What's saving my life right now

Modern Mrs. Darcy has such a brilliant Groundhog Day tradition to post about what's saving our lives right now.


I didn't know how to feel when my calendar told me that January was almost over.  My first thought was Yay...until I remembered that next comes February, which is worse, followed by March, which is just as bad.

It is, however, always close to 80 degrees in the chicken house where Jed is working these days.  His employers hired him to take care of things on his own while they were out of town last weekend.

Honorable mentions this year go to my ginormous tea stash of various kinds that I got for Christmas; afternoon quiet time in my room after school; and hiring a cleaning service.  I'd probably lose my mind without any one of these.

But the winner for what's saving my life right now is both idiotically simple and groan-inducingly difficult.


Getting out of the house.

I regularly fantasize about being stuck on a deserted island.  I always kind of wonder why Robinson Crusoe was so desperate to get off.  If there was a hermit club, I would join it.  Except I wouldn't.  And there wouldn't be one anyway...

My favorite place in the world is in my room under a fuzzy blanket.  So when life is stressful (as it is), I tend to dig in my heels under that fuzziness.  But through herculean effort, I actually left the house three times this week, not counting church, errands, or kids' activities--and two of those times represent patterns that will continue for the coming weeks.

Our church is doing Christianity Explored on Tuesday nights, over a meal, and I'm on the clean-up team.  So far it's been far more laughing than sweating.

Wednesday night my dear friend planned a girlfriends' night out to dinner, which was so lovely and refreshing and lots of fun and laughs.

And on Thursday afternoon I started my career as a library volunteer.  My shift is once a week, and, this time at least, I enjoyed a good long walk to and fro (and even had my act together enough to have a pot of hot soup waiting for me when I got home).  Being my first time, I got a tour of the library, much of which I knew from my extensive time spent there, but also including the very exciting behind-the-scenes and behind-the-desk tour.  Then I got to shelve a rack of books and learned how to check in returned books.  It was all nerdy and thrilling and slow-paced and I'm looking forward to next week.

Two years ago I posted about how sunrise runs were saving my life.  It could well be that the things we think will kill us (running at dawn; leaving the house, ever) are the things we realize are saving our life.