All the Rising and What Needs to be Raised

We are in resurrection season, can we call it that?  The trees that have stood silently bare all winter have sprouted buds and are leafing out.  Even here in California, the apple tree has it's first blossom and the bony tree out front is covered with a rustling new green.  Daffodils come by the bunches.  Birds make wild arcs through the air in mating dances, and I can hear them chatter at the sun before it's fully risen.  Easter sits two weeks away.  Once again, the landscape of living shifts.

In the last couple of months, I have been privy to four cancer scares, from very mild to very serious.  From a large mass to possible skin cells that need to be lasered off, from a deadly hereditary brain tumor to an alarming mammogram.

This didn't used to be regular news among friends.  These scares didn't used to touch me.
Is this 40?
Is this being an adult?
Is this the rent we pay for using these bodies for 3-odd decades?

Miraculously -- and I do mean that word here -- ALL four of the scares passed -- masses disappeared, scans came back normal, biopsies were benign.  And each of those good news appointments or phone calls has felt like a resurrection -- you have held your breath for days or weeks now fighting not to imagine the worst, the deadly, and here, HERE is life, full and healthy back in your hands!

Spring usually begs for some reflection.  The very ground under our feet is greening, blooms rising everywhere around us.  Everything that seemed undeniably dead is now breathing, budding, and the air smells good.  What's been dry and brown in me for the last several months (or longer)?  What's waiting to be cracked open again to the sun?

I'm doing some work in my life right now about the daily stuff, about what is "resourcing" and what is simply living up to expectation.  What leaves me depleted at the end of the day and what's energizing me?

I realized, after a heavenly weekend away with Ben, that Vacation Bronwen, who incidentally gets along with Ben swimmingly, is fully "resourced" and energetic (she naps, too).  We both really liked being with her.  When we got home Sunday night, though, come Monday morning, she'd vanished and Business Bronwen was in full effect, all logistics and practicality, all about staying afloat.

What I'm wondering is how to knit Vacation Bronwen into regular life, especially regular marriage.  Where does she fit?  What sparks her interest during the day (cocktails by the pool, a stack of books, hours of talking with Ben?) when she's not on vacation?

Discovery: I'm pretty much burned out by 6PM every day (even 5).  I've been all energy, even fun, stayed on top of the activities, the people, the needs, tried (usually unsuccessfully) to carve out some creative time for myself, and as soon as Ben's shadow fills the door, the fatigue of the whole thing floods me (because it can -- back up's arrived), so I can hardly get through the next couple hours without snapping.

This is not a great set up.  And Vacation Bronwen certainly wouldn't like it.

I have no answers yet, but I'm pretty sure the depletion has to do with not filling the right ways during the day -- in big or tiny ways, not getting my inner world in order before I launch into the outer world.

So on this last day of March (10 days away from turning 40!!) I'm wondering what needs to be drawn into the sun, and what actually needs to be cut back or dug up all together.  I'm marking the resurrections and hoping for one of my own.