There's Always Something to Choose (From)

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Well faithful readers, I'm back! And from the title, you should deduce that I've been making choices that don't have anything to do with blogging—or do they? :)

This has been the summer of choices, my friends, and some of those choices have thrown me for a loop...or two. But the nugget of truth that I've been searching for the words to express since it dawned on me is this: there is always a choice. Always.

Now I already knew this, but, as with most startling revelations, I hadn’t known it as viscerally, as deeply, as soulfully as I knew it every day of my three week visit back home on good ol’ Cape Cod. And even after those weeks of watching moments unfold with wonder, I still forgot when I got home.

Becoming the Queen of my domain is hard work!

I’ve been making all kinds of conscious choices for months now and for the very reason that I acknowledge that I have so many choices, I often feel completely overwhelmed! So finding the still, quiet place inside my heart and mind where I can discern which choice to make has been my life’s work here lately. It is very quiet and often lonely work, and it isn’t always something I want to write about.

I’ve learned that I write to think things through and that my ideas about what a “writer” is and does are finally catching up with how and why I write. I have discovered that when I tell just one of my friends, in an email, how I feel, I don’t feel the need to blog. But at the same time, I’ve discovered that perhaps I want to write a new kind of blog. And it may look exactly the same on the outside, but on the inside, I’ll be writing it from a different place and for different reasons.

And it might just have to be another blog altogether. In fact, I started writing an entry at the beginning of the month called “Low Pressure Area” and I was going to post it on my old personal blog, but even that just felt like this, and explanation of why I hadn’t been blogging. Well, the reason is simple. I’ve been putting my life back together like a puzzle and I still don’t know where all the pieces will fit together or IF THEY WILL, and I just haven’t wanted to talk about it until I knew more.

That’s all. Simple. I’ve been giving myself back to me and it’s been good!!!

So hopefully, like I said, I’ll be writing about this new trajectory of puzzling my life back together because I think I’m ready to talk about that for a while. And it may not be that profound, but I think it will be just fine. I hope you agree.

So here we go! My kids go back to school next week and SO DO I!!! I’m finally doing what I’ve said I have wanted to do for the last ten years. I will be exploring my own interests and creativity. Just for its own sake. To play. To experience some of that joy that Julia Cameron has been telling me about these past twelve weeks in her book, The Artist’s Way.

But more about that later!

PS: I did end up finishing and posting "Low Pressure Area" and if you're interested, you can find it here. I put it on that blog because there are more details of a personal nature! Shhhhh!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Something to Think About: Three Finger Rule

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Do this: point away from yourself like you are scolding someone. Does your thumb naturally grab onto those three extra fingers and hold them back so that they point right back at you? Mine too.

Did you try it?

Come on, play along.

Do it again!

What I love about the three finger rule is that I can see it! In truth, it is just a modification of Jesus’ lesson to refrain from judging others.

The New American Standard Bible says: "Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Other translations speak of a “mote,” “grain of dust,” or “splinter” in another’s eye as compared to the much larger “beam,” “bit of wood,” or “plank” found in one’s own eye.

I am so often humbled by remembering this passage; however, I didn’t always remember it at the right time! Because I tend to be a pointer when I am judging someone’s behavior (for instance: husband, children), the three finger rule is perfect for me. The passage now comes to mind immediately, and always, much to my dismay.

I see one finger pointing at the other person and THREE pointing at me. Uh-oh. Does that mean that I’m at least three times as guilty as the person I’m pointing at? Is there a log in my eye? Quick, hand me a mirror!

I won’t lie to you. This rule has made me furious at times.

I AM NOT like them! I’m just angry, disappointed, frustrated, appalled, fill-in-the-blank at their behavior! How could they be so careless, reckless, unthinking, unfeeling, fill-in-the-blank towards me and/or all of humanity (I’m thinking specifically of Houston drivers at the moment!)?? I mean, can’t a person just be upset when someone else doesn’t behave properly without it having anything to do with the person who is upset? I mean really!

The answer is no.

Honestly.

I know. It’s not easy to hear. Especially when we think we really, really get it.

We know this one by heart, right? It’s cliché for crying out loud! Let’s see….there’s: “He who is without sin should cast the first stone.” And, “People in glass houses should NOT throw stones.”
And, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” We get it!

And still, I couldn’t see how being upset with someone else had anything to do with me. I had to start asking myself some tough questions.

