Seeking Authentic Voice

Top of the Rockies, highway 89 heading north toward Salt Lake City, view is looking northeast, altitude 9000+ feet I've learned some interesting information about adrenal fatigue, such as the complexity of diagnosing it. In 2008 and 2009 I was having some health issues which eventually led to a hysterectomy. During that time I had blood work done (and in the years since), which indicated that my adrenal function was on the low side of normal. Adrenal function has a wide range of "normal" and medical doctors only diagnose adrenal issues when a person has gone into adrenal failure and developed Addison's disorder or Cushings syndrome. Prior to the onset of those, adrenal fatigue can set in and bring with it a host of complications which can also be associated with many other life conditions: unexplained weight gain, especially around the belly; sleep disturbances; muscle fatigue; heart palpitations; back pain; foggy-headedness; low blood pressure; a chronic sense ...

Following Jan Richardson and the on-line Lenten Retreat, I am struck by her words last week when she reflected on wilderness and landscape. Pondering Jesus' forty days in the wilderness she writes that the wilderness, while not desired, is nonetheless formative for without time spent in that landscape we can never have clarity. Clarity like this doesn't come cheap. It takes a wilderness. Perhaps not a literal one. But a space where we can shed something of the familiar, the habitual, the comfortable and known; the routines and rhythms that we have shaped our lives around -- or perhaps bent and broken our lives upon. And in that space, we begin to see and to know: who we are, what we have been formed and fashioned to be in this world. I'm thinking about the landscape of my interior life, the thoughts in my head and how it feels for me to be living in this body right now. It's an odd time. I have much to be grateful for. I ought to feel at ease, peaceful and...