Discouragement

Rick got a job yesterday. It's just a temporary, part-time, fill-in sort of thing, back at the Sagebrush Inn, where he used to work. This should make me very happy, and on one level it does. He went out there and asked, and they said yes, and now we'll have some money coming in. Rick is my hero in so many ways. So the part of me that's not so thrilled has nothing to do with him. 

I guess it all feels sort of like a commitment to Taos, and in the past, that has also felt like entrapment. It's icky. That's my best word here. Icky. It's like a surrender, or even a defeat. We went away, we came back, and now we're stuck again. What we came here wanting, is not what we're getting. Isn't that the way it goes? How does anybody even know what they want?

I'm beginning to feel a little silly living in a trailer in my driveway, while our big house sits there empty. But we still have good reasons for doing it this way. We hold on to the hope that we'll sell our house soon. That would change everything. It would give us options. Moving back into the house would be yet another surrender. I'm not ready for that. And then there are the not so small issues of firewood, which we have none of, for a house that's heated with wood, and of furniture, which we mostly sold or gave away. We'd have to buy a bed for starters. And firewood. And we'd have to get stuff out of storage and move it all back in there, while still holding on to the hope of getting ourselves free of this great big expensive house that we just don't need anymore. Somebody else needs it, but where, oh where can they be?

I am at risk of Discouragement, the kind that starts with a small lack of faith in the System, and snowballs into Hopelessness and even Depression. I don't want that! I want to believe with every bit of me that everything is just as it should be, and that it's all working away behind the scenes to give us exactly what we need, if not what we think we want. Sometimes I get that. Sometimes I know it. And I imagine I'm not alone in feeling a loss of "control" over my life. So as I sift through all this, I hope maybe I'm helping someone else find some answers too. After all, we're all in this together, and "control" is one of our biggest illusions.

I read the other day about how we go through cycles of "moving forward" and "standing still". The standing still times can even feel like slipping backward. It's discouraging, yes, but there's another way to look at it. It's like the waking and sleeping parts of each day. We need both. One is no good without the other. Action and Rest are equal partners in Balance. So what I'm trying to do, rather than feeling discouraged by things not going as I "think" they should, is to look briefly back at all I've done, and all Rick and I have accomplished together, and then to come straight back to Right Now, where there's really nothing to be done, and to let it be OK to just Be for a while. I'm not very good at that. I know I need practice. But to allow my own dis-couragement would mean to surrender my own courage, and that's not something I'm willing to lose.

Looking at it that way, I can feel better about any little commitments we make here. It's not that we don't like it here, but if we stay, to any degree, I want it to be on purpose. So, Rick can go to work, and I'll probably have to too. However it works out--no, plays out--I have to trust that it's all what it's supposed to be. I know we don't have much control over the Big Things in life, but we do have control over how we see them and respond to them. I'm keeping my Courage, and my Trust. Those are choices I can make. I guess the rest of it will just have to take care of itself.