like a soft whisper wind…

I was sitting at the table tonight with my family and we were laughing and smiling so huge that it felt like heaven opened up and swallowed us into it’s embrace. I immediately felt my eyes fill with tears and my throat tighten as it dawned on me the significance of this moment and the impact that it was making on my heart. Thankfulness for my husband, his smile, his heart. Thankfulness for my kids, their laugh, their unique sense of humor. And thankfulness for my place in this family, my role of mom, wife, and friend… the thankfulness overwhelmed me to the core. The truth that this moment would fade away all to soon was not lost on me, for even now reflecting on it and trying to find words to tell of it, seem to diminish its heart affect. I am so deeply thankful and so deeply grateful, that mere words cannot express…. but if I were to try to describe it… if I could pull the words together into some order, it would be:

Love love love came swirling around me today like a soft whisper wind, and joy laughed at my cheeks and echoed in my ears that my spirit had to try to grasp the tail of this helium balloon moment that was floating and dancing away and taking my heart up with it into it’s fruition in a chorus of a song in loud Braille with a melody full of effortless love that was imprinting itself inside my heart.

a tuesday with snow on top…

Today and yesterday I’ve been able to be a stay at home mom, literally. Adair hasn’t felt well enough to go to school, she’s tired and has some aches, and she’s congested, but most of all, she’s just tired. I’ve been reading up on the H1N1 and wondering if she has that or some other type of random virus. Interesting reading it was though, let me tell you. I learned there is a class of individuals that is known by the community of immunologists as the “superspreaders” and surprise surprise, school aged children are in that group, along with their well meaning parents or guardians. Superspreaders, sounds generous doesn’t it? Not so much if it’s talking about viruses. Another term I learned was about your “herd immunity”, which is where if the elementary school does a school-wide vaccination for all the children, then we as adults even if we haven’t been immunized would receive benefit because of us residing in the same herd as those who did get the vaccination. Interesting isn’t it? Another new thing I learned is that there is a whole subset of people who in their spare time are “flu trackers” and they study the immunology, and waves of illness. Isn’t that interesting? Did you know that the illnesses come in waves? H1N1 has. Wave 1 occurred early last spring, and we are now joyfully entering Wave 2. Fun! I hope I don’t catch the wave, I’m really not that much of a surfer.

Anyway, today there was snow, and my little girl is resting. I’m on the computer logging the moment into record so that we all know it occurred. Tuesday. Girl. Sick. Snow. Home. Love. It’s all there for you, just not necessarily in that order.

I’m home… where I feel like I was meant to be. Tomorrow though, I’ll find the courage to return to work, knowing at least that it means if I do, that my little girl feels all better.

imploding…

What to do with the cacophony of emotions that come about when someone you love is nearing the end of their life? It doesn’t seem to matter to my heart that this person I love has had a long and wonderfully rich life, filled to the brim with experiences, of which I was able to share some of. It doesn’t matter that this person I love lives hundreds of miles away and the last time I saw them was three or four years ago. The doesn’t matters don’t matter, my heart feels raw and the inner depths of me feel like it’s going to implode on itself with the rest of me to follow into the smallest black hole abyss on the inside that I didn’t realize had the power to suck me under and in.

Maybe the impending death of a life so richly lived is a reminder to the lack of permanence we all have. Or it is a window to unresolved grief for others that I have lost, or those I am afraid to lose in the future.

It is bittersweet and I navigate a path and tension between one part of me that celebrates a life well lived and another part mourns what this significant loss means to me and all those involved.

I know I will go on. I know all others involved will go on. I know I am better for having loved this person. I know that a legacy has been set into motion that will always live even when they are no longer here.

But right now, before this person dies, I want to voice that I’m going to miss them, and dare say I already do. I want to say I’m sorry their end is near and will come. I want to say that I am with them even though I’m hundreds of miles away. I want to say thank you for all that you have poured into my life. I want to say that I recognize that you encouraged and supported me, and that I am forever grateful for it. I want to say so much more but I can’t because I’m imploding, and this imploding hurts.

I don’t want comments…
I don’t want “I understands”…
I don’t want platitudes…
I don’t want you to tell me later that you read this post…

I’m putting this here for me…

I’m scribbling this out to describe what I’m wrestling with…

I just want to write this moment out for my mind, my peace, my presence and my heart….

as if it will help the implosion go somewhere instead of the inner inside and away with a force that could sweep the rest of me with it.

fall rains…

with the rain, those poor little worms have no choice but to get out of that saturated soil and make a run for it… little do they know, the birds are singing “Yay its raining, its pouring, the worms are soon to cover the flooring…” as they lick their beaks.

++clearing out some posts that were sitting in my draft box.

from where I am…

I read a quote on the blog of another that I’ve been thinking about… the quote comes from flylady.net (who I have much to learn from) and it says:

“Keep in mind, you are not behind: you are just getting started. I don’t want you to try to catch up, I just want you to jump in where you are.”

