Showing Up and Loving You with My Whole Heart

Cristina hit the floor tonight on Grey's Anatomy and Meredith came running into the OR and lay down on the floor with her and talked her out of the room. I was reminded once again the power in the love of friendship. There are those friends who you know, no matter what, are going to show up... even when you are in a panic lying under your desk... at work... curled into a ball shaking and quivering and certain you cannot work... cannot move... cannot get up... ever again.

I have been rescued just as Cristina was a couple of times. And I am grateful for those friends who lay on the floor with me, didn't leave me, and let me have the time I needed to get up. Everyone needs a friend or two just like that... for just those times.

I hope that I have been that friend who shows up and stays for someone else along the way.

The song below is beautiful. The words ask questions worth asking.

Life is not always easy, and really, life is not always full of good things for us to experience. But I will say that what makes it all worth while in good times and bad is having those who love you, who show up and don't walk away when it all gets really, really messy.

"Loving you with my whole heart." In those words lie the truth and the key to "forever". And then... following, is not such a scary notion after all.

Namaste

White Blank Page by Mummford and Sons
Can you lie next to her
And give her your heart, your heart
As well as your body
And can you lie next to her
And confess your love, your love
As well as your folly
And can you kneel before the king
And say I’m clean, I’m clean


But tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart
Oh tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart


A white blank page
and a swelling rage, rage
You did not think
when you sent me
to the brink, to the brink
You desired my attention
but denied my affections, my affections


So tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart
Oh tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart


Aah, aah...
Lead me to the truth and I
will follow you with my whole life
Lead me to the truth and I
will follow you with my whole life
Aah, aah...

Catch Up and Stir it Up

To catch up all my loyal readers (all 2 of you, hahahahahaha) my exercise program is progressing. No, I did not exercise at 5:00 am on Monday morning, but I did try. Yes, Sunday evening, I got out my old VHS tape of "Yoga in the A.M." I also went searching for my yoga mat. The last time I saw it, I believe it was in my closet. But after cleaning out my closets earlier this year, I believe, it might have been taken upstairs to the attic. The last time I remember doing Yoga was..... well, perhaps the VHS tapes speak for themselves. Let's just say that DVD was not an option at Walmart that year. Not sure Walmart was even an option.

Anyway, the yoga mat was not found, but I figured I would be OK on the laminate flooring - it's not too slippery. With that I went to bed.... forgetting to set my 5:00 alarm. Ugh! My usual alarm went off at 5:30, but I figured it was still early enough to get in a 30 minute workout of Yoga considering I don't usually get up at 5:30 in the morning anyway. I consider the 5:30 alarm to be my warning - WARNING! WARINING! 6:00 is coming pretty soon.

So - I padded out to put my VHS tape in my player and you won't believe it, but it would not work. Seriously, I pushed the tape in and the DVD/VHS player spit it out. I pushed it in and it spit it out. Over and over again. You know the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing, but expecting different results? Well, I didn't know what else to try, so after 6 or 7 pushes. I realized that exercise was not to be. Darn!

However, Tuesday night after work, I did put on my walking shoes and out the door I went. 35 minutes later, I walked in the front door, opened up a Coors Lite and sat down to watch The Biggest Loser. Yeah, man, I'm living the life!!!! Don't you know it!!!!!!

Tonight, there was not time for exercise. I had to buy spray paint for my 17 year old daughter. Kids can't buy spray paint these days. No Sudafed either. It's a shame. Anyway, she is dressing like a nerd for Friday's Spirit Day and so she needed some Purple Spray Paint. You put it all together - Nerd, Purple? Not so sure, but she's more creative than I am. Anyway, I didn't get home until 6:45 and was already late for my 6:30 Book Study.

So, I have exercised 2 times this week. That's a 50% success rate. There's room for growth there.

So much for catching up - let's talk stir it up, shall we?

The book study is on Women Food and God. I was fairly certain that any issues with Food were long gone in my past, but hey, I'll be part of the group and attend anyway. WRONG!!!!!! I felt stirred up and churned up, and I'm thinking I might still have a few eating and food issues left inside me. Well, at least a lot of that stuff that can surface into food issues - you know that pain and shame goo. So, I don't get out if this study so easily. It appears to be, perhaps, another growth opportunity for me (said with a touch of sarcasm). Grow, grow, grow.

Namaste

Mornings, Coffee, and Friendship

There is truth in the lyrics of the song "joy comes in the morning". Thank you, God that you gave me another day. The sun came up, and my troubles moved to the past, and I was faced with a new day, a new present moment. And wow! all that future laying out in front of me regardless of whether it is 5 more minutes or 50 more years.

One of my favorite things to do is go to coffee with my friends. We were invited to come together a year ago and we responded by getting up and out of our warm beds before the sun is over the edge of the earth because we needed exactly what we created in this small warm group. 

