living on both ends - an exploration of best and worst

developing kindness as a spiritual discipline

WORST- Kindness is not an attribute that comes naturally to me. Protecting of the weak? Yes. Compassion to those who struggle? Check. Moving from a place of kindness? Not at all. Slowly, let me add an adjective there, very slowly I am trying to develop an innate sense of kindness. I tend to move more from an innate sense of judgment and I am learning that judgment and kindness are not good friends.

The edge of the prophetic, for me, needs to be tempered with kindness. L gets kindness. I know very few people who do.

Magical thinking, catastrophizing, and avarice

BEST- Although I hate to look it or admit it even to myself, there is a part of me these days that wonders if this is how an addict feels at times. Thursday, after a prolonged fight with Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield, my doctor will have the biologic drug, Cimzia, in stock. The drug that has been helping me to feel almost normal again. And when I am oh so tired right now, or when I feel the presence of tenderness or pain in my jaw as I chew, in my ankle as I move down the stairs, in my hands as I type, or in my shoulders as I stretch for the coffee can in the kitchen cupboards top shelf, I can hear myself saying "Hold on to Thursday, it will all better on Thursday."

I've also been thinking a lot about the difference between magical thinking and solid hope. The further outside of the Christian bubble I get, the more I am saddened and dismayed at the level of magical thinking that I indulged in under the guise of faith. And along with that awareness is the solid reality of who much of my life I have catastrophized events and happenings that were not at the level of catastrophe at all. A little inventory of reality seems to be leading to a little perspective.

And that leads me to thinking of the verse 2 Corinthians 10:5 – bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. What if it was about bringing every thought captive to reality, to the truth?

Yesterday, I felt that old fear start to rise up in me - what if the house doesn't sell? What if the 16 year old can't make the transition to his new school in a new city? What if because of the delay in treatment Cimzia has lost some efficacy? What if my husband wakes up one morning and realized he is married to a 48 year old with a chronic illness? What if? What if? What if?. It is a form of avarice, indulging in that kind of worry about the future. And then how quickly I can move to the self-protective magical thinking that is also not based on reality, but a usurious twisting of the goodness of God around to keep me from feeling bad.

So today I sit in the reality – for today it is enough. Everything I live is way more than enough.