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.