I don't believe in coincidence, but I do believe in holy moments, and the power that can be created when God's people recognize and purposefully commit to creating space for one another. I believe that God knew we would have many things to rejoice over and cry over, not only this past year, but for years to come; and He knew this group needed to begin and form and become.

We have become a group of wise women who hold each others hands and hearts through the joy and the sorrow of these times. We are specially and specifically called together every week to be each other's friend. I thank God for these women and this space.

Namaste.

Surrender and Perspective

Do you have any idea how hard it is for someone who likes to be in control of life to surrender? To surrender to what is and what is not going to be? Wow! It is torture. It feels impossible. I am not very graceful or gracious while letting go. Possbibly because I am clinging to what was, or what I think should be. How graceful can one be as they cling to someone's leg as they are trying to leave town? I am... really doing this.... almost. I am a grown up wise woman for heaven's sake.

For someone who is used to getting what I work for, it is exhausting to work at something that is beyond my control. It is painful. It is frustrating. It brings me to my knees. It paralyzes me. It eats at me. It makes me lose my appetite. It drives me to drink. It makes me want to escape. It makes me mad. It makes me sad. It certainly, as you can tell (:>), makes me crazy.

Let go, let go, let go.

What simple, simple words.

What a complicated task.

In Melodie Beattie's The Language of Letting Go she says, "Our happiness is not a present somene else holds in his or her hands. Our well-being is not held by another to be given or withheld at whim. If we reach out and try to force someone to give us what we believe he or she holds, we will be disappointed. We will discover that it is an illusion. The person didn't hold it. He or she never shall. That beautifully wrapped box with the ribbon on it that we believed contained our happiness that someone was holding - is an illusion!

"In those moments when we are trying to reach out and force somone to stop our pain and create our joy, if we can find the courage to stop flailing about and instead stand still and deal with our issues, we will find our happiness."

She also says "Too often, we try to gain a clear perspective before it is time. That will make us crazy. We do not always know why things are happening the way they are... or why a door closed. How our present circumstances will work into the larger scheme of events is not always clear to us. That is how it needs to be.

"Prespective will come in retrospect.

"We could strain for hours today for the meaning of someting that may come in an instant next year.

"Let it go. We can let go of our need to figure things out, to feel in control.

"Now is the time to be. To feel. To go through it. To allow things to happen. To learn. To let whatever is being worked out in us take its course.

"In hindsight, we will know. It will beome clear. For today, being is enough. We have been told that all things shall work out for good in our life. We can trust that to happen, even if we cannot see the place today's events will hold in the larger picture."

Tonight, I will take these wise woman's words to heart and allow them to comfort my soul.

I surrender to all there is, was, and ever will be.

Namaste

Exercise

Today, I exercised. So, now, if someone asks, "Do you exercise?" I can say "Yes, as a matter of fact, yes, I do."

I have seriously been meaning to begin and continue a regular exercise program. My heart could use it... as could my lungs, blood vessels, muscles, and the rest of my aging body. So, I made the first step today. I went to the track and I went around and around and around until my time was up.

I tried to clear the cobwebs and the demons out of my head and think about nothing. I was not very successful. I thought about too many things. And one of those things was that I needed to do this kind of thing regularly. I thought about how I have 24 hours in a day and how I could divide that up:

8 hours of sleep + 8 hours of work + 2 hours of commuting + 2 hours to eat = 20 hours. This leaves me approximately 4 hours of "free time". If I added exercise to the day, I would still have 3 hours every day to do whatever else I wanted.

Well, then I thought that just the daily chores of feeding dogs, letting them in and out, brushing my teeth, making my daughter's lunch, putting dishes in the dishwasher, checking my calendar, my email, sending and receiving text messages, going to the bathroom, and all the other miscellaneous chores of each day. That's probably another hour, all together in my day, so now I'm down to 2 hours a day to do whatever else I want.

Then I remembered that I do shower everyday and just the showering, blow-drying the hair, makeup, getting dressed, accessorizing, changing my mind and starting over... well, that is AT LEAST an hour a day, so if I add exercise to my daily life, I will still have ONE glorious hour a day to do whatever I want to do.

So - I considered exercising tomorrow, but I don't know where that hour is tomorrow, because I am supposed to paint doors and fix drywall after work. I have hinges to remove from one set of doors and put them on other sets of doors. I have home repairs.

So, I can't exercise tomorrow unless I sleep one less hour and exercise at 5:00 in the morning. Do people exercise at 5:00 in the morning? I mean at those 24 Hour Fitness Places, how many people on the average in all the cities in all the world are at the gym walking on treadmills at 5:00 in the morning? And after I realized I really don't have any idea - I thought, that maybe there are many people dedicated to such a schedule. And those are my sisters and brothers of the morning. They are up and out of bed staying healthy and the least I could do is join them tomorrow morning (not at the 24 Hour Fitness Place..... just in spirit).

