Growing in the chaos

Yesterday's post was about feeling out of control, and then seizing little bits of control that you can. It was all true and valid, but there are other sides too.

One is that for all of the ways in which care giving is stressful, there are rewards to it as well. We are at a point where it is taking more out of me, it is true. Probably every time we start doing well on getting respite time in, we hit a new knot and have to adjust all over again. There is still a lot of love in it, and there are rewards to that.

In addition, I have grown a lot as a person, and in my understanding of things. The big leaps forward have mostly come out of bad times.

Some of that I have blogged about, like understanding how much respite time I need and how I need it to work by not getting it, or finding the last obstacle to liking myself in thinking that I hate my family.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/11/introvert-and-my-love-language-is.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-power-of-hate.html

Something more recent from a different blog was an experience that I had with prayer where it was really more the desperation that worked.

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2019/02/hang-in-there.html

I write a little about how I try to pray in there, and that is often how I pray, but lately my mind has been going off in tangents. It's not really surprising, because there are so many different things that I am worrying about, but it still feels ineffective and kind of rude to God.

I had noticed the chaos, resolved to do more to meditate and focus before praying, and then there I was and my thoughts scrambled all over the place just as if I had no control.

And then an answer came anyway. It may not even have been in spite of the chaos; the chaos might have helped. I mean, I can overthink things.

I remember reading an article once about someone whose trainer had her put on a Bosu ball. She hated it, because she was always having to correct and keep from falling. It also really strengthened her muscles, because she was always having to correct and keep from falling.

This is not my favorite part of my life, but it is an important one.

I know some people view God as a micromanager where everything is custom-designed for you to grow exactly the way you need. I don't, believing that a planet full of other people with their own moral agency plus entropy provides plenty of opportunity for growth.

I do believe that as situations arise there are good and bad ways of responding, and that some ways are much better and much worse. A lot of prayer for me is trying to get to the much better responses, and comfort and strength for that.

Sometimes, however, I beg for intervention, or merely ask for it because I am in a state of torpor that can't manage more, and sometimes I can't seem to form a coherent thought. All of those different things can end up working somehow.

I have written a lot about trying to find balance, but I have thought of balance as keeping things that are in opposition but are still valid in mind at the same time. It is starting to feel more like balance is about taking turns, and rotating through. Maybe that eventually achieves a more discernible order, like my original concept of balance is the ending point but I am still at the beginning. I don't really know how things will turn out.

I am still surviving.