Happy with today
It is a glorious morning, with sunshine streaming into the office window. My girlfriends were over yesterday to share life and prayer requests. We've spent the past sixteen years praying and talking over life together. They loved my office as an energetic AND calming place to work.
The final office consultation with Lynn was the day before that. We took down definitions pages posted on the walls: now, the room truly feels like my space. Love it, love it! LOVE IT.
During our session, Lynn and I adjusted words defining the rhythm of how I work. It comes to this after our reevaluation: I gather (ideas float unformed); percolate (sort and categorize possibilities into to-dos and how-tos); engage (work); flit (distractions drain off excess energy); and climb (build a stepping stone to the next thing).
Can't say enough about how I have valued the process of getting to know my adult self with Lynn's assistance. I simply had no idea who I was, after years of trying to understand and conform to others' expectations. My rhythm and flow has completely and thoroughly changed from the little girl who bounced up from dreams to wakefulness in an instant, who jumped out of bed each morning to hit the world with fully engaged energy that stayed "ON!!!" until bedtime. As a child, I stomped into every room with my whole self and brought it to attention. By the end of my teens, I had begun to learn to contain my wild, hopeful, and expectant energy.
After Lynn left, I pondered my radical redefinition from child to adult. During my formational years, peers and those in authority had soundly mauled and manhandled me in their resentment at my intrusion into 'their' space. Many of my defining moments while growing up are the shock of those emotional beatings and the slow, painful recoveries after finding others incapable of keeping up with my full stride.
As an adult, I became more useful to myself and safer to others by hard training. I watched others to learn acceptable ways to connect and network from "the side" rather than head on. I was highly rewarded for reigning in the impulsive creative. The willing, gentle connector others know may be my real, functional day self. The wild thing of tears, tantrums, and unrestricted creativity still visits me sometimes in crazy, joyful, unguarded nights. Those mornings, I celebrate her appearance with relief and joy in the gathering dawn: she has not entirely been disciplined away by my waking hours.
"You would never bring a room to a halt by entering it," Lynn observed. "You connect everyone in a gentle way, by working throughout the room." Her words were a great surprise and brought an AHA moment!
I have become comfortably integrated in this more acceptable and manageable rhythm. Miss Madeline, my first piano teacher who thought I should be medicated for taking over every space I entered, would be relieved. Elizabeth, whose paper I scribbled up as a reflex to her marking on my work, would be glad not to be in the path of my young hurricane. And Miss Muir, the first grade teacher who hit my open hands with her pointer to insist that I contain my large, unrestrained self, would be proud.
Having someone who didn't know me as a child observe the way I now enter a room or engage the day was shocking. How I've accommodated and hemmed in my energy since childhood and teen years! It's most helpful to see how "my true" current self is viewed by another. Decades of discipline have done their work, effecting something like the "Nun's Story," which I read over and over again in my teens.
Hearing Lynn's words, I didn't find myself sighing for the colorful flair and overdrive of youth. I embrace the small "flits" that contain my abundance. My mind has learned to percolate a transition from unrestrained night self to functional day self. The wild optimistic potential of dreaming really does settle into manageable how-tos and to-dos each morning. The resulting checklists satisfy my need for progress and growth.
What a relief to find words for a functional rhythm. I bring to these adult venues not the eruptions and landslides of immaturity, but seasoned gifts, experience, and education.
Lynn is VERY good at what she does - and certainly God's gift to me in this season. THANK YOU so much! To both of you.
The final office consultation with Lynn was the day before that. We took down definitions pages posted on the walls: now, the room truly feels like my space. Love it, love it! LOVE IT.
During our session, Lynn and I adjusted words defining the rhythm of how I work. It comes to this after our reevaluation: I gather (ideas float unformed); percolate (sort and categorize possibilities into to-dos and how-tos); engage (work); flit (distractions drain off excess energy); and climb (build a stepping stone to the next thing).
Can't say enough about how I have valued the process of getting to know my adult self with Lynn's assistance. I simply had no idea who I was, after years of trying to understand and conform to others' expectations. My rhythm and flow has completely and thoroughly changed from the little girl who bounced up from dreams to wakefulness in an instant, who jumped out of bed each morning to hit the world with fully engaged energy that stayed "ON!!!" until bedtime. As a child, I stomped into every room with my whole self and brought it to attention. By the end of my teens, I had begun to learn to contain my wild, hopeful, and expectant energy.
After Lynn left, I pondered my radical redefinition from child to adult. During my formational years, peers and those in authority had soundly mauled and manhandled me in their resentment at my intrusion into 'their' space. Many of my defining moments while growing up are the shock of those emotional beatings and the slow, painful recoveries after finding others incapable of keeping up with my full stride.
As an adult, I became more useful to myself and safer to others by hard training. I watched others to learn acceptable ways to connect and network from "the side" rather than head on. I was highly rewarded for reigning in the impulsive creative. The willing, gentle connector others know may be my real, functional day self. The wild thing of tears, tantrums, and unrestricted creativity still visits me sometimes in crazy, joyful, unguarded nights. Those mornings, I celebrate her appearance with relief and joy in the gathering dawn: she has not entirely been disciplined away by my waking hours.
"You would never bring a room to a halt by entering it," Lynn observed. "You connect everyone in a gentle way, by working throughout the room." Her words were a great surprise and brought an AHA moment!
I have become comfortably integrated in this more acceptable and manageable rhythm. Miss Madeline, my first piano teacher who thought I should be medicated for taking over every space I entered, would be relieved. Elizabeth, whose paper I scribbled up as a reflex to her marking on my work, would be glad not to be in the path of my young hurricane. And Miss Muir, the first grade teacher who hit my open hands with her pointer to insist that I contain my large, unrestrained self, would be proud.
Having someone who didn't know me as a child observe the way I now enter a room or engage the day was shocking. How I've accommodated and hemmed in my energy since childhood and teen years! It's most helpful to see how "my true" current self is viewed by another. Decades of discipline have done their work, effecting something like the "Nun's Story," which I read over and over again in my teens.
Hearing Lynn's words, I didn't find myself sighing for the colorful flair and overdrive of youth. I embrace the small "flits" that contain my abundance. My mind has learned to percolate a transition from unrestrained night self to functional day self. The wild optimistic potential of dreaming really does settle into manageable how-tos and to-dos each morning. The resulting checklists satisfy my need for progress and growth.
What a relief to find words for a functional rhythm. I bring to these adult venues not the eruptions and landslides of immaturity, but seasoned gifts, experience, and education.
Lynn is VERY good at what she does - and certainly God's gift to me in this season. THANK YOU so much! To both of you.
