Pushed to Move

 A month or so ago I wrote about feeling nudges on my heart. I knew something was needing to change and I needed to do it.

Well, I have made those changes.

The 22nd of December I worked my last day at the Hyundai dealership where I had been doing three jobs: warranty administrator, cashier's office manager, administrative assistant to the service manager. I was there for 2.5 years.  I inherited a hot mess when I got into that place.  I left them an organized, cross-trained, competent team with expectations and goals set in place for them as a whole that maximizes the work we do to help the service department, and the dealership as a whole. I feel like the work I was there to do was done and I felt I was ready for a change.

Sadly, the timing wasn't exactly of my own choosing.  Coming off a three months past a positive Covid-19 test, I was still easily fatigued.  I couldn't get enough rest. I didn't have the energy to do much of anything else but get through the day at work, and then kept us clean and clothed and fed at home. I knew that was the catalyst to make the change. I had only thought I'd have another year or so to make that change.  The need I had to make adjustments and opportunities to recover made that change needed now, not later.

So the 23rd, I packed up my clothes and the handful of other things I knew I needed immediately and hit the road south. Hubz had already gone south on the Saturday before, so he was there already. Driving down alone was a release, a "pause" in my consciousness, and chance to recalibrate my thoughts. When I pulled in to the garage I felt a little lost, but had a feeling that things would soon settle and I was where I needed to be.

That doesn't mean that I didn't feel guilty to be able to leave my life and hit a reboot for myself. I have dear friends who, I know, were sad and were going to miss me.  I had guilt about that. I was disappointing them by making this change. I was disappointing my boss by choosing to leave a job he appreciated me for doing. I was disappointing members of our congregation that enjoy my Sunday school classes each month. I was disappointing myself for thinking I didn't deserve this move and these changes. But I sure felt guilty about disappointing people.

Somehow I will work out this undeserved guilt about disappointment others, but that will take so much time. But in the mean time I will get my health back into my own hands. I will work out some physical exercise, some sleep patterns, some mental stability. I know that this is what my life needs to be in this moment. I won't be in this moment forever, but I need to make the best use of my time here while I'm in it. I will know when the next thing needs to happen and I will be ready.

Nudges on My Heart

 Maybe it is me, but sometimes I feel something needs to end, change or shift.  Mostly, however, I avoid change and ignore those feelings.  Sometimes, though, there is no denying it.

I'm feeling nudges. Uncomfortable nudge, but nudges, undeniably.

There is change coming and a shift before me and I am not sure I am looking forward to all of what will be.  But I know it is due, and I need it in my life. Even if it isn't going to make me more comfortable.

As the time gets closer to this move, I know it will do me good.  But even with that knowledge I hesitate getting to it.

Luckily, I have a team supporting me and encouraging me and are looking forward even if I am hesitant to do it myself.

Stay tuned.  Things are beginning to happen. I might squirm a bit before it all happens, but I know it is coming, and I know that once I'm through it, it will be good.

Joy Cometh in the Morning, or Even Before, Sometimes

 OKAY.  I know that last entry was seriously depressing.  I was feeling all that, It was real and my feelings are valid.  HOWEVER, it is not the end.

I felt a little better just vomiting all that out on the page as I wrote, but I finished and felt even sadder, if that can be imagined. 

I needed something but I didn't know what.

So, I turned to YouTube, to watch a lesson from two of my favorite Sunday school lesson expounders. They are teachers who teach Seminary and Institute in the area where I live.  I usually watch their lesson each Sunday as part of my personal study. But this last week I missed it. 

I do not think this was a coincidence that I watched it today.  And here's why.

The subject of our study this week is the final 3 chapters of Mormon's record of his own people--not as an abridger of the great Book of Mormon, but as a historian and prophet in his own book,  Mormon's book. He has watched his people become extinct because of their wickedness, and eventually it is just himself and his son, Moroni left. He is leaving his "last lecture". (If you ever read Randy Pausch's little book you'll see the similarity.)

Anyway, the teachers I watch mentioned that in scripture there a little pattern of people who feel they have been left all alone, but in their stories we find that God never leaves us all alone--I was reminded that even Jesus was sent an angel in the garden of Gethsemane to strengthen Him.

In the Old Testament we can read about Elijah the prophet who had just spent the last three years alone and was even kept alive by ravens who brought him food. But in 1 Kings 19, we are told that Elijah basically feels so down-hearted--like I did just a few hours ago--that he essentially tells God that he's done and he might as well die like all his ancestors had done. Then he curls up under a juniper tree and falls asleep. An angel gently wakes him and tells him to arise and eat of the cake the angle provides and goes on to tell him that he just needs to eat and rest, that the journey is too great for him right now.