That really covers a bunch of things doesn’t it?  Pretty much every thing in my life.   There are things I wish I did more of… like stitch more, clean more, and even write more, even if it is just to document my journey along this meandering path of motherhood and wife-hood, of life in all its array.  So, I guess that’s what I’m doing here, while at the same time I’m listening to my washing machine spin upstairs, and while I’m smelling the zucchini bread bake in the oven… it really has been a productive day, including things such as a nap, laundry, changing Adair and Alec’s sheets…. all the things that may seem mundane, but really, they gave me some sanity today.

I’m 38.  I have more than 38 lbs. to lose, I have less than $38 in my bank account, and I have a list of 38 other things I should be doing right now.  But, I’m not behind, in fact, I’m just getting started, and I don’t have to catch up, I just need to jump in where I am.

Where is that exactly?

I’m not really sure…

somewhere between here and there…

but in the middle of now.

I’m not behind, I’m just getting started, I don’t have to catch up, I just need to jump in where I am.

There is something soothing about repeating that… it’s comforting. It removes pressure from outside forces, and it brings me to now… to today… to what I have control of… which is this minute and where I choose to go from here. I don’t really know if I even have to have a destination? I think it’s all about the jumping in and allowing the moment to settle me, and removes the sense that I’m behind before I ever think if getting started.

I’m not behind, I’m just getting started, I don’t have to catch up, I just need to jump in where I am.

blood…

Today I was describing a part of my day to my daughter, specifically about the “Blood Battle” that is going on between our school and a rival.  Not blood per say as in fighting each other to a bloody pulp, but more in the shape of a blood drive with the American Red Cross at the center.  So, knowing that my daughter is a sponge for all things scientific and cool, I shared my experience of how I donated blood.  I told her about how I learned of a new way to do donate blood besides just the traditional way where donors give whole blood (consisting of red cells, plasma and platelets).  I’d never heard of the a new automated process that I got to do called “double red cell donation,” where donors like myself can give just the red cells, and not just my red cells, but two units of red cells, which is the component of blood that is in the greatest demand!  How cool is that!?  So, being that this was so awesome, and that I got a great t-shirt for this experience, I described to her this fantastic process and how it makes my heart feel comfort knowing that something from within me can be shared, and shared with someone in need, and even help to heal!

Imagine my heart stop as I neared the end of my description and saw my daughter’s eyes enlarge and fill quickly with tears as she searched with her hand for the arm of the couch where she was sitting, as if she had to steady herself from this barrage of too much information!  My immediate thought, Oh no… what have I done?! Too late to wonder that now, it was obvious that I had crossed a border of assuming she was going to think the science part of it was cool.  She… in. no. way. shape. or. form. thought. that. AT. ALL!!!  I, Mrs. O-positive-blood-donor-super-mommy had missed the mark, big time.

All my daughter thought was apparently something so big, that she couldn’t verbalize it. After I stopped talking and tried to back peddle to fix where ever it was that I went wrong, and to get her to communicate what she was feeling other than the visible panic, all she said was that she felt like she had something rise from inside her stomach, leaving itself “sitting heavy on her chest,” and that something was “so hard inside, something as hard as an eraser,” and that it felt like “a net was grabbing it and cinching it tight” into her chest and that it “couldn’t move.”

As a parent, here I was trying to describe this cool thing (to me alone obviously!), and I somehow assumed that because she is a bookworm, and loves technology and science, and that she told me the other day, without a hint of worry or concern in her voice that her fourth grade teacher fed the class boa constrictor snake a white mouse, and the snake constricted it, suffocated it, then ate the mouse tail first.  She seemed fine telling me that, saying it as if she was telling me that the sky was blue or that the grass was green.  Yet, somehow from all that, and other stuff in between, I missed that she just wasn’t ready to hear about the b word.

The more we talked about it, I came to learn of her fears, and that it’s not just the word blood, or the description of blood that makes her chest feel heavy and tight causing alarm which demands tears, it extends to thought of what germs do to the inside of you – they can kill you, or what snake venom can do inside your body – like paralyze you, and what cancer cells divide and how they can’t be stopped.  She went on and on crying and mumbling things I couldn’t even understand through her sobbing.  What caught me most was that I had witnessed her eyes open the widest I have ever seen them, and I saw the torrent of sobs she unleashed, which was unlike anything that had come out of her before.  It all underscored a fear that had been lurking under her surface waiting for this moment, and my saying the trigger word!  I opened my big mouth, and brought on the panic!  Me!  Talking about the cool centrifuge that spun my blood to make it into two parts, bla, bla, bla…. it created a vortex of uncontrolled chaos within my daughter.

So strange in looking at it from an afternoon’s distance that something on one side, so life giving – donating blood to someone who could die if they don’t get it, while on the other side, sharing it with my daughter who I had to talk down off a ledge of fear for about an hour because it was too much information, which ignited all the other things that were connected to it.

