I linger in the doorway
Of alarm clock screaming monsters calling my name
Let me stay
Where the wind will whisper to me
Where the raindrops as they’re falling tell a storyIn my field of paper flowers
And candy clouds of lullaby
I lie inside myself for hours
And watch my purple sky fly over meDon’t say I’m out of touch
With this rampant chaos, your reality
I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge
The nightmare I built my own world to escape- Evanescence- Imaginary
Today I feel exhausted. Four situations in my life have me stressed, three have me worried, two have me fearful. In one of the groups I’m in a mother who has lost a child says it’s one of those days when she just wants to give up. She’s not suicidal, just wishes she didn’t have to deal with this anymore. Tonight, in the group I’m in we’re talking about letting go of control of life and accepting what is. Someone says “Well, I’m sure those of in this room don’t have trouble with this anymore. Let’s try to recall what that felt like.” I say “Hold on there, missy. Let’s not assume we’re all past that, maybe for some of us it’s not a matter of remembering.” (paraphrasing here).
The idea that everything is in divine order is a new concept to me. I keep coming across it and I want so badly to believe it. It’s easy to believe when things are going well. It’s difficult to believe when things are challenging. I’m trying to accept it. I’m working on my analogies. Life is like a tapestry and when we’re in it, we’re looking at the backside. It’s a mess of threads all mixed up and seemingly forming no pattern, but when we turn it over, we see the beauty that’s been there all along (this is my favorite).
We get home and Tywana and I watch a little TV while I piddle around on Facebook. I see there is a message on our Facebook page from a customer. The message is simply “The website isn’t working.” That’s all I need to trigger the fear. Orders were slow over the weekend and practically non-existent today. I had to resist the temptation to call my marketing people and my developers who are in the process of fixing the known problems and say “When are you going to get this done?”. I start thinking “What’s wrong now? What can I do? It’s 10 o’clock at night. What if this can’t be fixed? How will we live?” All of those things come flooding in just over an hour after we left our meeting on how to live without all these fears and worries. I jump on the website and submit a test order. It goes through fine. There’s nothing I can do right now. So, i say to myself, “Let it go. We’ll see what it’s like in the morning.” and I head off to bed.
The good news is I can usually set this all down and sleep. I am pretty good at assessing what can be done about each situation right now, in this moment. If the answer is nothing, I set it aside and say I’ll pick it up when I can do something. I close my eyes and feel the darkness around me, comforting me. I feel the comfort of the sheets against my skin and I being to drift. I’ve come to be aware of that moment between being awake and being asleep that the burdens fall away. As I go down (or up) through various states of consciousness, I feel at peace, I have no worries, no concerns, no fears. I feel at Home. This is usually the moment when Tywana nudges me and says “Brian, you’re snoring.” and I reply “I’m not even asleep.” Tonight, I get the nudge from her. I don’t reply. I just roll over and reset, trying to get back to that place. I like to hang out there. I get impressions I can’t even put into words, but they bring peace. In spite of my best efforts though, they’re fleeing moments, caught out of the corner of my eye. I cannot explain, you would not understand. This is not how I am. Then, I am asleep. If I’m lucky, I’ll hit that state again in the morning on the way back to this world where I pick up the problems again and see what I can do about each of them.
The song lyrics are from Evanscence’s “Imaginary” which I wasn’t thinking about when I composed this blog, but it came up on my walk this morning and the lyrics perfectly reflected that feeling I have about sleep. Sleep, I think brings me closer to Home, an escape from this “reality”. More and more, I think this is the imaginary world though.
p.s.- after my walk, I tackle the problem that caused our store to not get any orders. It was an easy fix. We’re back in business.
