The Ordinary

One of the reasons that I am writing this blog is to help me grow in celebrating the ordinary ways of life.  Putting ordinary moments down in print helps me to both recognize and appreciate the gift of the simple and everyday things in my life.

We all have both valleys and mountaintop experiences in our life journeys, but for me most days are spent trudging along the well worn paths.  I want to grow in slowing down and delighting in the gift of each step along the way.

As an unexpected joy, I am finding great comfort and strength in celebrating those ordinary moments of life.  It has been a stabilizing and grounding strategy to recognize and to focus on the little surprises and delights along the way, both during times of great stress and also during more settled days.

Today was a celebration of wind in our little part of the world.  I loved feeling the cool wind in my hair, whipping around me whenever I was outside.  The flags and banners flapped wildly all day and the trees bent with the sound of evergreen fronds brushing one another.  Some empty pots went for a wild ride clear across our field, ending up in the neighbour's yard.  Life for me these days has been a bit like being one of those empty pots thrown around in the wind. Today I was able to laugh and feel the fresh wind around me, bringing refreshment.   Some of the old stale air was blown out and  fun and joy returned.

Dandelion Digging!

Today I had a quick call with a friend only to discover that I had interrupted her dandelion digging time outside.  Even though she has lots to do before going away tomorrow, she had gravitated outside do to clear her lawn of some of those emerging dandelions.  We laughed, because although I also have many  things that may seem much more pressing, I too spent some wonderful time with my dandelion pronger outside this afternoon.  Dandelion digging is a great stress reliever for both my friend and me.   I love being outside and digging out those weeds.  Sometimes I reflect on whether the bright cheery dandelions with their edible leaves should be allowed to remain as a lovely contrast to the green grass, but still I dig and clear mostly for my own grounding satisfaction.  I like being alone and having just one focus to clear a little of our wide grass.

Dandelions have deep roots and often emerge again in what seems like mere days.  Eventually, though, areas do stay dandelion free if I can catch them early enough in the season.  I find if I don't dig them out early they can completely take over so there is very little grass left.  My feet do prefer the soft green grass to those harsh dandelion leaves.  One of our neighbours had so many dandelions that he eventually plowed up all his grass and reseeded the area.

One of my daughters has been frustrated this weekend because some painful and harsh weed-like feelings and emotions that she thought had been dug out long ago have been returning these days.  Many issues become part of the terrain of our lives.  We deal with the challenging areas of our lives in different ways over different times in our lives.  If we can recognize their signs and attend to them early enough, sometimes we can prevent them from overpowering us.  Though we have had times of intense emotional digging through therapy, sometimes all that is needed these days is to recognize the feelings and give them some accepting and loving attention, bringing them out into the open so we can give them air and talk about them.  I know there will be times where deeper therapeutic digging may be indicated, but this time I think these emotions may be like those early dandelions that we can root out again before they take over the soft peacefulness of the steady green grass of our souls.

Be Still

I am delighting in the beauty and colour emerging all around me these days.  There is such an abundance of life everywhere.  I have not forgotten that just a few short weeks ago those same trees so beautifully decked out in fullness of colour and life today were bare and appeared lifeless for so many months in the cold and dark.

So often I feel that expression of life is completely up to me.  I worry and fret and take on responsibility for emerging beauty and joy.  I become tangled and frustrated inside when things do not happen as I hope.

I want to learn from these trees around me today.  They really did not actively do anything for the flowers so abundant now to emerge other than continue to be rooted and to feed on the firm soil in which they are planted.  They have opened their branches to the sun around them.  They rested in the dark days and did not allow themselves to be cut down when there was no sign of life.  The flowers emerged as part of their very being.

These trees remind me to not loose hope in those dark days.  I want to increasingly be still and rest in the unknown mystery of the soil of God where I have been planted.  I may not ever be a brilliant flowering cherry tree, but I am the tree I am meant to be, and in the right time those leaves will come forth as part of who I am.  Even while others flower I may still appear lifeless.  I planned my garden so that each season would bring forth its own beauty.  Even in the winter the paperbark maple by my kitchen window was planted with great joy and expectation of enjoyment of its creative and beautiful bark alone through those winter months.  The evergreen trees are not flashy, but give strength and solid colour and grounding steadily all year.

Together may we all rest in the unique beauty  of our own selves.  May we not despair and give up hope through the dark days, but thankfully be still and content in the special gift of our own being.

Place of Belonging

Not only is our sense of belonging with our family, but I am deeply aware both in myself and my children that there are deep ties to the physical homes of our being too.  This painting by Vancouver Island artist, E. J. Hughes, epitomizes my sense of physical home here on the West Coast.  I have walked for hours on beaches just like this one, feeling the wind on my face and the sand in my feet.  I can almost smell the freshness of the sea air and hear the breakers crashing and gulls calling overhead

These days I live tucked away in those mountains in the distance of this painting.  I always feel comfort when I am near their solid foundations and can smell the thick cedars and fir with the salt air from the sea rising up to mingle with their green fronds.

