One of those days started in the night, when I awoke with racing mind. Efforts at prayer were frazzled. I could have been a comic book character; probably white spirals of anxiety were coming from my eyes.
We all have them, days when life things pile up on us like a wet wool blanket. You have a string of home repair items that is just getting longer, because it’s turning into a monster problem to find home repair people for small jobs. Events in the news make you sob, and you can’t get pictures out of your head once you’ve seen them, no matter how quickly you turned away. Three of your dear friends are facing critical health issues at the same time. Helplessly facing their suffering is intolerable and thinking of life without them raises your blood pressure. You can’t managed to arrange the words you want to write the way you want to write them on a novel project you’ve been working on for a hundred years. You now can’t bear to sit down to write, or do any creative endeavor at all. You are looking long into the intricately imagined bleak future created with the same fertile mind that refuses to work on the novel, with those eyes shooting out anxiety spirals.
My mother once gave me a plaque that read: “I try to take days one at a time, but sometimes they gang up on me.” I have looked high and low for that plaque and cannot find it. The fact that I likely tossed it in the thrift store donation box in a fit of clearing out falls on me, adding to making this one of those days.
I opened my email this morning and read the bit of wisdom to the right, and smiled. I opened that email directly after prayer and meditation, and it was like BINGO! I realized I had been giving prayer and meditation short shrift of late, and had also been skimping on reading things that fascinate and inspire.
I looked up this Montaigne fellow–I always look up authors of quotes I like, to make sure they know what they’re talking about.
Turns out Michel de Montaigne was a significant philosopher and writer during the French Renaissance. He popularized the essay as a literary genre. Wikipedia states: “His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight.”
His writing would be just the style I enjoy. I bet back in his day no editor was telling him not to digress. And it isn’t a stretch to think that in this day and time, he would like be a blogger of some renown.
Now all the troubles that were weighing on me in the dark hours are still there, but I’ve quit looking at them. I’ve put them back into their place of resting with God, and I have become absorbed in the present moment with reading things that delight my spirit. The clouds have been banished from my mind. That Michel boy knew his stuff.
Grace and peace,
Curtiss Ann Matlock 
Those racing thoughts in the night can be very annoying! My go-to when this happens is to recite Scripture. Psalm 23 is my favorite. Blessings, CAM!
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Every time your newsletter comes to me, I learn something new—something I never knew I needed to learn. Thank you for that. This week it was reading your sign-off after hearing about your challenging day. What resonated with me was GRACE AND PEACE. I’m not sure you can have one without the other, but surely GRACE is the hardest one to learn during a lifetime. Or perhaps it’s just more challenging for me. But I thank you for the reminder to strive for grace.
As always from Constant Learner
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Louise– Thank you for taking time to share your thoughts with me and other readers. I have begun signing messages often with grace and peace in the way of St. Paul. He both opened and closed many of his letters to the churches with sending them grace and peace. Surely you are right–grace brings peace, they come together. St. Paul was praying his readers had God’s grace, and I like that reminder. Big hugs from another Constant Learner (isn’t it fun?!)
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Same, CurtissAnn. If I couldn’t read during these fretful nights, I don’t know what I’d do. Learn to knit in my old age? So many examples of why all writing has value.
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Thanks for your post today❣️ After reading your post today I read you have same days as the rest of us😉😁🙃
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I totally identified with your words aga
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Hi Curtiss Ann….very much enjoyed your comment today. I’m sure everyone has some little comment buried in their mind that they use to get through hard times. I was never very much into poetry but there was a short poem I cut out of a Guidepost magazine when I was in the Navy…..in the early 60’s. I carried it in my wallet until it finally just disintegrated…..but I’ll never forget it.
“Love seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself hath any care
But for another gives it peace
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair”
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Thank you for sharing that poem, cousin. And it is true–love seeks to please others, and help lift them up. There is peace in that.
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“I bet back in his day no editor was telling him not to digress.” – love it!
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