Eli's birthday is going to be this Saturday. He will be 5 years old. I have really been struggling with this for a few weeks. I feel like my children's lives are zooming by at super sonic speed and I know that I miss so much. I feel such a mix of emotions as they grow...pride, fear, elation, anticipation, guilt, joy...the list goes on and on.
To be 100% honest I have been pretty bummed out lately. A few weeks ago when Eli came home from his Dad's with a gap in his mouth and missing his first tooth, it was bittersweet. He was so proud and I was tickled by the delight that he had at being a "real live big boy" as he so described himself. I was amazed at his story and the bravery that he showed (although that is so typical of Eli - my little warrior man). I listened in prideful awe as he told me that he had to twist his tooth and pull it "really hard" to get it all the way out. I smiled when he told me that everyone told him to just leave it alone and it would fall out on it's own but he wanted it out so he just pulled and pulled even when it hurt really, really bad. I was so proud of him and for him. Then when he left the room I cried.
Those who know me know that this is monumental because I rarely cry anymore. But I cried because I wasn't there for this major event in my first son's life. I cried because I knew I would never see or hold his little tooth. I knew that it would be safely tucked away in his Daddy's safe and although I do not begrudge his Daddy the joy of holding this precious treasure in safekeeping, I cried at being unable to share in that treasure.
That day was a sort of shift in my mood and my perspective. I have been pretty weepy and pitiful and have pretty much felt sorry for myself every day since then. I have been gripey about work, housecleaning, bill paying, and all the other responsibilities that are ineveitably part of life. I have been sad to see my little boy grow before my eyes at seemingly lightening speed. I have felt tired and drained and powerless.
Well today an amazing thing happened. Once again I got a gratitude nudge. I tend to get these just when I need them the most. Just when I get all imbedded in my own little pity party, the Universe aligns with a cosmic lesson. That may sound a little self-important - to think that the Universal alignment shifts just for me but I believe that these things happen to all of us and by paying attention to them we will see that they happen at just the right time!
Tonight I took my children to Chuck-E-Cheese to celebrate Eli's birthday a few days early. (He will be with his Daddy on his actual birthday) As I was sitting there lamenting my tiredness the cosmic gratitude fireworks show began.
Wyatt has a wonderful habit of running up to me several times in a day and giving me a little hug and kiss while saying "kissie, huggie". Nothing has to happen to spark these little nuggets of affection, it's just something he does. Well tonight every time he came to the table to get tokens for the games he would do that. After about the 5th time a lady at the other table said, "You are so lucky! Your kids love you so much! I would give anything for mine to kiss and hug me without being asked." I was taken aback. I was shocked that she noticed what I had been taking for granted. Then my spirit felt instantly lifted and I thought to myself, "I really AM blessed that my children are so affectionate. Wow!"
As my mood changed and my attention was shifted from feeling tired and gripey I started to notice the laughter and shreaks of joy from the children around me. I looked around to get sight of my kids and across the room I saw a little boy about Wyatt's height and with Wyatt's exact hairstyle who was wearing a green shirt like Wyatt was. At first I thought it was my son and then I did a double take because this precious little boy had on Coke-bottle thick glasses. Now don't get me wrong...this child was adorable! But it struck me just how blessed my children and I are. None of my 3 children have had any major health issues. They all have perfectly normal vision, hearing, health, cognitive function, etc. What an amazing and miraculous blessing that is! One that I take for granted on a daily basis.
By this time I am just basking in gratitude. It is like a sunny day and I am feeling so grateful and so blessed. I walked to get a refill on my drink and I am bumped into by a precious little child. I look down and this child has Down's Sydrome. Tears immediately hit my eyes and as I filled my drink I chided myself for my silly mood these past few weeks.
As I walked back to our table with my Coke in hand I caught sight of my 3 kids all playing together at the air hockey table. Eli and Wyatt were on either side of the table playing and Erin was in the middle cheering them on and sweetly helping them out when the puck got stuck in the center where neither of them could reach it. She was being so patient and helpful and kind (as is her precious nature). The three of them were smiling and laughing. What a joy!
I am so blessed to have healthy children. I am blessed to have a good job and a great career that provides me that opportunity to take my children to Chuck-E-Cheese on their birthdays and to keep them in a safe home and a safe car. I am blessed to have a wonderful babysitter who loves my children and helps me to teach them how to be good and loving people. I am blessed that my children have fathers' that love them and spend time with them. My boys' may not have their parents in the same home but they have the benefit of us both which means they have a Daddy to do guy stuff with them. He is wonderful and involved in a way that so many parents are not. He teaches them about farming, hunting, and life lessons in general. My daughter's father speaks to her by phone every single day and spends a great deal of time with her. They have a friendship that most fathers and daughters do not have. My children all have the security of knowing that they are completely loved by both or their parents.