So - I am setting my alarm for 5:00 and will report back on my success..... or not.

Maybe meditation was a better idea......

Quest for Quietude

In Eat, Love, Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert she writes "The other day a monk told me, 'The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clainging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. the only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.'"

The suggestion for finding this place is through meditation.

Perhaps I could try. I'll let you know how it goes.

Namaste.

Deep Thinkers

Last night on Grey's Anatomy, Cristina, pages through a wedding magazine during a her counseling session and again while observing a critical surgery. She later says that all these women in the pictures of her magazine are simple. All they want is to marry their husbands. She thinks that these women were born simple. As opposed to herself, who I suppose was born the opposite. Do you suppose she meant complicated? She is yearning for the simple. Perhaps the ability to turn off the hard, difficult, traumatic, past few days... and simply get married without all the thoughts, all the complications.

I can relate to Cristina. I am not simple, but rather, analytical. I store data in my head; and I think too much. For instance I can remember what you said years ago; where we were when you said it; what I was thinking as you said it, what you were wearing; and why we were talking about it in the first place. And I remember vividly, how I felt when you said it. While you are talking today, I am filing through all our past conversations and wondering why you said "this" last year, and how does that relate to "what" you are saying this year. I can't help it. That's just how my brain/memory seems to work.

Sometimes I want to slow it all down. However the more I TRY to make it stop, the more data my brain processes about my need to slow it down and the other times this happened, and what I was thinking the last time I had this thought, or something I read in a book, or something I saw in a move..... Do you get the idea?

I am a deep thinker. And the thoughts can get quite complicated, muddled, and LOUD. Everything that happens, is said, every movement of your face or your body, is processing in my brain and creating output of what "it" all means... to you... perhaps, to me... perhaps, to the world.

And I am a deep feeler. I feel from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. I FEEL my emotions and what is happening all around me. And later when I go home, I will rethink it all again, reprocess, what i said, what you said, what he said, and what does it all mean. How it all makes me feel.

Seriously, it is EXHAUSTING.

What would life be like if I saw it all more simply.

I received a wood cutout of the word "Simplify" as a gift a year or so ago from a dear friend. It rests on top of a beautiful cabinet, that came from my parents home, in the hall outside my room.

Although I crave Simple at times and am reminded of the possibility by the gift, I know it not.

Search for Significance

Hey! This is an important day for me. Day 1 of telling my story. I may tell more background as the days go by, but today it feels important to go back a few years when I began a journey into the woods on a path leading to somewhere I knew not. I only knew that I needed to go. I can tell you that I was much too weary for the journey, and yet I left just in time. Times were not good, and I had no recognition of what I had become. I take responsibility for this. My choices took me to the place that ran me straight into a brick wall - the end of a time.

And a choice was in front of me. Stay stuck within panic, anxiety, and putting on a happy face, while counting my blessings, or to pack my valice and walk into those dark woods with only an inner knowing that this was the only choice I had or I would surely die. I call that period of my life the Search for Soul. And in those woods, I found who I was, before I had become so lost. And I liked her, which of course was me all along.

Well, those days are long behind me and yet these past weeks I have found myself in yet another place of choice and decision that I know, from that deepest place within, that my choice is paramount to who I am and who I will become. I was in love; well, I probably still am; and yet, he could not provide that which I needed most. And in all fairness, I was not able to promise and give him what he was asking me most to do. He needed to go away... someday... and wanted me to follow. And yet, in that deepest place within me I felt it was not a journey that was mine, and I let him go... with tears and fears and a bit of doubt, and a whole freakin' lot of despair.

And so today, I sit here in my home in Texas, and say to myself: "Good for you. For being true to yourself and all whom you love, that no matter the cost, you chose the right thing to do. And it is hard, so don't minimize the courage it took to face what you are facing today: which of course is the loss."

I begin today on a new journey. The Search for Significance. For eighteen of the past nineteen months, a large part of my significance seemed to come from being loved on a daily basis by a man. That's right! My daily life and my smallest thoughts mattered to a man who asked everyday, more than once, how I was, how was my day, what happened at work, how were the kids, wondering what mattered to me today. And then he shared his day and his life. He said "Good Morning", "Good Night", and "I Love You Most" And from all of this, I felt SIGNIFICANCE.

I am not alone in life. I have friends texting, emailing, facebooking, calling, inviting..... they are trying to fill the void and for that: I AM GRATEFUL. Truley, I am grateful. Thank you friends, thank you family, thank you GOD.

And I have to ask the question as I pack my bag to begin my search for significance: Where will this journey take me over the course of the next few minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or even years? Where will I go - with me - in search of this next part of me that seems lost?

I have a friend who said that "Loss does not equal Lost". I believe her statement, but nevertheless, LOST is what I feel as I begin.

Anyone who wants to join me, follow along. Anyone who has been there before, welcome to my story; our story. Namaste