So here I am in Lansing in a quiet room with a computer. The girls are painting in my sister's workroom. I lucked out after dinner and got to sit on the lovely screened porch, finishing Traveling Mercies. Life is good, I tell you.

It occurs to me that I came here, far from home and worries, at just the right time. Life since April has been one long sad rollercoaster ride. Greg told me today that it is time to move on from grieving the lost job. He's right. This thing is beyond my control (and that is so darn maddening in itself, I tell you!) But it isn't about me. It's about circumstance.

But as I landed here today, reading Anne Lamott's superlative words, I realized that I am so far away from myself. Sometimes, when life isn't hectic, I tell myself I must remember who I am and what I am about. Long ago, just after my mother died, a grief counselor told me to make myself a little black bracelet to wear on my wrist so I could touch it and grieve anytime I needed to. It would be a little remembrance of my mother. It would ground me in a quiet way. I need some sort of bracelet now. Something that would say to me, "Oh yes, remember, Anne? You are about loving others and giving of yourself. You are one of Jesus' followers. Your goal is to ease suffering in this world. You love God and nature and your family and want to be a charter member of the lovingkindness club. Remember?"

These are all things I seem to have forgotten in the day-to-dayness of life. I'm just getting a hint of them here, while my sister takes care of my daughter and me and helps K. paint beautiful pictures.