Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Self-reflection

January 20, 2017

Exposed

Several days ago, just for fun, I posted a small poem and a photo. I loved finding the photo prompt, making a connection right away, and then putting together a small poem about what I saw. I felt happy about it.

After I published it, I went visiting other bloggers to see what they were writing about. As it happened, several posts I read were top-notch. Way beyond my own small post that was ‘just for fun.’

Bummer! It didn’t take long. The more I read other posts, the smaller I felt. Inadequate and virtually voiceless. I even thought about taking my post down.

That evening I wrote about all this in my journal. Here’s the paragraph that best describes how I felt.

  • Right now I feel hot and bothered, a bit chagrined, small, less than an average writer, even embarrassed, as though I wasted my time with this piece of writing. Even though it gave me joy to do it! I think I’m weighing myself against other writers. They seem to have more finesse, deeper ideas, more winsome ways in their writings, more responses to what they post, better ideas and even more fun in life even if I don’t want to live their lives.

I wrote on, trying to sort this out. Near the end, I started coming to terms with myself. Here’s a key paragraph.

  • I want to let my heart speak to other hearts. Yet right now I seem to want my heart to make them happy—so they’ll come back for another happiness pill? I don’t know. We do seem to be a culture driven by expectations of happiness—meaning that somewhere out there today I’ll find something to make my day—something to make me happy—something to help me feel alive and worthwhile.

I don’t pretend to be an accurate observer of our current culture. What I say may be wrong of most people ‘out there.’ It was not, however, wrong about me on that particular day. I was driven by my need to feel happy. I was looking for “something to help me feel alive and worthwhile.” Not in someone else’s writing, but in my own. Which I did–for a very short time.

Why did my initial joy vanish so quickly? Perhaps I lost my confidence? I don’t think so….

I am, however, sure of this.

  • My experience after posting my poem exposed something in me that I don’t like. I say it often enough: Comparison is the source of all discontent. I say it because I don’t want it to be true of me. Sometimes it isn’t. But on that day, it described me with painful precision.

Thanks for listening!
Elouise ♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 20 January 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt:  Exposure

15 Comments
January 14, 2017

Breath of God Unseen

wind-sculpted-drifts-martin-nd-13-jan-2017

Breath of God
Unseen
Artist of my heart
And life
Breathe on me 

The wind is cold
Unyielding
To my vain cries
For mercy
Breathe on me 

Evening shadows
Lengthen
In fading light
Brilliant
and foreboding 

Deep blue sky
Darkens
Trees bend and sway
Breath of God
Breathe on me 

It’s late afternoon. This morning I woke to this photo on my weather page. I thought immediately about my life and the way God’s Spirit has blown through and around it, unseen and unbidden.  

Looking back, I’d say the outcomes today are beyond my wildest dreams. Not that I’m perfect or successful or even ‘special.’ Rather, this is about contentment. 

I’m at peace with myself, though not always with situations in which I find myself.  Or even with my behavior. Nonetheless, things have changed in my spirit over the last several years. 

Today I have compassion for myself as a child, as a young teenager, as a wife, mother and grandmother, and as a retired professional. I rarely struggle with feeling like a fraud, or with harsh self-talk that belittles me or accuses me of being The Problem with Everything. 

I’m not saying I’m perfect. I’m saying I’m at rest with who I am and who I am not. Especially from the inside out. The part that really matters. 

I like what I see when I think of myself as a huge pile of snow, sculpted by God’s Spirit through winds of change. I know, things aren’t exactly spectacular in the world right now. It’s just that today I’m at peace with myself.

Thanks for reading! I pray you’ll have a peace-filled Sabbath rest.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 14 January 2017
Photo taken by Brian Bender at Martin, North Dakota, USA, 13 Jan 2017
Found at Weather Underground App

Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Unseen

26 Comments
January 12, 2017

My someday list

My someday list
Of dreams come true
Spreads heavy with its weight
Of years across my life
So many yet so few

What now I wonder wistfully,
Is this what yet remains —
The scattered remnants here and there
Of life and love and mountains scaled
Now fading from my view?

