A Note : Use the menu above to click into various areas of the blog and read those posts. You’re welcome to comment on the bottom of each page or to contact me at debbie.williams@acu.edu. Curious about this blog? Read the intro below, and welcome!

I’ve finally stopped looking for myself. Now its time to simply “fall upwards” as Richard Rohr describes it.

I’ve tag-teamed 55 years with my mom to care for siblings with cystic fibrosis, a father with cancer and strokes, and the general issues of aging grandparents. I balanced care giving for 39 of those years with being a college professor, with being a wife for 36 years, with being a mom of 3, and a grandmother of 5. I’ve held hands of the dying and taught online in a hospice room. I’ve cooked a swimming pool of soups for tender tummies then run home to be sure that homework was done and sports uniforms, washed.

Even today, I fix and clean. I do for, I bustle, I bristle.

But what I want to do with whatever time I have left is

• to clean out this “container” that is me.
• to serve, not with busy-ness and know-it-all-ness, but with Godly stillness.
• to stop focusing on what others think of my container so I can serve with wisdom and humility.

I also want those wrinkles around my mouth and eyes to weave an image of joyfulness, not fretfulness, sadness, and anger.

I’d been planning and planning and planning this journey. I’ve been getting ready by reading and dabbling in writing, but planning is all I’ve done. I’m still mostly submerged in busy-ness that I’d tricked myself into thinking was godliness.

I’m a extraordinarily stubborn and a super slow learner. I couldn’t bother to be changed by trauma I’ve seen as a sister and daughter or by my struggles to help a daughter reclaim herself from addiction.

Unfortunately, it has taken the shock of almost losing my son physically and the risk of almost losing my daughters emotionally, in my initial bustling and bristling response to finally stop planning and began the painful and scary recalibration.

For me, writing helps me re-think. In my busy-ness, though, I had forgotten to write. I had even forgotten I could write. Now as I negotiate my grief during my son’s recovery,

• I write and read and write,
• I mess up by shifting the focus on me,
• I get mad and embarrassed,
• I pray and pray and pray and pray,
• I apologize to someone (and to God),
• I promise to do better, and
• I start this cycle again, trying to do better–at least a little.

Why should you read this blog?

If you’ve ever felt crushed under layers of expectations, join me as I challenge conventional wisdom by finding out if an “old dog” can learn new tricks in mothering, partnering, care giving, teaching, writing, praying, and playing.

(What’s this stuff about “falling upwards?” Check out Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.)