Upcoming

The colors I chose for the inside of my house are Kestrel White and Sanderling.  Sanderling?  That's a bird, but to me it's now a color. Kestrel?  Also a bird. Also a color, though not sure where the white comes from.  I think it's safe to say that I prefer winged tones



Having the interior of my house painted is a big undertaking, huge really, enormous.  Everything has to come off the walls, every fragile thing has to be removed from the shelves, the buffet, the china cabinet, the drop-leaf tables in the entryway and hallway.  All the vases, all the books, the silver framed photos of famiy on the night stands. All of that has to be boxed and all of those boxes have to go somewhere, somewhere out of the way.  Boxes and boxes of  the carefully wrapped treasures, paintings and photographs of my life are now stacked one upon another in a dark storage unit in a building sitting on the frontage road of an Interstate stretching from Florida to California. Cars and trucks pass by and on immune to the building, to that dark stall filled floor to ceiling with pieces of my life.

Wrapping and taping, watching my walls go bare, drab, revealing the dirty ghost of something that once hung there... packing and marking and crying.  Crying?  Yes, crying.  This is the beginning of a change I seek, want, yet fear a little bit. Every thing is apart and that foolish sense of control, it too is gone. Even when I know that control is never mine, but His.  I feel insecure with the changes but laugh at the idea that I have control or that it could be taken from me through shifting my belongings from one place to another.

This is the beginning of a change that will take time, will move me from here to an apartment, to the curb as I watch shovels dig and walls rise.  This is a time of working towards a goal, a happy and grand idea, and yet discomfort takes residence. 



I feel like this, this picture of Cheyenne running up the stairs.  The stairs and her movement are blurred.  You know where she's going, and so do I.  So does she.  Still, one of her feet is off the ground and the other three are on different steps.  If she stopped right there, as is, she would tumble.  Her forward movement is all that keeps her safe, is critical to her goal of reaching the top of the stairs.  That's life.  Onward, moving, different steps in the climbing, counting on the movement connecting to the destination.  Even if we lose sight of it, while moving moving moving towards our goal, we know when we are on the right path, we know that only when we are moving do we have true balance.

This morning, I will have surgery on my broken fibula.  It's not major surgery, but it is surgery.  And this surgery will put me out of my house for three weeks, conveniently while it's being painted, and in the homes of good friends who have offered to take care of me, to take care of Cheyenne.  It puts me on crutches for four weeks and unable to drive for two.  Inconvenience, that is all, because it will ultimately provide support to my ankle and allow me to heal, to walk, to run.  How often we take for granted the ability to move freely through our days, to walk, to run at will.  This surgery reminds me to be thankful for what I've taken for granted in the past.

So much change at once -- change in body and home -- makes me a bit nervous, a bit undone, even when the majority of it is by choice. This morning I remember my father's words Be brave and I take a deep breath, look out on this path before me and say I will be brave, I will be okay.  Today is his birthday.  Today, I remember his kind voice and I take his sage advice.  Today, I bravely step out to change.