Today is Ash Wednesday and my first day re-visiting the book Your Sorrow is My Sorrow. I also printed out the booklet I made with suggested prayers for the Seven Dolor Rosary I found from sources years ago when I first started researching Christian prayer bead traditions.
If you saw my meditation journal pages for this morning, you would see that I am all over the place in my thoughts. I could elaborate on many thoughts I had today as I read the book and the daily emails I receive from the sites I listed in my post yesterday.
One thing I know about myself from taking the Strengths Finder test is that “Connectivity” is one of my strengths. Though that is a positive thing in many ways, there is also the negative part that I have a tendency to make connections where there are none too. My journal entry today would be a classic example of how easily I can connect one thought to another. I see how the thoughts connect, but to someone else looking at it they could very well be totally lost. Actually, when I look at what I wrote today, even I am a little lost.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tilt-A-Whirl_in_Saskatchewan.jpg
Another one of my personality traits that came up when I took the Strengths Finder test was “Analytical”. Yes, I realized that my traits revealed what a tendency I have to be a “head case”. That might explain in part why I have struggled with panic attacks. I tend to spend way to much time thinking vs feeling. When the thoughts start spinning, I can feel like I am spinning too. Sometimes that can feel like being on a tilt-a-whirl ride and screaming “let me off!” That tilt-a-whirl analogy holds another truth I have found as well. Gripping the bar and pulling back will make the car on a tilt-a-whirl spin more and spin faster. If the car is spinning, your instincts might tell you to hold on to that bar tighter. What you do not know is that those instincts are actually making it worse. The instinctive signals your body gives you when you are having a panic attack are much the same–the more you try to run away from it, the worse it will get.
So, where do I go with this post today? What part do I focus on? It seems I have more questions than answers. What I have just written above is not even included in all the journal entries I made today. How do I connect the image of a tilt-a-whirl with Ash Wednesday?
Maybe it could be a foretelling of sorts of what I am really setting myself up for by agreeing to get on this ride for the 40 days of Lent.
What am I really opening my heart up to? What am I really willing to let go of? What is separating me from God? What do I need to turn away from and what do I need to be open to?
Link to One Source of Suggested Prayers for The Seven Dolor Rosary:
Sisters of the Holy Cross – Notre Dame, IN – http://www.cscsisters.org/spirituality/Pages/dolors.aspx