I sat with her in my arms trying to comfort her and listen to her heart and fear, and I asked many questions to try to understand better her inner turmoil.  And, to be brutally honest, I find it sad knowing that I still gave one cliché or churchy response to her fear, in saying the verse “Perfect love casts out fear.”  Really now, what does that mean to young girl in this situation mama?!  *sigh, note to self:  next time just shut up and listen*  Anyway, in the end, her near hyperventilating stopped and she settled and we talked about ways that she could express what is building up within her that said she doesn’t know how to talk about.  We talked about how she could use her artistic gift to illustrate her concerns or to journal out words that provoke thoughts in her so that they don’t threaten to overwhelm her.

backspace…

Sometimes I really want to write something.  Its as if there is a need to just put words together in a sentence, and then put a sentence after that.  But the paralyzing thought always comes first “what should I write about?” and that usually leaves me grasping at straws for some kind of topic, which never seems to reveal itself.  Just like this, I’m grasping at straws and spelling out this process.

I think from time to time that I would like to write something, like an article for the paper, maybe I could be one of those cute regular columnist, or maybe I could write a book… and be a new JK Rawling.  But, truth be told, I just don’t know how to get from here to those places.

Perhaps you just have to write, even if you don’t have anything at all to say.  Just write for the sake of writing, to stay in practice if you will, so that when you do have something you really have to say, you can say it, spell it, write it, breath life into it.

Perhaps I should practice more… but I have a problem with that damn backspace key erasing whatever I put down, when I do put it down… that key and that little pinkie finger that reaches up to push it have a life of their own and act as a censor because in all truthfulness, what I have to say sometimes is rather insignificant.  I guess there is a point that even if its insignificant, it needs to be said.

in the middle of July…

It’s been a busy summer, with working full time and all… I feel like I’m missing out on so much with my kids, but then again… I notice that when I’m home, they are off and away doing their own thing… their independence is growing, which is a good thing in the long run, but in this moment of reflection it’s bittersweet.

So much growing I have yet to do… so much perspective I have yet to gain… all in time I know… all in time. Funny how when I feel like I’ve just been granted insight into something, I get a bigger glimpse that shows me I have so much of a vast expanse yet to travel…

all in good time I’m reassured, all in good time.

bounce…

It has been a while since I’ve posted my little bloggy. So much and so little have been going on… I just haven’t had the energy to think coherent thoughts for a blog post.

Yesterday was Easter… a true celebration of Life triumphing over death. Interesting how Easter sits right at the entrance of Spring, where life is erupting out of winter’s hold. I jumped on the trampoline with the kids and laughed as my hair got so staticky and as my kids were looking like they were weightless.

stitchin away…

Well… I finally got the ABC Calligraphie Rouge pattern by Compagnie des ouvrages, from The French Needle… what a lovely kit!  I started this somewhere in the middle to end of January.  I’m stitching on it as I feel moved… and often times after work, that is rare, but it’s still got some going on, which always inspires me to keep going.

Another little start I did about mid October of 08 is a little four patch, called “Patch Red 4″, by Dessins DHC, albeit I’m doing mine in green, which after seeing them online now at the link, I think I wish I would  have chosen red as well.   I think I chose green because I am planning on stitching Moulin Rouge, and thought the variation would be pretty.  Here is a pic of where I’m at on the little thing…

Let’s see… what else am I stitching on?  Well… I’ve only gotten a little farter on my Windmills from Full Circle, but as you know, every little stitch counts.  Here is where I was, and as you can see, I’ve added a couple more rows of stitches…  I did notice a boo-boo, in that in my last row, I should have had a row of words between the very last row and the one above it, but I’ll just put my words after this last row, and then add another special row before the next green swirly things.

Another update is how I’m coming along on my Angels Song by Shepherd’s Bush (my ultimate favorite place to go and shop).  It bears repeating that this is the sister pattern to the Emmanuel’s Song that I stitched for my brother and his wife, so isn’t that just fitting?  Anyway, the last time I posted  a snap of the progress on this, I had gotten to this point, as seen in this photo, and here is where I’m at now…

I’m not exactly speeding along, but slow and steady wins the race.  So, this is where I’m at with things.  Progressing at a snails pace, but progress is progress, and I shall enjoy stitching now that I have made my blog current.  Hugs and stitches.

be beautiful…

A friend mentioned something to me that got my mind and heart moving… and it prompts this thought of how do you show someone the uniqueness that you see in them? Not the vision on the surface of things, but more the them that lies hidden, yet visible just underneath. How do you reflect that of what you see back to them? And, what is the surface of the very mirror you us composed of? How do you express the beauty that is hidden in plain sight within them, so that they see their value, their worth, in such a way that they too are offered a glimpse of their purpose? This beauty is subjective I know… but the value lies within all of us, and the value itself is perceived in different ways to different people who possess different needs.

