The Follow Up

The situation that prompted my last post (and thank you so much for all the kind words and positive responses) has eased up somewhat. It all had to do with the big Eagle Scout award and the fact that there was no evidence for the kid having completed two required merit badges years ago. I mean like 5 years ago.  I am not always so good at those kinds of details and was so helplessly frustrated at this lapse of record-keeping and accuracy in Scouting. It felt like a fail, even though it wasn't really. Regardless,  I needed to have a little Go Kellie cheer session in my head.

Fortunately, we actually managed to not panic, to reach out for help from the right places, and through some determined effort combined with some hard work, everything was pieced together. We were up against a wall though, because everything had to be found, recreated, documented and recorded by today since the big 18th birthday is tomorrow and that is the hard deadline. Add to that the fact that the kid left yesterday to go to Utah while I'm away at girls' camp this week. There was much of frenzied emailing and driving to other towns and emergency talking with leaders in a remarkably short amount of time.

Add to that the preparations for both his trip and my trip and the general heightened stress level of the last few months and HOLY COW. No wonder I had so many words spill out of me on Friday.

But I found these at Trader Joes on Saturday and you know what? I think they actually helped. It was either those or the chocolate-covered marshmallows. I'm not quite sure.

And I got to take pictures like this on Friday for a family I love.

And my garden looks like this.

Yes, I'm up late again, still finishing up preparations for camp and some work stuff and trying to get a box ready for my missionary girl. She's doing great, by the way, and we are so happy for her. But she needs some happy music and Clif bars, so I am sending them down.

I just wanted to let people know things are okay. We had a lesson in church today about ministering angels, and I tell you what, we had some tending to us this weekend. So much help came from just the right places and we all survived.

Now I just have to finish this and I can go to bed.

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Have a Little Faith

One of my most favorite scenes in all the movies in all the world is a bit from an old Disney flick called The Rescuers Down Under. Enjoy:

 So, did you see there at the beginning how he was freeing that eagle from the trap? He had just finished climbing up an impossibly tall cliff to get to the eagle. He had expended great effort to do what he thought was the right thing. It is one of the great ironic moments in movie history when the panicked eagle knocks that hard-working and well-meaning boy right off that cliff.

But, the reality is, sometimes life is just like that. 

Eventually, of course, the boy learns that the eagle is his friend and will save him and so the next time he encounters a cliff, he FLIES off with joyful abandon, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the eagle will catch him. It becomes an adventure instead of feeling like, well,  falling off a cliff.  I love that moment and am sitting here all weepy just thinking about it.

But right now, looking at the next two weeks of my life, I'm at the "just been knocked off the cliff" stage of this particular scene. I had a whole series of things so carefully worked out and perfectly arranged and then WHOMP, instead of going as planned, everything has changed and I'm having a little freak-out anxiety attack as I free fall out into nothing. I hate it when I realize yet again that yes, I actually am a maniacal control freak. I'm heading straight for the ground and not sure exactly how things are going to play out and I'm feeling what I will allow myself to call a little justifiable panic. 

Fortunately, I have a lot of eagles in my life. They are soaring in to the rescue even as I write this. I know that every need I have will be taken care of because it just works like that when you have friends and family like mine, but man, this free-falling thing while I come up with a whole new plan, it is not so much fun.

Check back for the flying part. I know it will come and there will be a breathlessly happy post about how awesome and fun the last two weeks were. I just have to stare at the rapidly approaching ground waiting to crush me for a little while longer.

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How Does That Work Again?

This weekend was one of those in which I had arranged, by my own choice, to be of help to several different people in a very few days. I have no desire to share details or aggrandize my efforts, because I'm not any different than any other person I know and because that's not the point. The point is how important it is to be willing to serve, to help, and to get outside one's own needs as often as one possibly can.

As the school year gets underway, things start to get busy, and the digital calendar I currently use becomes a veritable mosaic of pastel-colored rectangles. As the time fills up, I start to operate in a near-constant state of heightened awareness that easily tips over into stress. Some days it gets to actual anxiety as I breathe a little faster and my heart rate goes up as I wonder how I'll get it all done.

So, it would follow that during a weekend when I spent 6 hours away from the house volunteering for the high school and then on Sunday, and when opportunities to settle back and just listen and worship and absorb spiritual strength were few and my church experience was mostly just busy; my stress level would go up and not down and even send the needle way over into the anxiety zone.

But there's the rub. It just doesn't work that way. Not for me anyway. As I arrived back home from church on Sunday to my first opportunity of the weekend to have free time, I felt wonderful. Calm. Happy. Renewed. Ready for the week ahead. I was even energized enough to make a real dinner, which hasn't happened much this summer. It just never fails that when I am all sucked into the vortex of worry that I'll fail at what I'm trying to do and I reach out to God for relief, the answer almost always comes in the form of helping someone else. Perspective, endorphins, being with other people, all of it. It just works as serious therapy for me.

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