One of my pet peeves (besides disobeying traffic rules) was lying. I seethed if I discovered that someone had lied to me—at all. My self-righteous anger welled up and I thought, “It can’t possibly mean anything about me because I tell the truth!!!” So what did my three fingers have to tell me when I pointed out a liar? Turns out, quite a lot.

I don’t think anyone has lived an entire lifetime without bending the truth at some point, especially in the name of tact or politeness, and I certainly knew that I had not lived a life of perfect honesty. But I knew that I was honest to a fault because people would tell me how amazed they were at my honesty with them. In fact, I’m afraid I had a bit of a reputation. (Uh-huh, you hear it coming don’t you!)

Well, at this point in my life, when I felt surrounded by liars, I was desperately trying to find a spiritual way out of the pain. Once I learned about the three-finger rule, I was determined to understand it. For what seemed like a long time though, I just couldn’t.

I wanted to know why, the more I kept pointing out the liars, the more those three fingers kept pointing back at me!

Dear readers, one day I discovered I had been lying to myself. I finally heard those voices in my head that told me I wasn’t good enough, attractive enough, smart enough, fill-in-the-blank enough. I also started to see that people lied to me because I didn’t want to hear the truth. I expected too much from myself and so I expected too much from others, and when they “messed up,” the last thing they wanted to hear was me reminding them, so they lied.

The fact is, being upset with others is a choice we make because we want to control in others the faults that we often don’t recognize in ourselves. So, if you find yourself pointing your finger at someone else, remember that there are always three pointing back at you.


© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

A Whole Lot of Something

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When my sister gave me Anne Wilson Schaef’s Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much, I didn’t really believe that I was a woman who did “too much.” Sure I tried to tick off several items on my daily list, but those were “normal” things that wives and mothers and teachers had to do every day for heaven’s sake!

So I asked myself, “How does someone who doesn’t have a job but does have commitment issues (me) fall into the ‘workaholic’ category? What do I do so much of anyway?” The answer skewered me to the spot immediately. I do A WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING! I do so much nothing that I never get the great big SOMEthing(s) done!

In fact, my ability to avoid and shirk and dance around big projects with little nuisance-y things has been what has kept me from balancing my life and my time. The little nothings of my average life have been consuming me and keeping me from getting ahead: in my career, in my writing, in my reading, even in my parenting…in everything I say I want to do with my life.

Now, I already knew that 2007 was going to be the do-or-die year for focusing on me and what I want and how to get it. I had my tag words “Discipline” and “Commitment” looming in front of me. What I didn’t see was that there was “nothing” standing in my way. All those obstacles I saw between me and what I want for me were just a mirage, and I was creating all of them. I thought that the journey had to be long and difficult in order to be real, but here I was, presented with this “beam me up” reality.

The life I want is just a moment away.

And one decision is all it takes. Sure, I may have to make that decision repeatedly because it’s an idea that challenges my ingrained habits, but it’s a decision that gets easier and easier to make. Nothing and something are completely subject to our perception, and all that truly matters is that we choose to create the somethings that we want and not waste our time making somethings out of nothings.

For example, it is true that my family needs to eat and that I am the person who hunts and gathers (and cooks) in the family, so grocery shopping is, indeed, something that I must do; however, in light of the reading and writing that I want to do, shopping is much lower on the significance spectrum than I tend to make it out to be. So, if I expand shopping to the point that it interferes with reading and writing, then I am letting nothing become something and thus have nothing of substance to show for my dream pursuits.

(This made me think, Oh, the laundry needs to be changed out and I almost stood up! Like I said, I just had this Shazam! moment a couple of hours ago, so it may take more than a day for it to sink in!)

So in other words, if, at the end of the day, my goal is to have “something to show for” my dreams, then I must continually make decisions about what is “nothing” to me and what is “something” to me—or else change my dreams!

But that’s part of what this year, especially, is all about for me: taking the time and doing what’s necessary to find out exactly what my dreams are. And that’s what this blog is here for—to chronicle the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the overs and unders of my journey to becoming what Allyn Evans means when she says “Queen.” I am learning to establish dominion over my own life and to fill it with fabulous somethings, all of my own divining. So…

I hereby crown myself a “Queen-in-Training” (QT) and banish the somethings that are actually nothing! Please do join me on my journey into and around the Queendom!!!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved