making the rounds

i heard a story this week about a man who had the exact same name (except with the first and middle names reversed) as another man who died in a traffic accident this week. he was saying that he had to make numerous phone calls to family and friends to assure them that he was indeed fine and safe. he even called agencies he was involved with to be sure that they knew that he was fine. amidst all his anxiety and all his family's anxiety he had to "make the rounds" of his life to assure people that he was fine.

this week we talked about prayer in my church community and i thought about how it is that i pray when i'm spiritually healthy vs how i pray when i'm spiritually decrepid. i "make the rounds" when i'm spiritually healthy. my favourite way to pray is when i'm on the bike as i commute to work. i pray for those that i love as i pass the street on which they live, it's one of the great things about being apart of a community that encourages each other to live nearby one another. i started riding my bike to work yesterday and it was a giddy experience to pound the pedals as i rode the dirty streets of Winnipeg amidst melting snow and ice and the leftovers of sand that has blanketed our roads for 5 months. it's a dirty, wet ride that i have LOVED for the past two days. it's difficult to "make the rounds" on the bus because everything happens so fast as i whiz past the streets of those i love plus i have found it difficult to pray while life has been so cumbersome for me for the last several months.

being on the bike has helped me pray though. at least a little.

a friend reminded me today, "You are just realizing that you are the only one that can fix you. It may seem like a lot but it is necessary to keep going inward. You will make it past the empty and the anger and the sadness to a soft gentle place that is the truth of who you are. It is worth it. Keep going."

i'm still chewing on that.

solitariness has helped me go inward, to explore my loneliness, my aloneness and the feelings of rejection and abandonment that i have felt. it also has helped me to make the rounds, even if making the rounds has meant building up the walls of my own existence and self worth and all the praying i do is just about trying to fix me.

i saw another friend today and i told him that i am struggling. i'm hoping that he's making the rounds too.