I realized that maybe my life is not the "Leave It to Beaver" perfect portrait that I would have painted for myself and for my children. Always the strong-willed child, I have had to learn many of life's lessons my way which has turned out to be the hard way. And, unfortunately, my children have been drug down that road time and again. We have all learned lessons along the way but we have all been bruised by the many potholes in the path. I hope that the lessons learned will, for them, be worth the bumps and bruises.
I am a true believer that when life throws you a lesson and you don't catch it, it will get tossed back to you again and again until you really get it. I know that approaching life with a true sense of gratitude is a lesson that I am being taught. I guess I am a slow learner but I am working on getting there. Sometimes a lost tooth is just a lost tooth but other times perhaps there is something divine in that. It certainly sparked a lesson for me.
When we left Chuck-E-Cheese with our 86 cents worth of "prizes" from our $50 worth of tokens I felt so blessed. I felt almost giddy with the gratitude. I thought nothing could lift my spirits more. I was wrong! On the way out the door my almost 5 year old ran in front of me and held the door for me while saying "Ladies' First." I was so proud! Then on the way home I listened to my 2 little boys have a conversation like this:
Eli - "Girls are always supposed to go first. And when you see a girl doing something hard you are supposed to help her or just do it for her."
Wyatt - "Yeah! And you shouldn't ever let a girl open her own door or walk behind you because that is just rude!"
Eli - "Yeah. And girls like it when you buy them flowers or jewelry."
Wyatt - "Yeah. And candy too."
I looked over at my beautiful daughter and we both giggled and winked as we listened to these two tiny men remind each other how to be chivalrous. I realized that this life lesson was being reinforced in her young mind as well.
Chuck E Cheese (for my brood at least) is no cheap adventure. We generally average a good 3 hours and I always try to budget between $75 and $100 for the total adventure. We always come out with pizza filled bellies, cotton candy coated teeth, and 86 cents worth of useless "prizes" that always end up in the toy donation bucket within 2 weeks. But it's sort of a birthday tradition and we are usually laughing all the way home. We go 3 times a year (for each of my kids birthdays) and it's pretty much the same trip every time.
But this CEC trip will live in my memory for a long time. This trip came with the bonus of a free lesson in gratitude. And that is the best prize of all!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
The Heart of the Matter
Hearts freak me out. I'll just say that from the start. In Nursing School I had to do a clinical on a Telemetry floor. (for non-medical people Telemetry is a monitor that send a signal to a big switchboard at the Nurses Station telling exactly what is going on with every single heart inside every single patient on the unit). I felt like I would throw up every day. I had more admiration than I can communicate for the nurses and doctors who took care of those patients. I also knew after about 12 seconds on that floor that I would never want to work in Cardiac nursing.
Hearts are, I will admit, amazing. They are so predominant in our culture that we don't even notice them anymore. We sing about them, we talk about them, we sign little love notes with them, we fear them and we love them. We have an entire holiday devoted to them. (Wal-Mart at Valentine's Day time - aka the day after Christmas??) Hearts are an ever-present entity in our world.
Medically the heart is...well it is the heart of the body. This is the organ that pumps blood (the life force) to all other parts of the body. This is the organ that HAS to work. This is the organ that, if broken, can shut down the entire body and all it's systems. This is basically the sun in the universe that is the human body. This is a very important organ. It is also a sad medical fact that heart disease kills more Americans than any other cause. And, yet, as a society who fears cancer more than anything else we never ever hear of heart cancer.
The heart is a big player in our language. When we are sad, we describe ourselves as heartsick or heartbroken. Our heart hurts when we see others in pain or suffering. We say "bless your heart" when we hear someone's sad tale. (or in the South we women say it when we want to say something rude but have too much class to do so!) When we get frightened we throw out the casual, "I almost had a heart attack!" We talk of getting to the "heart" of the problem or of having a "heart to heart" conversation.
From the standpoint of religion hearts get lots of attention as well. Blood (the life force that flows to and from the heart) washes away our sins, stands as a symbol of our bond with our Savior, and represents the sacrifice of life that ultimately secured our salvation. We accept Jesus into our heart and we believe that he lives in our heart. His love fills our heart and we spread that love in the hopes that He can live in others' hearts as well. Love is the blood that is the life force that sustains us spiritually.