How do you show a mirror’s reflection back at someone? How do you show someone how beautiful they are, and what that beauty looks like to you?

There is a U2 song on the new album “No Line on the Horizon” and in the song is titled “Get On Your Boots,” where a lyric sings,

“You don’t know how beautiful you are..
you don’t know, you don’t get it do you?
You don’t know how beautiful you are…”

The truth of this lyric resonate truth… because sometimes we don’t know how to see beauty in ourselves, because we suffer from a condition where we see ourselves everyday, we hear our own inner dialog everyday, and we see all of us everyday, and from a very tight and confining space that is the inside.  Have you ever felt the cramped space on the inside where you can nearly find yourselves suffocating from the weight of yourself pressing inward?  You almost can’t help but to notice the self on the inside if you are being honest… what we could observe are the negatives, the flaws, the areas of deficiency, the areas where we know need improvement. And to add to that, we can’t honestly see the depth of true beauty because what others see is reflective of their heart, their vision, and their unique perspective…. so I wonder how surprising we would find what others find beautiful in us? Would it be what we see, or would it be something that would have never occurred to us? I’m confident that it is the latter.

When we can see the beauty in others, and somehow capture it and send the reflection of it back to them, imagine how freeing that could be?  Think of the awareness that could increase an individual’s vision of them self. Not for a vanity, but for a true view of them to seeing the God carrier that they are, in ways they may not have ever known.

What level of friendship does it require to show another the beauty that is witnessed in them? How exactly do we express the strange or lovely beauty to another? Is there a back door that we must enter through, to protect the information or insight from being dismissed? Is there a side gate that is less traveled into someone’s soul that is the way to enter with this precious gift? Or is it the random entrance all that is required? I know we are all prompted on different levels, and during different times and hours by the Spirit to share, but I know that often, I personally… have not spoken up on the glimpse I have been given into someone’s true beauty. And the consequence of not sharing?  I miss the opportunity to share a hidden in plain sight secret of someone’s soul with them, all from the perspective of the outside looking in. Note to self, look for opportunities to share this life I find in others with them, and be receptive to it if someone unlocks the truths that are hiding inside of my own soul.

completed stockings…

These are the stockings I stitched, and had my loving mom finish.  I gave this set to my brother and his wife for my niece and nephew, Grace and Timothy… with the intention of giving Brad and Becky their stockings this coming Christmas so they will have a complete set.  These were from the Shepherd’s Bush patterns… that are just lovely…

Then, here are the ones I have for Adair and Alec, with our set to be completed this Christmas as well for Mike and I.  Again, I stitched them, and my mom did the sewing to make into stockings.  I loved how they turned out and am excited to start the rest!

QV rogress report…

Well, it’s been a while and I haven’t been stitching on this too regularly, but I had to unhoop it to be able to continue stitching, so it seemed like a good time to take a snap of where I’m at now on my Quaker Virtues.  Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Here is where I was the last time I posted a pic… so, from July 2008, until now, March 2009, you can see that I haven’t made huge progress, but at least I’ve gotten a few more motifs done.  I have bee stitching on some other things, like my Angels Song, by Shepherd’s Bush, as well as the ABC Calligraphie… which I haven’t even take a picture of yet, but it’s beautiful.  Will vow to take some photos soon.

With me now working, I find that I have less brain power to stitch… I come home from work so mentally exhausted, so I’m just not stitching as much as I used to.  Maybe I will become acclimated to it soon and get back to a more regular stitching time.

how to learn to love something…

I’m not a runner, and I don’t walk too much, but I do remember well my fondness of swimming…  actually, I loved swimming.  Laps upon laps I swam in high school and some in college, and the peace of the water, the sound of the bubbles against my ears as I exhaled, and the feeling of buoyancy that made my body feel as if moving through the water was nearly effortless.  These days, I’ve been out of the pool for so long, and the fact that I have little time to manage to arrange for swimming, or few choices of places I could go, I need to find and develop another love.  But how?

These days my inactivity of sitting at a computer all day at work is evident in my body.  My thighs don’t resemble the thighs of my college years… instead they are things I’d rather not look at, which prompts me to get dressed a little faster than others would.  That is just so sad.  My body is supposed to be a temple, yet in reality, I’ve let it become more like a lean to where rakes and lawnmowers would be stored…. a shed, and a dilapidated one at that, whose hinges creek and groan.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been half heartedly attempting to right the situation by getting on the treadmill to increase any amount of movement possible.  But again, it has been half hearted, as so many of the things I try to do are.  What is that about me?  Half effort?  I shouldn’t be this way, but the reality shows that I am.

