Of What We're Made

I’ve been “thinking” in circles and squares and all kinds of random shapes since I first remember being able to remember. And once again, the Queen of Abstracts and Absolutes finds out what she thought she knew, she doesn’t know at all.

I’ve been on a quest for the past several years of learning what it takes to “let go”. To subtract those things that don’t make me better or leave me in a higher place. I’ve learned to dismiss, diminish, take away, step back, stop trying so hard, simply allow, go with the flow, reduce, remove. And I stand by the realization that all of the changes and re-arranges have shifted me, made me better, brought me more spirituality, more grace, more understanding and more joy. But I just had a “eureka moment” that can’t be ignored.

Until my life is over, I don’t think there are certain situations and circumstances of which  I will ever be able to completely let go. There are losses we face and are forced into bearing. There are tragedies that rob us, morph us. There are heartbreaks that we never fully recover from. All things I’ve tried over and over to rise above. All things I’ve peeled apart, layer by painful layer in an attempt to reach total healing. And it just now occurs to me that maybe we’re not designed to let it all go. Rather maybe we’re designed to process, digest, take it IN – not push against it or attempt to eradicate. Maybe it simply becomes part of who we are, becomes our make-up and part of our grander design. And maybe finally, in the surrendering, truly surrendering, I’ll discover maybe, just maybe, I’ve let go more than I think I have… and if not, maybe I’ve let go “enough”.

The things that happen TO us all, aren’t who we have ever been, aren’t who we potentially can be. I hope I’m learning how to place those things gently somewhere within where they work best so that I can be connected to the me I know I can be. And I hope I allow myself more breathing room and more elbow room.

3D Glasses

Sometimes I forget that I’m a three dimensional shape and that I won’t always get to be…

A three dimensional shape.

We all call it dying, but really I think we’re just shifting and evolving and changing and by the time we breathe our last breath of earth air, we let go of this experience, this body on loan from elements and minerals and earthly and other-worldly materials and move into the fourth dimension, fifth, sixth, seventh, millionth or wherever our next adventure lies.

I hope I never take for granted the form I’m in, the forms around me, the parts that I will never even get the chance to encounter because I’m so limited in 3D.

Here for such a short time. Inside this shell we take for granted.

May I recognize the dance I’m supposed to dance.

May I recognize the song I’m supposed to sing.

May I recognize the dreams I’m supposed to dream.

May I recognize the life I’m supposed to live.

Three dimensional nose that smells the pleasant and unpleasant.

Three dimensional eyeballs that fit into sockets that allow me to see in my own unique individualized colors and shapes.

Three dimensional fingers that let me feel the things that we call “tangibles”.

Three dimensional heart that beats and pumps and rhythmically and unrhythmically keeps me without sharp edges and hard corners so that I can fluidly move through the pounding of this thing we call “life”.

Shape. Form. Substance. Always changing, moving towards being without

this

that happens in

3D.

On Becoming More Bitchy

My mom told me over and over when I was young, “Be nice. Nice girls always get the guy.” Or “nice girls always come out ahead.” Or “nice girls always win in the end.”

I love that my mom taught me about how to be nice. Her actions more than her words became my road map. And she has always been one of the sweetest women I know. But often times while watching her be “kind”, I pushed down an overwhelming feeling of MAD. Because I watched as she worried about others so much, she lost parts of herself that I’m not sure she ever regained. While making others (including me) happy, she sacrificed her own self and life and health. A horrific price to pay. Pushing herself beyond her own limits so that others’ lives could be more comfortable. I learned from the master teacher.

But lately, I’ve been questioning “nice”.  Or my own interpretation of what that is.

Questioning it alot.

Not saying I think we should all throw kindness out the door. Far from it. But how about if we’re nice to ourselves enough to keep ourselves intact? To make our lives a bit easier?

For the first time in my life I’m finding out the efficiency of placing boundaries quickly and quietly around my inner being. It's hard for me to do. I have to work hard at it.

At work, I've had to learn how to apply these new principles better. Be more precise. Be more decisive. Be more clear. It saves time. It manages other’s lives better. It makes the well-oiled machine run much more economically. It helps MY life feel easier. I’ve struggled with it, because in demonstrating THOSE qualities, I have felt I’m sacrificing “nice”. Today the light bulb went on as I was gently taught that my concept and interpretation is a bit askew.

