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| Wild Tennessee Thistle |
What is it that causes a paradigm shift from one moment to the next; when we move from one situation to something completely different? This can be by deliberate decision or because an event happens to force you to make a decision.
Now that I've done it, I can announce that I have been laying a plan to leave my employer; "Successfully" was the caveat I spoke of with friends. That if this then that would be the iniator of the launch of change for me. Wait until everything is perfect before you jump, lest you jump prematurely and regret it.
"When my house sells, then I will move." Or "When I get a job in Tennessee near The Cousins, then I can leave my current one." I wanted all my ducks in a row, everything tidy before I left but the truth of the matter is, very much like a relationship that is not healthy for you, sometimes, you just have to cut your way out and go.
That was the situation for me late Friday afternoon. I had worn distress, worry, exhaustion, poor treatment and unprofessional office politics like a mohair sweater, bearing up under it time and time again, waiting for things to change before I bailed. I had promised cousin that I would not arrive and produce work-GAK all over her.
I played hooky for about an hour Friday afternoon; answering no calls, no Emails. I took myself down the road from cousin's to an area called German Creek Resort near Morristown, TN...look it up on the Internet...it is a fabulous little-known area of recreational lake created by the TVA that I wrote about last summer.
I flung my sandals aside and walked along the water's edge letting the mud ooze between my toes, picking up the lake detritus of Blue Heron feathers, pine cones and the sheared off aqua-colored glass from a mini Coca-Cola bottle filled with sand. Perfect! Perfect reminders that our lives are important, life is important! Small bits of grace and joy are important! Daily grace is important and abundantly available because God knew we would need it!
Saturday I spent half a day organizing myself and the work that is currently at hand, wrote a letter of resignation and pushed "Send". I did not list their sins nor my anger like laundry pegged out on a clothes line to flap in the breeze to be seen by any passer-by, I simply stated the last day of work and bulleted a list of commitments I would fulfill along with what they owed me financially.
The rest of the day, I tried on the actuality of a different kind of life like a cashmere sweater, coming to like the idea, a lot. Voicing them aloud like dandelion puffs on the wind, I let suggesions drift around and took in the commentary cousin provided in return.
Though I would not recommend leaving a job before having another one to anyone, I know that intrinsically, I have prepared myself for this moment. My life is orderly, financially and otherwise, so I really can do this. Though I don't know the outcome yet, I do know that it was the right decision to make and I believe that over time, I will see the greatness of that truth: it was time for me to go and I am the one who had to extricate myself from the situation.
What would it be like to accept only a job that you like and that likes you? A job where you are respected, appreciated, encouraged? How about not taking a job that does not fulfill those criteria, ever again?
What will I do in the meantime? Well, if they don't remove me immediately Tuesday morning, as often happens with people who are responsible for other people, then I will continue to look about in this area for any kind of work that I might like to do then, go back to Kentucky and start in earnest, the packing up of my house which I listed with a realtor last week. I knew it was time to get more traffic in there and get the job done.
I'm going to take my daughter and her pal to a beach in Florida that I have never been to; experience a week with two eighteen-year-old young ladies. My son will come for a visit here in TN to come and visit his grandmother; my mother, and my aunt who I will go get in Illinois. A road trip with two ladies in their eighties...I am most definetly getting on that train.
I am looking at the little piece of property just a rock-skip down the road from cousins' that has a little ratty two-car garage shaped like a barn and a gross single-wide trailer on it. I can have the trailer towed off, have carpenters make a loft apartment with a wall of windows in that barn-shaped shed. How would I like coming home to that? How would I like writing the books I know I want to publish from that spot? I can do fall landscaping, work at a grocery store; who cares? As I told my son, I am going to give myself the luxury of doing something I have never done in my adult life and that is, I'm going to take a month before I do anything other than read, sleep, write, travel, ponder. Let things unfold to me, instead of me jack-hammering my way out, trying to force the shape of everything around me.
For now, for today, and this moment in time before the results of my "Send" action comes back through the airwaves at me like a rip tide, I have enjoyed a morning in the small valley where the cousins live, taking pictures.
I made and ate an omlette from farm-fresh eggs and garden vegetables, drank chilled champagne with fresh peaches in the bottom of the glass; I call it Drunken Peach Fizz, thought up by Cousin Dear, my sister-kin, who has taken me in for as long as it takes for me to become my new self.
I am listening to the call of woodsy-birds I don't have in my part of the country and the clatter of the wind from hurricane Isaac blowing through the leaves. It will bring rain by night fall.
I made and ate an omlette from farm-fresh eggs and garden vegetables, drank chilled champagne with fresh peaches in the bottom of the glass; I call it Drunken Peach Fizz, thought up by Cousin Dear, my sister-kin, who has taken me in for as long as it takes for me to become my new self.
I am listening to the call of woodsy-birds I don't have in my part of the country and the clatter of the wind from hurricane Isaac blowing through the leaves. It will bring rain by night fall.
Starting today, I am cataloguing a journey of grace. Did you know there are 170 listings in 159 verses of grace in the Bible? I plan on finding out a lot more about grace. I am inviting her in to my table and I will see how many ways in the days ahead that Grace abounds to me in particular.
I'm starting with II Peter 3:18 which is about the time we live in now; the Age of Grace. We are not under the law and we are not to the last chapter yet, either. This verse is all about now:
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever.
Living in the present, taking each day as it comes. After all, that's all we get anyway; one at a time.
Grow in it, experience it, live it, live in that eye of Grace, not the storm.
Grow in it, experience it, live it, live in that eye of Grace, not the storm.
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| Wild Morning Glories |
