Disorganized

Isn’t it strange how one day you can have so much clarity, and the next you are wondering if you have any of it right? My world has been upside down for almost a month now, and inside out for a couple of weeks. It has been an interesting course of events, this past month. It finally snowed here. I read on the news the other day that the rest of our state got 15 inches last week, but it skirted right around us. I live in the foothills of the mountains in Montana and it has snowed three…yes three times this year. What is going on? Regardless, we got a bunch of snow yesterday. Hubby worked hard plowing for 19 of the last 24 hours, and is now trying to get in a snooze before our valentines date at the church tonight. Poor guy is beat!

I have had so many strange turns of events the last few weeks, and most of them jive with everything I perceived happening around me, with little exceptions. Hubby is looking down a path that, should he follow, will change everything about the location I was hoping was the plan for the rescue ranch. He may have an opportunity to grow in his career, and within a certain reasonable limit, I completely support him doing whatever he feels called to do with his career. I also have my mind open to the idea the God will take me wherever I am supposed to be, and I just have to trust Him, so if hubby’s job takes him elsewhere, then I guess I am meant to do the rescue ranch elsewhere. All my adult life I have felt called to a place just a few hours North of here, and I am very open to the possibility that I am supposed to take the rescue ranch up there… If hubby is transferred, I would be forced to conclude that this is the case.

My world has been overwhelming. I allude to the Highly Sensitive Personality type often, and today, this factor comes into play in my life again. With a guest on my couch, and his crazy dog to boot, life has been overwhelming. As a highly sensitive person, I require a great deal of “down” time, or “recovery” time. It is exhausting to me to be around constant noise and stimulation. I am a person who can happily sit in a candlelit room and do nothing at all for long periods of time…

I have a friend in need, who does not understand what comfortable silence is. One who cannot sit alone for five minutes without some kind of stimulation, even if it is a book or tv. I have never seen him just be still. Our world’s are foreign to each other, and it makes me realize how much my husband and I really do have in common. We have dogs. We are pack people. My husband and I joke about how much you appreciate the pack members you chose when a stray shows up…

I never realized how much my husband and I have in common until this friend showed up, and took for granted things that neither my husband, nor I, would ever consider as guests in anyone’s home. I realized in little behaviors, how similar hubby and I are as far as things like attention to detail, self direction, common sense and logic. I am so very thankful that my hubby needs quiet time as badly as I do. He is not a Highly Sensitive person, but he does get overwhelmed fairly easily when he gets no relax time.

I spent the last week getting more and more overwhelmed. I finally had a complete breakdown a few days ago, after a series of uncomfortable events, and sat down and wrote about fourteen pages of prayer, asking for guidance and wisdom in my situation. I asked for patience and understanding from hubby while I presented my issues, and I just put it out there for Him, raw. I slept on it, got up in am, waited till hubby was ready, and brought it up through tears. Hubby was patient, understanding, and not at all defensive. He addressed the issue immediately. Unfortunately, the issue came up again, and I had to address it myself. I had really hoped that our guest would respect my husband, but he did not, and I had to confront him. I hate confrontation. I am not good at it, but it worked, nonetheless. My issues are resolved, I feel like my home is a home again, and that is big considering last week I felt like it was the evils ones dormitory! I started my conversation with my hubby by telling him that I was trying to glorify God, and I felt like we were living in a dark cloud of sin, and that God was not at all happy with the goings on in this home, and that we would not get to move forward while we were living this way. That got his attention and he immediately handled it. I feel like I have a Christian home again, and that praying for guidance and approaching it the way I did really helped to avoid an argument. I am so thankful that my husband wants to glorify God as much as I do. That makes things much easier.

Meanwhile, there is so much going on, and so many thoughts in my brain about what I should be doing, where my goals are, what I need to be doing, what I want to be doing, and just little ideas about life, that I cannot seem to get into that place where I have a grip on it all. I used to make a list or two every night before bed. I have not been able to bring myself to do that in almost three weeks. I just can’t seem to get focused, and I am not sure what to do about it. I used to have a stretching routine that I did when I was overwhelmed or just needed quiet. I have not done it since I moved into this house almost three years ago. I think about it once in a while, but I just never get around to it. I think it would help me greatly to reinstate that habit in my life. I feel like we are close to a place where we get to move forward on our path, and I really have the strangest desire to just start packing up my stuff and making sure I am all sorted out and ready to go when it is time. I know that is silly. Buying a house takes months, and I will have plenty of time to pack and get ready and sorted when we make that leap, so why the sudden desire to start packing. Maybe it is because I am picturing it wrong? I assumed when we moved, we could take as long as we wanted to move our stuff from this home to out next, as it is not rented and there is no real hurry for us to get out. I always picture moving being a two or three week event of taking things as we were ready for them at a nice leisurely pace. Who am I kidding? I have moved a lot and never has it been peaceful, relaxing, or leisurely. I don’t know why this strange urge. Maybe it is just because I need to do some compartmentalizing and that seems to be an effective way. I had a high school English teacher once, who had us write our name on the middle of a piece of paper, draw a circle around it, and the draw lines to smaller circles projecting out from the center, descriptive words and phrases about the topic. I feel like I want to do a huge chart like that. I have a lot of separate issues that I would like to do that with, but they all tie back to one or two main jumping off places. I have tried a couple of times, but it is just too much, I can’t fit it all on one piece of paper. Maybe a notebook, full of pages of those diagrams? I started a notebook of lists, but I don’t know where I have placed it. There was even a list of lists I want to make in that notebook. What a weirdo!

Normally, this time of year, I would be obsessing impatiently about my garden. For some reason, this year, I have no desire or drive to even think about it. I am not sure if it is because I am still waiting for winter to happen, or if it is because I don’t feel like I can get a grip on my indoor projects this year, much less planning outdoor ones. This winter has been weird. We have all been sick more than normal, there has been no snow, life has been turned upside down and inside out. I feel like I have completely lost crafting time as part of my routine, and I have not done most of the things that I enjoy doing all winter long. I haven’t even flipped the power switch on my sewing machine. I have dug through the patterns, gotten distracted and walked away. So far very little baking or cooking, and well, I just really don’t know what happened to this season. I got a rough draft of my business plan kinda written, and well, as far as I can tell, that is about it. I guess I spent a good portion of November and December very ill, and got nothing done those two months, but still, what happened to this winter? Oh, I also pulled off my first fundraiser, successfully, so I guess I should give myself some credit, but I feel all outta sorts, wondering how to organize the mess of thoughts in my head.

Now that you have wasted a good portion of your day reading through the very mundane thoughts in my head, I hope that you have a lovely afternoon, and hopefully I will have something more profound next time! God bless…