All my children were born within a few miles of where we live today.  Especially for my children by adoption, the physical proximity to the mountain and sea places that they can remember helps to ground them, even when some of those memories hold both pain and joy.

These days I am leaning in to my physical place here and am constantly being refreshed and strengthened by nature and my physical surroundings.  I am consciously mindful of my earthly roots  and am increasingly aware of looking, listening, feeling, smelling and even tasting of the physical delights all around me.  Certainly spring for me brings a sense of new beginnings with the longer days and warmth of outside beckoning!  I rest in the grounding and life giving spirit of my place here in this small part of the world that is my home.

Ninety Years!

Happy Birthday to my most wonderful Dad! I am heading over to celebrate his ninetieth birthday this weekend!  A most interesting life lived, full of care and love and thoughtfulness.  My Dad has lived his life richly and fully, setting out very intentionally to deeply experience and love life. He has a wide range of interests, from beautiful artwork and music to all things technical.  He is always expanding in his interests and is a gardener and reader and deep thinker.   He especially loves the sea, and has settled for his last thirty years on a small island by the sea. I remember when he was looking for this island home.  He wrote a list of all that he wanted in his home and kept looking until he found it.  A couple of acres on the sea with a point and sloping sandstone beach on an island that had always seemed like home when we visited on the boat.  Our first purchase on that island was beautiful native sweaters.  I remember the day the creator of the sweaters sold them to us and we enjoyed their rugged softness and beautiful colours sitting on the dock.   Before that he loved roaming the coast in our steady converted fishboat, Tuya.  Tuya reminds me of my Dad.  Solid, deep keeled.  Slow and steady and though rolly in a sea, safe and secure.  One memory that I will never forget was one summer evening on a glassy sea pink and red with the setting sun near Thormanby Island, close to flat sandy beaches stretching for miles.  We sat together in the wheelhouse, quiet and speechless in the beauty.

Always giving to so many, especially his family, another favorite memory is his help with school projects.  He taught me to write my thoughts on pieces of paper that would then get scattered over whole floors and then pulled together into essays.  I still write the same way today.  Together we worked on an amazing project of the parthenon, made from carefully rolled pieces of paper.  It is forever etched in my mind.  Thanks so much Dad!

A chartered accountant for most of his life, even still doing work for many, my Dad has an amazing attention to detail.  He is determined and intentional, kind and giving, deeply committed to my mum and to all our family.  He has never stopped growing and learning and moving forward in life.  He reads widely, and loves his tablet and computer, knowing more about things technical than me!

Happy Birthday, my dearest Dad.  You have given me and so many others a rich legacy.  So much of you is etched deeply in the core of my being.  Thank you.  I give you deeply my love.

Disconnected Connection

Connection with one another and with our kids is a primary drive for most of us.  I have gone to whole courses on how to develop connection with our children, especially those from hard places.  Sometimes, though, the process of connection is a long and slow process that has many steps forward and back.  Sometimes we will never really have the connection with others that we so desire.  Sometimes we think we have a good connection, only to realize that it does not reach deeply into the heart of the person we are wanting to connect to.  Often people deeply wounded do not have the capacity for the connection that we so desire.  Sometimes our own hearts do not even seem to allow the full connection that we yearn for.  I am learning to be committed to deep connection, while holding the desired results of that connection with open hands.  Often I need to be consciously disconnected from behaviours and breaks in connection.  I am not good at allowing that disconnection.  I take perceived rejection or lack of connection personally. Anger and frustration over poor connection often builds quickly.  This has been a most challenging part of the adoption journey for me.

 I am slowly learning to work at strengthening my own connection with myself and with God first.  I try to put a circle of light around my very self that shines on others and on my own heart, while protecting me from the hard barbs of perceived failure in connecting.  I call it conscious disconnection from the response of others.  For those times when it is my own heart that lets me down, I step back, forgive myself, and disconnect even from the results of my own heart.  I consciously allow God's light to flow through me, checking for those places of tightness and restriction within me and paying loving attention to those inner places, letting the light warm and flow.

