Falling Down Days

Okay, so retirement got off to a pretty rough start. See past blog entries for details. So today, to ward off the creeping in of grief and depression, I decided to really do a super duper vacuuming job and I ended up falling down the steps wrestling 26 feet of vacuum cleaner hose - so much for a central vacuum. Well, I landed hard in the front foyer and as far as I can tell nothing is broken but I am really sore and achy. At the moment I landed I decided to just sit there on the floor and have a really super crying jag. It was great! There I was on retirement throwing the best pity party of all time! The company was outstanding and it was followed up by the best laughing jag of all time. All I could think about was what I would look like to a peeping Tom. Pretty funny stuff. This moment in time provided a well-needed cathartic release and, believe it or not, I am grateful for falling down days. As a reminder to appreciate the ordinary, Theologian Frederick Buechner in his book, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons writes: "All the absurd little meetings, decisions, inner skirmishes that go to make up all our days. It all adds up to very little, and yet it all adds up to very much. Our days are full of nonsense, and yet not, because it is precisely into the nonsense of our days that God speaks to us the words of great significance - not words written in the stars but words written into the raw stuff and nonsense of our days, which are not nonsense just because God speaks into the midst of them. And the words that he says, to each of us differently, are 'Be brave . . . be merciful . . . feed my lambs . . . press on toward the goal.' " And so I press on toward the process of retirement.