I wrote this in 2019 and edited it for clarity in 2022.
I’ve been stuck lately. There are different ways to describe it – hopeless, depressed, attenuated to failure.
Another way could be numb – to creativity, to possibility of change and fulfilling my potential. I go to my daily job from 8:30am to 3pm, maybe run an errand after work, go home, make dinner, and do very little the rest of the evening until I can finally put myself to bed with the justification that I have to get up for work the next day.
Somehow I manage to get the BARE minimum of my other duties accomplished. I do enough laundry to have something clean to wear, shop in little bits here and there to keep a modicum of food on hand, shower at least every other day. As far as my Baha’i responsibilities are concerned, there are assembly duties I have literally been avoiding for years, including archiving old papers, calling National to ask about assembly business, updating membership and records. Guilt weighs heavy on me, but is only partially why I have so little energy to move forward.
Doug sees my struggles. He’s amazingly patient with me – more than I am with myself. He found a person online who offers life coaching and encouraged me to give her a call. I have been considering it, but she charges $350 for a 1 hour phone call. And though the hour may give me some of the direction and momentum I need, there are several reasons I drag my feet.
- $350 is about what I get paid for 3 6-hour days at work. That’s 18 hours at my day gig for 1 hour of her time. I get spending anxiety as it is, and given our money situation, I don’t feel good about this ratio of input to output. Yes, due to not having health insurance this year, we have some savings. But that will be spent on my dental implant, plus I would really like to replace the tub in the girls’ house, since it is gross, at best, and full of health-damaging black mold at worst.
- The Baha’i writings talk about asking God for help – a version of “ask and ye shall receive”. It feels like I am betraying God, like I don’t have full faith in him if I ask someone else for help.
Then again, I am reminded of the joke about the guy whose home is in the path of flood waters. People come to his door to warn him and offer to drive him to a safe zone. But his answer is, “God will save me.” Then, when the water enters his home, a rescuer in a boat comes by to pick him up. But the man refuses to go, saying “God will save me.” The flood is so bad that eventually the homeowner has to climb onto the roof to escape the waters. A helicopter comes to take him off the roof, but again he stays put, saying, “God will save me.” The waters finally drown him, and when the man dies and goes to heaven, he confronts God. “Why didn’t you save me?” God says, “What do you mean? I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter!”
I believe that a Divine Force created human beings. And I believe that Life, as an emanation of this force, offers innumerable lessons for humanity’s education.
Sometimes life feels so complicated, with too many unrelated parts to make them work together coherently. Then again, the human body is made of many seemingly unrelated parts that all work together quite wonderfully.
The human body is one of my favorite metaphors.
So, with that, I take my brain, with its current pre-migraine sensations, and my strangely tweaky left shoulder, and my skin, basking in warmth and reveling in the cooling breeze, and I ask God, the Creator, to take these disparate elements that make up this person I have been made to be, and to move them into a fully functioning, Self-actualized form.
And to please help me recognize the modes of transportation that have been divinely sent to help me get to where I need to be.