During a recent church service, several people spoke of the need to not just endure to the end but to endure well. That hit home for me. I'm at a point in my life where I need to stop just enduring what life throws at me. I need to take command of my life and endure well. There's a huge difference between the two and it's going to require me to step out of my little cocoon of safety.
I passed the half century mark last year. This year's birthday was celebrated with as little fanfare as I could muster. I needed time for some self-assessment. There's been such a tumble of activity that there's barely been time to manage my time.
I've got several goals for the next few months. Confessing them here to any potential reader puts my resolve on the line.
1) Get back in decent physical condition. I've let myself go a bit. No, chasing after children and their activities is NOT sufficient exercise unless your children really are running for distance. Basic house cleaning and gardening, no matter how strenuous, do not constitute a regular fitness program. I will argue that the regular manual turning of a 1 cubic yard compost pile has serious aerobic exercise qualities.
2) Loose some of this stubborn weight that has crept, one jiggling pound at a time, onto my body. There's a 125 pound woman in here somewhere and she wants out. It's taken me 10+ years to go from 128 to my current weight and those pounds have gotten comfortable living with me. They're not going to go away easily.
3) Learn to play play the piano, if only a little bit. Yes, I have imaginings of myself sitting down and playing anything from Mozart to Joplin. That will come with practice. I mostly want to learn to play something that I can pour the feelings of my soul into.
4) Genealogy research: the never ending exercise in puzzle solving. I've started a family tree, almost a book, for one branch of my family. It was supposed to be a simple tree of my great-grandmother's descendants but it grew. I don't think it deserves to be called a book because it doesn't have the narrative I'd like to see in a family history book. At 72 pages, it's a bit more than a simple descendants chart.
5) Fiber arts: Honestly, if I could spend my days doing genealogy research or practicing some sort of fiber art, I don't think #2 would be a problem. I forget to eat when I'm engaged in these to activities. Sometimes sleep is entirely optional as well. I need to find balance between these activities and the dreary everyday necessities. I want to continue to expand and improve my knitting skills. I want to learn to spin yard well enough to actually want to use it. People have been doing this for thousands of years with tools no more complicated than a pointed stick. I'm at least as smart as they, even if I'm handicapped by waiting until I'm at least 45 years older than most third world beginners are.
6) Find some sort of balance between everyday life and the need for spiritual growth. Not everyone finds church and religion important. For me, it's a grounding factor. I need to take time to not just read the scriptures but to study them in a way that's meaningful.
Wow, that sounds even more daunting now that I've actually written that all out. It wouldn't be so bad if there was just me to consider. I'm a wife and mother first. I'm my children's teacher. I'm involved in a leadership roll in three community organizations. I'm a volunteer with two others. There are expectations and responsibilities that come with those. It poses a challenge for me in achieving my ultimate goal of enduring well.
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