Seven, I'm Still Counting

It's clear from the titles and content of the posts I just found in Drafts that writing in this space is an important longing for me.  Eight years and more have passed since I started this blog, and I've neglected it more than not.  I can say without exaggerating that there would be a book or even books of material here if I had a found a way to capture all the posts I've composed in my head.  

Anyway, sorry to be so meta.  

Marking today the seven month anniversary of our move to Tokyo.  Life is starting to pick up speed.  A sign that what we're doing feels more like life is coming from death.  Death sounds dramatic, but that's how I feel about the loss of our former life.  Though we wanted to come here, still, leaving all God gave us in the (to my thinking) unlikely location of Skokie, Illinois was a death.  I've joked to new friends that I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the experience of jolting from there to here in the space of four weeks.  Perhaps I do or not but what's real is the mourning.  It's in the back of my heart and I've tried ignoring it and shoving it down and putting other things in front of it but the truth is I'm sad.  

I don't usually accept sadness as a permissible state for me.  It's one of those OK for you because you should feel your feelings, but not for me because being sad feels like hard work.  Even after losing my babies, every time was a fresh turning of sad soil but I was quick to tamp it down and try to move on.  

So sitting in sadness seems like, in my usual estimation of myself, "not really my thing," but this time I am trying.  What's changed?  Other than everything....

 "Our suffering, in my definition, is whenever we are not in control. It is our opposition to the moment, our inner resistance that says, “I don’t want it to be this way.” Since the ego is always trying to control reality, it is invariably suffering, irritated, or unhappy, because reality is never exactly what we want. Isn’t that true?" --Richard Rohr

The truth about life is this: it's a miracle that God has bestowed it on me and allows it to continue now and now and now and now.  I'm still here!  He's still giving me breath!  And His grace and generosity are so breath-taking, He has also given me parents, sister, husband, children, sustenance, shelter, friendship, salvation.  So.  I expect and accept some low-grade sadness in my inner being for some time to come, but, I also hope and anticipate that sadness will bring joy, just as that Death of my Former Life is bringing Life to Here and Now.  

Kids doing dishes.  This could be a source of joy, for sure!  Must UP my organization so I can actually have them do it (they can't wash when all the clean dishes from the time before are in their way....).