Donna’s Blog

Monday again?

 Is it really Monday again? 

Did you know if you are sick and stay in the recliner all day on Saturday, that your weekend is pretty much blown?

Let me testify to that!  I should have known it was coming when I woke up sneezing in the wee hours of Friday.  I took some medicine and was able to make it to work.  I thought I had beat it.  We went out to eat at Texas Roadhouse Friday night after work.  That was quite an experience in and of itself.  (Did you know that if you are told the wait will be 45 minutes, and you end up waiting an hour AND 45 minutes and when you go and check in and they tell you that they called your name already and you tell them they most assuradely did not…that if the manager is called he will offer to provice your meal for free that night?)  Anyway, the food was good and we gave the waitress a hefty tip!  I thought I was feeling o.k. when I went to bed.  But when I woke up Saturday morning, my head was so heavy I wasn’t sure I could lift it off the pillow.

I don’t know why I don’t like to stay in my bedroom when I’m not feeling well.  I guess misery loves company.  So I grabbed a sleeping bag and curled up in the recliner out in the living room where I stayed all day!  I watched television in between naps.  Ben said I snored once or twice, and of course I used the “but my nose is stuffed up” excuse!

I won’t think about all the plans I had for Saturday.  The closets that were going to be cleaned and the floors that needed mopping and the sundry other things on my “Saturday to do list”…..needless to say they will have to be done another time.  Saturday was all about chilling out! 

I did feel better on Sunday and was able to start my 5th week of “The Artist’s Way”.  The title of this chaper is “Recovering a Sense of Possibility.”  That sounds great!  I wonder when we start losing that sense of possibility?  Maybe after falling flat on our face a couple of times?  Maybe after a few people tell us what we want to do isn’t possible?  The negative voices tend to make us doubt ourselves and doubt God. 

I love what the author says, “Most of us never consider how powerful the Creator really is.  Instead, we draw very limited amounts of the power available to us.  We decide how powerful God is for us.  We unconsciously set a limit on how much God can give or help us.”

OK….so here is to a week of NOT limiting God!  Here is to a week of being aware of the power available to me.  Here is to a week of considering how awesome and powerful He is!!

Rounded door frames and biographies

It was 8:00 PM last night and I kissed my girls and husband and headed out the door for my “Artist’s Date.” 

I felt mostly crazy for just taking off time by myself; but I have to admit I also felt excited.  I was finally jumping in with both feet.  I was going to do this thing all the way.  No more excuses, no more putting it off till next week….

I wasn’t brave enough to go somewhere completely new….so I headed to somewhat familiar territory–Books-A-Million.  I say somewhat because to be honest, I don’t really spend a whole lot of time in there just browsing.  I usually go to pick up a paticular book I’m looking for and then head off to other errands.  So it was kind of fun to just wander around the aisles and see what grabbed my attention.

I stopped in the religious section for a while….but decided I wanted to head off to aisles I might not normally go down.  I stopped in the Dream Houses section and decided it would be fun to grab a cup of coffee from “Joe’s Muggs” and flip through the magazine and see what Dream house I would choose.  I surprised myself by discovering that what I really loved was the rooms that looked almost cluttered because they were filled with pictures on tables, on the walls and every shelf had tons of things sitting on them.  I was also drawn to the round door frames and that look was even repeated in the brick on the fireplace. 

I finished my coffee and went to put the magazine back and glanced around to see if I was missing anything else and then noticed the biography section.  I used to love to read biographies.  I had already been in the bookstore for an hour and I hated to stay too much longer, but I just had to browse the shelves for a minute.  That is when I saw a book that grabbed my attention.   I can’t remember the exact title now, but it was a biography on the lady who wrote “Mary Poppins.”  It just intrigued me and I began to flip through the pages.  I would love to have bought it, but it is $25….so I think I’ll see if I can check it out in our local library.  But when I was just reading through the introduction I found this quote from part of a poem (and it was written by a famous poet, but I can’t remember who just now):

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know its place for the first time.”

I love that!  It says exactly how I am feeling…..I feel like I am on an exploration of sorts to discover exactly who God created me to be and when I arrive, I will know who I am for the very first time.

Pew Praying

I love being up early.  I set my alarm for 4:30 AM. 

