Warrior!…

Warrior?…

 Which is it, Lady?

There are days I feel so powerful, so confident and assured that I got this!  Then there are the other days…the ones where I don’t “Got This!”  I have days in which I can write with such purpose, intent, and directed passion, that I think God is really working in me.  Then on the other days, it feels as if nothing is coming out right and I struggle with how others may perceive my writing as perhaps, very chaotic, fragmented, and pointless. 

I have days where I feel better than I think I did in my 20’s, and yes, on the other days, my IBS, Fibromyalgia, and bone and arthritis pain leave me bedridden for days, which leaves both of my frenemies plenty of time to gather everyone for my Over thinkers Anonymous group, freeing me up to practice my gift of feelsorryformyselfery.  I laugh at myself for thinking that just because I walk with God, I am anywhere near being sufficient enough to always see and walk with Gods Perspective. 

He reminds me that He is God, and I am not!  I am human…with a soul, a heart, and a physical body.  While my soul is fully camped within the shadow of my Almighty father, my earthly physical body resides in the real world, and my emotions are right in the middle of it all.  Growing older really is not for the faint hearted.  All of the years of my spiritual journey, my body has followed, taking a lot of abuse along the way of my learning and growing. 

Its like there is this place deep within me that is a fountain of Gods love for me, keeping my soul nourished and refreshed.  My emotions love this place, and come here often to load up with all the gifts, taking them with excitement to my physical side to share. 

Sometimes, though, my spiritual side forgets to equip my emotional side with the tenderness with which to share said nourishment.  I become irritated at my physical self for the lack of commitment to grow and get stronger with the rest of me. 

I am discovering that while I have been growing stronger in mind and spirit, I have been a bit rough on my physical body.  I should really be honest in saying that I am very hard on myself physically.  I get up and push myself every day, becoming impatient with myself, and God, at my body not keeping up with my spirit.  I realize that I have been allowing God to heal and strengthen my soul and repair emotional issues, but I have been unrelenting in what I expect from myself physically.  You know what I think God says to me about this?  “Grace, child”. 

What does this mean, you might be wondering, well, what about “Cut yourself some slack”.  Here is a really good one… “learn to love yourself the way I love you”.  I have always laughed at the idea of self-care.  It makes me automatically think of spa visits, beer gardens, and all those pics of what someone ate at some gps location on our smart phones.

I do not even own a vacuum cleaner, let alone have a bathtub for the spa experience, lol.  For me the self-care has been nutrition for my frenemy IBS, exercise and vitamins for my frenemy Fibro, and trying to exist through all of the spinal and arthritis pain, as I have moved away from modern medicines.  In order to manage these things without a doctor’s care requires a lot of self-discipline. 

And this is how I arrived at one of the “other days” today.    I got going really good with all of my checks and balances in place, and then I got a bit lax, as I sometimes do.  Long story short, between the temp change, dehydration from sweating, and not paying attention to what I ate, I have landed myself in what I refer to as a partial shutdown.  This is not the first time and probably won’t be the last time I am forced into self-care time.  This time, however, I decided to learn how to not be so unforgiving of my body, but instead, try to lovingly bring myself back online without dragging my husband through another hospital adventure.  Instead of allowing panic to overtake me, when my numbers are all off like this, I have opted to forgive myself for not paying enough attention, and put on my HR hat, in order to practice some serious conflict resolution with my frenemies.

Funny thing, though, out of all of what I wrote down here, I think maybe God simply wanted to tell me that I try way to hard, a lot, and all He actually asks of me is simply to Believe in Him, and walk forward.  If I rest in His shadow, it is not I that needs to move obstacles in our path, but my Father.  He is a big God!