What is the deal with hearts!? Why does this organ get so much play? We don't have a holiday that has the kidney or the gall bladder as it's mascot. We don't have a thymus to thymus conversation with our closest confidante. We don't have affairs of the lung. I've never received a note stamped with a little brain that said "I love you." Things that make you go hmmm!
I recently started to read a book called "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chakras." For those that don't know chakras are (according to ancient Indian wisdom) little wheels of spinning energy that are located along the energy pathways of the body. These are the little things that are responsible for things like butterflies in your stomach, a lump in your throat, or that hollow feeling you get in your chest when you are lonely. They are not physical but you feel them that way.
So, here is the lesson I have learned (am learning) about the heart. It should come as no surprise that the Heart Chakra is the chakra associated with love and also with breathing. (like when we are in love we say that it "takes our breath away" - albeit in a good way) This is also associated with our ability to give and receive love, compassion, altruism, etc.) This chakra is associated with the entire cardiovascular system.
Some of the physical issues that can be associated with blockage in this area are heart disease (duh!), breathing issues, depression, and immunity disorders. Psychologically there is often problems with being intolerant, cold, overly critical, and constantly unsuccessful in maintaining relationships with others. If this area is overloaded there tends to be (phycially) heart enlargement, low blood pressure and breast problems. Psychologically we see co-depencency, clinginess, jealousy and constant unsuccessfulness in maintaining relationships with others.
This is a pretty important chakra!
So, basically loving ourselves and others is critically important. If we don't do it our Chakra gets blocked (spiritually) and our heart gets in trouble (physically).
Well, it looks like a simple little lesson. We are supposed to love each other and ourselves. (I feel like I've heard that somewhere before - Love you neighbor as yourself.) That should be easy right?
This is something I know. Love is hard work. Love is NOT our human nature. We fight over everything, we find ways to create heirarchy in every arena of our life. We look for ways to feel superior to each other, to control and dominate one another. We all do that. We all hurt one another. We fight wars over love (Helen of Troy anyone??) Put two people in a room together and given enough time there is going to be a fight. Love is something that we have to choose. But choose it we must! It is critical to our very survival!
Love is the most vital force there is. Love can move mountains. Love can heal anything. There is a power in love that is nowhere else. Love is truly the blood in the body that is our spiritural existence.
We throw that word around like crazy and we think if we feel a tiny blip of it that we have "loved." But that romanticized notion of love is not it. Those butterflies we feel when our loved one comes near us is just a tiny part of this notion. Let me give you the Biblical description of this word:
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. (I Corinthians 13:11 - New Living Translation)
Now, look at each element in that statement of what love is not and look above at the psychological effects of a blocked Heart Chakra. Then look at the physical effects and at the statistics of health issues in our country. When I saw that I couldn't believe it!
We have got to wake up and realize that we are choking the life force (love) out of the body (world) that we live in and it has to stop! We have got to stop finding ways to condemn, judge and shun one another. We have to reach out to one another and have the connection that we are supposed to have!
The sins that we commit are many and constant. ALL of us are depending on grace. We have all sinned and (this is big)...there is not a sin that trumps the others. If you are a speed limit breaker you have no right to judge the cleptomaniac. The adulterer shouldn't point fingers at the murderer. Society puts weights on sins, the soul does not. Wrong is simply wrong and we all eat from that cake.
I felt like I had been slapped in the face when this truth got shared with me. I realized how I have, over the years, cut myself off in so many ways from others. I realized that I can't love others if I am judging their actions. (and I grew up in a very judgy environment so I tend to be judgy!) How I had shut down my heart chakra and stopped letting love flow through me. I realized that my inability to cry even when my mind told me I was sad was a result of a blocked heart chakra. (Darn those ancient Indians were pretty smart!)
The Heart of the Matter is This....we are all made of the same stuff. We all have the same need for survival. Physically we all must have blood flowing through our body to take all the good stuff that each individual cell must have to survive. Block off the flow of that and our cells get sick, can't function to their full potential, feel like they have to hoard or overproduce, etc. This will eventually lead to the death of our amazing and glorious body. I have learned that Spiritually it is exactly the same.
Spiritually we all must have love flowing through our body to take all the good stuff that each individual soul must have to survive. Block off the flow of that and our souls get sick, can't function to their full potential, feel like they have to hoard or overproduce (overcompensate), etc. And...this is the important part....this will eventually lead to the death of our amazing and glorious soul (aka the disconnect of our soul from the life force that is love). Biblically we are taught that God is Love and that being diconnected from him leads to spiritual death (Hell). It's the same pie no matter how you slice it!