I had to head to the shower first so that I could wake up!  After my hair was dry and the coffee was brewing, I was ready for my morning pages.  I wanted plenty of time to write my pages and to do a “task” out of my workbook before everyone else was up.  I love the quiet and peacefulness of the early hours.  Funny how quiet and peacefulness so often go together in my mind.  The two just go hand in hand.  We used to sing a song in church called “Blessed Quietness.”  I wonder if that song is even still in our hymnal.  I must have been thinking about all this somewhere in my subliminal thoughts, because when I was choosing songs for Sunday, I choose “Sweet Hour of Prayer”….something else we haven’t sung in a long time that involves quietness.  Coming before the Lord, not in a rush but in quietness….just to enjoy His presence.

I was talking to a lady at church last night about prayer.  We had just finished praying in small groups of three and four and she was complaining that she didn’t really know how to pray out loud all that well yet.  She is an older lady, but a new Christian.  She mentioned that it seemed so easy for me to pray.  I told her I had had years of practice…and then it brought back a funny memory that I shared with her.

When my dad was pastoring a church in Blountstown, Florida, I remember that on Wednesday nights we had PRAYER meetings.  We would meet in the sanctuary and share testimonys, songs and then pray.  One particular Wednesday my mother was leading the service and she encouraged us to just pray in our pew; we could sit (easier for several of our older members) or kneel and then just all pray out loud, together.  So, I kneeled at my pew and plugged my ears so that I could hear myself pray.  Several times I would take my fingers out of my ears and make sure everyone else was praying then I would go back to my list of teenage concerns.  When I was about done, I thought I’d unplug my ears again and check and to my surprise, I heard nothing.  It was quiet.  Oh no, that meant everyone was done and I had been praying, OUT LOUD, and others had been listening!  Yikes!  I was so embarrassed.  I decided to just stay on the floor in front of the pew.  Maybe they hadn’t really heard me and everyone was just now finishing up, too.  That would be great…because I could just wait for them to say the closing prayer and dismiss, and then I would get up out of my pew and no one would notice.  So I waited for what seemed like an eternity and then I heard my mom say, “Honey, are you done now?”  “Yes, Ma’m”, I said and I slowly rose from my knees and sat back down on the pew.

I did learn a valuable lesson that day:  if you are going to pray out loud, make sure you aren’t fussing to God about your parents!   

I Will Date

I am supposed to be going on a date.  This is week four and I’ve already missed three dates.  What is up with that?

Here is the “formula”:  go have fun by yourself.  The reason:  You are taking your “artist child” out to play and that is a good thing. 

I keep skipping it.  Life is too hectic…it is wearing me out just thinking about planning this.  Okay, that is the problem….I am thinking too much.  I’m just supposed to go out and have fun.  I just can’t decide what will be fun.  Go tour a museum?  We don’t have a museum.  Go walk the riverfront?  We don’t have a riverfront.  Go sit in a jazz club and enjoy the music.  No….no jazz club either.  Go to Starbucks….yup, I can do that (see Monday’s blog!).  But I think my artist child wants to do something different…..she keeps shouting “let’s go have fun”….and I keep shouting back, “so what do you want to do?”  Then she gets real quiet as if to say, “Oh come on, you should KNOW what I want to do”. 

I would really just keep skipping it, but the book says that this is one of the important keys to this whole thing.  There were several pages dedicated to the “artist’s date”.  Maybe I should go back and read them AGAIN and see if I can figure it out!

In the mean time……I went to the eye doctor yesterday for the first time in nine years and he had the nerve to tell me I have cataracts!  You’ve got to be kidding!  Minor surgery required, no big deal.  Right.  Stick a needle in the eye….crack apart the cloudy lens and remove it……insert nice, new lens.  Sounds like fun to me!

On the bright side….I took some of the teens of our church to our Georgia Nazarene talent competition.  They all did great.  Of course, being a proud mom, I have to brag on one kid in particular!!  Karlee entered four categories; vocal solo, solo keyboard instrumental, solo woodwind instrumental, and duet instrumental.  She won first place in each one!  I am so PROUD of her.  It always amazes me to hear her sing, play piano and play the flute.  I am reminded every time I watch her that God has given her these talents so that she can glorify Him and that one day He will use these gifts in a BIG way!  The finals are in Nashville, TN in April at Trevecca Nazarene University.  Cool!!!

Wiping the mirror

I sat in a Starbucks yesterday and got blessed.  No, it wasn’t the great coffee….it was discovering that I am “wiping the mirror”, and that is a good thing!  I grabbed a tissue and hoped that no one saw me.  I don’t know….is it o.k. to cry in Starbucks?  Probably so….I think everyone is in their own world at that place.  We’ve only had a Starbucks in Valdosta for a few months….so it is a new experience….but all kinds of people come in there and plop down on the couches and sit at the tables and seem to be in their own worlds.  I guess that is what I love about being there.

