Category: Personal Reflection

Personal Reflection

Strange Days

Carrie Sue Barnes

A headache had me flat on the couch for hours this afternoon. Eventually I moved to my bed and prayed and cried a bit until I fell asleep. It was a heavy sleep that I didn’t rise from for three hours. Now I find myself awake when I should be readying for bed. Closing my eyes in the daylight and opening them in the dark, I feel off kilter and am desperately hoping I’ll be able to slip back into sleep sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I decided to turn on the television and watch a bit of the coverage on my DV-R of Blessed John Paul II’s beatification. With a little restless channel scrolling, I’m now flipping between this and the breaking news of Osama Bin Laden’s death at the hands of United States personnel. The combination, along with my shaky nerves from the headache, is rendering this the strangest day in recent memory.

The pain is returning to my head after some relief during my sleep. I haven’t eaten much today, which probably isn’t helping matters. As I’d awoken this morning with several ambitions for this rare day to be spent at home with no company, there’s no denying I was thoroughly disappointed by how things went. Now though, I’m filled with a gripping sense of the littleness of my sufferings. I am a member of this vast human society. It’s a society riddled with sickness and war, instability and death… trying to catch hold of peace but never certain of its finest course.

This is a terribly rambling message, I realize. So go my thoughts though. Blessed John Paul II, advocate of the true peace of Christ that passes beyond our understanding, pray for us.

Faith, Personal Reflection

Slowed

Carrie Sue Barnes

Oh, head cold, you have such a knack for slowing me down. Pressure and congestion and coughing… I am not a pretty sight this morning. As my sister put it after I was dressed for the day, “You look really nice, except for your face.” Throw together a handful of nights of too little sleep (and restless sleep, at that), some unexpected traveling and emotionally trying days and we have pitch perfect circumstances for getting under the weather.

One thing I will say about colds though, they are masters at making me settle down. I’ve wondered if anytime I catch a bad cold, God’s been trying to calm me down for a while but I miss His subtlty and so He allows for a more direct tactic. I wouldn’t put it past Him… or me. So, I’m giving in. Under a dizzy fog of Dayquil, I will lay low. I will rest. I will enjoy a few simple comforts – a favorite blanket, a mug of tea, a bowl of chicken soup. And I will wait.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s precisely the point the Lord is trying to make with me. Waiting: what I am not doing when I get ahead of myself, whether it be in actions taken or in mindsets and expectations; what I am not doing when I attempt to shape God’s will, letting Him know what He ought to be accomplishing in my life; what I may do better under duress of a head cold and a dosage of humility.

Personal Reflection

Best of All

Carrie Sue Barnes
I love spring. I love summer. I even love a few things about winter. But autumn, oh autumn is best of all. Cool nights suited to baking. Putting on that cardigan you’ve missed like an old friend who went away for the summer. Leaves to walk upon and rake up in tempting piles. Apple picking. Simmering cider in the slow cooker. Warming each other’s hands. Sharing blankets during coppery sunsets. Autumn seems to be best suited for old hymns, British miniseries, and books waiting patiently for reading. It invites you to snatch up sunshine and comfortable evenings, whispering in your ear of its own fleeting habits. It dares you to be happy in your home, content and peaceable for a while. I can’t help but trust this season.
Love, Personal Reflection

Lunching

Carrie Sue Barnes

For the past five years I’ve maintained the habit of eating my lunch at home alone. The office being a three to five minute drive from my house, depending on green lights, this has been a completely reasonable option for me. I’ve savored the time by myself, interrupting the workday with an hour to myself, maybe with some productivity or simply some relaxation. I’ve always been someone who needs a bit of time to myself here and there, so these at home lunches have served me well.

No more. Matt and I work in the same office. Our relationship began with lunch dates. We’ve now reached the point of only an occasional lunch apart from each other. The way I used to crave that hour alone and miss it if I had to skip it more than once a week, the same can now be said of lunches with Matt. Today I opted to have a long overdue lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in several months. Delightful as it was to catch up and spend an hour enjoying conversation with that friend, in the back of my mind was the constant awareness of missing Matt at my side.

