Settling into

I've been obsessively watching Oprah.com Behind the Scenes video clips for the last 48 hours. Suddenly, after over a year of no television in my home, I'm having a burning desire to watch things, anything. I didn't see a single episode of Oprah's final season, except the last 3 finale shows which I asked my mother to DVR for me so I could watch during a visit to Maryland for my birthday. But now, I've watched all this footage of her, with her producers, creating content for the monumental 25 year in the making finale season of episodes. It is quite riveting to see a woman like Oprah at work. Confessing she has no life outside of Harpo Studios, surprisingly cool about the end of a thing that has been her life for 25 years, watching everyone passionately work for her, truly believing they are changing the world with the content they produce. Everyone has an opinion about Oprah, and the more I watch, I have my own. But one of the most significant things I have learned from watching all of these videos, is something about the grace, strength, and wisdom Oprah exhibits, in keeping opinions about others, to herself. She appears to genuinely accept people for who they are. So I shall follow in her magnanimous footsteps, and just share something I learned from my Oprah meditation. (Yes, I can turn anything, even obsessive Oprah video clip watching, into a spiritual discipline ;)

My Oprah lesson is about journaling. There's a segment when the ladies of The View come to visit. They're all gathered in Oprah's office after taping the show and Oprah's showing Whoopi something she journaled about her back in their Color Purple days. Barbara Walters asks Oprah if she's always journaled, and Oprah says, "Yes. I've been journaling since I was 15." They're all fascinated by that. Not even Barbara Walters journals. And Oprah's fascinated by that. "How do you remember things? How did you write your book?" she asks Barbara.

I was fascinated by this similarity I share with Oprah...

My first ever journal entry is from 1991. I was 11 years old. What fascinates me more than the content of that particular journal, is the discipline I had to journal at that age. Almost every day there was an entry. Oh, it was just a short little paragraph, but an entry nonetheless. Here's a sample from today's date, July 11, 1991. It was another summer in Virginia at my grandparents country house by the Potomac River.

Dear Diary,
We went crabbing and caught 12. Then Granddaddy went again and caught about 7.
Bye,
Colleen Thomas

Lol.

Later, throughout my teen years, from about 1993-1998, I only have one journal. And most of the content is about being fat, trying to lose weight, complaining about my parents, friends, and boys I liked but never hooked up with.
After those years, my discipline increased. I began to fill one journal a year, one every 6 months...up to today. Now I average about one journal every two months.
And I began to see traces of my conversations with God emerge as the depth of the content increased.

Even Oprah admits that her 20's journals were all, "Woe is me" and obsessing about men. When I told my mother about my discovery of how life seemed to be from the perspective of my journals, compared to my actual memories of life at those periods of time (which, Thank God, is considerably more favorable), she shared a wisdom I gleaned from Oprah's confession. Mother said it's likely when we're young we tend to dwell on the have-nots. At those ages, I could only see what was happening to Me, unable to fully reflect on all of the nuances of feeling and experience that wisdom offers a more mature woman's perspective. When we're young, we are less likely to accept realities - that circumstances, good and bad, are there to grow us up; that the world doesn't revolve around us; that the purpose of being alive in God's world isn't to get everything we want.

Thank goodness I don't live with the mind of my teenage, 20-something self. And you know, as I write, I think what sparked such an intense interest in watching Oprah, was a similar sense of enjoyment I find being in the company of older women who are so much more settled in life. And not settled in a material sense of the word - that they've got their this and their that...but truly settled with life, with circumstances, no matter what has come. There are no regrets, life has been resolved, they've closed the book on worrying. They no longer view destiny as something to be controlled or manipulated. Rather, they have learned to accept all of life as destiny. Whatever dreams may...

As I reflected on another year coming, I experienced a noticeable settling. I was "at home" in Maryland with my parents...and at home in my heart with Life.
In my 20's I feared settling. It meant to me, giving up, forgetting my dreams. But I see I was limited in my understanding of its meaning. To settle does not just imply an end of a matter despite being wholly satisfied, like settling for something. Nor does it only imply giving up "the dream" for an ordinary, stable life, like settling down. No. To settle also can suggest a movement towards calmness or comfort...to become quiet in your soul. There is much beauty in that.

"Blessed are you when you are who you are," someone just preached to me. My journals teach me that.

No, I am not all I want to be yet. But I am rich in spirit. Because I am not living in fear that I'll never be all I want to be. And you know, I'll go one step further. Because my birthday revelation is even deeper than that. I'm not living in fear that if I am never all I want to be, I'll live in fear.

Now, that is peace beyond understanding.


Bye,
Colleen Thomas