I was reading my new chapter into week four of The Artist’s Way.  The subheading was called “Honest Changes” and my first thought was…”i’m not sure i’ve really made any changes, so this should be interesting reading.”  Guess what I went on to read?  The author quoted what people have often said to her during this process, “Nothing dramatic is happening to me.  I don’t think the process is working.”!  She goes on to say that the changes that are taking place, are often invisible to us, but nevertheless, they are there and very powerful.  She went on to give some examples of things that might be happening to us and how those are important changes….and she hit the nail on the head with me on several areas.  I won’t go into detail in case you want to do this book sometime….but suffice to say, this author KNOWS her stuff!

I discovered something this week….I don’t really know what I like.  One of the exercises was to answer twenty questions that had to do with my “favorite this”, or my “best this”, or ”what I really love is” and I can’t tell you how hard that was for me to try and answer those questions.  Maybe that shouldn’t bother me, maybe everyone has trouble answering those kinds of questions….but it just bugged me.  I wanted to know EXACTLY what I liked and instead I had this feeling that I wanted to ask someone else’s opinion.  I know this may not make sense, so let me tell you what one of the questions was. 

Question 5.  If I could lighten up a little, I’d let myself……. Ok, there’s a good question.  We all need to lighten up a little.  What would you do if you could lighten up a little?  It’s hard enough to be honest and admit that I am hard on myself.  I demand a lot of Donna.  I expect Donna to perform great at her job, and keep a wonderfully clean house, and be a caring friend, and be a prayer warrior for her family, and dedicate the necessary time it takes to do the volunteer jobs at church, and learn what it takes to be a good songwriter, and be a loving supportive spouse and……and…..and…..and….  Lighten up?  You’ve got to be kidding?  I think I finally answsered that I’d take some girlfriends and head off for a weekend of fun….and then I felt guilty for writing that!  (if you are thinking this girl is screwed up….I am liable to agree with you!) So….welcome to the conversation at Starbucks! 

Then here is the awesome thing I read:  “What you have been doing is wiping the mirror.  Each day’s morning pages take a swipe at the blur you have kept between you and your real self.  As your image becomes clearer, it may surprise you.  You may discover very particular likes and dislikes you hadn’t acknowledged.  A fondness for cactuses.  So why do I have these pots of ivey?  A dislike for brown.  So why do I keep wearing the sweater if I never feel right in it?….The snowflake pattern of your soul is emerging.”

I love that.  Maybe I am just waking up to the “okayness” of being myself.  I have been a people pleaser for way too long.  I don’t like conflict and I’ll do whatever it takes for people to get along.  Maybe it is birth order, maybe it is personality….I don’t know.  I have this picture that stays with me whenever I think about how much I dislike conflict.  I am at home as a child of about 8.  We are all in the living room as dad is trying to hook up a new television he had purchased.  My parents didn’t argue a lot, but I could tell that mom was getting aggravated with dad and I can remember that I stuck my fingers in my ears so that I would not hear the conflict.  They never shouted so it wasn’t that they were loud.  I just remember thinking “I hate it when people are on two different sides and don’t seem to be listening to each other.  Why can’t they just meet somewhere in the middle?  Or better yet, why does mom have to even offer an opinion?  If she was quiet, there would not be any conflict.”  So I would “close them out” until it looked like they were getting along again. 

But you know what?  All conflict isn’t bad.  It helps to clear the path sometimes to truth and finding what works.  It just takes someone daring to step out and share how they feel.  Maybe I’ve been afraid to dare to offer anything.  It is easier to applaud what someone else is saying than to admit that I might disagree. 

Let me close with another great quote that I’ve put a star by:  “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”

The Truth of Two

“The lie is to think I can make it on my own; the truth is that two are so much better than one”….

It’s funny how I write words like that and then they come back to me in the most powerful ways.  I mean it was powerful when I wrote it; the chorus from that song goes on to say that “Somebody’s praying for me…” and that was what I was focusing on when I wrote it.  Tonight, it is that verse that is so meaningful.  I have really experienced the “truth of two” this week.  It is truly amazing to have friends to lean on.