Sometimes you just need someone to let you rest, bring you cake and tell you it is going to be alright. Even if you are a mighty Old Testament prophet.

The teachers use this story to illustrate the similar message we find with Mormon telling us his final story. There are days that feel it's all just too much for us. 

I know that feeling all too well today. 

But this scripture story reminds me that God is in charge. Jesus promised great things, and that goes for me too. Just like He did for Elijah. Just as God the Father did for His Son, Jesus Christ. and just like They have promised even me.

Good things to come.  Not a bad idea to sink into as I settle my heart enough for bed tonight. I am grateful for the miracles that God brings to pass in my life.  Even when it is just a gentle nudge to remember that His miracles are unending and offered to every one of His children. Even me. Even tonight. Even in this world and this day, and this situation.

"...and great shall be the peace of they children."

Lingering

 I haven't written since Covid-19 struck me.  I was in bed for 2 weeks, and then I thought I was bouncing back.  But it was a lie.

I have never been so tired.  The tiredness is physical but it is emotional and mental too. I'm disappointed that this is a different recovery than I had in mind.  I like to think of myself as one who stays healthy until I'm not then bounces back as soon as the worst is over.  I haven't really been a sicky person and I haven't ever felt like I was a whiner. But this recovery has made me a whiner, for sure. I do not feel like myself and when you add the yo-yo societal situation the world is in, the political mud fight we've been living in, and the silly putty stretching and pulling and balling up of my psyche in the last eight months, I think I have officially lost it.

I don't like this feeling.

Today is the day after the election. There is no outright winner.  There is definitely no out right victory for America, so far as I can see. I AM worried about the world and the situation we've worked ourselves into. We worry about how people can thoughtlessly treat others with anger and hatred and not see the error in their ways.  I worry about neighbors who are so offended by someone's "differentness" that violence and degradation are somehow okay. I worry that the polarization in our country, our state, our county, our community has become a chasm that cannot be bridged.  I see immediate conflict in even my little neighborhood--new business versus neighbors --that has made an ugly turn.  My heart is hurting for all of this.

I really don't like that feeling.

I have dear friends who have so much hurt and mistrust and resentment within their families that it is manifesting in detrimental health disasters and physical pain and damage.  Distancing in situations like this is far harder than social distancing. I cannot find a solution for any of it. I hurt for my friends and I hurt for their families and I feel hurt I felt years ago from hurts in my own family that I thought I had purged from my life. 

I can't stand that feeling.

The world is a dumpster fire. and I'm standing by with no tools in my hands and no thoughts of how to find a tool to fix anything. I try to heal myself with positive thoughts and messages that I attempt to share on social media that I keep hoping helps something. But I can't see anything improving. I can't feel anything but is changing for the better. I can't see a way out.

I HATE that feeling.

What a depressing post this has become.  I feel so out of control of my own life.  Maybe everyone feels like that right now.  Maybe tomorrow the feeling will pass. Maybe it won't. I just keep going and imagining things will improve, but I don't know anymore.

But I have hope. It's fleeting but it fleets in and out. Maybe tomorrow the fleeting in will last longer than the out. That is what I am counting on.  Each day a little more hope.  Each day after that a little more.

Maybe that is all I need. Maybe that is all I can do. and Maybe that is a feeling I can live with right now.

POSITIVE

 I started with a headache, and achy joints last Saturday. Sheer exhaustion, like I have haven't ever felt before settled in and Sunday I added a sore throat to beat a strep screening. Monday I was tested for the coronavirus. Tuesday I spent the day in bed, half sleeping, half annoyed that I felt like hell. Wednesday the result showed I was POSITIVE for Covid-19.

So this week I have rest, drank more juice than I ever remember drinking, rested some more. I sat outside in the sunshine for limited periods.  I slept. I have felt little desire to eat. But Genius Golfer has brought me food and I did eat it, I guess I felt a little better with some blood sugar. Generally it has been a wasted week--not wasted for what I did, but wasted for knowing what day it is. Wasted from feeling even more annoyed that my boss thought it proper to instruct me to do paperwork at home. Wasted to one by one, each day this week, having my employees report that they too are testing positive for this virus. Wasted for thinking that I started this plague in my office.

