The Slithering Sleuth

I'm entering the dreaded month, which should be celebrated as it is Breast Cancer Awareness month but I am not feeling quite so celebratory. Ron says he sees it coming - carefully mumbling with glee to avoid the ramifications - “you’re entering into surgery mode aren’t you”?  “What do you mean, Ron?” Me, fully knowing what he means.  “You’re dreading it aren’t you?”

 

Something happens in me a few weeks before a known surgery. I slip into this funky funk of not-so-good moodiness. What normally falls under slide-off-my-back turns into get-under-my-skin-ferociousness. A poorly delivered mail package can put me to tears. A dropped bowl becomes a world-war level catastrophe. I’m bitterly moody and it shows in all areas.  My consciousness becomes tainted with dreaded anticipation of the inconvenience right around the calendar’s corner.

I am already mourning the loss of energy that comes in the 4 weeks after anesthesia. I absolutely detest that sluggish gait and intense need for extensive sleep. I loathe the confinements of the living-room and the helplessness of inactivity, the bandages and the zombified stance the surgical incision invokes. I abhor relying on someone else for every single task. It makes my gut twist and turn in frustration. I’m strangely optimistic that recovery will be swift and purposeful, maybe the easiest of all surgeries thus far! I’m hopeful in that, but the funk is over shadowing that optimism. It slithers into my soul like a sleuth on the prowl – I’m not even aware it’s coming, it’s just suddenly there as an uninvited guest.

So my apologies go to you if you have been the unfortunate intercept of my subconscious turmoil. Know, my true desire is to serve you well and to treat you with the kindest of respects. It’s in the forefront of my thinking, but that sleuth just pushes his way in changing the outcome.  My kind soul is just underneath eager to find its way back to my day and into my interactions.

I’m starting, again, the study of Crazy Love. Though the timing wasn’t intentional, I am so grateful for the placement in the calendar. I need the prompting to re-embrace the overwhelming Love of God for His people and in return find myself swimming in a puddle of love for Him in return. I tend to mold Him like puddy into this spherical glob to perfectly fit inside my heart shaped hole.  Instead, I’d be much better prepared for this world if I put MY whole into HIS heart shaped hole becoming all consumed by his love and grace and mercy and holiness and perfect plan. This slipped implant would barely register on a hill of beans if I focused my thoughts to opportunities of grace instead of funk induced outcomes of poorly delivered mailed packages.  Life can be so very all consuming, instead of my being fully consumed with and by Him. I’m refocusing. I’m eager to have the shift and am being purposeful as purposeful is the only way to make the turn. Waiting around for it to happen is not serving me well.  Waiting permits Funk. Purposeful produces focus.  “I hope it affirms your desire for 'more God' even if you are surrounded by people who think they have 'enough God'."        

Yes, indeed, I am motivated to have “more God” so that my “surgery mode” becomes less commanding, Mr. Frances Chan. For the love of mankind, it’s needed.

So you can pray for my surgery mode to seep back into the nooks and crannies of nothingness and that my spirit of grace finds itself in my lens scope and interactions. I give you permission to hold me accountable to nothing short of that. Rub off on me if you have it mastered as learning from those who have conquered serves me will. I’m eager to be at that place where dropped bowl are sources of comical jokes, orthotic boots are motivators for hysterical laughter, and surgical lethargy is just something you get through with flying colors. Teach me, Father, I miss my dwelling in you.