I think I grew up mostly as a loner….not because I wanted to, but because we moved every two to three years.  It was difficult attending two elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools.  Well, I don’t mean to say that everything about it was difficult; I enjoyed meeting new people and building new relationships…but it was hard for those relationships to really become “planted” when we didn’t have a lot of time to cultivate them.

I always marveled at the stories of neighborhood girls who would talk about living in the same house their whole life!  I would be fascinated by the thought of meeting a friend in first grade and still knowing that same friend in sixth grade.  Think of all the stories you could share…..all the “firsts” you could share.  First report card, first chorus Christmas program, first field trip, first slumber party, first boyfriend, and on and on.  Friends would see each other through thick and thin.   Friends were there to lean on through it all.

I finally discovered that in college.  I met an amazing girl from the country of Panama and somehow we became prayer partners.  I can remember sharing our burdens together and then we would kneel beside the bed and pray.  I was always amazed at how easy it was to pray with Anabela by my side.  I never felt judged or condemned, or like I had to pretend I was something I wasn’t.  We would cry and pray together and touch heaven there in that dorm room.  I remember it like it was yesterday and it was my first glimpse of the truth of two.

I had no idea that I would marry and actually settle down and live in one place for 20 years.  The funny thing is, I’ve made some great friendships and guess what…..each one has moved away and now I am the one that stays!  Mandy, Adel, Robin, Leighann, Barbara, Renee, Leisa, Pam….for whatever reason, the Lord moved them on and I got to stay.  The cool thing is that several of those ladies planted themselves in my heart and they are my soul sisters!  But ahh, distance is still such a frustrating thing.

Then sometime last year the Lord gave me the Lunch Bunch.  The four of us decided we were all hungry for friendship and the only way to grow it was to do that cultivating thing.  So….we meet for lunch and we talk and eat and have gotten to know each other.  They were the first ones I emailed this week when things started getting tough at work.  What a comfort to know I wasn’t alone.  And then I wrote a message on the WAJ board and friends replied they were praying and some others wrote some great advice.  It was like a breath of fresh air into a place where I had been all closed in.  I realized I am not a loner….I can not do this on my own.  Sometimes I have no answers…..sometimes I am downright confused and needy.  And to know that even one person understands me and will help to carry my load makes an incredible difference.

That is the truth.    

Do you hear what I hear?

“The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels.” (Hazrat Inayat Khan)

Why is it that we focus more on the outer being, than the inner being?  Why is it that there are billboards everywhere that encourage us to drink the right drink, wear the right clothes and dazzle others with all our jewels?  It seems the world is shouting that it is all about what I am on the outside that matters.  Yet if I follow their advice, then I just fatten my lifestyle with good things and leave my soul malnurished.

So I focus every morning on the soul.  I try to nourish it with time in the Word and now, writing my morning pages and listening to what my heart and soul are saying.  It is time well spent.  Although I find it interesting that I can hear a voice in the distance somewhere, saying that I am selfish to spend this time on just me.  I should be doing anything else with my time instead of investing in this “unseen” exercising of the soul.  I can listen to these doubts and allow them to grow and sabotage what God is trying to do in my life.  It is funny how doubts, once unleashed, can grow frighteningly louder.  “Taking in the first doubt is like picking up the first drink for an alocholic.  Once in our system, the doubt will take on another doubt–and another.  Doubting thoughts can be stopped, but it takes viligance.”

I know I must focus on this truth….that as the soul is nourished it becomes enlightened.  There are so many things that I am learning and as I learn how to understand what my heart and soul are telling me….I can learn to be a better “me”.  When I am a better me, I give a better gift to my family, to my friends, to my corner of the world.   

My reading today was on Dealing with Criticism.  Criticism will bring doubts, quicker than anything else.  The author suggests a cure for the critics in our lives…..just ignore them and DO IT ANYWAY!  Invest the time you need to invest to be what God is calling you to be.  Go to that class, read that book, spend that time by yourself, find that friend who will listen.  Whatever it takes….just do it!

I hope that as I become aware of the tender reed of the soul, that I will be someone who will encourage that sprout to grow up in others.  How amazing is the gift we can give to one another through the well spoken word.  I want my words to always be words that will lift up, encourage and bring light to a soul…..that indeed, is more precious than jewels!

If you build it, they will come

…the famous line from the movie Field of Dreams.  I don’t think I fully understood that movie when I first watched it.  Kevin Costner’s character heard voices telling him to “build it”.  After much struggle, mostly with his own instinct to run from what he was hearing, he built the field and it was amazing what happened!  The Field of Dreams not only brought answers to others, it answered a deep need in Kevin’s life, too.