So that is my very long and wordy way of describing this lesson I recently received (finally). I realize that I am a nerd and have to make everything complicated and deep. Otherwise John Lennon tried to just sum it up for me in a cute little song (which I have always loved - get it...loved? haha) called "All You Need is Love." He was right. It is all we need.
Just a little side note - hearts still freak me out. But a very wise woman and fabulous nurse once told me that she loves hearts because hearts are easy to fix. She meant medically/physically but I believe that they are also easy to fix spiritually.
My goal from this lesson is to get out there and start loving. I am a nurse and I tend to try to heal so this is going to be my spiritual way of trying to spread some healing. I am going to love every day. (and if I act in an unloving way - point it out to me and remind me that my heart chakra needs to stay open!)
I love you all and I am going to start acting like it!
Tracy
Hearts are, I will admit, amazing. They are so predominant in our culture that we don't even notice them anymore. We sing about them, we talk about them, we sign little love notes with them, we fear them and we love them. We have an entire holiday devoted to them. (Wal-Mart at Valentine's Day time - aka the day after Christmas??) Hearts are an ever-present entity in our world.
Medically the heart is...well it is the heart of the body. This is the organ that pumps blood (the life force) to all other parts of the body. This is the organ that HAS to work. This is the organ that, if broken, can shut down the entire body and all it's systems. This is basically the sun in the universe that is the human body. This is a very important organ. It is also a sad medical fact that heart disease kills more Americans than any other cause. And, yet, as a society who fears cancer more than anything else we never ever hear of heart cancer.
The heart is a big player in our language. When we are sad, we describe ourselves as heartsick or heartbroken. Our heart hurts when we see others in pain or suffering. We say "bless your heart" when we hear someone's sad tale. (or in the South we women say it when we want to say something rude but have too much class to do so!) When we get frightened we throw out the casual, "I almost had a heart attack!" We talk of getting to the "heart" of the problem or of having a "heart to heart" conversation.
From the standpoint of religion hearts get lots of attention as well. Blood (the life force that flows to and from the heart) washes away our sins, stands as a symbol of our bond with our Savior, and represents the sacrifice of life that ultimately secured our salvation. We accept Jesus into our heart and we believe that he lives in our heart. His love fills our heart and we spread that love in the hopes that He can live in others' hearts as well. Love is the blood that is the life force that sustains us spiritually.
What is the deal with hearts!? Why does this organ get so much play? We don't have a holiday that has the kidney or the gall bladder as it's mascot. We don't have a thymus to thymus conversation with our closest confidante. We don't have affairs of the lung. I've never received a note stamped with a little brain that said "I love you." Things that make you go hmmm!
I recently started to read a book called "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chakras." For those that don't know chakras are (according to ancient Indian wisdom) little wheels of spinning energy that are located along the energy pathways of the body. These are the little things that are responsible for things like butterflies in your stomach, a lump in your throat, or that hollow feeling you get in your chest when you are lonely. They are not physical but you feel them that way.
So, here is the lesson I have learned (am learning) about the heart. It should come as no surprise that the Heart Chakra is the chakra associated with love and also with breathing. (like when we are in love we say that it "takes our breath away" - albeit in a good way) This is also associated with our ability to give and receive love, compassion, altruism, etc.) This chakra is associated with the entire cardiovascular system.
Some of the physical issues that can be associated with blockage in this area are heart disease (duh!), breathing issues, depression, and immunity disorders. Psychologically there is often problems with being intolerant, cold, overly critical, and constantly unsuccessful in maintaining relationships with others. If this area is overloaded there tends to be (phycially) heart enlargement, low blood pressure and breast problems. Psychologically we see co-depencency, clinginess, jealousy and constant unsuccessfulness in maintaining relationships with others.
This is a pretty important chakra!
So, basically loving ourselves and others is critically important. If we don't do it our Chakra gets blocked (spiritually) and our heart gets in trouble (physically).
Well, it looks like a simple little lesson. We are supposed to love each other and ourselves. (I feel like I've heard that somewhere before - Love you neighbor as yourself.) That should be easy right?
This is something I know. Love is hard work. Love is NOT our human nature. We fight over everything, we find ways to create heirarchy in every arena of our life. We look for ways to feel superior to each other, to control and dominate one another. We all do that. We all hurt one another. We fight wars over love (Helen of Troy anyone??) Put two people in a room together and given enough time there is going to be a fight. Love is something that we have to choose. But choose it we must! It is critical to our very survival!
