Thinking differently

I've really enjoyed participating in the Poem A Day Challenge. Writing poetry makes me observe and think from an unusual point of view, but I've missed just plain old blog entries, the ones where I whine or giggle or ponder or just mess around. There is a difference in writing a public and a private journal, and while I have both (the private is truly private, in ink, in my home), my blog is a way of connecting with people who matter to me, whether or not I "really" know them.

I've read so many journal entries lately that have made me want to write on the same or related topic, and I've got a mental list going. I just hope that by the time I get to write about them, the original, thought provoking entry won't be too outdated. This is certainly true during Holy Week, but my thoughts are still gelling, not quite ready to come out yet.

One of my own blog entries and the dream that motivated it have been on my mind a lot. After dreaming painfully about my late husband the other night, I felt like a character in "The Monkey's Paw." The old saw about being careful what you wish for hit me upside the head with a crow bar.

In my more confident moments, I think of myself as a fairly stoic woman who handles pain and life challenges fairly well. That doesn't mean a lack of tears or an absence of whining (proof of that being this blog). Those are just healthy coping mechanisms. I don't want to get stuck in the pain or the problem though, and I thought through my dream some more. In it, my husband was back from the dead. We all knew this was a miracle. I basically went off about how things couldn't be like they had been, and it hurt him. That hurt me badly. Breathing was painful. I was doubled over. My blood pressure skyrocketed that day, and I nearly passed out again, for the first time in many months.

I had prayed to dream of R. and learn something from it, and my initial response was a bitter "so that's what you get for praying." Thinking through the things I said in the dream, it hit me that I was just telling the truth. The truth was hurtful, not my delivery. I could not go back to things the way they had been for the last few years. I still cannot. My spirit was being crushed. R. and I had separated for those reasons, and we were together again struggling to make things better, but death intervened.

If R. had lived, I do not know what, how or where we would be as a married couple. That is a pain that I will have to live with, but I can do that. In the perspective of an entire lifetime, a few bad years are certainly no fun, but they do not define the entire life or the entire marriage. There is a warm, soft place for our many good years of courtship and marriage now. I've got that back. I also have the self-respect to know that despite the discomfort it causes, I will choose a life where I matter. I did learn something from my dream. My prayer really was answered, and I am reminded of Julian of Norwich.

All is well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.