Getting to the other side. Part 2.

I didn't mean to leave the last post hanging in mid-air for so long. I'm afraid it's built up into something larger than it should be at this point. I imagine scads (ha!) of people waiting with bated breath for the big reveal, when really there is no big reveal, just this: How did my sanity well get depleted? Because I haven't been going to church.

I don't mean church in the chapel-God-folded hands-Bible-prayerful sense. I mean church in the place you go to get connected to your spirit, or a spirit, or something that's bigger than you, or whatever you want to call it.

And for me, of course, that place is outside, even in this wretched, everlasting, scorching hot blast of summer. Because after a long day at work, switching into parenting mode at home, and trying to take care of all the nonsense that needs to get taken care of at home, trudging through 100+ degree, drought-ridden weather sounds absolutely awful.

Except, I realized as I drove home from work one afternoon, there is beauty in the heat -- something affirming -- in being forced out of your comfort zone by the blaze of nature doing what it does this time of year. Beauty in the enduring, in standing below a canopy of trees, the air buzzing with cicadas, in feeling sweat roll down your back. This is work, I think, driving home in my un-air conditioned car. This is discipline. Not succumbing to the terrible pull of the temperature outside, even while you feel like your face is on fire. Not letting it tear your mood down, not raging at it, not feeling bitter because you are dealing with it. It just is. Why fight nature? It always wins.

Upon this realization I called my husband and told him I'd figured out what my damn problem was already, and that we needed to go outside after dinner, even if it was a short hike. And so we did. We did every day that week, and have since, even if it is just playing in the water hose in our backyard, or driving to the hiking/biking trail at the main part of River Legacy, taking a jaunt down to the river, or traipsing down the familiar paths near our home.The very first night of Operation Go Outside Already was a little piece of magic. Because it was hot and we were sweating, and my girls wanted to run the trails with the dog. So my husband took the lead and they dashed down the trail together, and I lingered -- taking pictures, noticing little, beautiful things -- and then ran to catch up with them. We were pink-cheeked and sweaty, but our muscles were singing and our eyes were open and we looked up and around us, and we noticed everything.

And already I felt better.