I've been pondering what that might say I'm in for this year. As I look back to the past few years since I began the One Word 365 program, I realize that the past few years have been very enlightening and I feel I have learned so much about myself.
If you have read many of my posts, I'm quite sure that you may have gotten a pretty clear feeling that I have battled significantly with self confidence and self image. If you have thought that, then you would be correct. For many reasons, (that I have talked about to death so I won't bore you once again) I have certainly struggled in the area of seeing myself through a mentally healthy lens. The common theme of the words appear to be teaching me how to accept myself (strengths & challenges), resting (physically, mentally, & spiritually), returning (including trials, relationships, struggles, etc & wait to see what God gives back to me), and now journey (ask me at the end of 2015). Yep. Definitely cause to ponder what is in store for this year.
At the present moment, there are a few different areas in my life that have been on my mind. The priority in this journey we call life is always my relationship with God. A word that I've heard frequently in the past year is "brave." I've heard it so often that I was a bit surprised when that wasn't the word sent my direction this year. Be brave in our spiritual walk. Be brave and boldly go where we are called. Be brave and stand for what is right. To be brave is a pretty large order that I'm not sure I could grasp over a year. (Maybe that's my word for the decade....I'll have to ponder that one.) What I do know is part of my journey in my relationship with God is to learn to allow Him to love me in the way only my Father is able to do. To feel His love so completely and allow myself to be drawn into His arms. Wow. Just the thought of it is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. I think I most assuredly have a lot of work to do for that part of the journey.
The next part of my journey that is taking quite a bit of my time and energy is my career. When I was in college, I heard many people inform other students of their "natural" social work ability. That these students will obviously be most excellent social workers. As for me? I struggled with terminology, with staying on task with the scholarly portion, and with attempting to adjust to being a "returning adult student" who was old enough to be the mother of many of my classmates and a peer to my professors. Even something as basic as a thesis statement. "What the heck is that?" (Never fear, I was quickly educated in the most basic of expectations in my paper writing.) Enter my fear of failure. My fear of falling on my face. My feelings of not being good enough.
Now, fast forward to my current professional life. Leaving an agency where I was known and respected to go out on my own in one arena and, at the same time entering a brand new world of hospital social work. Just a little bit of anxiety, you ask? Sure. Just a little (or a lot, to be honest) of insecure feelings going on in my head through 2014. Recently, I have experienced some acknowledgement that has got my head spinning. To hear clients tell me how much I've helped them, that therapy has been a literal life saver for them, that "we looked at your website and thought you were the right person for my daughter and you were. She's so much better and I'd like for you to work with me, too." To have clients refer their friends to me, or people who I have incredible respect for to send their close friends and family my way for help. Or to advocate so hard for patients in the emergency room, going toe-to-toe with doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, insurance approval folks, or crisis teams when I feel like a person needs more help than they are able to receive just because my gut says there's a problem here. When I hear a physician tell me that "you're a life saver. You got more out of that patient than I ever could have" or "if your gut says there's a problem, then we need to trust it." To hear a supervisor request that you consider receiving supervisor training, that they are recommending an intern work with me, and that an intern would love to work with me after shadowing me for one night. To hear an intern say "Wow! I sure hope I'm that I can be as good as that one of these days. You were amazing with that patient." Or to have a sweet young adult friend of mine ask to have coffee so she can pick my brain about some career thoughts for herself or the other young adult friend who referred to me as her mentor. My thoughts when I hear those words? "Really? You are all talking to me? About me? Wait a minute. Let me make sure there's not someone behind me. Because this is not really the person that I see in the mirror everyday. How did I fool you so well? What useful information do I have for you?" Yep. I do believe there is so much work to do here as well on this journey.
The next thing on my heart this year, thus far, has been relationships. As I wrote about in the last post, relationships are such finicky things. A friend recently gave a wonderful analogy about relationships. She likened them to a garden that takes tending and care. Going along with the same analogy, part of tending the garden is pulling the weeds and adding food to the soil. What would the weeds and soil food be in a relationship? What about co-dependency? What about boundaries? Let's take a look at some things that may be considered weeds in a relationship.
Is a friend "allowed" to have other friends, or must they only be friends with you? Is a friend allowed to express themselves to you without fear of recrimination? Have you ever expressed a hurt feeling or attempted to encourage someone (friend or family) only to have everything explode in your face? Then be informed that you shouldn't say such things as it might hurt someone's feelings? Yea. Me, too. What about if you have a different view than your friend/family? Does that mean you can't be friends or family anymore? How about friends who are only there when it is convenient?
I've seen gardens and relationships that are not tended to in such a way that one could consider them to be priorities. It's not really pretty. With a garden, they've been described as an eyesore and you can certainly not often gain great food and/or flowers from them. I would propose that relationships are the same way. One of the really great things, though, is that weeding and feeding a garden can do amazing things. I would bet that doing the same to relationships can do the same. A great deal of work, but in the end it could be pretty great. Especially if one kept up the care. The issue at times? You might not want to prune, weed, or feed another one's garden. Part of this journey is acknowledging the boundaries. Staying out of other's gardens and keeping others out of ours. Yes. I will be so brave to say that I think there are things many of us can learn about relationships on this life journey.
If this is where my brain is going in only the second month of the year, I might think it wise to be afraid? To take a quote from a popular movie "to boldly go where no one has gone before." Okay. Maybe not where no one has gone before, just a new place for myself.
all contents (c) 2015 Laura Inglis
