self care

I spend a pretty decent amount of time taking care of my outside. I don't spend any time, taking care of my insides. Via Haley, via Sarah Monroe..January comes from the Roman god Janus. Janus had 2 faces, one looking forward and one looking backward (Good for a new year) the word Janitor is also derived from this root. Cleaning house, and keeper of the halls. This seems to be a good month to start caring about my insides. Cleaning house, and working on those parts of me that I am not too proud of.

I like to write, it's my way of releasing whatever emotions are running through my head. I keep a journal, and of course, I have my blog. The great thing about my blog is that I get encouragement for whatever thing I am going through. Sometimes its a silly picture of something that makes me smile. Most of the time its what I'm up to, but I was really grateful this week to be able to write about the hard things that are happening in my life, and know people I love are reading it, and care about getting me through it. The e-mails and phone calls, and even just comments are such an encouragement to know that I am not doing this alone. I have you to help me get through it.

My super-ridiculously awesome roommate Haley is going to Peru for 2 weeks. I am CERTAINLY going to miss her an incredible amount, but today I realized that the time alone is quite needed. When something happens to me, either a fight, or an uncomfortable situation, or something wrong..when that happens, I go straight to fix-it mode. I don't take even 2 seconds to think about how or why it happened, or how i even feel about it. I'm so uncomfortable with the thought of someone being mad at me, or upset with me, or disappointed in me, that I force it to be worked out. This results in me being impatient, and so i use un-desirable methods of communication to get the conversation going (i.e. text, e-mail, IM, etc). And once it's going, because I haven't thought about how I feel..those conversations tend to be pointless, and they don't really go anywhere. The point is, when I am upset, I start looking at EVERYONE around me, and I want to talk to anyone about it, get their opinion, their advice. I don't ask myself how I feel about it, or what my opinion is. Today was a whole day of uncomfortable-ness. I sat all the way through it, in my own head, in my own lonely. I didn't reach out, I didn't try to reconcile. I figured out how I felt about it. That felt pretty damn good.

I'm not anywhere close to perfect. All I want is to grow in the grace i'm given, into the woman God wants me to be. I think I took a big step that way today. I feel pretty good about that.