HOP, POP, AND DROP, OR BE!
September 28, 2017
Woohooie! Am I living outside the box, or what? It’s three days and a few hours before the end of September, and here I am, writing this month’s Doodle. What has come over me? you may ask. (And for those of you who care, I finally looked up how to punctuate a sentence with a question posed within it, and that’s how it’s done. I hope I can remember that the next time this happens.) Before answering your thoughtful inquiry, I must first let the dog in, since she is staring at me through the sunroom door and will soon jump up on a window if I don’t hurry to let her in. If that happens, then I must yell at her while shaking my finger and then wait an appropriate amount of time before going to the door to let her in, or she will not know that she shouldn’t jump on the window. These are direct orders from my dearly beloved, although one would think that by this time, after living with us for sixteen months, Loosie would have learned this lesson by now, and I wouldn’t need to worry about her climbing on the windows if I don’t HOP up to let her in within twenty seconds. This is not the case, however. Loosie means business when she wants in, especially at supper time, and thus, seems not to care about the yelling and finger wagging.
It is now four hours later. What happened? you may ask. Life happened, if you must know, plus laziness. Really, you’re getting a bit nosy, don’t you think? I hadn’t answered your first question, before you asked another! And in order to be true to my word, I will answer that first question. I decided to write my Doodle today because I will be celebrating my oldest daughter’s birthday on the last day of the month and preparing for it on the day before that, which leaves only today and tomorrow to write this, so in order to save myself some stress tomorrow, I’m doing it today. Plus this will count as today’s something I’ve written. Unfortunately, I have not yet succeeded in writing something everyday if it kills me, which is another reason to write this Doodle today. I can count this as a day I met my writing goal! But in my concentrated effort to meet that goal, I totally forgot to meet the “practice piano every day” goal. And I was getting so good at Pop Goes the Weasel! Tomorrow, if I remember, I will have to start all over trying to get that Pop to POP correctly. (I’m trying to teach myself from my daughters’ lesson books.)
As for learning to make some kind of visual art, it took me only two days of trying to draw a cone and a cube, according to my “Learn to Draw” book, to come to the conclusion that I don’t think I have the wherewithal to keep striving in that arena. I may take up painting by number instead. Or painting abstract creations that only I will understand. Or I might try another Bob Ross lesson. He’s so nice about all those happy mistakes.
One positive I can say about my experiment in retirement so far is this: My house is cleaner than it has been in years! I’ve been following my housework schedule fairly well and I’m still exercising every day that my knees aren’t rebelling too badly. And I have tons of food frozen in little containers. It’s the creative endeavors that I have been longing to spend extra time on for years that seem to be tripping me up. Whyyyyyy?
Someone please tell me what is wrong with me! Maybe it’s the fear of failure. Maybe I don’t actually want to be more than a household automaton. That’s easy. Just do those chores and DROP into a heap on the couch! I hope that’s not my problem.
Here’s the deal–God gave me the word MORE this year for a reason. MORE is NOW! In March I realized that the MORE I had been longing for was the positive side of the LESS I had been wanting for years. (Less noise and busyness, more peace and contemplation.) And when my knees started acting up this spring, I had no choice but to take the road to LESS work, which has led me to MORE time to fill with those less hectic pursuits. Just as 2 Corinthians 12:9 discusses, my literal weakness is leading me into a greater realization of God’s power within me, a power that is more evident because of that weakness. So maybe I need to simply BE for a while and let the MORE evolve, rather than doing my normal thing of setting goals and planning every moment to death (if it kills me).
When this happens, everyone will know it’s God’s power doing it, because it certainly won’t be Debbie! Jesus, please help me to not get in the way of Your work within me!
*I forgot to post this after I wrote it last night, so there! Take that Planning and Goaling!