Honestly, beyond the annoyance for being forced to slow down and take it east--which I have never been good at doing--I'm more annoyed that my work situation wanted to even take caring for myself in a way recommended by the county health department from me and insinuated that I should be able to work from home since I am "just sitting there anyway". Why can't we allow people the time needed to heal? What does the almighty dollar and American business theory that you work yourself sick have to do with anything like ethical business practice? Why does self care have to be diametrically opposed to being a good employee?  Why can't we actually take and use sick time when we need it?

As I told my parents this week, I think this week has fortified my resolve to really quit my job when I am ready--without worrying about hurting someone's feelings, or offending my boss.  Maybe that is what I needed to learn from this experience. It was a difficult lesson to learn, but a necessary one.

Demoralized, Devalued, Demolished

 This week.  Well, It was a month-long kinds of week. I have had weeks that I ended my work feeling tired, but this week I felt tired to the core.  I felt demoralized in my efforts to do my work, thanks to coworkers, and especially customers.  I felt broken in my desires to get up and go again. I was absolutely disintegrated.

This past Thursday night I came home after having worked the fourth day that was more than 9 hours.  I had taken direct verbal beatings that day from more customers than I have fingers on my hands.  I heard coworkers in my building essentially tell me, to my face, that me and my team were below their notice in our importance to the success of the business. I was directly, personally confronted with a recently-made-senior coworker that was supposed to be home quarantining after direct Covid exposure but felt he was more important in his new position to show up anyway, in his basketball shorts and t-shirts only to come in the tiny lunchroom we have been mandated to use and sat directly next to me while I had 5 minutes to eat my lunch away from my desk. Several sales-based coworkers continued to drag unmasked clients and  their families through our service area as though we did not need to be equally protected from the potential exposure. We have 8 coworkers who currently are actively fighting this virus at home.

Perhaps, it was the worst day of my working life.

I felt devalued. I felt taken advantage of in my position. I felt very Mother-Bear regarding my own employees in that moment. I felt there was no reason to get up and do it again Friday morning.  What was the point?

That evening, feeling sorry for myself and severely undervalued in my work-life, I spoke with the Hubz before going to bed. Genius Golfer listened and then thought a moment and then told me I need to quit feeling sorry for myself and get back to work. Now, I was ANGRY on top of all the other feelings that night. I felt hurt by my primary champion and partner. I went to bed with tear in my eyes and fists of clenched anger. His words stung.  I really wanted to just have him tell me how right I was and how I didn't need to be there if they didn't appreciate what I did each day. Instead he told me something I didn't expect and I didn't want to hear.

I slept poorly that night.  I was tossing and turning.  I woke up several times before my alarm went off at 5AM. I drug myself into the shower and into an acceptable enough dress and grooming result to drag myself to a job I was less than satisfied with on Friday.

The things I went home thinking and feeling Thursday night, didn't magically disappear Friday morning at 6:30AM when I got busy doing what I do each morning at work.  I didn't get different feedback from customers the next day. I still had coworkers that were thoughtless and careless in regards to precautions for Coronavirus. I still felt I was unable to pay my team what I think they are worth monetarily.  Nothing really changed. But I was there.  I still showed up.  I still gave 100+% of my attention, energy and focus that day. 

I was there because it was the right thing to do. It wasn't what I wanted to do, but I did it anyway.

Maybe just showing up is the antidote to demoralization, and devaluation, and demolition. Just get through it. Just show up. Just keep trying.  It isn't easy. But maybe because I did it on Friday after the Thursday I had just had, it will feel easier to do when I have another day like that.  I am certain I will have that day, but I hope my fortitude practiced this week, will make the effort next time a little bit easier.

How Big IS My Brave?

 We have some dear friends who, just this weekend, opened a little soda shop in a nearby town.  This is a franchise they bought into and plan on running it as a family.  We have been hearing about it almost since day one.  I have been intrigued.

We spoke with the franchise owners at our friend's soft open last night. They gave me directions to start the process, to at least get more information.

Could I own a little business myself? Could I run a business? Could I handle the stresses of getting something together to do this? It would definitely stretch me in ways I never have been before.  But I watched my parents run a successful business. I've managed small offices and departments. I know enough to either be dangerous or successful. I want to do something that will be small enough to manage and big enough to make us some retirement money.  I want to have opportunities to do things like cater a PTA Teacher's Conference at a local school, and give local high school kids a job in a good environment. I was something positive to be working toward when I get to St George.

This might be it. 

I Just Did A thing

I just hit "send" on an email to my Alma mater's alumni magazine. Each quarter they publish short first hand stories of former students on a particular theme.This edition requested submissions fro a theme of "students-ward stories".  Here's what I submitted:

Fall semester in the late 80s-early 90s was drawing to a close but before our ward broke up to go home for the Christmas break, we had one more Sunday to meet together. One more Sunday school lesson I had to prepare. But this was going to be the Christmas lesson. Everyone knew the Christmas story, so how could I make this very familiar story mean something more to my ward-mates?

