such good news

My passion is percolating and I feel the need to write. One that I love called last night and told me of very positive changes in her life. Relief. Joy. Strength. I could hear it in her voice. Hope. I won't say her name, but I don't want to put other peoples' lives on my blog without permission.

So I will put MY stuff out there: my stuff is that I was very worried about this person when she was sick in mind and body and spirit. Exhausted, weak, unable to function. In the past I personally felt the need to change her life. But in recent years, through reading books about Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, I grew. I cannot "make it all better" for someone else. I can't fix other people, only myself. I can only do the best I can to grow myself. I can be there and try to help, give advice if it is asked for, be supportive, listen, do things I am capable of for the person. But I cannot make decisions for the person about what to do with her life. That was growth for me and I noticed that when I was with her, I grew less tense and worried inside and more relaxed: make good decisions myself about things that are MY responsibility. Other people are responsible for their own lives.

Then I have antidepressants which have made it easier for me to think more like a normal person and not get all tied up in knots of frustration and anger when things go wrong.

I voluntarily subitted myself to brainwashing by flylady (see flylady.net). The most helpful aspect of her email deluge for me has been fighting the perfectionism in me. There is nothing wrong with doing excellent work, but being a perfectionist is delbilitating and leads to depression.

My church and my pastor have given me layers and layers of teaching and living out of GRACE that comes through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Last and most definitely not least, I hired a Christian life coach. (See purposefilledlife.com) At a time when I felt excited about the future and keen on finding my new niche, I was also very frightened, and felt very, very alone.

I had whined: I don't want to do this by myself! That is, make the big decision about what to do next? God cares and He was listening - even to my whining - and then I got that email from my former tennis coach saying: 'You'd be a good life coach.' And I thought, What's a life coach? But the link to Ron's site and his 30 minute free coaching session convinced me to try it.

Someone to walk with me on this journey. I know I was growing before, but I am sure that having a coach has multiplied my growth. I would have tried new things and gotten a job or two and moved forward, but without a coach, I would not have moved at the pace I have. Well, it's kind of silly to play the 'What if?' game. 'What if' (what if I had not hired Ron as coach) does not exist. Ok, so this is what I know. God graciously led me to a fine coach, suited for me, and He has used Ron to ENCOURAGE ME, SUPPORT ME and keep me ACCOUNTABLE.

So what does this have to do with the phone call last night? In the past, I think I would have gotten all upset, experienced a lot of anguish in my soul, feeling the whole burden of "fixing" another person's life, not my own life, you see. But this time I sat by the person, prayed with the person and for the person, listened to the person, encouraged her to talk, admitted to myself and to her I DO NOT HAVE THE ANSWER and not only that, but it is OK that I do not have the answer. All I had was a caring for her, and a willingness to be with her and the faith of a mustard seed that she could take steps to make her situation better.

Something that helped her tremendously was not my idea. It was her own idea. She was able to get away from her present load of stress and have time away, time outdoors, time with fun music, time with relaxed people. Lots of rest and healthy food.

Now then at the end of the day (this day only) I could hear the difference in her voice. Her voice was louder and clearer. She was enthusiastic and sounded happy! God, you are so good. Thank you. I expect more encouragement and grace from You for today, and I thank you in advance for that too.

relecting on the superhero thing

A week is past back in my old position, the managers are asking what I think of the experience. I tell them how excited I am for all I've learned and that the job has really just begun. My partner and I are thinking to continue to help make the store better not just for our 2 week test but long term.

Big manager says why don't you write an article? We did, my partner already submitted it. But it was her article mostly and I didn't really express myself. Sometimes it takes me a while to mull things over .... Maybe I'll do a freewrite and then edit it.

I had mixed emotions. More comfortable to be back where I know what I'm doing, but as the old song says: "how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree"?

It was so interesting watching people work, those who are in control, how they interact with each other and how things get done. And we had the authority in their names to go and get things done for them, use their names and watch people move. Fascinating.

One manager pointed out that everyone knows who I am now. Yes, not that I care about that, but it's true. And I have met many co-workers and know their names as well.

They are looking for us to take our pictures in our superhero T-shirts. My partner says we already took pictures, use those. I say we are being reviewed today and I have to be in uniform and I'm not leaving my post! Oh, yes, she agrees.