I have heard before that it takes 21 days to make a habit and three days to break a habit, so if you want to exercise/walk, etc… do it for 21 days and you’ll have a habit… but if you skip three days, you’ll break a habit.  I can’t even get to 21 days, because I have too many three day breaks inbetween.  Hysterical I find it, and totally depressing too, honestly.

I don’t want to have my thighs and hind end look old… its not a vanity thing, because I don’t really care how they look to others, its me that I’m thinking about.  If I had to run a sprint if my life depended on it, I’d be breathing heavy after 10 steps and likely be giving out and giving up long before others would.  This saddens me.  I do have vanity about swimming though… I would love to swim now, if I was already in shape, or at least in better shape than I am now.  Bathing suits reveal all the things that usually I dress quickly to hide.  Not to mention that after swimming, the other things that hide the reality of myself need to be reapplied… like doing my make-up or styling my hair.  I remember that when I was in college, I used to complain about my body… if I knew then, what I know now… wow, that would be some insight.  I was in fantastic shape then, no cellulite, no labored breath when walking fast.  These days there is room for improvement, vast improvement.  I’ve fallen off the weight watchers wagon several times, there has got to be a better way.

I guess question I’m hunting after the answer is how to learn how to love exercise (walking or running, or whatever).   I hear quite often that exercise releases endorphins… I don’t know what that’s like.  I’m on a quest…. after a smooth thighier me, after a less poochy belly me.  I haven’t seen her in a long time… I let her disappear somewhere and I’m so sorry me for letting my old you me go.  I miss how much better my clothes fit on you, this new me seems physically older than she wants to be.  If I could swim everyday without someone seeing my ass, I would, well… that’s if I could figure out a way to have my hair be a wash and go.

These are some of the thoughts drifting through my mind today.  It’s been a long time since I’ve written here… I don’t know why… maybe coming here is hard because this is one of the places I become honest with myself, and document that honesty.

looking ahead…

Thinking ahead to summer, I am needing to figure out what to do for child care for my kids now that I am working.  I’m not quite sure how this will all work out, but it’s January, so if I start planning now, hopefully it will be covered.  In the past I’ve paid $35/day for a sitter to come and watch the kids in my home… from when the rooster crows at 7:30am until Mike gets home from work at 4pm.  That’s a really long day, and honestly not that much pay in my opinion, but for a 13 yr. old, maybe it is better than nothing.

Possibilities include my mom coming for bits of time, for the kids to go stay at Rolf & Eve’s for bits of time, and or for Mike to go to swing shift for the summer months.

Wondering how this will work… have never had to consider this in the past.

point of view…

I saw this on a fellow stitchers blog… what a beautiful description to keep in mind as I go through deep reflections while stitching… what a picture….

God’s Embroidery

When I was little, my mother used to sew a great deal. I would sit at her knee and look up from the floor and ask what she was doing. She informed me that she was embroidering. As from the underside I watched her work within the boundaries of the little hoop that she held in her hand, I complained to her that it sure looked messy from where I sat. She’d smile at me, look down and gently say, “Son, you go about your playing and when I am finished with my embroidering, I will put you on my knee and let you see it from my side.” I would wonder why she was using some dark threads along with the bright ones and why they seemed so jumbled from my view.

A few minutes would pass and then I would hear Mother’s voice say, “Son come sit on my knee.” This I did only to be surprised and thrilled to see a beautiful flower or sunset. I could not believe it, because from underneath it looked so messy. Then mother would say to me. “My son, from underneath it did look messy and jumbled, but you did not realize that there was a plan on the top. It was a design. I was only following it. Now look at it from my side and you will see what I was doing.”

Many times through the years, I have looked up to heaven and said, “Father what are You doing?” He has answered, “I am embroidering your life.” I say, “But it looks like such a mess to me. It seems so jumbled. The threads seem so dark. Why can’t they all be bright?” The Father seems to tell me, “My child, you go about your business of doing My business, and one day I will bring you to Heaven and put you on my knee and you will see the plan from My side.”

Author Unknown

today’s thought…

In this small moment, I am at peace today…
with all that is, and all that will be for me…

this feeling is fleeting I know…
for tomorrow’s tomorrow might bring things that I will decide I must fret over…
or I will fret over them without ever thinking first if it even necessary…
we all know it isn’t.

But today, my heart holds a truth that I am contented…
with the me who I am, the quirks, the high pitched squeals, the geek, the girl, the hips, the split ends, the heart, the eyes, the all of me who I could list on forever.

Today all is well with my soul.

so tired…

It’s amazing how just working during the day can cause me to be mentally wiped out.  I come home and I feel about as withit as a sea slug.

naming what I won’t…

It’s been a little while since my last post.  I’ve felt a little inward, a little reflective, and somehow without a pen for my voice.  It’s hard to know what to express here sometimes, even if it is just meant for me and my inner reflections.  It’s hard to know what I should say to myself…

Maybe I don’t want to get that truthful with the me I am today… or the me that I will become one day as I reflect back on this space of words written out in digital format.

