the days are long but the years are short

Oh, I am living through an emotional time. Yes, yes. I am. I am filled with worry for those I love and wish I could make everything better.

When Meghan returns from her morning hospital visit and Faye is down for her morning nap, I often plop down beside her while she does her pumping. We visit and talk, mostly about her frustration that Emerson is not yet home. She vents and cries. I vent and cry. It is one of the tender highlights of this crazy time we are all living through.

I've explained, but she already knows, that a little perspective and patience is helpful in times like these. It is a painful lesson to learn to surrender to events, to learn to go with the flow. I have not provided a very good example. At times, I still think I control the universe.

Anyway. How to turn over our heart worry? How to do that exactly?
Interestingly, this morning while thinking deeply about all my worries and concerns I came across a blog post I had started last year. I never finished it, but it fits my mood today.

Here. From deep in my computer files:

The title of my blog “Fighting Against What Is” refers to some pop psychology guru (I can’t even remember the name) who gave this saying as the definition of stress. “That’s what stress is”, this wise person said, “it’s fighting against what is”. That was memorable to me because it described/describes exactly how I find myself most of the time. I rant and rail and rave, whine and complain and cause myself untold misery by fighting against the circumstances and events of my life.

Lately I have been reading the teachings and philosophy of Eckhart Tolle. I know, I know Oprah loves him. That alone gives me cause for pause. Still. Even though I don’t agree with everything (okay a lot) of what he espouses there are kernels of wisdom in his teachings. I have been giving it a lot of thought and trying to make it all jive with my understanding of the plan of salvation and restored teachings. Which means I have to toss out what is bunk. But his thoughts about mental noise and pain bodies, while all very new agey, are true I think.

"To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly.
See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness".

This, too:
"Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists. Then the implication, of course, is there is another way of dealing with things, with situations. Make peace with it. And then action - Take action. The action then comes out of a different state of consciousness. The action comes out of presence. Presence. It’s no longer reaction. It comes out of presence and not out of you being defensive about it. And the action is much more powerful and effective when it’s not defensive and not negative".

I relate to this, too:
"Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best-better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His. We can grow in faith only if we are willing to wait patiently for God's purposes and patterns to unfold in our lives, on His timetable."
--Elder Neal A. Maxwell, "Patience", Ensign, Oct. 1980, 28

Yeah. Ideas to chew on. Patience, surrendering to what is. Hard stuff. But as my mother used to frequently say, 'This too shall pass'.