Turning a corner

This last little while has got to be the weirdest 3 weeks of my life.

It started the afternoon of April 19.  I was finishing up my shift at work when my manager (my boss' boss) said she wanted to talk to me.  Oh no, I thought. What did I do now?  (I guess old thought patterns are really hard to expunge from the psyche).  

Long story short, she was facing a shortage of team leaders for a short period of time and wondered if I would like to fill in for one of them.  After my jaw stopped dropping open of its own free will, I said I would love to do that! And so she put the wheels in motion for me to start Thursday the 21st (essentially a day and a half later) - the day before Good Friday - until Friday the 29th, a total of 5 working days.  During that week I learned a LOT, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Not the "being in charge" part so much as the variety of things, the never knowing what was waiting for me when I got into the office, and the sense of accomplishment I would feel when I had resolved a problem for someone. As a brief "aside" - I had expected to receive immediate respect for having been named as an A-slash (acting for someone else) but it didn't happen.  When it happened was when I rolled up my sleeves and started doing what was expected of me ... while still being myself.  It surprised me to find out that I didn't have to NOT be me to do the job.  Go figure... 

So the Monday afternoon after all this was done, (that would be this past Monday) my supervisor came to see me. "How did you like team leading last week? did you enjoy it?" I did, and told him so - exclaimed that it was so different from what I normally did - but that it was a good kind of different.  So he asked me if I wanted to fill in for him when he was away the next 3 days.  I said, "Sure!" and he just up and let people on the team know.  So the last 3 days I have been fielding different questions from lots of different sources and feeling so incredibly validated by all of it.  It's a weird feeling, one I didn't expect - yes, my name was more up front - but I played more of a 'support' role.

It's like turning a corner when you're flying.

The G-forces are more powerful, and in order to keep from losing altitude you have to speed up - which puts more pressure on the plane.  You need to bank the plane (turn it sideways a bit) when turning - and it means you're tilted with gravity pulling you in one direction.  But the turn is pulling you in the opposite direction (same as when you go around a turn in a car - turning left will make your body be pushed toward the right).  All these forces are at play in order to keep the plane in the air and pointed in the right direction.  But you get where you're going faster - and you get to see everything from a "bird's eye view."  There are no blind hills or blind curves in the air as there are on the ground.  Yet, the potential for more severe personal injury is (at least at first it seems so) greater.  

Still, there is no denying that it is exhilarating - even more so if the passengers are there of their own free will (grin).  

I was told that this process that I am on would open new doors for me; at the time I didn't believe it.  But I am coming to believe that if it wasn't for this journey, these opportunities would never have been presented to me.  It's a humbling thing.

And tomorrow night, I start another new adventure.  In a local church basement, I'll be hosting a meeting of a group of people who will come to share their experience, strength and hope to help each other recover from the obsessive need to control and take care of other people - to their own detriment.  I was such a one... and still have to fight that urge to fix people by imposing my will on them. I showed my hubby a poster with all the patterns and symptoms of codependency (see my page, "What is Codependency?") and he counted all the symptoms and said, "Twenty-four."  Then he read through them to see how many of them he had (I won't say how he did...) 

And then I asked him, "Compare that list to me 'before' I started my journey of healing and 'after.'  What are my numbers?"


"Oh, well - 'before' - you had all 24 things.  And 'after'..." here he paused and counted in his head while looking at the list ... "you have 5."  

I must admit that I really didn't think I had improved THAT much - maybe around 8 - so I was impressed that he thought I only had 5 patterns of codependency left.  

I give the credit to God who has empowered me to get on and stay on this journey.  And He's by no means done with me.  All I AM saying is that God is in the miracle-working business...and this is living proof that I'm turning a corner - and that if it can happen with me, it can happen with anybody.