Warblers and Sheep

Lurking beneath the surface in some unconscious place very close to consciousness is a pit frothing with scalding emotions that every so often seep into my day-to-day business and at once my breath catches and I cannot exhale. The pain, fear, longing, earnestness, and grief are nearly overpowering.
I swallow. Focus. Eventually breath, and dispel the glimpse of awareness of all that simmers within me.
There is just so much, reason tells me. Too much. And, deterministically thinking, what can be done about it? It is what it is, so why focus on it. . . so I push, and down it goes once again, to bob up unexpectedly someday.
Another reason to drown it is fear that facing it will cause another misfire in my brain, an episode so alarming and paralyzing that I fantasize for death. Anxiety, depression, stress, life --whatever it is called, I cower to its memory -I am terrified of returning there again lost in a world of evil blackness, starved of light and life.
So what do I do with anguish and tears and loneliness and grief, with all of the recollections: I miss... ?
Glowing off of water and haze, the sunshine lit my life. Barefoot, risking splinters, I tip-toed, high heels in hand down the warmed wood and sandy boardwalk toward the ocean. The expanse of preserved natural space off of PCH was dense with coastal desert vegetation: Papaveraceae (the state flower: bright orange poppies), Platanaceae (Sycamore), Ranunculaceae (buttercup), figwort (paintbrushes, snapdragons, owl's-clover) sage brush... my eye took them in without distinguishing between the scent, color, or Latin classification; they simply, collectively, landscaped a pathway to the jeweled pacific.
Twitters and chirps of orioles, wrens, warblers, and thrush carried on the wind while quail and road runners remained more secretive, lurking between bushes and pausing with my every step closer to freeze and stare.
Once I was even halted mid step by the gracefully startling glide of a bright orange, black, and white-striped king snake. I had nearly stepped on him as he warmed himself in the sun. Instead, I stopped to watch him slither and glide on sand until he disappeared into shadows.
These were my afternoons three days per week, sandwiched between a morning at Laguna High and an evening with Patrick, Megan, Michael and Kim, small group, graduate classes (depending on the night).
I miss the features that I took for granted and the way that sitting, gazing at the crystal water, scouting whale spouts reached right into the depth of my emotions and spoke of Him.
And maybe I could find that here, if I stopped, sat, breathed. Do clouds and grey commingle with the Spirit as sunshine does to produce peace? Does cold air, bulky fabric, and indoor confines warm deeply too?
Why does new stretch so tightly that shape is distorted and I can no longer recognize myself.?
I question and search for same, comfort, familiar, any small piece of past self that looks, feels, and warms the same, but it's all so eerily different. When does different and new become broken from wear, comfortable from callouses, and known from repetition?
Today is Thursday! I get to see Mattie and Florence, Marge, and Bob. Though 94-101 years old, these lovely people delight me with their memories and candor. Barking instructions at one another during Bingo or patiently snipping flowers for floral arrangements on their dinner tables, I am reminded that life is changing and will continue to change forever. I asked them last week what their favorite age of life has been, and many thought deeply: two said meeting their husbands of 75+ years!, one said college, and the woman who is 101 said, "right now."
Maybe age dissipates our longing for the past because we finally learn to stop idealizing what was and realize that the collection of memories is nothing more than gifted experiences every single day. For her, I had asked to share her first date, a memory so long past that everyone laughed, and the joy brought by her recollection fused past and present joys into one authentic experience.
I rarely look forward, and almost never stay with the moment.
In this I hear a warning in my Spirit: I grieve for myself, a life that satisfies and feeds and comforts, providing pleasure, joy, and abundance. I look back coveting what I do not have, speaking nourishingly to my lust for satiation.
God issued a warning through Ezekiel:
"Destruction is certain for you shepherds who feed yourselves instead of your flocks. . . You drink the milk, wear the wool, and butcher the best animals, but you let your flocks starve. You have not taken care of the weak. You have not tended the sick or bound up the broken bones. You have not gone looking for those who have wandered away and are lost. . . Though you were my shepherds, you didn't search for my sheep when they were lost. You took care of yourselves and left the sheep to starve" (Ezk. 34:2-9)
At this moment, through my front window I can see a junior high school P.E. field. At intervals during the day I watch faces masking emotions and experiences to protect what vulnerabilities these young hearts still possess. And I see the same guard at High Gate Senior Living, in my classrooms at Heritage and YVCC. Where there are people, there are hearts to mend and hope to renew. I forget and forsake others when I live for me. Until I stop living, life will always mean summoning the red hot of emotions and experience to heal and care for others with empathy and strength from the grace that I am not crushed by my self-love every day.