Thursdays at Therapy

I had my third therapy session this week... it's a really interesting experience to be doing this after the fact, so to speak. Therapy is so so valuable during the storm... it helps you cope and it gives you tools and strategies to keep your head above water... keeps you focused, in a way, so you don't get so far derailed. It's a terribly easy thing to do to get self destructive and start self medicating in really crummy ways. Pain is such a frightening thing...

So here I am, therapy after the fact, and I'm learning how valuable it is - it's sorta like a debriefing. I am at a place right now where I have all that I need... I've made progress... as the therapist said, "You are most definitely in an enviable position." She pointed out there are many people who would love to be where I am. I know this... I most definitely feel blessed. I have a wonderful new job, one I can only say I was led to by God... it was in the plan... HAD to be in the plan. It wasn't easy to get here, took some patience and work, took me stepping out of my comfort zone. The rewards are numerous, both personally and professionally. I get to help kids, often times in quiet, behind the scene ways. I am their advocate, and at times it's frustrating but the frustration is motivating... drives me to persistence. Personally I get to exercise my brain - the job really makes me think sometimes. I have to write things, and I have to strategize and I have to work with people and negotiate and compromise and, at times, dig in my heels and be that stubborn girl I've been known to channel at times (green skin anyone).

The kids are doing well... that's a huge blessing. They are good kids, good, good kids. Life isn't perfect and I juggle the parent to an adult and I juggle the parent to a teenage girl... but I've remained consistent with them and it's helped get us through. My son has his degree, no debt and a job he seems to enjoy. My daughter is doing well in high school, is busy with dance, and continues to be a thoughtful, good hearted girl. Dance has been huge in keeping her focused during the separation and divorce. I am a firm believer that children have to have goals and activites that challenge them, motivate them, teach them about themselves. Dance has defintely done that for her... and it's put her in an environment where she is surrounded by young women who are smart and talented - young women who go to college, make good grades, have a direction. I've always been impressed by how great it is the dance studio owner is able to get such wonderful college girls to come in and teach. These girls take what they do seriously - not only the dance instruction but their influence on the younger girls. They are college girls, after all, but there is a balance to who they are, a balance to how they conduct themselves. And now, in four years, I'm very aware my daughter will be a college girl too... ouch :-)

I'm financially better off now than I have been in a while. I need to shore up my savings account but now I should be able to do that. We have wonderful health insurance now, such a huge, huge thing - that little card is like solid gold... for the first time in a decade I have health insurance I can actually use should the need arise - what a weight lifted off my shoulders!

I have friends - I go to out to eat with them, take little trips, shop. I went and had dinner at the house of another former co-worker last night - she and I talked until 2 in the morning. I do things for myself these days - things I would never have done before - I have my monthly manicure/pedicure... I'm taking those classes at the dance studio, I'm buying theatre tickets and going to the movies... I'm doing all I can to enjoy as much of life as I can...

I have my faith back... but I guess the truth is it never left me. I see God's hands all around me, in everything that happens. It's not always sunshine and roses... but He gives a light to whatever comes, whether happy or sad... and for a while I had lost that knowledge - for a while I had forgotten that. I can honestly say with all my heart that I've never not had what I needed. I may not have recognized it at the time, I may not have been able to have the faith to believe it, but that's the truth... I have had what I've need - perhaps not on my time table or in the package I thought it should be in, but once I shut up and listened, it all started to make sense in some way or another. And I sit here today knowing there are other things for me - somewhere out there - wonderful things, I just don't know what they are yet, and I have to be patient and live my life. It will all happen when it happens...

And I've learned some lessons :

(1) Life truly is about the journey, not the destination, because ultimately the destination is death - and gee... who's in a hurry to get there? But I didn't always see it like that - especially after the divorce. After the divorce I was so ready to recapture what I had lost, so ready to make up ground and "right" all my wrongs, and it just doesn't work like that. Life truly is about travel, the sights and sounds along the way - the connections and the experiences... and should the Lord truly feel the desire to bless me with more abundance than He already has, then I will find that one person to share the journey with me. I may have already and it's just not time yet... who knows, I surely don't!

(2) I've stopped seeing things so much in black and white... there are no absolutes, except for the ones we impose on ourselves. There is a solace in that knowledge... a comfort. It doesn't remove sadness or disappointment from life, it just sorta puts it in perspective. It's all right to mourn, it's all right to cry, it's all right to be confused - it's all right to feel. Even if it hurts. But it's not all right to get stuck in it and it's not all right to use pain as an excuse to justify bad behavior.

And sorta continuing the above thought -
(3) I can still care about people without losing myself in it... I can love them, support them, pray for them, even from afar... without risking myself and my health... I can set a boundary, even if painful, even if that means temporarily removing them from my everyday life, even if eventually that means they become permanently gone. I don't have to be a victim... I do have control, if only of myself...

It's all right, don't ya think?