I was cleaning up outside earlier today, an activity I'm finding much more soothing than cleaning up inside the house, because it turns out that Nature is less destructive than my family, so I get to enjoy the fruits of my labor a little longer before entropy takes over and sends everything back into visually displeasing chaos.  At some point, my pesky back pain kicking in, I sat down, and thought, "Wow, this is wonderful! I'm sitting here and it's so peaceful," which was followed immediately by, "But if I'm going to sit here, I should be writing something or reading something or doing something."

But it struck me that the guilt was misplaced. The stillness was a necessary part of writing and a form of reading and an aid in doing. So, I stayed there for a while and did a little of the work of letting go, just by the slightest amount, of the to do list, which seems to be harder for me than doing the things on it. And then I wrote it down, here, to help myself remember it.

After really struggling last week between my need to sleep and my desire not to sleep, I decided that this week on my day of spirituality I would spend one day throwing out my to do list and letting go of all the things I "should" do in favor of whatever came to me in the moment.

So after I got the kids off to school, I thought, "I should exercise, but I'd like to sit down and pet the cat and look out the window."  So I sat down with the cat and just relaxed.  Every now and then a thought would come to me and I'd worry about when I should get up or what I should do next.  I told myself that I would know when I knew.  And I sat petting the cat until I was done and it felt like time to go lie down and take a nap.  So I took a nap.  And when I woke up, I didn't quite want to get out of bed yet, so I stayed in bed, trying to trust that I would get up when the time was right.

And when my daughter was finished with school, she wanted to play outside.  So I went outside.  And as I stood there watching her play, I thought, "This day feels so much better than last week.  What if I lived every day this way?  Just doing the next right thing and trusting that I'd know when to do it..."  Which I followed immediately with the thought, "But then nothing would ever get done!"  And I realized that I was fine trusting God to take care of rest and relaxation, but I did not trust God when it came to getting work done.  Sure, God could help me relax and pet a cat, but I didn't feel God was going to be there when it came to getting the dishes done or cleaning the bathroom, which was quite a lesson and one I need more than ever at this time of year.  I hope I can take at least some of that into the coming weeks with me.

Did you do anything this week? Share in the comments or post a link to a blog post in Mister Linky below. And if you want to join in and change one aspect of your life for one day, click over to my introductory post to get more information and a badge.

"The level of sexual imagery in modern life is astounding. I knew intuitively this was true, but when you tune into it, you just can't believe it. I click on the Yahoo! finance page, and there's this blond model in a low-cut dress looking at a computer screen and nibbling alluringly on the temple of her glasses, apparently very aroused by the latest S&P 500 report."
~ A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically

Years ago, when my husband Mark and I were first married, we went away for the weekend, leaving the little city (or big town) we called home to drive to a bed and breakfast on a ranch in the middle of big rolling fields of nowhere.  At night, we could look up and see a sky, not just dotted with a few twinkling stars against a vast blackness, but absolutely littered with more light than darkness.  But even more than the presence of stars, I remember the silence.

There were no cars rumbling past outside, no neighbors talking or banging doors shut, no fire sirens or televisions, no computer network humming and no cell phone coverage.  It was so quiet, I actually had trouble sleeping; the absence of sound rang audibly in my ears.  I didn't realize I was surrounded by a constant whir of background noise until it wasn't there, but when I went back home I was suddenly both very much aware of it and increasingly bothered by it.  Was it good for me to have so much noise in my life that I heard actual ringing in my ears when it was quiet, the same way I have on leaving a rock concert?  At the same time, that level of background noise was clearly normal in the place and culture in which I was living; could I get away from it?

In a way, moving from addiction to recovery felt the same way, as I began to tune in to the ambient noise of our culture.  Suddenly, that billboard or that song or that TV ad wasn't just part of a constant, and largely ignored, backdrop; it was the trigger that could bring the trauma of addiction rushing to engulf me again.  Being married to a recovering sex addict meant suddenly being faced with the need to avoid gratuitous sexual content in order to protect my own sanity.  And that meant becoming acutely aware of just how soaked in sexuality American culture is: everything from hamburgers to web hosting are sold on overtones of porn.  (And seriously, I can think of few things less inherently erotic than ground beef and Internet domain name registration.)

Recovery has also meant looking at patterns of alcoholism and addiction among our extended friends and family, and becoming similarly aware of the pervasiveness of alcohol, which is an integral, accepted, even expected part of everything from weddings to sporting events to birthday parties.

And once I did begin to tune in, I wondered, much as I did when I came home from those nights on that secluded ranch: had all that cultural noise (unnoticed, but loud enough to leave my ears ringing in its absence) been good for me?  I didn't think so.  So, from ad blocking software to a DVR to changes in my own routines, I've worked to beat back the noise our culture throws off and journey toward the quiet that I now crave.

Whew! I sat down today, with both kids finally healthy and off at school, with my husband healthy and off at work, with a house covered in a summer of chaos (which I am steadfastly ignoring) and thought, "I'll write about my daughter's huge tantrum. No wait, my son scaring off evangelicals. No wait..." I opened a fresh page for a new post, figuring I'd just dive in and see what came.