At first I was not sure whether to call this post "connected disconnection" or "disconnected connection."  Both connection and disconnection are important heart skills to learn.  They bring another of those central life paradoxes into our lives.  In my own heart I am completely committed to connection first and foremost.  I would not have adopted if that had not been the case.  I am in the process of learning how to grasp the right kind of disconnection in order to be alive and healthy in my world.  I am not sure I have yet got the disconnected part, so disconnected will be the adjective describing the connection for now.  Let's not be afraid of disconnection.  In many ways it is equally as important to learn as connection.  Perhaps a better word for "disconnection" is "releasing."  For today, take the pressure off the connection for both you and your kids.  Love through both connection and disconnection, releasing those ever present demands for perfection.  Help both yourself and your kids make those inner connections and heart love first.  Let go and disconnect from the desired results or connection, forgiving yourself and others. Dig deep for the warmth of love to somehow shine through it all.

With Sadness and Prayer

My heart is with all those for whom running the Boston Marathon was a goal that was to be reached this year.  I am praying for all those families of the people who were killed and those who were injured, both physically and emotionally.  I am sorry that such a special event and celebration ended in such tragedy and fear.

I am reminded afresh of the fragility of life.  We all have our hopes and dreams.  Sometimes those involve marathons of one kind or another.  Other times we are running marathons just because they are part of the terrain of our path.

Sometimes, our marathons do have parts that knock us over or take us out of the race.  Unexpected circumstances explode in our paths with often disastrous consequences that mark our lives forever.
I am surprised that the solid landmark event of the Boston marathon was targeted today.  It brings an unexpected level of fear in the midst of the stable and ordinary markers of our lives.

For our children by adoption, those surprising and disastrous explosions are often expected and felt to be almost deserved.   If life is too settled, our kids often unconsciously seem to create those familiar insecurities that for them are the expected norm.  For our kids, their desires involve wanting to be loved, secure and belonging.  These are often elusive goals, sabotaged even by the challenging and surprising wiring and explosions of their own brains.

Some in Boston tonight are fighting for their lives.  Others are facing months of long rehabilitation.  Still others have been deeply traumatized.  Many are grieving.   Their goals and perspectives have changed in an instant today.  I am praying for each person for whom the impact of this cruel act is significant.  I am reminded again of those explosions in the lives of my kids, also surprising and undeserved and the result of the cruel decisions of others.  May we all bring love and kindness and prayers to these tragic circumstances both in our lives and in the lives of others tonight.

Deserving

Language is multilayered and interesting to me.  Some words are loaded with a mixture of meaning and emotion from different experiences and contexts used.

The word "deserving" is one of those multilayered words for me.  I often have not been quite sure what to do about the word and concept of deserving.

The dictionary definition of the adjective "deserving" is simply and clearly to be worthy of being treated in a particular way.  The verb to "deserve" does give the idea of doing something or having qualities worthy of.  We can do actions that lead to deserving of a treat or some perk.  In our essential being, however, we can be described by the adjective as deserving or worthy people as we are; separate from our actions.

The reason I am pondering the idea of deserving today is because yesterday one of my daughters asserted that she does not feel she deserves to have a family and to be loved.  Somewhere deep in her heart she has never actually felt deserving of love and care and family.  I know, too, that for many people who long to be healed, the feeling that they do not deserve emotional freedom and healing is often a major stumbling block to health.

The concept of deserving sometimes gets confused on the other extreme by a sense of entitlement.  So often in our culture we hear people asserting that they deserve to go on that exotic trip or to have some extravagant home renovation.  Furthermore, sometimes our actions and behaviours lead us to negative consequences that are not altogether undeserving!

Deep in our hearts, we are all carefully treasured and created by God just as we are.  We do not have to do anything to get that love.  I am sad that my daughter and many others have never known that unconditional love from birth.  Somehow they have missed that crucial link to feeling a deserving and worthwhile person by their very being.  We are all deeply deserving of God's love and the love of family.   Easter is all about God even dying and living again in order to connect with His people in love.  We are all deserving and worthy of love by God, others and, sometimes most difficultly, by ourselves.

I am working hard with myself and my children to not get the deep heart deserving muddled up with our often challenging behaviours and actions. Again, there have been actual brain changes for some of my children who have never known what it means to be deserving and treasured from birth.  Lack of care and nuturing love especially in the first year of life leaves an empty hole in our children's  hearts. In turn they try to fill that hole with all sorts of temporary things which are often not healthy.

 My dear daughter, you are deeply deserving of love from us your family, from God and from yourself.  In your very being and wonderful creation you are deserving of much love and joy and peace of heart.  God's love and deserving goes beyond our actions.  Nothing can separate us from that love. The challenge is that you have never known that love.   It is my prayer that bit by bit, day by day, we might together help you come to feel the connection that you are most worthy and deserving just because you are you!

Welcome Home!

Welcome home to our Rebecca!  Rebecca has come home to live for the next year after four years away in Ontario.  After a very long day with snowy delays in both Toronto and Calgary I finally had a chance to hug my daughter.  Later I sat on her bed in her makeshift corner of our playroom that she wants to call her own.  She put away books, folded clothes and seemed so glad to finally be home even though I know it has also been hard to leave special friends and places from the last four years away.