I also figured out today that this world isn’t always nice. (duh) Very few individuals I know of are completely selfless. Most of us are incredibly selfish, putting our own wants before anyone else. Not that that is good or bad. I’m convinced it’s simply being human. We all expect life and the universe to swirl around our importance and when it doesn’t we get all bent out of shape and wonder why and feel we’ve failed or something. (a different topic altogether) So I’ve entered into the challenge to begin using my built in Bullshit Radar - on myself and on others. What can I do to not only protect my energy but also “your” energy? Keeping us out of circumstances or moments that are unnecessary or unimportant or just really not needed? Going back to that feeling of creating more empty space around me. I’m finding out there’s a way to make vastness around my reactions or lack of reactions and in my constant need to people please.  Whittle down. Take away. Remove. And in so doing, I become aware that there truly are those who take advantage. (insert huge audible, collective gasp) Some people try to get away with as much as possible simply because they can, probably without even understanding what they are doing.

Just say no. Be blunt and to the point. 

Especially if you’re in a place where you feel you need to start protecting your own value and worth. I’m giving myself permission to pull back on the nice-ness.

Look out world. And um, sorry mom.

lol

Dancing With Life

I had an amazing conversation last night with someone I’ve known “on the surface”, someone who has died twice, gone through incredible life journeys, has had to climb back and rise from the rubble more than once; someone who is worlds away from where they first started as a child. The stories inspired me and feel like they’ve changed me somehow for the better. I heard about tragedy that led to a place of learning how to embrace and live in each moment as it comes, trials and traumas that led to a place where dancing, absorbing music and just shining an inner light for others has ignited a willingness to open one’s life to complete service to others. Through “me”, use me to change a world one little piece at a time is the lesson I gained from simply listening.

It’s a call I feel my mom instilled in me forever ago. A call to take the ashes or the shitty parts and pieces and raise those things up with love and life as the driving forces, the forces that know innately that everything, every little thing can be used for the good, for betterment of self and others.

I don’t know, nor will I ever really figure it all out, I don’t know if we are all here on planet Earth for a reason. I have my gut feeling we are. But I also have my doubts that maybe life is nothing but randomness and chaos. But the stories that weave themselves in and out of my life ignite my bones. They wrap around and tie things together and make sense out of nonsense and guide me to a feeling of wanting to sing and share smiles and laughter and ease other people’s pain. Those wishes become the fabric of life and take me away from an even-keeled center where there is little to feel, shallow waters;  where there is no depth into this expansive full spectrum ocean of experience. It all keeps taking me further into the highest highs and lowest lows and I emerge feeling baptized over and over by some kind of grace that is stretching me beyond comfort and ease and into a new dimension of absorbing life in ways I never dreamed I could or would.

The more I love myself, the more I love this life, the more I love others around me who have similar paths and ideas and dreams to express, the more expansive everything becomes. I might not have a lot of money, I might not have a mansion on a hill complete with swimming pool and servants… but I have stories and the hearts of friends that make me feel incredibly rich. Thank you life. Every day.

A Gypsy's Creed

Again today I will rise.

I’ll get up and brush off all the remnants of yesterday, leave it behind in the dust of the day gone forever.

Today I lift myself up again, to a new place and into a new direction.

The path of the gypsy, ever changing, always flowing, learning slowly and sometimes quickly how to let go and unchain from what tries pulling you back, tries dampening your spirit and inner light, the things from the outside that work toward taking away what’s deep on the inside. But that part of me remains. It will never be diminished or destroyed or taken away.

I know me. I know my light. I know my strength. I know who I’ve been called to be.

I know when I rise, all around me does the same, even though sometimes the pain of acceleration can shake up and break up, make me stumble, make me wallow for awhile in self-doubt and self-pity and self-centeredness that makes me temporarily lose sight of the bigger picture.

Today I rise again. And again if I have to. Constantly remembering we’re all being challenged to do more, be more, evolve more.

So it is in rising that I embrace those things that have come, that will come that trip me up. I appreciate the gifts hidden inside the experiences and I will rely on powers that flow through me, that surround me, that are present even as far as galaxies away; the powers that can, do and will turn everything… EVERY LITTLE THING… into something better for everyone, not just for me. It isn’t my power to own, yet it is. It isn’t my power to direct. Yet it is. All I have to do is remember. All I have to do is reach out and grab onto, hold loosely and trust.

Today I will rise, whether or not I feel myself moving. I call my old self out from beneath any shadows and invite my real self to enter into the path of light. That simple.

Today I rise again and dance myself, paint myself, write myself, sing myself into my higher purpose, which is your higher purpose, too.

Today… you rise again too.

Dwelling Inside the Good

Sometimes I think the breaking point in my marriage was the day the basement flooded.