As I paused to reflect, I looked out the window and said, "Why is one of my good hand towels on the ground outside?" Then before I could figure it out (although the answer is probably "my husband grabbed the first thing he saw to wipe something up"), the cat jumped on me and started walking on the laptop keyboard, purring. I shoved it off. It came back. I took my laptop and turned my back to it. The cat jumped on my shoulder. I told the cat, "I know you want attention, but Mama needs to go where no one is demanding my attention." Now I'm safely shut in my bedroom, out of reach of the cat and out of sight of the hand towel, which remains outside on the ground.

And now that I'm here, I'm thinking that I told the cat exactly what I want to do and say. If I close the laptop right now, if I turn off the phone, if I keep the door shut, I can breathe for a minute and no one will interrupt me. Delicious. I'll pet the cat and pick up the towel and write something fabulous tomorrow.

One summer day, when I was eighteen, I was lying outside in the sun, eyes closed, just (supposedly) relaxing. But I could feel every tense muscle in my body. I could feel my mind racing, uneasy with the stillness. What was I doing just lying there? Shouldn't I be doing something? The fact that I couldn't think of anything else I ought to be doing right then wasn't comforting. I felt tense at the thought that I'd forgotten something.

It became harder for me, the more time went on, to do nothing. I'd try to sit still and find myself nervous about all that I wasn't doing. Or I'd know I needed a break to rest or eat, but I'd want to finish what I was doing. It made me anxious to have a task out there uncompleted.

Yesterday, I sat down to write and found that I couldn't think of a thing today. As I sat there, tense, trying to force an idea to come, it occurred to me (after years of work at trying to pay attention to these things as they happen) that I was tired, and that rather than forging on, I should take a nap and try again later. And that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. Yet today my stomach is growling (Did you hear that just now? That was loud!) because I'm afraid that if I stop this writing and leave my room to eat something will happen to keep me from finishing.

In recovery, I'm learning the lesson that taking care of myself by getting adequate and timely rest, food or relaxation is not "doing nothing" but very much doing something. Yet it's still a hard lesson to put into practice.

My cold toes wiggle
under a still sleeping cat:
warm, furry blanket.

There's movement outside,
the light is getting sharper,
but I'm not ready.

I want to cling to
that last moment of stillness
like a lost lover.

My mind races. Often it races at the same brick wall again and again.

I was sitting down at the computer earlier trying to compose a post about something I'm working through in my recovery. My mind was spinning and spinning on the topic, but the right words wouldn't come. I have learned when that happens that I need to leave that topic and come back to it, but I was feeling like an animal trapped in a cage, desperate. "I have less than half an hour until I have to pick Baby Girl up from school. I have to write something today and if I don't do it now, when am I going to find the time?"

Still, I was getting nowhere and "have to" generally signals trouble for me. So, I closed the computer, dragged myself away from it, pulled my meditation bench away from the wall, set a timer for the twenty minutes I had available before I had to leave, lit my incense, rang a gong and sat.

I love this ritual. It always feels like a luxury to me, though I often wish it didn't. I love the smell of the incense. I love my gong and the way the sound resonates and hangs in the air. I love the meditation bench that keeps my body upright and my feet from, as my daughter says, "snoring." And I love my timer. My mind, like my kids, likes to say, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? You know what, I'm just going to go get up and check the clock and see." And I love being able to tell it, "No, the timer will tell us when we're there. Sit still."

I sat with my eyes toward the wall and felt my heart race; I could see my heart pounding in the throbbing of my vision. I felt every tense muscle in my body, my shoulders at my ears. I sat. I felt my mind racing too, saw it like a rat in a cage. I heard a voice inside me say, "You don't have control over this situation you're struggling with." And my mind said, "Ok, lesson learned! Let's get up now." But the timer hadn't chimed yet. So, I sat.

I felt those still tense muscles. I tried to balance and release. And the voice inside me said, "Let go. What are you afraid of?" And I cried as I sat, with tears running onto my hands, as I relaxed just a little. Then my mind said, "Ok, see. This is a good stop. Let's get off here. I feel better. I'm all fixed. Come on. Let's go." But the timer hadn't chimed yet. So, I sat.

I have had meditation teachers tell me to picture nothing, and I have had meditation teachers tell me to picture something. I find I like to picture a figure floating in space like a star, surrounded in golden light. The light is tangible and I can breathe it in. I breathe in clouds of golden light coming from the figure, and I breathe out black clouds, which the figure takes in and purifies into golden light. I breathe in more light. I breathe out brown clouds, then indigo, then blue, then green, then spring green like new leaves (so beautiful, more tears), then golden. My mind says, "Now I'm really fixed. See. The light is golden. Let's get up." But the timer hadn't chimed yet. So, I sat.

I let my shoulders fall away from my ears. I sat. My mind scampered a little slower. My heart beat steadily without pounding. And at last, the timer did chime. I sat for just a few breaths more. Then I got up feeling, not perfect, but clearer headed and more serene.

I went to pick up my daughter and left that topic I was struggling with for another day, because guess what? As so often happens, it turns out that what I was really struggling with today wasn't that topic I was so insistent about pursuing after all, but the pursuit itself.