A New Year, A New Way

One rose for One Year

 JJ and I marked our one year anniversary on May 29.  He sent me flowers at work, which was totally unexpected. I came back from lunch, and there they were!  They were a beautiful addition to my desk that had become overrun with my new job. In the interim before the clerk, Jessica, took over my position, we had several people out of the office for various reasons.  My work lagged behind as I worked daily to keep the rest of the office caught up.  I was fielding calls for business licenses, manufactured homes and boat renewals. I was filling in on the tag line, and filling in at the phone desk. Stress was becoming part of my daily routine. By that Friday I was ready to jump up and run out of the office...and then the flowers grounded me. The card was wonderful. "It's been a wonderful year, looking forward to having many more. Love you Sweet Pea".

We FINALLY went out!

And so, for dinner we went to Red Lobster. And we enjoyed ourselves. It was nice to be together, alone, with no TV, phones, games. We talked as the friends we have always been, yet somehow lost touch over the course of the year. Somehow our dinner and our time together pushed the reset button on our relationship.  I can't stress how important it is to date your spouse....and more than just the once a year. My favorite pictures on facebook are of the couples as they are on there dates. Chip's happy wife,  Gracie, grinning ear to ear at her man as they sit at some restaurant anywhere waiting to order their dinner; Wendy Cukierski and her husband "deck dancing". And finally, it was our turn.

 Since our date last week, we have had a wonderful time. Everything is as it was before the game came into our lives. JJ was happy to see me when he would come home. He would call from on the road and be happy to talk to me. He hasn't played the game in weeks, and finally he began acting like the old JJ.  We enjoyed this revival of our relationship, and I am basking in the glow of it.

And then Saturday something weird happened to me. I had a really sharp chest pain that was directly located in my heart and radiated down my left arm. I was so drained that on Sunday I missed mass while lying in my bed all day. Fortunately I had Monday off, so I could use the day as a make-up day. I worked really hard and really well, but by Tuesday I was drained out again. I was dizzy as I left the house for work. I was so drained at work that I felt off kilter. I finally went to the doctor that afternoon. The lab results showed pretty much everything normal, but as I was having concentrated chest pains, the CRNP got me an appointment with a cardiologist in town for this Tuesday.

Cardiologist. That is a scary word at my age. My grandmother has heart trouble. My uncle died a couple of years ago from congestive heart failure, which he lived with for years.  JJ has agreed to go with me to the doctor, for which I am eternally grateful. He knows I am worried, and I think that he is as well.  So in the light of the last week, I am taking a new leash on things. I have to change my way of thinking. Despite my second honeymoon type of week that I have had, I have dealt with a great deal of stress in the last year. So many changes. And with the change of the job and ending of school and numerous other things going on in my universe, stress just seemed to pile up.

Having to transform by renewing right now.

One of the recommendations, besides diet and exercise, which I will cover in later posts, was to meditate. I've been thinking....these Catholics have cornered the market on meditation. What with rosaries and novenas and the office of divine hours, there is no reason that I should ever lack any meditation.  And yet, I have. For the last several years. My routine has been to run wide open for seven days a week as long as I could stand it and then crash about once every few months, usually when there was a holiday weekend, and I had the time.

And my body has told me that it is time to stop the madness.  My healing begins at home with me. I have to transform my health by renewing my spirit...in meditation. So much stress I could have just left at the foot of the cross...a long time ago. And now I have the motivation to do just that.

At my mom's this weekend, I am taking the time to recharge my batteries. I am working on various things that I can't work on at home, including this blog. I have brought various other tools with me to browse over and get my game plan together. There have to be some changes in my life, and they start now.  So, when JJ decided to start his bachelor weekend on Thursday night, I couldn't let it stress me out. I would have rather spent the night with my sweet husband that I had enjoyed having back over the last week, but when I got the grouchy man who wants to complain about everything, I gave him his space, packed my bag (the trip was already planned), and went to bed alone.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
       Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. For this reason man may not despise
       his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in
       honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.  (364)

Woman is sacred

And so I need to change my thinking. I have always heard that the body is the temple of the holy spirit. And that you should keep the temple clean. This sheds a whole new meaning on it... "obliged to regard his body as good".  I am obliged to take care of my heart.  I am obliged to exercise. I am obliged to meditate.  I am obliged to take care of myself, so that I can take care of others. I need to change the way I look at myself.

Then I saw this on facebook:

God's glorious creation began with things such as dirt, then vegetation, then animals....Yet man was created only second to last. Woman is the crescendo...the last and the greatest of all God's creation!
God has created nothing more beautiful, more loving, more tender-hearted, more nurturing. That is why women are perfectly positioned to be wife and mother. And, because women are the pinnacle of all God's creations, they too, like the Blessed Mother, should be esteemed as sacred.  They have been given the special role of being the tabernacle of God's next love interest (the baby she carries).  That is why many women veil at Mass.  We veil sacred things. Woman is sacred.

And I am sacred. And I am special. I have to delegate. I have to exercise. I have to mediate. And when it doesn't go the way I think it should, I have to hand it over.