The Desk

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Every experience...every time you look at the bad things that happen to you in life...you gain strength, courage and confidence. What I've gone through has not been a real "horror" as in the above quote, but it has smacked my little inner self that I always try to protect. The words really make a lot of sense to me right now. Recently I have not been sure that I could "take" the next thing to come along, but I know that I should and must do the next thing. We all face things that we find difficult to do. It just happens in life. But somehow, we have to not only face them but move through them. Move on forward until it feels like normal again.
Today they brought me a new desk. It's a simple thing really, given the new position I have in a clinical setting. They moved the "beast" out that was consuming my office area and took it out back to shoot it, I think. It was an amazing, huge desk with more little nooks and crannies to stash stuff than you can imagine. The problem is, with office supply junkies like me, I would eventually have it so full that I would likely never be able to even find the staples. So they moved it out. It was a vote of confidence, as I see it. It said that they believe in me, believe in the work that I am doing and believe that I am right where I should be. Today I was there. The desk was a bit of a turning point for me, given the roller coaster ride I've been on recently (with actually now having three different offices in three locations!).

My appointment book is starting to look like something I would imagine they have at Dallas-Fort Worth airport to keep up with the logistics of all of the flights incoming. And it feels like that as I try to keep up with where I'm supposed to be and when and what files and materials am I going to need there. My car is beginning to look like it did when the kids were younger and we might have everything in one day ranging from dropping off and picking up at three different schools, baseball practice, drill team practice, gymnastics or ballet. We could have essentially lived out of our van for several days had we ever been stranded in a snowstorm somewhere. Thank goodness we never had to find out. Between all of the changes of clothes and food/drink boxes, I think we could have lasted.

But someone else brought me a desk today. And tomorrow I will continue to bring in things to build my "nest" so that my new home (or at least one of them) will start to feel like home again. Maybe I will do some good again tomorrow and begin to repair the battered self esteem of someone starting over again at 53. Today was better. Tomorrow I will continue to do the thing that I think that I cannot do. And I will be happier in doing just that.