I just returned to my office after an 11-day holiday break. I had so many hopes for that break time, many of which went unfulfilled. For weeks, I’ve had hundreds of dollars of medical receipts to submit for reimbursement to our insurer. Although there were hopes and plans for family time, gift exchanges, holiday parties (all of which happened and were great), one singular tactical goal was setting aside 30 minutes at the most to print these receipts out, stick them in an envelope and mail them off to Cigna. Today is January 2nd and they’re still sitting on my bedside table.
I wasn’t completely idle. I walked every day (of course). I did a couple of other projects around the house, ones that produced more visible and immediate rewards. But I avoided getting this simple paperwork completed.
Many of my local walks take my along urban paths full of potholes and sidewalk tripping hazards. I have to actively avoid them to protect myself, so I recognize that avoidance isn’t always bad. I was very aware as I walked the neighborhood on December 27th that I was avoiding walking down one particular block, one that I avoid intentionally. It is on this block that the Palermo family lives. On December 27, 2014, four years earlier, a colleague of mine, Heather Cook, struck and killed Tom Palermo, my neighbor, while she was driving intoxicated and texting as he was out cycling on his holiday break.
It is not unusual for me to see Rachel, Tom’s widow, and their two children in the neighborhood, most often in the morning when she is walking them to school which requires walking near my house. Although we don’t know each other, we know who each other is. Our dogs have met. She and I have met (awkwardly) at a party. We can go weeks without seeing each other, or it can be twice in the same week. We are polite, but there is a certain level of avoidance. For me, it is a combination of avoiding the trauma I still feel from that incident, and an attempt at not dredging up that same trauma in her that I imagine she feels when she sees me. Avoidance is at times a survival skill.
Back home, in addition to the medical receipts, there’s an intermittent leak in the back bedroom ceiling that eventually needs attention. I need to order new athletic shoes, but we probably need to buy a new refrigerator first—or can either or both wait another few months? Next week will produce a new list of avoidances.
I know there are some things that just won’t magically go away. Like talking with a neighbor who is a good friend of Rachel and we both know we need to talk about that complicated triangle of relationships at some point. Or figuring out what to do about the roof. It’s easier to hope that it can wait one more day…and maybe it can (and maybe it can’t).
And so I keep walking, mulling, being mindful of puddles, cars and cracks in the sidewalk, but being mindful as I walk that I have time to ponder these other distractions that my psyche wishes to avoid, but the Spirit nudges me to address.
Moses could have avoided confronting Pharaoh. Jesus could have avoided confronting the religious authorities. There were times in both their lives when they did avoid certain circumstances: Moses fled after killing the taskmaster and did a lot of growing up before his return to lead his people out of bondage; Jesus retreated to the wilderness in moments of needing a break. Following their good examples, I grant myself permission to stumble a bit as I navigate my own path.
There were tasks and emails waiting for me today when I unfolded my laptop on my desk and logged on. I chipped away at many of them. As the day drew to a close and I prepared to head home, I also remembered that I meant to write for the blog at least once during the break. And so here I sit, chipping away at the avoidance, peeling back a layer of protection and exposing my vulnerability to the air and light so that the healing may continue, both for me and the cosmos.
Today I am reminded that my spiritual hikes go beyond where my feet carry me; my fingers journey across the keyboard of my laptop and bring me to new corners of insight and awareness as they pull my thoughts onto a digital canvas for clearer expression and viewing. My willingness to share a slice of this on my blog hopefully nudges some of you to continue forward in your own journey, avoiding what you must, but journeying to those more mundane and sometimes courageous places all of us might more easily avoid. For me, the discipline of sharing it is part of the healing; pulling it into the light of our collective consciousness, not avoiding but embracing the connections that are fostered through a shared journey into vulnerability.
P. S.
I‘m home and it took me less than two minutes to stuff the receipts (which I had forgotten that I’d already printed) in the envelope, sign and date the submittal form, address the envelope (which I’d already put a stamp on) and seal it. I’ll mail it tomorrow. Sharing this story created the motivation and accountability I needed.
Comments