Originally posted on Ponderings.
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on August 12, 2008

I attended a funeral for the father of new friend of mine recently. In our understanding he died too soon. He was only in his early 60’s. Although I never had the opportunity to meet this man, his funeral impacted my life. The tributes and memories shared by family and friends were beautiful. We viewed a slide presentation set to music, tracing the journey of his life. The one thing that really spoke to my heart was that this man had truly lived.

He was an adventurer. Fear didn’t hold him captive. He lived out loud. He wasn’t afraid to follow the dreams God had placed in his heart, and yet he didn’t take foolish risks. He enjoyed life to the full. In many ways he has gone from living to living.

My life in comparison would be such a shadow. Many of us would be likened to “dead men walking” in contrast. Oh, maybe outwardly we’re going through the motions. Jumping through all the right hoops. We know how to play the “Game of Life”. For generations it’s been the same. We’ve read the rules. We know the expectations. Years go by, but our passion is getting buried deeper and deeper. We are allowing ourselves and others to dig our own grave…only we’re still breathing. We’re being buried alive.

I read recently of someone who, though living, described themselves as dead. Have you been there? Have you been to that dark place that numbs the heart. Apathy is your new normal. You feel indifferent…listless. You’ve lost interest in all your surroundings. Dejection and weariness characterize your existence. You are no longer a participant, but a spectator. You have eyes that see, without seeing. Ears that hear without hearing. A heart still capable of loving has become your prison. You feel empty, drained, alone.

Unbelievers are not the only ones held captive. Many Christians live life behind locked doors. Self-imposed cells. Discouragement, pain, rejection, insecurity, fear, accusations, past, present, future all build up walls. Gasping for breath you feel smothered, yet weakness and familiarity keep you hostage. It’s often comforting to stay in the security of this new normal. Realizing work and effort may lay ahead, awakening holds too many uncertainties. A strange part of you enjoys the attention, pity and compassion from others. Silence is your truest friend and your most consuming enemy.

The problem? Right now life seems too overwhelming. Negatives far out-weigh the positives. Somehow your focus has shifted from what can be, to what is. Often it’s a slow fade. Unfulfilled desires in a marriage, demanding children, a stressful job, painful, abusive memories, illness, …disappointment in God. Oh, you’d probably not come right out and say that, but somewhere along the line, you’ve felt God has let you down. You had plans. You had desire. Your life was filled with enthusiasm and drive. You’ve been robbed in the cruelest way possible. You don’t have to worry about being one step closer to the grave, you’re already there.

{Originally published on Grown Ups Are Like That}

~

As I reach my hand into the bottom drawer of my desk I pull this out:

rice candy
sun room
honey bear
autumn spirit
october leaves
fall song

and this:

blue overtones
a few brave men
movie star
stonewashed
independence day
ozone

Paint chips are some of my favorite little objects in the world. I love the matte, powdery feel of the sample. Like just-sanded pine. Soft and smooth, their bookmark shape fits comfortably in the palm. The one (and I have many) labeled with names such as submarine, swamp fog, and fizzle has maroon crayon marks all over it. I can close my eyes and feel the transition from chalky pigment to waxy, bumpy lines. I can sit for hours running my fingers over these bits of color that please not only my eyes, but my fingers, too.

In this same drawer I have a small wallpaper sample book from 1978. Like the paint chips, the pages are not just food for the eyes. These sheets are rich with texture. The page called Williamsburg Fruit is durable and thick. They even suggest taking a hard brush to the orange and green fruits “It’s Scrubbable!”

{Originally Published on Swistle}

Some people find they can “Sleep now, because you won’t after the baby’s here!” Some people find their sleep batteries don’t work that way.

Some people have labors that are empowering and make them wonder why other women make such a fuss about it. Some people have labors that bring them to a crisis of faith about human design, because the Eve thing is insufficient explanation for this crap. Some people have labors that give them reason to be grateful for advances in medical science.

Some people will fall in love with their newborns instantly, on sight. Some people are fascinated right away, but not in love for a few days or weeks. Some people don’t fall in love for months.

Some people get the agreeable, laid-back kind of baby. Some people get the colicky, crabby kind of baby. Some people get the angry, opinionated kind of baby. Some people get the happy, bossy kind of baby. Some people get the whiny, fearful kind of baby. Some people get the early-developing, adventurous kind of baby. Some people get the irritable, rule-following kind of baby. Nobody should take much credit or much blame for their allotted baby.

Some people will get babies who will cooperate with the baby-wrangling system the parents have chosen. Some people will get babies who require a re-evaluation of system requirements.

Some people find they can “Appreciate every moment!” Some people find they can only appreciate it later, looking back on it, when they’re well-rested and well-dressed and fuzzy-memoried, standing in a supermarket telling a stranger to appreciate every moment.

Some people think the newborn stage is the best. Some people don’t really like babies until they reach the less-shriveled stage around 2 or 3 months. Some people don’t really like babies until they’re not babies anymore.

