Tag Archives: gratefulness

A Year Revisited

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I  discovered to my astonishment when I went to update my WordPress account that I had last posted on New Year’s Day of 2013.  Those who have followed my blogging journey know that I have fallen away from writing from time to time, but a year?  Last year was a moment, a lifetime, a daily slog.  In the end I added another slab of clay to a life mostly molded with a strong and recognizable shape.  My sculpture grew in some ways predictably, in others, less so.  My gardening became a massive bounty of produce that I never anticipated; shared with friends and strangers I never met.  I taught myself to preserve that same bounty in lovely sparkling jars now gracing my pantry shelves.  I learned new things about myself and others as well as what makes a great garden grow.

After a patchy go at trying to fill in the gaps for work and personal growth, taking college classes that aided both but never added up to that coveted piece of paper; I charted a course to finally achieve that, until now, elusive goal.  To that end I stepped back into a college classroom a few weeks shy of my 60th birthday and discovered that instead of feeling old, I felt experienced.  I took a single class that set me off in a new direction, with enthusiasm and excitement I lacked during every previous college experience.

For the first time in my life I chose to suspend my disbelief and open my heart to faith.  I learned quickly it is not an epiphany but a way of living; constantly reminding myself to open my heart and ask for grace in all things.  I never realized that the practice of believing can lead to belief, rather than having belief which is then practiced.  I know there are many gifted with the later, but it took a wise man of God to suggest that the opposite might work for a searching, but Doubting Thomas such as myself.

The grand and the minutia and all the daily bits of life sandwiched between; when one reflects back on a year, each has its role and place in memory.  Five years from now, which bits will remain and built upon?  Which bits will drift away into the mist and leave little reminder.  Even though we seek to live lives of value and honesty, it is a perplexing effort, trying to know which things will linger and add to the fabric of our lives. In this especially then, I wish all of you the grace to believe, and the opportunity to offer your experience and wisdom to those around you.

Happy New Year 2014 ~ C

Love in this Time of Life

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“Each time of life has its own kind of love.”
-Leo Tolstoy

Rereading the chapter in Tolstoy’s work “Family Happiness” from which this quote springs reminds me that this is about the sorrow of love that has changed and dissipated over time.  Yet I chose the quote for altogether another reason.  It brought to mind the ever-changing focus of the love that we hold within, and the varied expressions as one passes through each phase of life.

The last few days I have thought about how much I love my life; especially that in this time in my life I have allowed myself to choose a path and take the steps that carry me fully in the direction I intend to go.  In the past, I felt carried along on a tide of which I had no control and felt helpless to tug against.  Yet in reality I was making choices and often they were taking me in a direction that was rewarding and suited me well.

It is only in this time of life that I am able to reflect on the nature of the lasting loves and the newfound love of my way of life.  I now more clearly understand the steadying nature of the love of a long marriage, one that has certainly seen its share of heartbreak, but has endured in spite of all we did to harm it.  The love of my children has grown and changed dramatically over the years.  At its inception it was a strong physical bond, wrapped in desire to protect and shelter, the need to hold them close.  As they grew, I loved who they were, even as the physical bond lessened, the emotional bond grew.  Even later as the struggle to hang on and let go all in the same movement, love became something to come back to when confusion and disconnects threatened.  And now I enjoy the love of acceptance, loving them for who they are and aspire to become, much as I have finally learned to love myself.  As the awful burden of expectations has fallen away,  the underlying beauty of the fact of their beings returns to me as it was in the first hours of their existence.

Ultimately this love is such a powerful presence in my awareness and appreciation as a result of the great gift of being present in the moment and looking not forward, but all around.  This time of life has offered up, and I have gratefully accepted, love of place, love of life, love of home and family, and the ability to revel in each of these.

Life Lessons

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In my time away from writing blog entries I have done little that involved writing and spent much of my time outdoors.   Which leads me to lesson one:

Just because you take a break from something, no matter the duration, you can always come back and pick it up again.  This goes for hobbies, a project you’ve lost interest in, a stubborn problem that needs a new approach.  Stepping away is not quitting and likely when you return it will be with a renewed and refreshed point of view.  In the past, once I had stepped away I would begin the process of berating myself for being a “quitter” and never finishing anything.  Once I was thoroughly beaten down, starting again was daunting.  This time I gave myself permission to take a break, and a general timetable to return and best of all realized that there is no finished, just done for now.

