Creating spaces

Lots of laughter: perfect way to spend an afternoon.

I slept in until 10 am today and rose eventually to have a leisurely breakfast here at "home" and then drink a pot of tea while I spent some time with God.  I had a quiet afternoon visiting with a former student who long ago captured a very special place in my heart.  As we talked and caught up he would periodically throw his head back in fully body laughter, at a story or a memory or one of the Thai words I was telling him.  As I mentioned in a previous post, summer break is a time for me every year to step out of my day to day life, a time to reflect and reexamine, looking at both my teaching and my living.

And today, as I sipped my tea, smiled at the joy before me, and then had an evening snooze on the sofa, I realized that I haven't been giving myself enough space in my life.  Space for pots of tea.  Space for solitude.  Space for head throwing laughter.  And as a result, I haven't given myself enough space for exercise or naps or prayer or healthy food or spontaneous conversation with friends.  In the transition and stress, the scramble to feel settled and be settled, I filled many spaces with many good things, and wore myself out in the process.

So this year I want to be more intentional to leave those spaces.  To not fear my own company.  To turn off the music when I jog and let my mind wander.  To cook.  To invest in pots of tea with friends.  To worry less about how much Thai I'm learning.  To say no more often.  To spend time at the foot of the cross and listen to the voice of love that gently whispers my name.

It's easy to do that, of course, when one is on vacation.  And it's easy to set those goals.  What will be difficult is to both be intentional about doing those things, and also be intentional about forgiving myself when I'm not able to do all those things. I'm just the sort of person that says, "I'm going to cut back and balance my life by doing a, b, and c, and then striving for such perfection in accomplishing a, b, and c on my timetable that I wear myself out.  Instead of taking a half hour to pray or rest, I'll spend a half hour journaling about how I didn't give myself enough time to pray or rest.

So perhaps my biggest goal, in creating these spaces in my life this year, is to be kind to myself when I fail to create the spaces.  To say yes, there are all these improvements I want to make in my life and my teaching, but I am, in all likelyhood going to fail to make them all. And that's okay.