Tuesday, Tuesday...

I am loving my job right now. My kids are so dang funny, and we've just started reading Romeo and Juliet, which I usually teach between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I gotta say, I think I prefer finishing the year with it. So far, it has been delightful. My mood lifts considerably when I am teaching something I truly love, so here I am, finishing my year with my fave. Pretty smart way to do it, I think.

The weather was a tease today - cold in the morning, and I grudgingly wore a coat, but I slung my coat over my arm as I left school today. It was beautiful, and I opened the moon roof, and cranked up the radio, and wore my sunglasses, and loved the sunshine warming my car. I am really hoping it sticks around this time, this elusive sunshine. I have missed it sorely these dreary winter months, and believe like never before in the power the weather can have over our moods. Not just me - lots of people I know have battled the clouds of this winter. It's been a long few months.

This weekend I am doing a retreat with a group of women out in the country, and it's a retreat that I've been invited to several times over the last couple of years. I guess it happens a few times a year, and up until now, I've always had a reason not to go. But there was a space that opened up for this one, and I took it. I'm really in a weird place right now of contentment with all the surface things, but discontent with the deep-down. I am much more agreeable at work lately, and I find joy in things I used to fear/dread, like social engagements. But the church retreat a couple of weekends ago kind of awakened me to the reality of my "blah-ness" right now about what I call "the big stuff." I am a functioning, reasonably happy person right now, loving my friends, my work, my home, working on some personal goals... and yes, journaling every day to the big guy upstairs. But... what are we really talking about? I mean, I think there is a big elephant in the room called "disappointment" that he and I are not really addressing. Why? Because I'm functioning, enjoying many things in my day, thankful for an awful lot of stuff. But there is still that niggling little voice of sadness that pipes up every now and again, and that little voice, I fear, is going to have her say this weekend. I think it's set up to be the sort of weekend where you let those voices have their say.

I'm a little wary of having my voices shut down. I mean, that little voice needs to be dealt with, because it says some pretty shitty things sometimes. But there is that part of me that is protective of it/her, because after all, she is a part of me. That doesn't mean she necessarily gets to stick around or have birthday parties thrown for her, but - I don't want her trashed. I don't want to be manipulated. I don't want to be judged to be some "way" that I'm not. So... I step into it with trepidation and hope, not so much because of the people who will be there, but because I feel like it could be the time for God to speak a fresh Truth to me and give me a new voice that outshouts the other. I have hope that I've been led into this weekend for purposes beyond my own plans, and my hope is those purposes will be for ultimate good for my heart, for my life.

Guess I'll be filling you in on that on the other side. If I don't write again before then...