Call Waiting- Call Forwarding-Wrong Number?

I indeed feel in the desert now. I know there is life here too. Not the green familiar. No. Not the lush blooming delicate flowers. Not the soothing green forests. Not even the wet mud of melt and infernal buzzing of bloodsucking insects! This is more than summer. It is an internal climatic shift. My life mirrors the world around me after all.
I must learn from the lizard, the tumbleweed and the baking rocks. Find that new beauty. Right now it just feels dried up and cooked.
After two months of covering for the absent full time chaplain I am cooked. I kept cutting the hours, moving them around, dividing them up into smaller segments, and even so, I cannot make it work. The pay is so small as a per-diem employee that my take home is less than I am paying the caregiver for mom. The reality that I am paying to work, literally, has finally lifted the blinders. I am leaving the job. It makes me sad. I am fighting the grief and building resentment. I also know there really is no other option for me that makes any sense and that makes me angry. So, will I go back when mom progresses and is gone? Will I go do some other chaplaincy that is perhaps more manageable? Or, hope springs eternal, better compensated? Will I just give up? Right now, I don't know. I do know that this adventure is over and it is time to let it go. I loved it while it lasted.
Go with God, hospital chaplaincy. Rest in Peace.
Amen.

self care splatter

I fell off the self care wagon. I have not kept my promise to myself to write everyday. I have been sleeping. That is good. Probably. I have been mostly eating right. That is almost true. I am taking my vitamins and one medication more regularly (almost 50% compliant)...I suppose that is progress. I have been working too, too much.While rewarding spiritually, it is draining physically and the time to be....vanished. That has been problematic. I have missed therapy, my women minister's support group, my denominational ministers group, my standing monthly lunch date, my friendly breakfast gathering, two appointments for doctors. The two retreats I promised myself, one after the other. I am late to everything. My dog and cats have not been to the vet or groomer. Mom missed a follow up eye exam. I didn't even make it to church for six weeks unless I was preaching.

I think I have answered my question. No. I cannot do it all.

Grimelda...guide me to release what I must with joy. Aid me in halting my headlong dash towards exhaustion. Teach me to love choosing myself sometimes. Care for those I must let go to do that. Help me grieve this loss without hurting those around me in my ambivalent pain.

Amen