Someday is now my yesterday
Of dreams no longer bright –
The muddled brilliant afterglow
Of memories tucked away in scraps
Sweet pangs of love and life and death

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 12 January 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Someday

8 Comments
January 4, 2017

Crossings of No Return

Crossings….

The word resonates with finality
Hints of danger and uncertainty
Sorrow and desperation
Weary clothes and
Hungry faces

One foot in front of the other
Backs burdened with life’s necessities
Bodies and bellies heavy
With tomorrow’s children
Silently pleading

They say our world is disappearing
Melting and boiling away before our eyes
Erupting into a chaotic crisis
Unknown in modern times
Are we ready for this crossing?

I can’t help wondering what lies ahead for this world and for us as citizens of this world. Our insular, isolated, boundaried ways of life don’t work well anymore, and our ways of governing seem to have reached their own point of no return.

Years ago I crossed a line of no return. I chose to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I don’t believe there’s a magic wand answer for any of this world’s upheavals. Yet I do believe we see a direction in the life, ministry and death of Jesus Christ. Not the superstar, but the human being sent to this earth to live and to die as one of us and as God’s beloved son.

Jesus made a crossing of no return when he came to live with and among us. He wasn’t president, emperor or chief. Nor was he a privileged member of the religious or political elite, or a child of God immune to human emotions and agony.

His life was short. Yet in his short life I find a direction that hasn’t changed even with our current global upheavals. Taking my cues from Jesus, I’m to love God, my neighbors and myself. Acknowledge my human limitations and need for others. Be ready to accept and offer hospitality from and to strangers. Bear the cost and share the compassion of being a follower of Jesus Christ.

Do I feel strong? Rarely. Do I feel ready? Rarely. Do I feel like giving up? Sometimes. Yet the steady, courageous, compassionate and steel-eyed clarity I see in narratives about Jesus’ life on this earth remains my True North. The one point on my compass that won’t change no matter what it takes to get from here to there.

What does this look like day by day? It’s all in my outlook. Each encounter might become an opportunity to ask for help or to offer help as I’m able and ready to identify myself as a follower of Jesus Christ. Most important, I’m not a savior. I’m another human being who won’t make it in this life on her own.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 4 January 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Crossing

7 Comments
December 29, 2016

Don’t lose heart!

Renewal: urban renewal, spiritual renewal, book renewals (from the library), renewed vision, renewed strength, and renewed energy.

A-ha! Renewed energy! I long for it, yet experience it these days in tantalizing bits that often dissipate overnight.

From the day I was born in 1943, I began dying. Stranger still, everyone around me thought I was just revving up. Maturing. Developing. Becoming a mature, responsible adult woman.

Which means on my way to death. Right?

No one lasts on this earth forever. How dismal can it get? I’m not a pessimist, but I’m also not a gung-ho optimist, so finding my balance from day to day is dicey.

My tock is ticking down. Relentlessly.

Yet I feel more myself than ever before. More at peace with who I am, if not at peace with everything that happens to me. And yes, I want to be renewed. Who doesn’t?

Renewal hurts. Something has to go. Or be altered. Even then, renewal isn’t guaranteed. Especially if I think I’ll get back what I just lost. So that my life can go on ‘as usual.’

Things falling apart is usual. Making do is usual. Total restoration of all bits and pieces of me is neither usual nor guaranteed in this life.

This past year, things fell apart. Unexpected visitors (heart problems, broken jaw, Lucy pacemaker) moved in to stay. When I’m willing to stop, accept, and listen to them, they free my spirit and my writing voice in ways I don’t understand.

So I haven’t lost heart, and I pray you haven’t either. For me, renewal is happening alongside things falling apart internally and externally. Especially renewal of my inner-woman voice that leaps out of my fingers when I sit down at my computer.

