a little hope

I took last evening totally off - watched most of the first of the "Hobbit" trilogy of movies (have been told it's the best of the three, and since I've read the book like 30 times I probably don't particularly need to see the rest of them) and knitted for several hours on one of the sock-gifts for my mom. And then I took a warm bath and slept.

This morning, playing Pandora after I got up while I was getting ready for the day, "Spirit in the Sky" came across the channel....and I started dancing along with it.

And then I stopped, thunderstruck: I feel happy again. I feel hopeful again. That doesn't mean I'm not still mourning people or feeling concern about the future of the congregation or my university. It's just, those things don't dominate my thoughts or emotions like they did earlier in the week.

And yeah, I know, there will be points of backsliding - I get overwhelmed more easily these days and one problem I do have is that when I get overwhelmed with work I hyperfocus on what's wrong and forget the good things. Or there will be some other "bad" thing that happens.

So: I'll have to hang on to this. And also remind myself that I deserve to live, too, and maybe if I have a day when I get overwhelmed, instead of staying over at work late struggling and trying to get things done, I get better at saying "forget this for now" and go home and knit or read a book or even clean up part of my messy house.

Sometimes, if you're juggling too many balls, you just have to drop a couple. Or throw them to another person to hold.

I AM going in to work today but I feel better and more hopeful about it, like I will get useful stuff done, and then this afternoon I can come home and relax, and I still try to take Sundays entirely off.


Also, this was in the movie last night (I have the book of "The Hobbit" well-nigh memorized, and I don't remember it from the book), but it was something I needed to hear, and something I need to remember:

"Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."

(Emphasis added, but that was the part that struck me. Because I am only an ordinary person, and I can only do small deeds. But if I can choose to be kind and loving - to tell the student who walked away from a bad car wreck that I'm glad he's okay instead of asking when he'll be back to class, or helping my new colleague with something that is unfamiliar to him, or greeting that visitor at church - that might just make a little difference. And it's all I can do. And maybe it's people giving up on those small ordinary deeds because they don't seem to matter that allows the darkness to creep up on us....and literally the only resistance I can mount against the darkness - what I was calling earlier this week on twitter as the a-holes winning - is to just keep being who I am, who my parents raised me to be)