Grief and Change

I posted about my friend Matt's suicide a while back. I was reading my good friend Tara's post about continuing through grief and it made me realize that since Matt died I have been trying hard to continue with the motions thinking that will make things better. Acting as if nothing happened doesn't work. I wrote about how wonderful Matt was but I never wrote about what happened.

After Matt's death in October I was absolutely devastated, it hit me hard but I bottled it up quick because so much was going on. I started to post the same old stuff I always posted but the real truth was I didn't want to post about all my insecurities and problems because I didn't want to admit weakness because to me I was mad at Matt for being weak and taking the cowards way out; that thought only brought me shame because I love Matt and miss him and don't want to have any bad thoughts about him.

Right now all of my bad feelings  need to be expressed and I don't mean a bunch of ranting on my blog about how mad at Matt I am but an honest confession about how I feel.  A lot happened all at once: Matt's suicide, I lost my job, and I made a commitment to becoming a pastor. Every single one of these things is terrifying. I love Matt for who he was and a lot of that had to do with what we had in common. Matt's suicide brings out fears that I will give in the same as him and cause so much pain to those around me. It also brings out a lot of emotions, losing my job left me without a predicable security in my life, and my commitment to becoming a pastor started a new path and with it all the doubt and insecurity associated with a new path.

Thanks Tara for helping me to be honest with myself, I hadn't realized that I have been wrestling with grief since October and I will be a whole let better off expressing it.

My Prayer:
Father God,

Thank you Lord for putting the desire to follow your will in my life and thank you for giving me the gift of a known path. Please Lord continue to help me to have the strength to follow your will.

Amen.

My Hair is pink! How to Keep it Pink through November

Every year, in October I dye my hair pink for Breast Cancer awareness. This year is very special. My good friend Tara is attempting to raise $3000 to walk in the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3 day in November in San Diego. If she reaches her goal I will not only keep my hair pink throughout October, it will be pink all through November and I will meet her at the finish line of her race ready to cheer her on!
Tara has already raised $1,242.15. This leaves $1757.85 to go. If you would like to help please visit this link: http://tinyurl.com/tarapink.
Also I am walking in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5k in Temecula, CA on October 17th. If you would like to walk with me please register at http://komenie.org and send me an e-mail at darnellster@gmail.com to let me know so we can meet up.

Can't write, too busy dealing with my writers block

Me: Here I go, sitting down to write in my blog.
Resistance: What do you mean write? You can't write, you don't have any ideas.
Me: I guess that' s true but shouldn't I at least try?
Resistance: Why try? You don't have anything to write about, you would just be wasting your time! Why not do something more productive like read TV show summaries on Wikipedia?
Me: While that does sound appealing I really enjoy working on my blog. It is all about the process for me and I should probably just sit down and write something.
Resistance: That is ridiculous and foolish, there is no point in writing anything unless it is perfect the first time.
Me: That is not what my good friend and coach Tara Rodden Robinson says on her blog. She says that I should meet inspiration halfway by either stimulating my creativity or just writing something.
Resistance: Oh no! not Tara! You have bested my with your use of the best performance coach around. But I will be back the next time you pick up your camera!

Aha moment: Mindfulness

Yesterday my friend Tara and I were talking on the phone about the practice of mindfulness and began to focus on mindfulness in conversation. I ended up having a big aha moment when I finally understood something my pastor was trying to explain to me last year. I had asked him about ways to practice listening and improve those skills. He suggested treating listening as a form of meditation. After Tara and I defined mindfulness in conversation it made me realize that this is what he was talking about.

A way to put this that is easier to understand is that listening should be done in a state of mindfulness. This can be done by:
1. Clearing one's mind
2. Actively listening to the other's speech and not thinking about a response while they are talking.
3. Practice intuitive response, listen to one's intuition for speech, silence, and don't enter parts of the conversation with haste.
4. Pay attention to tone, volume, tempo, body language, settings, and environment.

There are definitely more details to mindful conversation then we were able to identify in our 30 minute talk. I am sure that it is about as complex as the most difficult martial art forms.
I am sure I could write much more about this so I will conclude this for now; I am glad I had that talk yesterday because it really freed up a lot of mental energy I didn't realize I was using.