...Plain Upon Tablets

I received some news today. The stage was set for it three weeks ago, and today confirmed it. I have diabetes. Out of all illnesses you can get, diabetes has been #1 on my Please, Dear God, not that  list my whole life. I've had great aunts and uncles that had it and saw some of the more extreme effects of it, and wanted nothing to do with it, ever. Three weeks ago, blood work results came back. Sugar was pretty high. My doctor decided to schedule more blood work within a two to three-week span of time. I had that done this past Friday. Today, after smiling and talking with my bestie about my good talk with my dissertation chair, after declaring the completion of my dissertation, after excitedly telling bestie of new writing project; the call came. About the norm in a roller coaster life in which at 1:59 you can be on Cloudy Infinity and at 1:59:10, you can hear the thud and the crack of bones as you fall back to earth. Doctor told me the number was lower, but that...

I. Am. Tired. This is a major truth for me these days. I am physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, socially, spiritually (every "-ally" you can find) tired. The month of May was one in which so many things took place, ending in an ultimate pain and sadness that I know will take awhile to deal with. I dealt with the end of a semester that was painful and wrong on a few levels, I dealt with my first May Seminar class, which started right as the painfully wrong semester was ending, I dealt with pressures of a personal online project I took on and that kept me stressed, and I dealt with learning that my father was gravely ill and eventually had passed. Some might wonder why I would put my dad last on this list. Surely he was more important than everything else, and this is true. But what the above is, is a culmination of pain, stress, and exhaustion that exploded with the death of my father. During May, I didn't go to church. Didn't once open my bible. And I...

I do love Chrisette Michele's song, "Epiphany," but I use a line of her song as title because yesterday, something came to me suddenly: an epiphany. For just a split second, I was sitting at my laptop, having full-blown angst over trying to get my mind, my energy to focus on something, anything, when I got quiet. It was no longer than a minute. But I didn't hear the TV. I wasn't thinking. It was full, complete silence. And in that one-minute of silence, I heard one sentence: Nothing inspires me . And I tilted my head to the side, thought about the sentence and said, "That's it." Since the new year, there has been a change in me. I would argue the "change" started months before this, but I felt its presence strongly after the new year. But I didn't see it as me being uninspired. I saw it as issues with me. I was very depressed in January, and I spent a great deal of time being mad at myself for feeling the way I did. I struggled with tho...

First full week of school kicked off last week. I'm excited, nervous about the semester. I'm excited because every class I'm taking will provide a practical benefit almost immediately to me. For example, my grants/proposal class will enable me to submit a proposal to a conference, to develop a proposal for a non-profit organization, and to develop an academic or industry proposal...with a purpose . Last semester was heavy in theory, in the foundation, the understanding of all the things we will be doing. It got very tedious, very fast with the mounds upon mounds of words to read and dear God, try to understand in order to articulate a fairly intelligent response. I've always been good at doing . Not to say I'm bad at thinking and understanding , but if you give me a task, the task will get done , and usually, done well . So though there is a lot of work to be done this semester, the act of doing is right up my alley. Having said this, the first week, week and a ha...

Dedicated to my spiritual daughter, Ceria Friday night, I hooked up with a "fellow" fellow to see author Jeanette Walls. Walls is the author of the NYT bestselling memoir, The Glass Castle , which details her life growing up in extreme poverty and the unimaginable obstacles she faced. To say Walls is a character is an understatement. She was brutally honest and funny and sweet and vulnerable as she talked about her life, and we in the audience were very receptive to her story; every time I nodded my head or offered a quiet "Mm mm mm," at least twenty people were in agreement with me. One thing Walls talked about was the power of storytelling and how important it is for us to reveal our truths. These truths do not have to be in a NYT bestselling memoir, mind you. They can be revealed to yourself as admission. They can be revealed to another as an initiation of comfort. As she talked about this "revealing of truth," tears slipped down my cheeks. I thought ab...

Recently, God has me buying a lot of things - faith-based things. Books. CDs. DVDs. I know he's getting me ready for something, and I thank him for the preparation. Today, I received Kenneth & Gloria Copeland's Healing & Wellness: Your 10-Day Spiritual Action Plan . There's a praise CD, a healing CD, and a sermon-laden DVD...in addition to daily readings and journal writing activities. For each day, there is a morning devotional time and an evening devotional time, which I love because it encompasses my entire day with God. Today was DAY ONE . The purpose of this blog site is for me to chronicle my journey into new phases of my life...to, in essence, be bare so that I can see the flaws, learn to love them, and learn to keep on moving on to the wonderful life God has in store for me. I thought it appropriate considering this was day one of this spiritual action plan to start by being bare, so... This is a recent pic of me - bathed, sans makeup or anything that c...