The Beauty Of Sunday Rituals

You might read about The Ghost In Your Blog and ask where my head is at and I wouldn’t blame you, especially if I told you that Carole King is singing again about people being so far away.

Except the thing is, that is just because I have listened to the same playlist a bunch of times and it just happens to be on now.

If there is a reason why my head is looking backwards it is because of a couple of things that happened this week that reminded me of just how far I have come and how much progress I have made.

There is never enough time devoted to gratitude, never enough time focused on acknowledging that you got swept up in a few storms and have weathered them…more or less.

Don’t know why, but it is far too easy to remember the things that tore us wide open and left scars that we can still feel, see and touch than to focus on the beauty of having overcome them.

So I am reminding myself of the joy in the journey and the pleasure of being able to say more than I was because you can say I am.

The Beauty Of Sunday Rituals

Sometimes it feels like a million years since I left my apartment in Texas and sometimes it is yesterday.

That apartment was life changing for me, the place where I looked inward and outward and acknowledged what I had suspected to be true was and recognized that such a thing meant that the future I had once planned upon would be different.

While I couldn’t say then and can’t say now exactly what it would be now the things I discovered then are what set the path before me.

It made me feel a bit like an ancient explorer who set sail upon the sea following the faint outlines of the stars above and the tug of his heart.

That is not the kind of map that you could find on paper then nor is it the kind of thing you can Google or Ask Siri about now.

It is the faint echo of a song you hear and your gut response to it.

I am not what anyone would call a clean freak but I am not a slob either. I can only live with clutter for as long as necessary and then I am simply done with it.

Sunday mornings were usually spent ridding my place of extras, vacuuming and cleaning up so that if I chose to entertain it would be presentable and so that the rest of the week it would always be livable.

The afternoons were different.

They were designed to be moments in time where the world would be stopped and the challenges of the week were forgotten.

Most of the time that is how it went and for a brief while I got a glimpse of possibility and potential. I suppose part of what I liked best was how well I did at living in the moment and not spending my time thinking about the future.

It is not always easy to do, especially when we live during a time where you are always supposed to be actively working towards your next accomplishment.

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I used to buy into that wholeheartedly and believed that if you weren’t focused on moving yourself from Point A to Point B you were wasting time.

Hell, I still sort of do, when you know from experience how fragile our grip upon life can be and have been to as many funerals as I have it is hard not to be cognizant of it.

But somewhere along the way I realized you can’t maintain that pace without it having a negative impact upon you.

And I say that having been told multiple times by multiple people that they don’t know how I have kept so many things going for as long as I have.

The gift of high energy doesn’t come without a price and only a fool ignores it.

Do Things Happen For A Reason?

I am an atheist turned agnostic regarding this.

There was a time when I would have suggested it was something people said to make themselves feel good about things they can’t explain, but I won’t say it now.

Too much has happened to me, too many things for me to give the automatic no so I call myself an agnostic. Some say that makes me a fence sitter but I don’t care what they think.

Scientists will tell you they don’t know everything about everything and so it makes sense for me to say that I don’t either.

What I do know is that the period of time between January of 2014 and roughly May of 2015 was among the most challenging I have been through.

There were moments that were awful. Well I would use more colorful words but that wouldn’t provide you with the full impact of just how bad they were for me and even if you understood it wouldn’t make a difference.

What I know is that something about the beauty of Sunday rituals and the bubble in time that was created helped fortify my desire to push forward.

Well, that and my ridiculously stubborn nature which doesn’t know how to just lie down and say I have had enough.

So there were moments where I wanted to scream with frustration and I looked back at those Sunday rituals and nodded my head because it was proof that I had survived the prior storm.

Keep On Going

Whenever I tell the kids about the importance of fighting through the hard times I do so knowing that I have done it. I have visited my own private hell and kept going, didn’t matter if they doused me in gasoline I just screamed a little louder and kept on walking.

There is more to success than being told to keep on going or to work hard, luck plays a role there but sometimes you have to manufacture some of your own and that comes sooner to those who are willing to keep on going.

I am grateful for all I have and thankful for having made it this far.

And like that ancient explorer I am still following that faint trail in the sky to see where it leads because you really never know what sort of treasure if any lies at the end of that rainbow.