Resiliency keeps coming up in conversations across many sectors of my life. It's begun to feel like a conversation that I'm having with God rather than any one person. I'm just enough of a mystic to stop and look up when that feeling creeps in. See, this season of life was supposed to be something else. I wanted to focus on community, but it has been cold and lonely. I feel as though I'm moving backward in the lessons that I wanted to learn. I feel less capable than ever and like something inside of me is damaged.

At the same time, I have had several days during which I have had to stop and note to myself, "I am surprisingly happy." I've whispered it so as not to blow the dandelion head of this secret into oblivion. I often feel something like guilt sidle up to my happiness. We all know that it is possible to be happy even when everything is not perfect, but when are things "good enough", "balanced enough", or "successful enough" to give ourselves permission to be content? For myself, the question has always been "how do I know that I am doing enough so that I can trust that it will work out?"

I don't really know the answer to that; but something I have begun to observe in myself even in difficulty is that I know how to be both happy and not happy at the same time. I just noticed it this week. Hiding in the corners of my unhappy self is happiness. I didn't will it to be there. I didn't meditate on all that there is still to be thankful for even though things have gone down "Unexpected Blvd".

I am truly surprised to find that I am both happy and unhappy. I am dissatisfied but not empty. This is not what I hoped for. I am hurt and disappointed. But I am nothing if not flexible. These years have taught whatever muscle or reflex is in charge of hope to be nimble.  It feels a little like coming out of the darkness. I wonder if this paradox of being both happy and not is what resiliency is made of.

Yesterday, I gave the best explanation for why I got fired from the flight school to a friend. I explained the complexity without getting lost in the details. I was able to take responsibility for the weaknesses that I brought to that proverbial table without excusing the abuses of power that combined in such a volatile way with circumstances so far beyond my control.

In no way do I ever want to be back in that time and space. It's better left where it is as it is. But I'm still not over it. This March will make 4 years since I was fired and I have adapted and adjusted, rebuilt and remade so many aspects of my life. I'm proud of my resiliency.

I never thought that I could take lessons from the Phoenix and choose to live again still surrounded by the ashes and rubble of what I thought was a good plan. Even though this phase of life hardly feels like a glorious rebirth, I can sense myself becoming someone stronger than I was as I keep pushing forward. It feels like I am woman with one foot in two different worlds. Each day, I lose a little ground in one world and live more fully in the other. At first, this process grieved me. I didn't want to lose the dream, but I didn't want to get hurt anymore.

The strangest part of all of this is that the more I leave aviation and the life that I was building there, the more clearly what I want comes into to focus. What I want is what that job should have been. I love the potential that a flight school has as a work place with a culture of learning and adventure. But that dream burned and I remade myself into another animal entirely...right?

What I want is flying. Oh God, how I want to fly. I want a team like the one I have now but I want aviation. The question I return to in the inconvenient moments when talking about the past resurrects it for a little while is "why can't I have both?" And there I am, astride these opposing galaxies trying to figure out what is good, what is possible, and if those things have anything to do with flying.