I had spent most of my adult life trying to be “the good mom, the perfect wife”. I spent hours and hours creating scrapbooks and photo albums, collecting memories that I thought would be so important to document for my kids and future grandchildren. I had made the choice to be a stay-at-home mom and I poured my heart and my love into being the best I knew how to be. Hours of building a home from scratch, days and months and years of collecting just the right bits and pieces to make their home great, to make their keepsakes memorable and artistic. I spent so much of myself I often wonder if I lost me in the process of trying to be perfect.

I beat myself up for awhile. I should have placed those precious picture books high on a shelf or in some special trunk or container that would keep them safe. But instead, they were stacked on the floor, on new carpet in a room I cherished as a safe haven where I made my creations or spent time alone in prayer or healing of self. There on the floor, my sons’ scrapbooks sat in water that seeped through the floor and walls and flooded the rooms that had taken my ex-husband and I so long to design, create and build.

Something completely broke inside me that day. I came home to the emotions of those who were already frantically trying to bail the water out, to salvage what could be salvaged. All I could see, all I could think about were those books. And what it meant to lose not only the images saved, but the energy and love I had spent on something that could be taken away in such a short amount of time - as short as a thunder storm/torrential rain.

I’m thinking now about how disasters can rob you of your identity. They can steal away a lifetime of hard, honest work. They can erase within moments all the moments that you spent being who you are. Within seconds, so much can be erased and never again replaced or retrieved or found.

It’s at those times, through all the shattered chards and all the broken bits and pieces that we start creating a new mosaic. At times when a person thinks there is no possible way to move forward, they find out movement is inevitable. It is at those pivotal junctures where you discover there’s really no control to be had, only a sense of weightlessness and surrender, a floating into the arms of whatever this life is about. There is simply a will to go on so you begin by sifting through, dusting off, shaking away and allowing life to take you wherever.

I don’t doubt any more that there is mercy and grace buried inside of trials, buried inside of tragedy. And there is an energetic, live and tangible peace there, too. And sometimes we have to be rattled to the core, removed from all we’ve ever been and known in order to finally reconnect and feel it in our souls. Maybe minutes after or maybe years. But it’s there for us to unlock and uncover.

Today I caught myself wondering where I’d be if that basement would have held up and kept the water out. I know I wouldn’t be the one I am today. I wouldn’t have the same experiences or the same encounters.

I am pretty certain there is a huge advantage to seeking out the good even through all the bad. Focusing on the positive changes everything. It doesn’t take away the hurt or the negative or the pain of what happened unjustly or unfairly, but it empowers life to turn things around for the better, it opens up the flood gates of goodness.

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

Find Joy

Several years ago, after struggling most of her life to get there, my mom was healthier than she had ever been, had lost a lot of weight, was married to her best friend, had her dream job and finally had reached a place of life where she had less pain than she had known for years. I remember seeing her during one of her visits to Iowa and feeling so proud of her accomplishments. She was stunning (still is).

Shortly thereafter, she had a stroke. And although it didn’t affect her nearly as badly as it could and should have, it altered her. I’ve been thinking about how it seemed to have robbed her of the state of joy and “perfection” that she had finally reached. I’ve been thinking how life is like that too often for many of us. This roller coaster ride that we have no control over, finding ourselves throwing our hands in the air, screaming as loudly as we can and just flying with our eyes wide open. A lot of times there isn’t anything left to do except to just buckle in and ride the ride.

I’ve admired how, through it all, through the good and through the tough, she has carried one theme within her – to live life joyfully, to find happiness in each and every moment. Even in her tears and the times I’ve heard her cry on the other end of the phone, it always changes to laughter, often times giggling without reservation like a little child.

Some of us spend most of our lives seeking out, searching for relief from pain whether it’s mental, emotional, physical, spiritual; however defined. We get caught up in thinking that life has been unjust. We dwell inside of what doesn’t make sense. We wallow in the shallow. Fall down and focus on the sharp edges, the scar tissue, the HURT. I’ve learned through my mother that if you dive deeper, love harder, risk more, breathe bigger breaths and laugh deeper laughs there is a place you reach when you find the “peak”. A place where peace is truly the kind that passes all understanding and you know that whatever is around life’s bend will somehow manage to take care of you, hold you, guide you, raise you and place you right where you need to be. Even the crummy things, like strokes and broken hands and broken hearts make you better and in a sense make you more capable of being happier and more content with the little things that truly are what make life valuable.

Throw your hands up in the air. Let go. And feel life whirling around you, through you. Find joy.