Some people find that the impact of children on their lives is so severe, they need to warn the world how bad it can be. Some people find that the impact of children on their lives is so wonderful, they need to tell the world how amazing it can be. Some people find themselves confused about what exactly it is they want to tell the world.

{Originally Published on Collecting Raindrops}

I was nine, living out the unfortunate fashion legacy of the 80’s, on any given day sporting Jams and jellies or leg warmers and Keds, and devouring Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret when no one was looking. I was ugly and I knew it, like an English Bulldog puppy. The kind of ugly that tugs at heartstrings and causes onlookers to want to scoop her up, fix her a cup of cocoa, swipe the smudges from her pink plastic glasses, and entertain her wild ideas.

A fair amount of my time was spent watching surgeries/procedures, studying oddities that my Dad retrieved from the stomachs of his equine patients, and exploring the barns and acreage around his veterinary clinic. I enjoyed the dual citizenship extended in childhood, dividing my days between reality and imaginary worlds that spun themselves into convincing, more entertaining versions of the truth with colorful landscapes and curious culinary creations.

I was an odd little girl, (which may be the most redundant phrase ever uttered, following the previous paragraphs.) I wrote myself into mystery stories. I concocted ridiculous diary entries that chronicled the life of a more ordinary and attractive girl. (If someone were to find that little diary, some day, which is hopefully decomposing nicely in a landfill somewhere in Oklahoma, they’d be bored to tears and think I lived a very different life…with platinum blond braids.) That was the year I decided on my career path: I would attend Harvard Law School followed by a brief, but spectacular stint as a lawyer before being appointed to a judgeship which would of course, lead me directly to my seat as Chief Justice of The Supreme Court. I was nine–where are the dizzy daydreams of riding unicorns over rainbows (both of which enjoyed popularity in the 80’s thanks to Rainbow Brite, The Care Bears, and Hippies having children) or wanting to be a Marine biologist and work at Sea World when I grew up?

My Mom and Dad encouraged this phantasmic life plan. I was really good at Memory so, you know, I was already qualified.

It never occurred to my adolescent self that I might not be the Chief Justice, or attend Harvard, for that matter. These things were guaranteed because in my other world, my imaginary world, I had already lived them.

My imaginary world was as easily accessible as my back yard. It wasn’t until I was fourteen that it started to crumble. Reality came crashing down and the pillars of my youth showed deep and unsettling cracks. I began to question everything. Pragmatism emerged as an important ally in the days after my Dad left and my Mother couldn’t stand up underneath the sadness that enveloped her. Dreaming, planning, writing, inventing, creating, were dismissed (by me) as childish and I no longer had the luxury of being a child. I locked the door to that world of dreams and tossed away the key.

{Originally published on Thursday Drive}

I was in the middle of nowhere, but I felt as though I had arrived at someplace important and pivotal. A place that should show on some map of my life with the words Go here.

Heavy and golden, the moonlight sank to earth on a parachute of stars and brought everything around me out of the shadows – the hulking shapes of mountains, open space, a black ribbon of road. Far away, the light of one house.

I stood in the middle of a road in northwestern Montana, shivering with the wind that ran through me like a hundred ghosts. I had stopped to get out, to look. No other car would pass by while I stood there. The night was big. The world was big. How many times had the wind that filled my lungs traveled along the curve of the earth? I breathed in, sure it told me secrets of what my life could be, how big it could be, now that it was all mine again.

Back home in Connecticut, my job waited for me and my husband did not. Our separation was new, no older than a month. With less fuss than it took to plan our wedding, we decided to break apart the marriage, each of us taking uneven halves of the whole, pieces that had never quite fit together and always left a space between two people who tried.

I settled into a new place and then took every vacation day and every bit of cash I could, and I drove – this time, from Connecticut to the western side of Montana, 5000 miles in 12 days. It was the middle of September – now, almost to the date. This time every year, I give myself over to nostalgia for that trip and for the person I was then. Brave. Unafraid to go as far as that, alone, to see something beautiful, to be changed.

And despite the disappointment of a marriage that ended, I still thought I could see ahead and predict the future, or shape it.

The joke was on me, of course. On her, on the person I was that night, eight months before I would learn that I was pregnant with my first child. Whatever I thought was brave or scary before hitched a ride to somewhere far away.

But she learned. You want scary? I told her. Having a baby is scary. Cobbling together a life with another person, with a new life between you, takes guts. Believing that it will all work out? Harder still.

{Originally Published on Mommy Melee}

It’s a little after 5:30 and the sun is starting to give everything a rusty, magic glow. Green is greener. Blue is bluer. And half of Riviera Middle School is in ruins.

I knew about it, of course—racing the sun to get the light, to document the destruction before I forget, before it’s gone gone gone. I have my camera in the passenger seat. I pull up against the fence, crack the windows for my sons in the backseat, and step out onto the pavement.

Monsters in the parking lot. Two giant diggers. (The dinosaurs are eating the school, my son whispers.) The sun glints just right, a little flare of personality. A wink. I shiver and start taking pictures.