That is what I’ve been learning this third week into “The Artist’s Way”.  You know how you read something and it just jumps off the page at you?  Almost as if it was a truth that you already knew existed somewhere deep in your heart….but had to see it in print to understand and believe it.  For me, it is the concept of what the author calls “synchronicity”.  If I can try to put it in “a nutshell”, it means that when I begin to answer the call, commit to the call of my heart, then things begin to “fall into place” that were supposed to happen all along….but could not begin to happen until I took the first step of obedience.  A lot like the field of dreams…..when he built it (did his part), the magic began to happen.

I love this quote by Goethe:  “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it.  Action has magic, grace and power in it.”

Another thing the author wrote that stopped me in my tracks was this:  “In my experience, the universe falls in with worthy plans and most especially with festive and expansive ones.  I have seldom conceived a delicious plan without being given the means to accomplish it.”

I just had to stop there because I could look back now, over this journey of writing and see how that is so true in my life.  How I dipped my pen into the waters of writing music and then a ripple effect begin to happen.  Here are just a few snippets of that journey and the ripples that happened…..

–I “run into” an old friend who writes songs and I decide to play a song I had started and never finished.  He tells me that if I don’t finish it, then he will.  I pick up my pen in January of 2002 and start writing.

–My mom invites me to come to sing some of the songs I have been writring at a Mother’s Day Banquet at her church.  After I sing, several ladies ask if I have a CD of my songs.  This stirs up another idea….recording a CD of the six songs I had written.  I just happen to have a friend who has a studio and offers to help me record the CD.

–I send this CD to several friends.  I have a dear friend in Zanesville, Ohio who is excited and asks me to come and do a concert at her church.

–Since we are traveling all the way to Ohio to do this concert, we make plans to go in the summer of 2003 so that we would have time to stop along the way and maybe sing at some other churches. 

–I have a dear friend in Nashville, Tennessee who wants me to come and sing at her church.  She gives the CD to their new music minister who likes the CD and invites me to come and sing.  The music minister is Dave Clark!

I could go on and on, and sometime I will have too….but I feel like I am still on the verge of what God is doing.  I feel like there are ways that He is working that I have no clue about.  I know without a doubt that doing this Artist’s Way book is one of the necessary steps in this journey.  (And by the way, this is happening because Dave encouraged me to attend Write About Jesus….and Sue Smith, the director of Write About Jesus started a bulletin board where I saw a link to Melissa’s blog, that encouraged me to pick up this book…..whew!!!)

I was writing this morning about what an awesome God we serve.  This Creator of the universe is creating dreams in our heart each day.  I think about all the songs, books, poems, and prayers that will be sung, written and spoken today.  He is the author of them all!

Let me close with something else from week three:  “We like to pretend it is hard to follow our heart’s dreams.  The truth is, it is difficult to avoid walking through the many doors that will open.  Turn aside your dream and it will come back to you again.  Get willing to follow it again and a second mysterious door will swing open.”

On the Other Side of the Glass

I have some friends who are in the recording studio today working on their next album.  How fun is that?

The first time I was in a studio to record was back in 1983.  I was selected to be a part of a mixed ensemble at Trevecca Nazarene University.  I don’t think I realized how awesome that whole time was; I don’t even have the first album we recorded back then.  I know that they gave us some to keep and I think I gave one to my parents, but none of us can find ours now.  I’ve thought about contacting some of the people from that group to see if I can get them to burn me a copy onto a CD.  I had the chance to sing a duet with one of the guys in the group and I would love to be able to go back and listen.  Although I’m sure I sounded like I was twelve….it would still be cool to have that recording.

I remember standing around in the sound room as we were handed our head phones to put on.  There were four guys and two girls in our group.  The guys gathered around a couple of microphones and Melissa and I stood at the other one.  The producers and technicians were on the other side of the glass doing their thing…..listening to see if we had our parts right…..listening to see if we were blending together.  It was so much fun!  We’d only been singing together for about six weeks when they wanted us to go ahead and record our songs so that we’d have an album to sell as we sang at churches around the Trevecca District.

I remember thinking how cool it was to be in a room with such gifted singers.  I thought everyone was so great.  I wondered what in the world I was doing in that group.  I had auditioned for the group at the last minute, on a whim.  I just grabbed a songbook and headed to the auditions.  I guess it was the fact that I picked out a low song to sing that grabbed me the spot.  They assumed I was an alto and they needed one.  So I got the part.  I CAN harmonize and sing alto, thank goodness, but I’ve always been a second or first soprano in high school choir and at church. 