I don’t know if I want to come to terms with anything today, other than today is a the first new day of this new year… and it’s open and unwritten, ready for me to explore the empty pages of it and make it into whatever I may.

There is so much that I would like to admit to wanting to see happen… while yet still finding that admitting that I want things different, things new, things changed, things improved… but if I share them here to this space, then in some way I am admitting my responsibility to see them happen, or worse yet I am opening myself to knowing responsibility to admit my own lack if they don’t happen.  I realize that if I do not mention them, the possibility exists that whatever they are could dry up or vaporize at any moment without ever having the chance at being realized because of having no accountability whatsoever.

But here, in this space, I am admitting them to myself.  Here in this sphere of my heart, I am acknowledging that I want some things to be different, and some ways that I do want things to improve.

I find it interesting that we examine ourselves  so closely on New Year’s Day… it seems that I should become aware of such longings everyday of the year, just as I am today.  Or, perhaps not.  Perhaps the perspective is too much to bear everyday…  I think the day to day mundane-ness takes over and it helps me to lose my perspective of the long term… but today I see it, as if it’s tomorrow…

and I can see what I dream it could look like if x, y, and z occur.

pondering…

A friend shared this metaphor with me… it is stirring.

Once upon a time there was a huge boat parked in a rather large port. News spread all over the town that the boat was leaving for heaven. Masses of people showed up and started a huge crowd, a huge line. People from all over the place came to get in line to get on this massive boat. There happen to be a man that worked in the port who tied the smaller boats up and did some odd jobs along the dock. Since he worked in the port, he was near the front of the line.

People started to get edgy as they were walking on the boat going to heaven. Some people yelled at each other, threw elbows as they worked their way to the front, as there was limited space on the boat going to heaven. The man who worked in the port saw what was going on with the people in the port, saw the people getting angry with each other and throwing elbows to get to the front, so he started letting people go in front of him. He had a gracious spirit about it and wanted to bring peace into the chaotic situation. He let most everyone go in front of him until everyone was on the boat going to heaven and there was no more room on the boat. As the boat was untied and pushed off to set sail, the people on the boat mocked him a bit that he was stupid enough to let all the others on the boat, but he himself missed it.

As the boat was leaving the port, God walked up behind him, put his arm on his shoulder and said with a smile, “Welcome to Heaven.”

love this picture…

so thankful…

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe.  Hebrews 12:28

within within…

Back and forth between my beyond. The words enter there and whisper of the fragments of thoughts that have yet to be written. Back and forth and around the corners, are my moments, my me, my you, or the me and you that always seem to make room for one more.

Yesterday’s tomorrow and tomorrow’s today… back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The thoughts take me to worlds away within.  With one word here that is followed by one word there… words like submerge, suspend, cushion, upend. The words themselves seem to take me different places within, which strangely enough I find all seem to look like the same secluded pool of thought that only a portion of me knows how to find. The thought pool itself is surrounded by an embankment of walls… which makes me wonder, what are these walls for on my insides? Are they suited for climbing and exploring? Or only for holding back and hemming in? Perhaps they serve as a shield to preserve and protect this special place, so that only I can explore it in the safety of my own desire and time… and perhaps if I do not explore this magical within-within, this unique pool of thought just bides its time until enough thoughts and interesting words form, that the word pool itself is forced to flow up, over, and outward onto my mind and heart, so that I can break free from the surface world for one brief moment… to find a timeless world escaping in encapsulated bubbles of thought, where the flowing over of the word pool ends up taking shape into something I can capture in my cupped hands if I dare.

What do I do with this?  What to do with the interesting words I hold… in absence of knowing, I just watch them, read them, examine them… some appear to float, while others are so heavy they sink. The water of words in my hands is as real as my hands themselves.  Fascinating to me how each one can stand on it’s own or can be strung together.

Embraced, rejected, moved, unmoved, tomorrow, today, experience, break, broken, healed, healing, renewal, reflection, honored, anonymous, magenta, liberate, security, welcomed, detonate, undecided, hypothermia, overheat, shine, resume, armload, magnify, agenda, theology, reel, wingnut, rail, rocker, denim, hardwood, lifeline, acorn, starfish, fossil, orange, umber, sunset, shoe, translucent, texture, adjustment, hinged, origami piano, undigested hypertension, around and around, and around they all swim…

They beckon me to either see the poetry they are in that above unfinished state, or to rearrange them into different combinations as the wind of my soul shifts from North to South or to the East of me. Unproductive, yet producing more than one would think, even if it is only measurable by me. It’s an experience, a moment, a truth, a reality partly captured with fragments of thoughts floating in the water of my pool of words. Where does your pool of thought take you?  Do you respond to the words?  Do you collect or discard them?

