pushing past fear

It's 2 am and fear is eating me alive. I probably also had my first bonafide hot flash and that didn't help much, either. Suddenly I feel very old and very vulnerable. I wake up with the pains I fall asleep with. The salt shaker is sprinkling my hair faster than I can comb or cut the grey away. I don't mind that, but last night after exercising and doing all I felt I should in the day I was just shuffling around in my slippers. It was the first 60 plus day outside, the sun was shining brilliantly, my two cats were in my open studio windows doing the tennis match head swivel at birds outside, and I just wanted to stay inside. My right shoulder hurts from even lifting pencils. I've been going over our real estate stuff and reading the investor website. This venture is going to take body parts a woman does not possess.

At this particular second I'm tired of being forced out of my comfort zone and stretched like this. Again. I'm afraid. I'm a weenie, I'll admit. I know in the end it's right. Everyone tells me how brave it has all been to use our son's experience to help and serve other people. I guess...but it was survival, too. Still, every week I'm facing a jail library full of women in orange that I don't know. It scares me to face the guards, the uncertainty, the thought that I fall flat on my face, have no answers. It scares me to write to a prisoner who keeps challenging me, seeing so much in my life and feeling I'm just a paper tiger. He has such hopes and dreams for a changed life after he gets out. I know it will happen, but my dear friend, it isn't easy. Life will disappoint. Last week our CR leader admitted wanting to step down, feeling tired and burnt out, too prideful to ask for help. I thought to myself, another person I look up to who seems invincible going down in flames. He's not...but I thought that, and once again fear filled my heart at the thought of him leaving, a person who gave me such courage when I started CR. I'm trying to get through the fourth step and feel the tug to abandon all. I don't want to think about this-why doesn't someone else do it?

I was in the grocery store yesterday and saw an old friend. She was busy and pointed in a different direction than me, so I didn't shout or stop her. This is someone I've known since we moved back to my husband's birthplace, 20 plus years ago, and I realized for a second I scarcely recognized her, black hair almost completely white, stooped over a shopping cart in sweats-she looked so tired. Just like I felt. We were prayer partners and we spent hours together praying for this valley, our home. I have to believe a lifetime doesn't pass in vain. Are all these things that stretch me so part of our answers? Will I die before I know? God help me finish this race.