Gum on the seat, then my jeans, a jacket tied around my waist. Crying on the phone, please come and let me go home, the girls are so mean. I write a report on dachshunds. A boy in gifted class writes a song about the way I pick my nose. I know I’m not the only one who thinks about last year’s rape incident every time I march up the dingy stairwells. I have a boyfriend for three days in the hall. A high school student volunteers with the after school chorus program. Why don’t blondes use vibrators, he asks me. Because they chip their teeth. I don’t get the joke.

{Originally published on Into the Rabbit Hole}

Tonight I put on my Express size 5/6 jeans again. I didn’t have to struggle, suck it in, or lay down to get them buttoned!

I never dreamed I would be able slide into these again. Since February, I’ve lost twenty pounds. That’s a lot, considering that I wasn’t fat to begin with. However, those twenty pounds were necessary, because now I definitely look better, feel healthier, and am more comfortable with my body.

Want to know my secret? Five simple words: “I love my beautiful body.”

Think about it! A person who loves their body will take care of it. If you were to body-sit for a loved one’s body, wouldn’t you do everything it needs, to make sure you return it happy and healthy? You’d feed it the most nutrient-rich, yummy food you could find, and you’d give it lots of exercise, and you’d never say things like, “You’re so fat,” or “God, if you could just lose fifteen pounds…” Hell no you wouldn’t say that!! If you were body-sitting, you would be kind and gentle, giving it everything it needed and telling it good things!

So, why is it that we don’t care for our bodies the way we know we need to?

I believe it’s has everything to do with how we think of our bodies. Instead of loving them, we put negative energy into our selves, wishing we could just lose (fill in the flaw)… or saying we’re not good enough until (fill in the ‘what am I lacking’)… Guess what! Thoughts like that affect our bodies.

You are what you think! And by changing the way I thought, I was able to bring forth to the outside of my body what it was that I thought from the inside of it. I wrote it in soap crayon on the tiles in my shower. I wrote it on my mirrors. Every time I turned the clasp on my necklace, I whispered, “I love my beautiful body.”

Eventually, I began to believe that. The power of your thoughts is everything. In order to break habitual thinking, or any habit for that matter, you must change that thought you express into something that is contradictory to what you have previously thought. For instance, when I quit smoking, I changed my self-perception into, “I am not a cigarette smoker.”

At first it was a struggle. “I love my beautiful body” conflicted with the original self image I had; it conflicted with the, I’m fats or I’m not pretty enoughs. That confliction is why I needed the reminders to change my thinking through out my day. I needed the necklace clasps and the soap crayons.

If you want to be beautiful from the outside, you must express beautiful things from the inside. Do not criticize your body; love it and care for it. Nurture it.

{Originally published on theRunaMuck.)

I seriously feel like I just had my lights knocked out, and I’ve woken seeing red and dusting off my rear end.

It’s sangria time, people. Are you raising your cups?

My husband and I can’t stop saying: we only have this one life.

I’ll say it again - we only have this ONE and it’s riding like a breath on the wind, already in disintegration. So what are we doing here?

If God doesn’t shine through this spot of air He’s given me, may my computer fly to the moon, let the world wide web scramble to a fuzz, and may we meet outside weeping at each other’s necks for what we’ve been missing.

Luke 12:48 (The Message)

47-48“The servant who knows what his master wants and ignores it, or insolently does whatever he pleases, will be thoroughly thrashed. But if he does a poor job through ignorance, he’ll get off with a slap on the hand. Great gifts mean great responsibilities; greater gifts, greater responsibilities!

I have been given much. That is my confession today.

{Originally posted at Flowerdust.net}

Her name is Anne.

She has fallen victim to some bad curry.

Or maybe it was the pizza.

Either way.

She wears no makeup today.

She doesn’t fix her hair.

Her eyes are red because she’s been crying.

And her bed has been one of her two closest friends.

(I’ll let you guess what her other friend has been).

{Originally published on Foment, Bee Lavender’s Journal}

For the most part I ignore my own dreary medical drama. There isn’t enough time in life to accommodate all the good stuff: adventure, travel, friends, love, lunacy.

This does not mean that I am exempt from fear and grief. I just save it up until the crisis has passed.

Riding the bus back to the city centre after my appointment, I could feel my heart racing, see my hands shaking.

Since I didn’t have my bicycle I could not literally ride away on a wave of anxiety, so I did the next best thing - talked to a friend who mocked me into a reasonably calm state.

Then I went searching for gifts for new babies, sweet boys, sick relatives.

At the toy store I queued up clutching a Playmobil figure without paying too much attention to my surroundings.

Apparently I had accidentally dropped in on a fashion conversation because the woman at the counter gestured and said Now this lady is chic.

I stared about in amazement since you would never normally see such a creature in this town but she was pointing at me.

Huh? What? I’m no lady (fill in your own vaudeville joke here) and my tattered sartorial state does not equate with ‘chic’ even on a good day.

I was not having a good day.

Though I have a special leftover childhood reserve of anxiety over what to wear to visit the doctor, this has in the last few years mainly translated to concepts like wear clean clothes that cover the tattoo.