Then a note has gone up on the bulliten board that they want people who will do comics and write for the newsletter. I will have to do that. I have no choice.

determination

On one side are real tangeable goals, something you can touch and see. On the other side are ideals, ideas, dreams, wishes, desires. I live mostly on the dream side. I am trying to move toward the reality side. So this week I did a word study to draw my mental energy into this process. Still dreaming? Probably. But it helps me to think on paper. And if I get a better grip on what the difference is, I hope it will prepare me to act more decisively. Hope. Learn. See those words? Dream side of things, they are. But prepare and act, those are on the goal side of things.

Determination: I thought about the fact that I am a "flaming P". (ok, this is from the Meyers-Briggs types, P is the letter a person comes out with if she likes to keep her options open as long as possible, does not want to commit.) I suppose I get this from my Dad. When they asked him to work at AUL, the guy thought the phone had gone dead because of the long silence. Daddy would not go, Uh, um, hmmm, let me see, he would just be quiet while his brain wheels turned slowly. Whatever came out would be a good decision, but you had to wait for it.

A flaming P wants to keep her options open as long as possible. Another way of putting it is that she is afraid to commit and get stuck. Up to now, I have not made that determination: ‘I am going to do this thing’. My coach said he would fail as a coach if I never took a step toward making my life purpose a reality.

I have grown to like the song on 'Awaken' CD by Natalie Grant, the last song which she sings with Wynona Judd. He’s gonna bring it all together for good. He’s gonna make you happy. He’s gonna make you laugh out loud. Yes, it’s true, God is ultimately in control of the outcome, whether my dream comes true or not. But that does not mean that I should just wait for it to come together, piddling around without a goal. I can make a specific goal and work towards it...

My entrepreneur friend is willing and happy to have lunch with me so that I can pick her brain. She is a go getter, a plan an doer and she has come all the way from sick and broke with an injured and broke husband to owning homes and having successful businesses and she is not finished by a long shot. She says it's a God thing, and it is, but I still want to be around her and learn how she works.

So my "reason" for not being determined is that I’m afraid that if I invest money in making a career painting and writing, I will lose in the end and wind up broke, or at best struggling financially.

Why don’t I believe I can be a NOT starving artist? My coach gave me a lot of ammunition to believe with and he said “you will say he’s just saying that because he’s my coach” and he is partly right, but no, I do believe I am marketable. So do I need to make a goal and be one of those crazy people who puts signs up all over the house and car about what my goal is?
determination n. = firmness of purpose
focus = a center of activity or interest v.
3. to concentrate or be concentrated or directed (on a center etc)

I think I've been taking steps toward a goal, by saying yes to things that pertain to art, writing and people (life coaching) but those are just areas not goals they are too big, too nebulous, too braod the target is not pin pointed.

Speakimg of nebulous, when I went out for our walk tonight the clouds were cumulous, big, warm and stormy looking, not warm in color, they were mostly deep blues, but the weekend brought warm weather and they seemed warm. I tied my jacket around my waste half way down the street. It seems like winter is over so suddenly and that in a couple weeks all the trees will be budding. Already some are dressing up with reddish purple.

The big heavy clouds were moving slightly. They dropped a little rain on us as we walked, but not enough to make us wet. I turned my ankle and thought Oh no not again! but decided it was the pain-for-one-minute variety and walked home, and even ran part of the way and it did not hurt. The last thing I need is to be injured at work tomorrow when we are being reviewed and they asked me to come in for the morning shift so that if they ask me security questions, they will get a good answer. The new person might not know the answers, and the old person may know some of the answers but never comes in on time and won't be there whent they come through.

I met the guy who is building an arts community South of here. I had read about him in the newspaper's Sunday magazine and made a mental note that I should check it out. Well, they paged him in my store and I thought, hey, that's that guy in the magazine.

I call up to the department to which he'd been paged and say: ask him if he would stop by the entrance on his way out, I want to meet him. After about 10 minutes I see a guy going upstairs and I think it is he, but I don't chase him because I'm not sure... meanwhile a rumor has started in the department to which he was called that he's some famous person, because Annie said he was in the magazine this week.

Well, they call back and want to know who he is and is he famous? and they say that he just ordered something and went downstairs. So I go looking. Hmmm, I think he's the type to just make his purchase and leave; he's not going to browse; I think I'll go down to where he will be picking up his order.

Sure enough there he is and I introduce myself and ask him about his project and tell him I'm interested, that I'm starting to paint again after 35 years of mothering and ministering. He is renovating a place where artists can live and work all in one place. It sounds cool. I ask about a waiting list, yes, he expects there will be one and he gives me his email address. He says he's gotten more responses from that article than any previous ones about similar projects in other cities. He is wearing the same jacket he was photographed in. He is an architect.

