(That's Gingersnap whispering sweet nothings to Mr. Stinky, who is thankfully off to his next batch of girlfriends)Spring was great! Spring was wonderful. Spring is over and now it is fall. It is cold and windy and gray and cold. And the newly melted snow which is collecting in huge sloughs all over our yard (and in my garden) is now nicely rippled ice that the Canada Geese are walking on probably feeling disgusted with their rush to get here.
I have been starting my horse program to get all three up to speed and feel in control of each very distinct horsey personality. It has been interesting so far to concentrate on putting a sustained and thought through amount of time into these animals. I am constantly discovering things about myself that are useful but humbling. For instance, I read all the wrong books as a child. The Black Stallion series comes to mind. What a load of horse patooey. These formative novels gave my willing young mind the idea that horses like to collaborate and also that they are capable of executive functioning. That means they can think. As a matter of fact, horses really don't like to think. They like to eat. And avoid work. Thus the rider is a necessary part of the equation. I am finally realizing that asking a horse to think is unfair and puts a huge strain on its trust of you as a leader because thinking is the very last thing they want to do on a sunny day. If they can't stand and doze and eat all day, they would rather be following crisp, clear instructions that are achievable and show that you are doing most of the thinking for them. This makes sense when put together with horse behaviour that I have experienced for 20 years. It sounds very obvious to horse people, probably, but if you grew up on the Black Stallion this is very shocking.
So I am telling my horses that from now on, I promise to be a good dictator. I will tell them exactly what to do and when to do it and leave decisions as to whether the oncoming semi or the fluttering garbage bag or the mattress dumped beside the train tracks not to them but to me. And if I decide that it is a non-issue, then it is a non-issue and we don't need to pay attention to it at all. This is really a huge leap for me. It goes to my entire relational style which is always wanting to collaborate and get consensus and have everyone reach the finish line at exactly the same time and could we all understand each other please. No wonder I keep burning out!
Boundaries. I gotta say, everyone in my entire life has mentioned that I may have some issues with boundaries and I have always thought, yeah, whatever. I have plenty of fences. Who needs more? But the issue is not the amount of fences, but how clear and consistent one is with them. This is finally making sense to me. Again, I am a little slow on the uptake, probably having read all the wrong people books as well. I want to think that everyone is basically decent. That a deal posted in the paper is probably less than the item is worth and so it wouldn't hurt to offer the guy a bit more for the bike rather than less. I think that if I extend some emotional courtesies than other people will unfailingly sense this and extend the same in return. It is hard to believe that other people are not always paying attention to the same nonverbal cues that I am, though.
I have, in the past, very occasionally lost my temper. This has always been when someone I thought I was excruciatingly clear with went over a line and did something unforgivably rude to me. I generally feel that such lines are painted with glowing neon paint on the sands of relational time. However, I wonder if they are. I know that sometimes people are unforgivably rude, but perhaps I should extend the benefit of the doubt somewhat farther and ask myself how clear I really am about lines in the sand. Just because I think they glow in the dark doesn't mean my horses understand them. Maybe some other people don't either. I might need to Spell It Out occasionally before completely losing it. I hasten to say that my completely losing it is not usually expressed very violently although I have been known to write a scathing email or two.
Anyway, this is all very good for character. I am trying to figure out who I am as a midlife non-crisis crisis. I have time this year and it is something to not have unbelievable time pressures to use as excuses for not being myself. Who myself is is somewhat murky and I think it is because I have been pretty foggy with the boundaries and therefore have been letting other people define me by taking whatever is left when everyone else is done with what I have to give. That's not a very good description of living life but I suspect it is true. Probably for other women too. This is after all the model of "servanthood" that I grew up with in the evangelical community. There are probably hundreds of songs that tend to glorify that sort of laziness. Because I think it is lazy if I let other people live my life for me. It's like winning the lottery and immediately giving it all away because you can't deal with all those choices.
This is not to say that the original concept of servanthood as portrayed by Jesus is bad. I don't think it is. However I think there are some essential pieces that aren't emphasized perhaps that could be. Stewardship of resources is generally more of a male concept, in my memory (Mennonites do have quite a male/female division of roles, I must say and I think this is more pervasive than we probably think). Anyway, at this point, as a woman, boundaries are good. Being clear to the point of subjective rudeness is probably kinder than not. Using my life intelligently towards goals that are not made by others is not only okay, but essential. Not giving away all my resources to the first person who asks for them each morning is also a responsible way to live. Amazing.
