Reworking.

Making Ginger Lemon Honey tea, (without any tea- it's actually an infusion) my very favorite comfort drink. And these are limes, but Asian limes and lemons are interchangeable.

I've been doing some deep thinking. Good thinking:

I've drawn back

sketched a little

thought about how things are going

why I've been breaking down inside

what's going on

what to do now.

One thing I needed was rest. I've somehow skipped all of my rest days in the last month. There have been birthday parties, meetings with friends, reasons galore to be racing around the house instead of sitting in the swing chair with a book or some knitting. On the weekend I had a meltdown, got sick, and spent two days in bed, watching Project Runway. I arose feeling like I'd come back from the dead. I walked outside and thought that things were beautiful again. I looked forward to going to the market, finding something to cook, and coming back to the kitchen to throw it all together. I didn't feel dark inside.

It's my schedule for myself that has gotten out of control. My schedule comes from another season in my life, when it worked. I thrived on getting up at 5:00 or 5:30, writing on the porch in Goa with the sun rising over the hill in front of me. I thrived on spending every waking moment that I wasn't working with the kids on some writing project or creative thing. But that season is no longer with us. That season is what I'll call the un-pregnant season.

I've entered a different season, or should I say re-entered. Pregnant season. Dear ones, I'm having a baby. And I find that I simply can't keep up. Not keeping up is making me loathe myself. I clearly need to reprioritize.

Part of it I know is money. This has been a hard season in the financial sense. You know it's hard when you're seriously considering whether toilet paper should be considered a luxury, or when your son is holding a one baht coin that he found on the ground and you're all, "THANK you," and then you kiss it before you put it in your wallet. When I encounter money trouble my response often is, I need to move faster, work harder, get that thing done yesterday!

And work begins to feel like something I should have finished already, I'm failing before I've begun. I was praying and journaling the other day about this relationship between work, trust, and money. Just that day I came across Psalm 127. In verse 2, it says:

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil;

for he gives to his beloved sleep.

As a result of reading that, I wrote this in my journal.

...We work as monks--we do--I do-- my work because it is the work God has set before me- in my heart, mind and will. But my provision comes from God, not from my own hand, so when in need, I pray, rather than frantically trying to figure out what more I can do. We work on in peace day by day, fulfilling what we feel God has asked us to fulfill, not fretting about money or success-all these things are in the hands of God--we approach him with our needs.

Does this happen to you? You find yourself trying to race along in a difficult time at the same speed as always and it comes to pass that your joy is sapped, your strength is gone? If it does, ponder it for a while. Do things a different way. All the little pieces can come together, I'm sure, but maybe everything will happen a little more slowly. Things can always be reworked.

My own reworking is going like this:

-No more setting the alarm clock. I'll wake up with the kids, usually around 7:00, make breakfast, journal for a while, and start school.

-Novel writing will happen on my writing day. It's terrible, it hurts me to do it, but I simply can't stretch my mind in a thousand different directions right now. I'm homeschooling four children, cooking all the meals, cleaning the house. Something's got to be set aside. Not for good, and I know from experience that I can get a lot done on a single inspired day a week, but I realize that I've been trying to bend my mind a little too far. It's feeling brittle.

-All these hormones make me strong in other things. I adore the kids, love to hang out with them. My love for them reaches ridiculous levels when I'm pregnant. I feel domestic, I want to cook, make things I've never made before. I need to excel in the things I'm feeling right now.

-We're starting with some different kinds of schooling that I think will be exciting and bring a lot of joy into our days.

-And more rest, more time for thinking, more things that have nothing to do with work.

-With the meditation center, small achievable goals will bring great results.

I've been on the right track for a while now, remembering to read and journal in the morning. But I needed a little more insight, and that came from boiling over and fizzing out. It's important. We all know that Pregnant Season is the doorway to the journey through Newborn Land, which requires its own gentle, gentle touch.