In a few years time, when his project is up and running, I may be ready to sell my house. My girls will be out on their own I hope. I may want a small artist's apartment then. Hmmm, I do not know if this is something the Lord put in my lap or not. The little red brick storybook house, (see post "love at first sight") was not for me, but it still had a reason for me to look at it.

Oh yes, this is supposed to be about determination, and yet I am allowing myself to free write, so now I need to determine that I am going to make a living painting and writing. Why do I feel the need to be so darn sure before I jump in? Is it because I felt sure before, and jumped in, and in the end did not feel I succeeded in my first career? Success breeds success. (So does a sense of failure breed failure)

I did not feel successful then, even though my outlook on all of what I did has changed and I value it for what it was: me trying, struggling along while depressed. I think I am way over the line guarded against failure. It comes back to what I am learning about fear, a perfectionism, and all that. To be continued, I have to go to work.

superhero job finished

Yea. It's over. My old manager says "you're mine now". Other departments (2 to be exact) have offered for me to come work with them. The man whose idea it was to do the superhero thing, well, I don't think he's too enthused about what we did. But superhero 2 and I are going to have a talk with him about it. For one thing, we do not know what he thinks, in spite of the fact that he's pretty much ignoring us and gave us a funny look when we showed up in our costumes on the last day. (He wanted us to be in costume every day from day 1). I know that we did not do all that he expected, and I can only guess that he is dissappointed that we were not successful in generating a high energy level at the store, but we did what we could. We got a lot out of it. I would do it again for that reason... I learned TONS: like how to order something for the store, how to look up products, how to put up displays, how to make a video, where to get tools, how to order things, how to get reimbursed for store purchases, how to climb up the escape ladder to the roof (oops, don't tell) how to make signs in the graphics department, which was my favorite part.

Our first job in graphics was "weeding". That involved removing the surroundings from white sticker letters so that they could be applied to a blue board. Tedious, mindless, but relaxing, after you've been running around for several days. Takes a lot of time. The store is going bililngual and there are many, many signs to change.

Good things happened for me personally, though that was not the purpose of being a superhero. I tried. Perhaps it would have gone better to have a superhero with a strong ability to focus.

The last day we ended up in graphics and I was pleased to be able to do what they asked: applied a giant sticker on a giant board without making bubbles in the vinyl. My teacher was good and had no problem with saying 'now you try it'. There was NO sense of "Oh be careful, if you mess up that will cost us x amount of money..." Then she bragged on me to the director. I see it more clearly every day. I guess I am better than average working with my hands.

The many other jobs, from making newsletters, to designing T shirts (a dual effort) and building furniture and removing heavy things from high displays, finding people to finish assembling the rest of the new displays and someone to put new pieces back up again, borrowing the right tools from the people who do this every day, making transfers from one department to another and getting the right signature, calling other stores, marking down what customers looked at, recording wait times in different departments, listening to frustrated co-workers and trying to encourage them to keep making their concerns known to their managers and the managers above those managers.....on and on.

My favorite part at first was surveying the co-workers, getting their feedback.

The other thing I appreciated, not one of my jobs, but a by-product of the assignment, was watching the big cheeses at work, scurrying around, calling each other, listening to their conversations, following them on a walk through the store and hearing how they presented things to the co-workers. I will never look at my job the same way again. I realize how much better I can be at my job now that I understand how much EVERYONE has on his/her own plate. I knew that, but now I know many of the specific tasks they are working on each day. I also have a bigger picture of how the entire store and its system works and how my little part fits into it. No more tunnel vision.

My partner and I think that our job as superheroes is really just beginning. I doubt we pass the review this year, but I could see us making huge strides by next year if we carry on with a sort of permanent superhero attitude all year long. I wish I could work full time and also have time for my at home job. But I will figure out a way to keep my old job at least for now and add in one day in graphics, and/or general purpose superhero stuff (which kind of amounted to super-gopher by the end of the 2 months).

People in my department kept telling me they missed me and when was I coming back. That was nice. Someone is sales asked me if I was coming to their department? I said I had thought about it and 'maybe' and he said Yes!!!

My partner told the biggest cheese that we could do a show and display my artwork in the restaurant. Yikes. I was scared. No, let me hide out on the web, not put my things in front of real people, and much less people I actually know. Fear, get lost. If she agrees, I will do it.

Well, more details may come out later. In 2 weeks when the review is over, maybe an update on whether we passed. Maybe an update on how our talk with our superhero boss goes.