It’s been exactly one year since my surgery.
2017 was a year of healing, risk, growing, trying, falling, getting up, and getting up some more.
I’m so thankful for my husband who let me attempt my new career as an actor after recovering from surgery, and for being so supportive as life has shifted again, for us.
During my last post I was in the middle of filming my 3rd commercial and also in rehearsals for Philomena, the original musical our Children’s Pastor wrote, that my kids and I were in. Being in Philomena reminded me of my childhood love for musicals, musical scores, and live theatre. It was fun and required a lot of energy, and I felt the extreme need to guard and plan rest whenever possible. My mind rehearsed lines and my solo for so long, that it took a few weeks after the show for my brain to stop automatically rehearsing on every drive.
My life is different, as I am now fully “on call”. E-mail alerts on my phone give me a jolt that I am not used to. A single e-mail might reschedule my next day, and rescheduling may include a domino effect of rearranging of childcare, appointments and other areas of my life. I find myself unable to plan much now, unless it is a last-minute decision. It’s a little crazy to always have the caveat, “…I may have to cancel if an audition comes up.”
As the New Year has started, it’s appropriately cliché in this season to start planning, drafting lists of goals and to start the resolutions. Even as I prepare to attend a workshop next week for actors, I had to do homework which included defining goals, and making plans for achieving these goals. In one of my homework answers I wrote: I want to take the appropriate risk in the right season.
In 2017, I had to learn to increasingly let go of control. And although in past seasons this would have been completely scary, it feels like several small steps have led me here.
In this recent season, I’ve had quite a few conversations with people that were facing crossroads, especially in the area of vocation. Decisions seem overwhelmingly huge and each decision maker felt that every step made, determined the next 10 steps. The focus on step 10, then made step 1 overwhelmingly heavy and difficult, and it even sometimes felt paralyzing. Each of these conversations resolved the same, as we asked, “What can we say yes to, for now?”
Our winter nights have been very foggy and there has been limited visibility on several drives. We still go do the things we need to do even when it’s foggy out. We just take it into consideration that it is a condition of our journey. I feel like this limited visibility is where I am, right now in life, and the only solution is to take one bit of distance at a time. Having GPS readily available hasn’t prevented making wrong turns, but it’s helped recalculate and reroute when they were made.
As much as I love clarifying a list a goals, resolutions and plans, it’s just not what I feel is right for me in this season. There are plans, but they are loose and there are resolutions, but they are even more loose. The goals are the same, but the path leading to them are a little foggy. The focus is now on trusting in the moments of rerouting and recalculating.
So I bid you all a happy new year and a year of yes, for now.