simpleandgrounded

Fog makes me antsy. Especially the kind of fog that wanders in and surrounds you before you can get your bearings. On Sunday, we woke to a dense fog that took custody of the house while we slept. It masked the movement of the light across the sky, leaving us disoriented about the time of day. It slathered us in wet cloudness, suspended the house in gray-white space, and took away the mountain under our feet. Weightless, timeless, we hung there in the sky, unable to break free.

Fog insists on introspection. When out there loses shape and form, in here sharpens its focus. I had just spent most of sunny Saturday working outdoors, sleeves rolled up, gloves muddy from moving stone and outlining garden beds. Those hours in the garden whetted my appetite for more. Yet now I was hostage to the fog, and her sidekicks – freezing rain, snow flurries, blustery damp winds. The kind of weather that chills you to the bone and beyond.

I don’t do antsy very well. Days like Sunday, there is no grace in me. I get irritable, I pace around, dabble at odds and ends. I move in fits and starts, ever a little grumbly just under the surface. By early afternoon, with no let up in the weather, I realized that all of my antsy-ness was wrapped in my resistance to what is. I had a plan for the day and the fog had derailed me. Only when I remembered that I was the author of my own antsy-ness, my own irritability, could I let go of my plan and relax. Cup of steaming tea in hand, I curled up in a corner of the couch and let the fog speak to me.

She reminded me that sabbath time is crucial for rest and renewal. She invited me to stop all the doing and just be for a while. And she helped me take a necessary pause, ungoverned by the need to be productive or finish anything. I could sit and read, or nap (not likely) or wander my own internal landscape. In her wisdom, the fog held up a mirror. She jolted me out of a fuzzy-thinking brain fog place and helped me back to my Angel Card word: Clarity.

Later in the afternoon, I drove down the mountain on an errand into Asheville. For the first several miles, the fog was so thick I could not see more than thirty feet in front of the car. Take care. Slow down. Focus. Trust your memory of the curves in the road. Stay the course. Just outside of Black Mountain, I came out of the fog and into a simple misty rain on a Sunday afternoon. What a difference a few miles make.