Carpeted, enclosed, plaid, glittered, gold, fuzzy fleece, whispered through clenched teeth, covered in mud, slammed shut, clink, kitty furring, separated and distinct, waiting for the clock to speed and then to stop… not you, not me, and nothing in between. Oceans and oceans of words for thoughts… expand, exhale, excel, achieve, nothing but thoughts expressed out loud to my ears and the sky. There is no wrong here, no right either, just words, and just left and just East of me, along a line, across an expanse, finding a way along a curvy path yet to be taken in between the within-within of me.

This is a glimpse of where my mind roamed today…

a moment of understanding…

I am thinking of how I discuss negative emotions with my children… grief, sadness, fear, failure, worry, regret, pain, disappointment, etc., etc.  I think I have some significant areas where I can grow when it comes to this.  Overall, a learning experience from this evening has taught me that I can practice much in this area…

Tonight Adair was reading on the couch and I mentioned “ice skating” to her, in that it will be so fun for her to go next week for her field trip!  She and her class are going to get a lesson and then some free time!  How fun!!!  I thought.  Mmmmm, apparently NOT.  She shook her head with the look of “Oh NOooo.  That’s not me.  You are incorrect mother.” to which I replied in an encouraging and vigorous head nod of my own accompanied with a wide and excited smile.  Of course you know what that produced in my daughter… even more confusion and dismay on the face of my sweet child, which was then followed quickly by an aggressive head shake in the NO NO NO NEVER GONNA HAPPEN YOU CAN’T AND WON’T MAKE ME OR YOU’LL BE THE MOST HORRIBLE MOTHER ON THE PLANET direction.  All I could do was stare at her with an encouraging smile, and apparently I must have kept nodding my head yes, because then her cute aggressive no-no-no-head shake gave way to a slowed down version, which e v e r s o g r a d u a l l y melted, and lead to her sweet little head giving way to a slump as it fell forward to do a faceplant into her awaiting cupped hands.  This of course, was where her tears and incoherent speech became evident.

This is when a light bulb went off.  Instead of continuing on with what I normally would do… a cheer leading crazy thing where I try to put a positive spin on whatever the problem is, I instead opted to slow down with her and literally feel her anxiety.  And although I never reached out to touch her, and instead only moved closer to her and sat next to the couch on the floor near her, I could still FEEL her dismay, her frustration, her shock, her betrayal, and her fear. Now, I realize I am probably the last person on the planet to get this, and that every other mother out there in the world is perfect with a capital P. Forgive my honesty here, forgive my hiding in plain sight moment. I know I have practiced this before, maybe with friends, but it seems it’s been a while since I have done this with my children.

I sat with her tonight and let her cry out and babble her rational, and I let her try to get to the bottom of the fear… with the open ended questions… and somehow she magically just came to a point where she said “Is all of my class going to be there?!!?!” and I replied “I think so…” which lead to her responding with a huff, “Well, if they are all going to go, I will go!” And although she said it, I could tell she wasn’t that happy about it, but nonetheless, that was the apparent end.

I don’t know exactly what lead her to that place, but she got there, and in that moment I heard the quiet voice that advised me not to be a cheerleader, and instead to acknowledge.

Sometimes I’m so thick, I think I miss those subtle cues, but thankfully today, I heard it, I listened, and I felt.  I didn’t fix… I didn’t try to cheer… I didn’t spin…  I didn’t try to construct a new reality that seemed better to believe… I just let her be temporarily grieved, and a magical outcome occurred.

My understanding learned from this?  Talk less, listen more.  Be ok with the negative emotions, whoever they belong to.  Not everything is on the sunny positive side…. and that’s ok.  Learn to deal with negative emotions, not by sweeping them away and ignoring their presence, but instead by acknowledging them and being ok to let them take up whatever space they need in that moment.

I don’t know why at times we turn into that person who has to have all the answers, and feels the privilage or duty to convey such.  I don’t know why at times it seems like we need to look like we’ve either been there and done that, or heaven forbid that we act like we are smarter than that and have never felt this or that given emotion, or worse yet, that we invalidate the acutal emotion itself.

Pause.
Step in.
Join.
Go alongside.
Journey with.
Talk less.
Listen more.

looking for new letters…

There are a few people who I can read their expression and it takes me to a deeper place within myself that I didn’t know how to get to on my own.  A fellow blogger… one who took a vacation and then is back again.  I’m sure they never attempted such a feat when they set out with their fingers in a melody of taps over their keyboard, yet it is what is.  It’s just… t r u e.  Some people have a way of expressing things that I just wish for more of… and I don’t know exactly what I’m labeling here… but it’s more of this inner string of thoughts that is just under the surface and that is woven amongst other thoughts… and somehow I have this desire to write out the letters of what that string makes.  Yet maybe… those letters aren’t in the alphabet of my mind.  They are letters that lie beyond my own vocabulary and alphabet, and when I read the expression of a select few, it’s like they unlock this inner alphabet that is just beyond what I know how to pronounce or describe.

