Inventories, healing your heart

The rhythm of my life is a rhythm of inventories, reviews and reports.

Every night I have prayer. Every Sunday the sacrament. Every month a period of fasting. Easter, Christmas and New Years, each with different types of inventories, reflections, goal setting and personal reformations.

Work is similar, with time lines, forms and reviews.

Any member of the LDS Church has had interviews, goal setting and personal inventories as a part of the circle of life. But loss and grief catches us without a period or a ritual or an inventory that fits.

In grief, people rarely take stock or review, unless they are early in grief (where they inventory themselves to blame themselves) or in full recovery (where self-assessment is a part of appreciating the good in oneself and life).

To compare, in a twelve step program taking an inventory is a part of moving past the next level of denial. Often the fourth step is the first honest look a person has ever taken of themselves, with an effort to avoid both sugar coating and downgrading themselves. Honest, not positive or negative.

I admit, the thought of people who did not consider inventories and self assessment a normal part of life's rhythm was a real surprise to me. I have since discovered that the hustle and bustle of life, its demands and limits, cause many, many people to limit their self-assessment to depths so shallow it doesn't even reach to denial.

In that light I ran across: http://roxcy.synthian.org/2006/07/07/reporting/ -- one of many posts on opening your heart and finding Christ again.

I recommend it and the other posts in the series: http://roxcy.synthian.org/category/experiment/ -- I needed the reminder and the new perspective.

May you find perspective that leads you to comfort, peace, and happiness and may your heart be healed.