Thanks for reading and listening!

Elouise ♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 29 December 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Renewal

10 Comments
December 26, 2016

elusive retreat

gray overwhelms

dreary drab

shades of life

without color

body aches

tears pile up

unable to retreat

one more day

one more year

lost forever

bar clanks shut

on doors creaking

weighted down

heavy chapters

in a book

never written

***

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 26 December 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Retreat

6 Comments
December 15, 2016

How to be Wise, not Good

I grew up believing the Bible would teach me to be a good girl. The other option? Ignore the Bible and grow up to be a bad girl. I just needed to read the Bible, study it, and take it to heart. 

Maybe I’m trying to split a hair, but I don’t think being ‘good’ is the same as being ‘wise.’ Many ‘good’ girls grow up to be like fools. Not all the time, and not by choice. Sadly, they weren’t encouraged to learn the meaning of wisdom—not just as an idea, but as a way of life.  Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments
November 23, 2016

Waiting for God

My soul-mind-body health barometer is a nasty piece of business. Totally independent of my plans and wishes, it does its duty whether I like it or not. It won’t be bribed or bought off with promises to do better tomorrow.

And then there are those pesky paydays. Days when what I wish were true about me has to face harsh reality. Inconvenient reminders of how I’m progressing in soul, mind and body. Or not.

I seem to have arrived on this earth with a predisposition to try harder, more often, more consistently, in better form, with a better attitude. Never give up. Just keep practicing. Little by little today; giant leaps tomorrow. Yes, you can reach the sky. Just pick yourself up and try again!

This morning, however, my soul-mind-body wants something different. The kind of difference Simone Weil writes about in Waiting for God.

There are those people who try to elevate their souls
like someone who continually jumps from a standing position
in the hope that forcing oneself to jump all day—and higher every day—
they would no longer fall back down,
but rise to heaven.
Thus occupied, they no longer look to heaven.

We cannot even take one step toward heaven.
The vertical direction is forbidden to us.
But if we look to heaven long-term, God descends and lifts us up.

God lifts us up easily.
As Aeschylus says, ‘That which is divine is without effort.’
There is an ease in salvation more difficult for us than all efforts.

In one of Grimm’s accounts,
there is a competition of strength between a giant and a little tailor.
The giant throws a stone so high
that it takes a very long time before falling back down.
The little tailor throws a bird that never comes back down.
That which does not have wings always comes back down in the end. 
― Simone Weil, Waiting for God

And so I’m challenged today to wait for God. To give up jumping through hoops and trying harder, hoping for something better. I anticipate God’s descent to lift me up, and kindle quiet thanksgiving in my heart.

We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us.
― Simone Weil, Waiting for God

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 23 November 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Anticipation

8 Comments
November 17, 2016

Lassitude percolates

Lassitude

percolates

pore by pore

disarms

body spirit

induces

slumber

of denial

***

I know this feeling. The desire to escape into dreamland–literally and figuratively. I thought I’d tamed this beast. I have my short list of things to do today. They’re small, I admit it. Yet they’re forward-looking and constructive. Not in the world’s eyes, but for me personally.

Still, I find myself fighting it again. Putting things off until later. Pretending my days aren’t numbered, or that my contributions don’t matter. Allowing this way of thinking to seep into every pore of my body and spirit. . . . . . . . . .a life-numbing, bitter, death-dealing brew.

This is my wake-up call.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 17 November 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Percolate

10 Comments
November 13, 2016

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind —

chaos-in-markets-britain

Here’s a timely poem from Emily Dickinson. She captures what it’s like to be at loose ends. Unable to think straight, sort out feelings, or fit oneself into the new reality. My personal comments follow.

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind –
As if my Brain had split –
I tried to match it – Seam by Seam –
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before –
But Sequence raveled out of Sound
Like Balls – upon a Floor.

c. 1864

Emily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
 Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995

Things undone aren’t easily put back together. Especially when accompanied by Read the rest of this entry »

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