Gathering inspiration from the likes of popular talk show divas of the day, Oprah and Sally Jessy Raphael, I went WAY out of my comfort zone and prepared a Christmas Lesson the likes of which this ward had never seen. I called on a dozen or so friends in the ward—family home evening brothers, roommates, and a few other good friends who probably just felt sorry for me and knew I needed some help. I asked each person to study the Christmas chapters in the scriptures and be prepared for questions posed as if to a specific participant in the story. I then prepared what I thought were thoughtfully angled questions to ask the Innkeeper, or a shepherd, or one of the angels, or Joseph or Mary.

I started our lesson with a question to each character that belonged in that story. What I imagined would be little lighthearted, fun, end-of-semester lesson turned sincere and spirit-filled series of testimonies of each of these ward members. Each took the assignment to heart.  Each bore testimony of Who Jesus is, how much He means to them, and their gratitude for Him. The Spirit bore powerful witness that Sunday to each of us there—participants and listeners alike-- of His birth, His life and His atoning sacrifice and what a wonder and blessing He is to us.

Thoughts like a Waterfall

It's been nearly 2 years since I posted anything on here, but that isn't because I haven't had anything I wanted to say.  Mostly it was just because I felt too stressed by work, worried about family, and discouraged by life in the real world to sit and write out my inner musings. But I am trying to change that.  I want to purge my mind of the things that I worry about , the topics the world keeps pounding into me and the stresses of a job I'm not in love with but coworkers I really enjoy.

The world is a crazy place.  We have been dealing with a global pandemic since March 13, 2020. Everywhere I have heard about those who are isolating, staying home to stay safe, and all the missing out of things.  I also heard of so many that were catching up, making things right at home, reconnecting as families, and rediscovering their divine relationships.  I envy that a bit.  My job was deemed "essential" and therefore nothing has really changed but my work life has only gotten busier, and more accommodating to our customers, more tasks assigned, and only the same old group to do it all. I feel I have missed out of the reconnecting with my soul that many people have experienced.  My soul is TIRED. My soul feels starved some days. My soul feels defeated.

My family is financially fine.  Everyone of our Core 4 Family were deemed "essential" in March.  But we were essential in three different locations. I'm grateful that things financially are OK, and I'm grateful that the kids' jobs were safe and they are healthy and doing just fine. But I have envious feelings toward those that could Skype and touch base each week or multiple times a week. Or even have everyone over on Sundays to have "at home church". When I'm not at work, I feel like I am treading water as fast as I can to keep my head above water.  My mind is on overdrive and my emotions are spent.

We haven't had congregational worship meetings since the end of February. I miss the people I see there, even neighbors that I would normally see in the neighbor hood, but everyone else is "bunkering down", it seems. I miss the communal worship and singing together hymns of praise and worship. I especially miss the regular and thorough study I did weekly as I prepared to teach Sunday School. Doing it at home to keep up with weekly reading assignments is a very different way to study the scriptures. I miss the effort-filled preparation and the in persona sharing face to face and heart to heart. I miss my class members who have always had a larger breadth and depth of knowledge and experience they would graciously share each week. I miss the interplay with the Spirit as we shared our testimonies of the Savior.

I'm discouraged by the rantings of the media and the political leaders who seem only motivated to scare people and create a frenzy of terror and anxiety. I feel like I want to drop off the face of social media, but there I have tried to post something positive and uplifting each day--for myself as well as for others. It isn't always genuine as I struggle to see the positive, but I do it anyway as a "fake it 'til you make it" syndrome. Here is where I really feel I cannot do much to help the larger world.  The professional media outlets from whom we have been able to learn unbiased information are gone. Now you tune in to hear what they want you to hear and then they ram it over and over down your throat. It is a world of confrontation and dissonance. It's uncomfortable and unsettling. But that is the choice we have. You can select hard right or hard left, and they will determine what you should know from their point of view. Gone are the days of unbiased journalism. Reporters all are working an angle and the networks just reinforce that angle all day long. It's exhausting.

Maybe someday things will be normal again. But I don't think that way things were in January will ever be considered normal.  Whatever we end up with after this craziness will be the new normal, until the next big thing comes along.

I just want things to be simple and good and happy and right. I do not think they will be ever again. Or at least not until Jesus comes back.  I vote for that. I vote for Jesus to come, and the sooner the better.