It was fun to add the harmony on the album and especially to sing that duet with Mark Hodge.  The song was called “We Get Lifted Up.”  I’ve never seen it in a song book or anything since then, but it was a cool song.  It talked about the power in praising the Lord and how it changes our perspective when we focus on His goodness and love.

The next album we did was in 1984 and the producer was Dave Clark.  How cool that exactly twenty years later, he would be producing my first CD!  I actually don’t remember Dave from 1984.  If he came from behind the other side of the glass, I don’t remember meeting him.  I didn’t realize he produced that album until I was looking at it one time last year and saw his name on it.  I was so surprised.  I racked my brain trying to remember if I’d shaken his hand, spoken to him, anything.  I hate to admit it, but I guess I was rather focused on the cute college guys I was singing with.  But that is a whole nother blog!!

The Wall, The Wait, The Will

What a difference a day makes!  Wasn’t it yesterday that things were “sunny” and now today, I feel like I want to sit down in front of the wall and cry.

I think that is what they call it when you hit that “point”….that “no going forward”….that “about to give up” feeling…..the wall.  It’s day 11 of my journey through this twelve week “spiritual path to creativity” and I am starting to doubt my ability to wade through all of this stuff. 

My first half of the brick wall is the argument is that I seriously do not have the time to dedicate to this.  I came home from work last night, thought about the laundry that needed doing, the bathrooms that needed cleaning, the chapter in my book that needs to be read and church.  I told myself I could just drop the girls off at church and come back home and get a lot accomplished in an hour and go back and pick them up.  We loaded up the van, stopped by to pick up Karlee’s friend and even as I was pulling in the parking lot I was still debating about what to do.  I thought about the kind of example it would set for the girls if I were to skip church for my “to do” list (that is always there anyway…what would one more night hurt?), so I parked the van and got out.  Like always, I was glad at the end of the evening that I didn’t skip it.  There is a always a blessing in store at our Wednesday night Ladies Bible Study.  I am never disappointed that I made the effort to go.

The second half of my brick wall is the fear that I will invest all this time of writing my morning pages, reading through the book, doing the exercises and not be changed.  I have this fear that I will be the one person that this book won’t help.  Everyone else who picks it up will be radically changed by the end of it….and then there will be me, sitting in front of the wall still trying to figure out how to get over it. 

I remember thinking the same thing when all the buzz was happening about the prayer of Jabez.  People were going on and on about what a wonderful book it was and how it was revolutionizing their prayer life…..so guess what?  I purposely didn’t pick up the book to read it.  Is that crazy, or what?  I couldn’t help knowing WHAT the prayer was because it was on posters in every bookstore in town.  But I just didn’t want to read all the background behind the prayer and then have it not affect me in any way.

I guess the reason I wasn’t afraid to pick up The Artist’s Way, was because I only read one person’s comments about it and she hadn’t even done it yet, so I didn’t have to live up to what she’d gotten out of it.  I guess I should never have read the introduction to the book, because it gives example after example of how people’s lives have been transformed after going through this course.  So there is the thought again that it has already helped thousands of people…what if it doesn’t help me?  If I’d realized what my problem was……I would have skipped all that.  If it sounds like I am aruging with myself, I think I am!  Cause part of me just says to wait a a while and take a break from all of this. 

I guess it is no coincidence that today’s reading is called “Skepticism”.  Let me quote what the author says so that I can really digest it:

“Perhaps the greatest barrier for any of us as we look for an expanded life is our own deeply held skepticism.  This might be called the secret doubt.  It does not seem to matter whether we are officially believers or agnostics.  We have our doubts about all this creator/creativity stuff, and those doubts are very powerful.  Unless we air them, they can sabotage us.  Many times, in trying to be good sports, we stuff our feelings of doubt.  We need to stop doing that and explore them instead.”

OKAY…..so I’m being skeptical.  And according to the author, I am right on track.  I’m supposed to feel better about that?  I have no clue.  It does feel kind of strange to be reading about this now though, like the author stuck this chapter in here when I wasn’t looking.  I should pay attention.  I want to muster the will to try really hard to look at myself and “air” the doubts. 

Later in the chapter, this is another great thought she wrote:  “Setting skepticism aside, even briefly, can make for very interesting explorations.”  Hummmmm……I bet there are some interesting sights on the other side of that wall.