There are times when I honestly think “I need to write something.” I don’t know why I think it, it’s just that the thought pops into my mind and sits there, waiting, like a blinking cursor on a computer screen.  The thought then leads me to a question of “What should it be?” What exactly should I write?” and then that is followed with the probing question of  “What do I want to say?” and then it’s just crickets after that.  A silence staring me in the face as I stare at the blinking curser in my mind.  The truth hits me that there is no magical answer.  I don’t logically know what to say.  I don’t have any points to make, or… I just can’t open the gate to get inside anything that has a sound other than white noise.

Yet… what’s interesting is that at other times, its as if there is something that is bursting forth out of my mouth that I just have to express, otherwise I will spontaneously combust, or maybe the thought itself will combust and all I will have left are the burnt ashes of what could have been if I had just written while the thought was waiting to burst forth and leap out of my brain or heart.  And still… there are times when I have a hidden language, hidden even to myself, that I just don’t know how to find the back door to open, or I can’t find the right key to unlock the treasure.  (mind you, it’s a treasure only to myself, to others I’m sure it would be blat).   I guess I wish to express what seems like I don’t have the opportunity to express anywhere else in my world.  I know, I know… I could share these thoughts with others, I could randomly just pick a few and try to describe them to those close to me, but I guess what it comes down to is that they may not get what it is that I don’t even get, even though I know it is still there.

The undercurrent of another alphabet, the one that is waiting for the pen and paper to express, or for the keyboard and monitor to help bring into focus.   A thread of thought that does not get prematurely edited by my ego, or given the ax by my fears of expressing something that seems unimportant, or heaven forbid, unprofound… as if I was ever profound to begin with!  ha.  I want to let my mind ramble, and then to make sense of the ramble NEVER.  To just let the ramble and the thread that runs through everything be whatever it is on it’s own.  Something that doesn’t need my permission to be understood or something that doesn’t need my understanding to be misunderstood.  Just a thread, a woven structure of something that has no structure… that’s what I want to reach.  Something that is unexplainable, yet is attempting to describe just what that unexplainable is.  It makes no sense, but that is the beauty of it.  Nonsense sense.  Just written expression of where my mind is going, and where my thoughts are taking me…..

there I went, into the nowhere that was somewhere…. what fun…. I wish to come back and visit it again… where ever it was…. and however I happend to find it…. whatever it was.  I’m just smiling and glad to know it was there… or here… within… whatever it was… it was what I was wanting to find.  It turns out it has a vocabulary I can understand once its all written out… at least I understand it, even if no one else in this world does.  I found a lock and unlocked it and peeked my head inside the door.

of this and that…

I haven’t voiced my two cents yet about this recent and historical presidential election.  I am amazed at the outcome and I am totally excited.  I supported Obama and Biden, and while many upon many around me did not, and made that clear to me in their own way… I did.  I do.  And I will.  I am excited for the millions upon millions of people who were inspired by HOPE.  Various people had different reasons as to why they either did or did not, and I have several reasons why I did support him, instead of McCain.  I won’t go into that here, but rest assured, I thought about it quite extensively, as well as prayed  about it.  Some of my friends have strong feelings against Obama, but I do not share their views.  And likewise, some friends seemed to have strong feelings towards McCain/Palin, but I did not share their views.  I saw many perspectives, and realized there were many ways to view the options and that it depended on what lenses you wanted to see with.   My brother said it well in that, “there are plusses and minusses with all things… that definately applies to this presidential election, no matter who one is choosing.” The outcome is exciting… the opportunities are vast, and Obama is on a large stage with a huge responsibility to meet.

Anyway, in the words of Forrest Gump, that is all I have to say about that.

On other fronts… the cleaning was a success.  I filled the trunk of my car, and my kids went through their toys, and we happily drove to the thrift store and donated a ton of things.  I am delighted, and lightened.  A wise and wonderful friend emailed me tonight with some great insights over how to peer into the thoughts of our stuff and to dismantle them.  Thank you for your note Jan.  Full of heart and perspective.

I believe it has to become a lifestyle of sorts… I have to reach a point where daily I am living this way, of not putting of the small decisions until a later time… in favor of tackling things as they come.  I don’t need to keep every card my dear uncle writes me… I don’t need to keep every drawing and homework item the kids have done since they picked up their pen.  If anything, this procrastination of making a decision somehow makes the drawings themselves be what I get burdened by… and I definitely do not want that!  My precious babies would not want that.

Learning as I go… day by day.  Exploring the parts of me that make me me, an deconstructing the things that do not serve me or my family with the desire to discard them… to set them free… to let them hatch into something of their own, on their own, without me being a part of them.  Yes… this is what I seek.  Fly, be free my weights… thank you for trying to teach me, albiet the hard way… I’m sure I will need to relearn this lesson, but let us hope that this is lasting.