Two Journeys and the Bridge Between Them

One of the reasons why I feel so behind or backlogged when I've been out of touch is that there's not just one batch of stories to tell. Sure, I was away for a week working on the documentary project, and I came home to sick children and caught what they had and we spent a week together on the couch. And then we squeezed in a birthday celebration before the next round of illness hit and then there was a super storm and we were all home another week. There were a couple close calls and so many dishes to wash. 

This journey itself holds plenty of stories, its portion and then some of emotions. It could criss-cross maps with its starting and ending points. 

But that's just the outer journey. While all of that was happening on the outside, there was another journey happening on the inside. There were books read and provoking films watched, there were conversations to both soothe and aggravate. There was an invisible terrain to navigate, paradigms and expectations, courage and discernment, trust and grace.

I'm not sure exactly what to say when people ask how I am or how it's going and there is so much, inside and outside. Often I say very little, especially while it's all still swirling. Maybe there's a way to tease out the contained moments and smaller episodes, to take one's time telling them and resist the pressure to live blog one's life.

What I'm learning most of all is this: my body is the bridge between the two journeys I am concurrently traveling. It is both bridge and barometer. On Monday I can wake up with ideas of all kinds of things I 'should' do, and then Tuesday I can feel tight and tense and headachy and it's a reminder that I physically can't swing living inside of external expectations at the cost of internal calling. All those things I 'should' do undergo fierce examination and are either discarded or have to take another form.

I wish I could say it comes naturally just to trust my body barometer, but the truth is it takes a lot of encouragement and validation--especially when what it's telling me is to simplify and dial down the outer production to hold space for all that is happening, unseen, in the interior. I have to send my inner Performance Junkie packing.

There will likely be more to say about this later, but I just wanted to offer what I have right now--these thoughts trying to take shape in a mess of words before I tend to my body and what it needs from this day.