So when I get that far in my thinking (as I am picking up horses' hooves and cleaning them out and brushing out huge mats of winter hair), the next logical question is: what are my resources? How much do I have to work with, considering that I can consider it as "mine" and not belonging to the needy world out there? Turns out, not very much. I am also humbled to find out that I need, on average, 9 hours of sleep a night. Any less and I start to go into sleep debt, which I can do for a while but not forever. It will catch up with me. Nine hours a night!!! What a colossal waste of time! Can you believe in evolution at all when an organism is made that inefficiently? Sigh. So that's one thing to consider.
Second, I have been keeping minute detailed accounts of all our household spending for the last 4 months and my general foggy ideas as to how much we need for, say, gas or groceries or even miscellaneous birthday presents, are somewhat understated. Maybe by half. So that's why we are constantly feeling like the end of the month is farther away than it should be on a budget. Yech. Realistically, I don't think we are overspending on any particular category. Realistically, we eat a lot. So money is not in abundance and mostly spoken for the moment it arrives by any means into our bank accounts.
Thirdly, space. Huh. Well, the yard is soon going to be half-submerged and this may go up or down as the summer progresses, leaving us with fewer options for expansion of living and storage spaces (including for various animals). Furthermore, our house is exactly the right size for 5 individuals and the minute more are added it becomes what you would call cozy. No basement is not a plus when many kids are involved. Again, not at all undo-able, but a factor in terms of planning out lifestyle.
Fourth, energy. Well, we all know that I am one of those people who others think of as "energetic" because I am when I am with other people, but when I am done I tend to crash hard. So it's not truly energetic-ness so much as enjoying positive feelings and gaining short spurts of energy from being around people who make me happy. Like a sugar high, it is not real but still very pleasurable. I think in reality I am probably more of an introvert for the long haul than otherwise. I can spend a LOT of time alone without feeling any negative emotion beyond a tiny bit of guilt. However, there comes a point when I am screamingly lonely. At that point, what I am missing is not a party but a really deep and stimulating honest conversation. I think that is still more introvertish than extravert. So energy for me is hard to quantify. It is not good in the sense that I cannot predictably get lots of tasks done. I can if I'm happy or with happy people. If I'm feeling an onslaught of the terrible injustices and tragedies in the world (which I find to be everywhere and very emotionally disturbing) I begin to lose energy like a sand garden loses nutrients. This means that for very unrelated reasons I can have either productive or completely draining days. Again, evolutionarily speaking, quite an impractical way to be. If we could just fix all the suffering in the world, I think I would be better at keeping up with cleaning the bathroom.
Well, probably not.
So, as a therapist, if I was to figure out what my platform of strengths is on which to begin to work, I would actually have to dig down pretty low to find a template of a sustainable, healthy, balanced life. Low in the sense that I would not necessarily be accomplishing a lot of the "servanthood" stuff that I find so admirable in others. I would likely be able to get up, read my Bible in a foggy half awake state as I inhale coffee, make breakfast for the kids in the same half-awake and somewhat non-responsive state, work out so as to fully wake up, have a second cup of coffee after a shower, consider carefully what to do that day, plan supper, do laundry (always), clean up breakfast finally, work with the horses and use up relational energy in the process, talk with one friend in a meaningful way, complete one task that is not strictly maintenance (I'm talking a very small task, like grocery shopping or planning a birthday party), and then deal with the kids as they come home from school and practice piano and tell me the woes of their day and do their chores and make a mess all over the kitchen with snacks and lunch-making and then make and have supper and read to everyone, watch an episode of ER, and then go around unplugging appliances and putting our dog away for the night and doing one more load of laundry before bed, and there you go. The day. And Heaven forbid Dan is gone and I need to add chores and making the fire every 8 hours and being in two places at once for sports events and so on. Which is often the case and so my days feel pretty full and I really have always thought that all that stuff was what you did before morning coffee break. Ha.
Anyway, that is some of the stuff that is rumbling around in my brain as I try to do a good job of the platform of strengths that I have. I can make cream of wheat and unload the dishwasher and butter toast and listen to calm music all at once. I cannot coherently answer my children's questions about the notes I was to have signed at the same time. That requires a full pause for deep and intense thought. And so, perhaps I should concentrate on these basics a while longer before adding in a whole ton of new challenges. :) And now I should really stop procrastinating and do something - anything - before I have to go and do my one task of the day which today is to pick up our Toyota after getting its brakes done. And that's a whole other story but I didn't lead with it because it's more of a Dan story and he wants to stay out of this. Ha ha.
Cheerio!
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