Lesson two:

Sometimes when life is bleakest, the reward for persevering is a powerful moment or one of extraordinary beauty.  This comes from sitting with some of my lowest feelings over the years and reflecting on the grace bestowed upon me when I emerged from despair.  It came together in  stunning visual clarity after I spent 14 long hours behind the wheel, in driving rain for a large part and on a dark, rainy, windswept mountain road at the end. My reserves spent,  I was fully focused on avoiding becoming another highway statistic.  After stopping for the night, I returned to the road to finish my drive home and the stunning beauty of a river gorge awash in fall foliage greeted me and was my companion for much of the day as one river became another and the colors ranged from molten gold to deepest bronze.

Three:

It isn’t personal, even when it is.

A long list of events in the last few months, any of which would have sent me to a corner in a funk in the past, sailed right by with hardly a ripple.  The difference is in my self-talk, a change in perspective that has allowed this shift to occur.  Even in one particular situation when a friend said, “that is such a slap in the face”, and perhaps it was.  I took it as the other person having an agenda different from mine and since she was the decision maker, her agenda took precedence.  At this rather late juncture in my life I am able to see that I do not need to take ownership of another’s opinion of me,  that I do not need to take something personally even when it was the intent.  Some might say that the fight has gone out of me, and I suppose when one finds oneself at peace, that is true.  The fire, passion and enthusiasm have not waned though, and those are the traits I cherish most in myself and others.

Being mindful in the moment, giving myself time to sit with my feelings and reframe my expectations, choosing to find my peace wherever I am has given me greater clarity and wholeness.  I look forward to resuming my daily writing, with even greater enthusiasm.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunny Sunday

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The sun is out, and it feels like spring.  There are two robins in the tree outside my window cavorting and celebrating as well.  What a glorious way to start the day!  I am incorporating mindfulness (paying attention to the here and now) with gratefulness into my thinking about every moment. I am using what the politicos refer to as spin to change my thinking.  Last night during a roaring wind storm, during which I tend to worry about all sorts of flying objects and damage, instead I turned my thoughts to how lucky I am in a warm safe home, with a cheery fire and a huge selection of books; gratefulness.

One of the risks of this somewhat Pollyanna-ish thinking is the loss of being taken seriously, always hugely important in the past.  But when I framed it in a new way, would I rather be taken seriously and be unhappy or would I rather be happy and let the chips fall where they may?  I chose happiness.

Today I will sing, loudly, all the way to Missoula, dance when I dry my hair and put my purchases away, and laugh just for any old reason or no reason at all.  Happy Sunday.

Not for the squeamish

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Not that I have been overly freaked out by the various bugs and rodents that may cross one’s path in the suburbs, but I have risen to the level of nonplussed when it comes to dealing with the grosser aspects of country living.  A friend of mine who lives in central Washington near the Canadian border has waged an all out war on voles that decimated her garden last year and has tracked her body count on Facebook.  Country gals become a little tougher, (and find our entertainment in unique ways).  My personal vendetta has been houseflies, tons of them, with no let up in winter.  I have searched the web for ideas, and short of killing the dang things and removing their food source, there was little help.  I have heard anecdotally that flies are a problem in log and wood beam homes, but cannot find documentation or the answer to why?  I am stumped on the food source, as I have no attic space to hide a dead rodent, the garbage tucked away in a pull out, and I have never seen any activity near the cat items…so clobbering and cleaning up flies is part of the daily routine.  I am the proud owner of four fly swatters and my shop vac has a place of honor among the weapons of war.  Next up is sterilizing the interior surfaces in the hopes it will discourage the filthy little buzzers.

Yesterday when I went out the cat had left me a gift of a severed mouse head and the less tasty (I’m assuming) guts on the walkway to the garage.  I don’t really have a problem, anymore at least, of flinging them into the woods with a shovel, but I have to say even this newly minted country girl was not thrilled to clean the barfed up  indigestible parts of a mouse at 5:30 AM.  Thanks cat!

The trade-offs for which I am grateful:

  • Even on this gray morning the air is still, crisp and smells so clean
  • Heating with wood is one of the most cheerful ways to stay warm
  • The quiet is so soft, the birdsong so sweet in early spring, the stillness so calming

Today I will continue to practice happiness, gratefulness and mindfulness.  I will try a new activity, the First Friday celebration in town, to meet new people while “being Cathrine”.