It’s a simple little thing, this shift in my lunching preference. Maybe you’re rolling your eyes over it or perhaps you think it’s sweet. What’s the point of sharing this tidbit with you? I guess it has me thinking about the changes wrought in my life over the last three months. Three months… it doesn’t seem long enough in the scheme of things to achieve such marked changes in a person’s day to day life. As are so many aspects of life lately, this is just another reminder of how capable God is of taking us by surprise as He works out His plans in our lives – especially if we are carrying around expectations, as I know I have done so very much of the time.

Friendship, Personal Reflection

Missing

Carrie Sue Barnes

What is it about today that has me missing a particular friend so terribly? I can’t put my finger on it. All I know is that it’s hitting me hard today. He has been the definition of “a good friend” for the last few years – good for a laugh, good for a hug, good for counsel, good for conversation. Due to some particularly trying circumstances, we’ve had to go our separate ways other than an occasional email. I miss him… and today I miss him more than usual.

My priest often comments on how we all have to learn the difficult lesson of letting go of certain relationships at the proper time. When clinging to it or remaining in it would undermine what was good in the relationship in the first place, or when the other person is keeping you from continuing on the road the Lord is taking you down, the question arises of whether that person is supposed to be in your life any longer (or you in theirs). His remarks had yet to hit home for me, not because I’ve never seen someone leave my life or experienced an end to a relationship but because all those endings have happened quite naturally. For one to end when nothing in me wants it to end… to have to make that choice because I know it must be made but nothing thereafter makes me glad it has ended… that’s a new experience for me and not one that I am enjoying.

Personal Reflection

This & That

Carrie Sue Barnes

I haven’t even seen the third “Pirates of the Caribbean” film but this rumor is a thrill to hear: Pirates 4 to film in Traverse City?? The photo on that blog does away with any doubts that it’s a usable setting for the film. It’s crazy how much I love that area.

Each and every flowering tree around here is obscenely fat with blossoms right now. It’s fabulous. The season for such sights is also the season for dandelions though. Seriously, I mowed the grass only last night and already there is almost as much yellow as green in our lawn. If I gave any credence to such things I’d have to deem the dandelion the single best representation of survival of the fittest in the plant world.

This morning I found a new favorite poem. Not many poems give me the inclination to memorize and loudly recite their verses but this one accomplishes exactly that.

Becalmed upon the sea of Thought,
Still unattained the land it sought,
My mind, with loosely-hanging sails,
Lies waiting the auspicious gales.
–
On either side, behind, before,
The ocean stretches like a floor, —
A level floor of amethyst,
Crowned by a golden dome of mist.
–
Blow, breath of inspiration, blow!
Shake and uplift this golden glow!
And fill the canvas of the mind
With wafts of thy celestial wind.
–
Blow, breath of song! until I feel
The straining sail, the lifting keel,
The life of the awakening sea,
Its motion and its mystery!
(H W Longfellow)
Faith, Love, Personal Reflection

Aiming

Carrie Sue Barnes

“The line is thin between a selfish act and things you do to keep yourself intact.” I consider that one of the most insightful lyrics of the countless songs I have heard. It’s from “Same Mistakes” by Sara Watkins and the song is a beauty. That particular line resonated with me the first time I listened to it and does so again, perhaps more, this week.
I have a decision to make. It involves work and friendship and priorities. The direction to which I lean changes from day to day. Sometimes in life, thank God, clarity and peace of mind determine a choice and I am able to move forward in that choice with confidence. Sometimes not so much. After feeling convicted to turn in two completely different directions from Sunday to Monday, I began Tuesday with my Bible open on the kitchen table. As there is logic and good reason behind either choice, I felt convicted to seek the choice of love. Which way allows for loving as I should, while which way, valid as it may be, is the more self-serving? “Make love your aim,” was St. Paul’s reminder to me. Make love your aim…
This doesn’t uncomplicate things. This does not even decide things with desirable certainty. But I am given a lens through which to survey the problem, and a purpose to prevail over the handful of other tension-building purposes presently motivating me.