Seeing Rebecca's joy and peace even after several days without sleep, I realized afresh that it has not been easy for her tender spirit to leave and set up home so far away year after year.  There is something very grounding about being in the heart of home where we are loved and accepted  and cherished just because.

Some of my children have never known that deep sense of home.  There have never been open arms of gentle love and acceptance, cherishing and caring from birth.  There is a deep sense of empty abandonment and homelessness that cannot be consciously or easily filled.  Gabor Mate talks about those hungry ghosts.  I feel them in some of the empty moments of my younger children.  They do not naturally think of coming to me to meet their needs.  They are deeply wired to 'go it alone.'  They have developed their own ways of coping that often emerge in behaviours that further alienate and distance them from others.  They do not have a natural sense of being treasured by a  mother or father or resting in peace at home.  Even allowing a mother and a permanent home into their hearts involves conscious effort and work for them.  One daughter recently drew a branch being blown about randomly in the wind.  At a deep and primal level she feels like that bare branch, alone and disconnected.

Day after day, month after month and year after year I am hopeful that our younger children will one day feel at home in my love.  It may always look different for them as the very template of their hearts and souls has been shaped in some very lonely ways.  Still, I trust God and the Gift in all ways.  I do believe that there is hope for us all to be deeply welcomed home in the arms of others and ultimately in the home of God's heart with its varied and expansive rooms of deep peace and loving rest.

The Gift

Yesterday I was going on about one thing or another and a friend quietly asked me a question that has changed my perspective forever.

We all encounter lots of things that hurt us, frustrate us or which we really wish were not part of our lives.  We read stories that do not always sit well with us.  My friend has known deeply of tragedy and pain and lots of joy too.

Her question to me was, "Where is the Gift in that?"  She encouraged me to dig deeper and uncover the gift that is given to us in all our circumstances, both wanted and unwanted, easy or hard.  Find the gift in that story not quite understood, or in that event not exactly asked for or desired.

I am smiling.  I like gifts. I like finding surprises and a highlight for me each Easter is always the Easter Egg Hunt!  These days I am still finding undiscovered eggs in random places.  My friend has introduced me to a much more exciting challenge.  It is a fun and most positive adventure to uncover those disguised and hidden gifts in all people and all things.  Join me in discovering and accepting the joy of GIFTS hidden all around us in surprising places.

The First One

All week I have been treasuring the image of the first person Jesus spoke to after he had risen from the dead.  That person was not outwardly the most holy.  She had not done the most for Jesus while he was alive.  She had not cared for the most people, had the most friends, or lived the most upright life.    Mary Magdalene was a woman.  She had very little standing in her culture. Furthermore, she had lived a life that could have been seen by many as a life of failure.  She was a prostitute, rejected by those in her world, especially the religious.

Jesus loved Mary Magdalene deeply.  She was the first person to see Him after his death.  He called her tenderly by her name, "Mary."  

I wonder who Jesus is speaking to these days as they come to his empty tomb?  Come to Him, all who are weary and heavy laden.  He will call you tenderly by name, and give you rest.  His love will surprise us all.
 

Joy!

I had one of those days where I encountered joy and beauty in places from which I was not expecting such encouragement!  Several individuals, each radiating beautifully from very hard rock-like places, shone bright into my life today.  It is possible to bloom and grow in those hard places!   May we have the strength and insight and love to bloom even in those cracks in the granite of life!

Unbind Him!

After Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, He told the people,  "Unbind him and let him go!"  Other translations say, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go." (John 11:44)  While Jesus is often accused of causing people to be bound by legalistic rules, in reality He is the great Releaser.  His Spirit alive in us does help us to take off those binding grave clothes and to be fully able to move and be who we are meant to be!  Just as He spoke to Lazarus, calling him to "Come out!" so He calls us out of the musty tombs and tight restrictions that we find ourselves in.

Just as with Lazarus, we need others to help us become unbound.  We also can be those doing the unwrapping of others.  As I considered this image this weekend I thought of some of my children, tightly bound by layers of restrictions.  Some of these protective layers had their purpose in allowing my children to cope and survive the horrors of their earlier lives, but now they often cause other challenges.  Often the children are numb to the world around them after so long in the grave clothes.

It takes a long time to unwrap those cloths, and once unwrapped it also can take a long time to be able to fully move and feel again. Sometimes function never quite returns to what we would all hope.   Be patient and  continue to help unwind those binding strips, whatever they are.  At the same time, I want to allow others to help me with my own areas of restriction, gently unwrapping that often all-encompassing ego and defenses in place.

Remember Lazarus and come out to the freedom and light of day!