HDIF when we slip into our old ways? DYFID

Dear LORD:

Thank you for today. I don't want to do anything particularly difficult today. Maybe go buy a food processor, which we need. Certainly do yoga this afternoon, hopefully with my sweetheart. That's about it. Thank you for a soft, lazy, gentle day together with the person that I love.

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was making an anti-rutty breakfast. It was delicious! Thanks so much for your creativity.

The question you ask is difficult because I am changing so fast. Maybe you can't see the internal process going on inside of me. But it is very much there. I am struggling, evolving and changing more than I have since we were first married. This is mostly a spiritual process. I can't explain it any other way. I had another deeply spiritual dream last night. I did not get to tell you about the last one, because we were interrupted at CPK by our son. This one was similar. If you like, I can tell you about it.

I suppose if there was an area where we fall into our old ways it would be the ruttiness. sometimes we get into ruts and habits. I am trying to break out of these and create new ones. At times if we get rutty, I feel the emotional distance forming between us. And that would be my strongest feeling: One of distance. If I look into your eyes and see nothing there in particular (as I did this morning at times), then I know that you are distant and I feel far from you.

At that point, I need to reach out to you. I need for you to know how important and vital you are to me, and to reaffirm our connection. We are very much in love, very much a couple and we are working towards a common dream, a common vision: A life of uniqueness, distinction and significance.

I love that you bought the book Half Time. This tells me that you are struggling with the same issues I am struggling with: What now? Yes, I have achieved a certain measure of success. Yes, I make a lot of money, which seems to please our financial planner, and which he wants me to preserve in a conservative, buy and hold strategy. I am not so sure I want to be that conservative at this point in my life. Having someone wipe my butt when I am too old and decrepit to do so for myself is something I am not particularly interested in hanging around for. I don't know about you, but if I have to work for 14 years at EMC in order to have the money to pay me $177 per day to come to my house and wipe my butt, I might as well kick it all right now.

There has got to be more to life than this.

The thing that lends the most significance to my life at this point, the point at which I feel the most fulfilled and the most at peace, is when you are in my arms and I am rubbing my hands on your body, feeling you melt beneath my fingers, hearing your sigh of pleasure and relaxation. You are the canvas upon which the painting of my love is formed. I find that moment to be the best, most fulfilling, most gentle and sensitive, moment of my day.

If I could find a way to gentle and sooth your soul and heart in the same way that my hands have found to sooth and gentle your back and your feet, that would be heaven! I long to touch your soul deeply, to reach into the crevices and secret inner folds of your mind, to cuddle and sooth you there, to entice you out of your hiding place and to set you free.

You remind me in so many ways of the dog Jojo that was on the show Dog Town last night. A dog who had been abused by humans and had lost the ability to trust. Eventually, Jojo found a way out of her shell. I pray that you find your way out too. I would love to be there with you when that happens.

And that, I would say, is the pattern you slip back into. For me it is ruttiness. For you it is the shell, the hiding place, the reclusive tendency to cacoon and hide from the world. When you begin to slip into that the feeling that I have is one of loss. I feel like I am losing you. That you are, again, slipping away into a place I cannot follow.

I am afraid that dropping out of school was a step in that direction. I fear the person you become when you are in that place of hiding, very distant and protective, very much closed and not open to me. I want for us to continue our dialog with each other, and with the world. I want for you to be free.

My strongest feeling, again, is one of distance. A feeling that you are in a place I cannot go, and that you are unavailable to me. A shared experience would be when I told you to pretend that I was dead when I was in Munich. This feeling can be very strong at times.

It is a pale grey, of the sky before dawn on a cold, cold night. It is a feeling which chills you to the bone.

I want for us to be vital, connected and loving to each other and to the community around us. I do not know how to make that happen, but I want it very much. And I want for you to come with me.

Love,
Me