Love is the most vital force there is. Love can move mountains. Love can heal anything. There is a power in love that is nowhere else. Love is truly the blood in the body that is our spiritural existence.
We throw that word around like crazy and we think if we feel a tiny blip of it that we have "loved." But that romanticized notion of love is not it. Those butterflies we feel when our loved one comes near us is just a tiny part of this notion. Let me give you the Biblical description of this word:
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. (I Corinthians 13:11 - New Living Translation)
Now, look at each element in that statement of what love is not and look above at the psychological effects of a blocked Heart Chakra. Then look at the physical effects and at the statistics of health issues in our country. When I saw that I couldn't believe it!
We have got to wake up and realize that we are choking the life force (love) out of the body (world) that we live in and it has to stop! We have got to stop finding ways to condemn, judge and shun one another. We have to reach out to one another and have the connection that we are supposed to have!
The sins that we commit are many and constant. ALL of us are depending on grace. We have all sinned and (this is big)...there is not a sin that trumps the others. If you are a speed limit breaker you have no right to judge the cleptomaniac. The adulterer shouldn't point fingers at the murderer. Society puts weights on sins, the soul does not. Wrong is simply wrong and we all eat from that cake.
I felt like I had been slapped in the face when this truth got shared with me. I realized how I have, over the years, cut myself off in so many ways from others. I realized that I can't love others if I am judging their actions. (and I grew up in a very judgy environment so I tend to be judgy!) How I had shut down my heart chakra and stopped letting love flow through me. I realized that my inability to cry even when my mind told me I was sad was a result of a blocked heart chakra. (Darn those ancient Indians were pretty smart!)
The Heart of the Matter is This....we are all made of the same stuff. We all have the same need for survival. Physically we all must have blood flowing through our body to take all the good stuff that each individual cell must have to survive. Block off the flow of that and our cells get sick, can't function to their full potential, feel like they have to hoard or overproduce, etc. This will eventually lead to the death of our amazing and glorious body. I have learned that Spiritually it is exactly the same.
Spiritually we all must have love flowing through our body to take all the good stuff that each individual soul must have to survive. Block off the flow of that and our souls get sick, can't function to their full potential, feel like they have to hoard or overproduce (overcompensate), etc. And...this is the important part....this will eventually lead to the death of our amazing and glorious soul (aka the disconnect of our soul from the life force that is love). Biblically we are taught that God is Love and that being diconnected from him leads to spiritual death (Hell). It's the same pie no matter how you slice it!
So that is my very long and wordy way of describing this lesson I recently received (finally). I realize that I am a nerd and have to make everything complicated and deep. Otherwise John Lennon tried to just sum it up for me in a cute little song (which I have always loved - get it...loved? haha) called "All You Need is Love." He was right. It is all we need.
Just a little side note - hearts still freak me out. But a very wise woman and fabulous nurse once told me that she loves hearts because hearts are easy to fix. She meant medically/physically but I believe that they are also easy to fix spiritually.
My goal from this lesson is to get out there and start loving. I am a nurse and I tend to try to heal so this is going to be my spiritual way of trying to spread some healing. I am going to love every day. (and if I act in an unloving way - point it out to me and remind me that my heart chakra needs to stay open!)
I love you all and I am going to start acting like it!
Tracy
It has to begin somewhere...
Ahh....the New Year. This is a time when we make big plans for all the changes that will take place in our life in the next year. Some of you make resolutions for all the things you will do differently. (I don't believe in resolutions - but I don't fault those that do!) Some (like moi!) just dive in head first and hope for the best. No matter how we approach the New Year, we can't help but feel that stirring in our tummies that comes when we don't know exactly what to expect.
But this year I am going to try to approach it differently. I am going to take a two-fold approach to this amazing gift that is another year on this planet. I am going to look both backward and forward. The last several years have been wrought (is that how you spell that word?) with amazing lessons, horrible and heart-wrenching tragedies, and joys beyond my wildest dreams...and still I regret that I did not document those lessons along the way. (and that is truly what every single one of those events has been - a piece of this lesson that is life)
I have found that in those highly emotional times, memory goes into some strange mode. Do you remember those plastic toys we had as kids that were full of colored sand? Mine was a big flat oval and you could turn it in multiple directions and the sand would swirl and move and make all these delightful patterns and designs. I remember the beauty of it but not the specifics. I think that is how our memory processes things when we are overloaded emotionally. We remember the general overview but the specifics get lost in the mix of colored sand.
I don't believe in regrets because I feel they are wasteful of our time but I do believe in learning from our disappointments. I am disappointed that I only have scattered journal entries to look back on. I wish I could clearly remember what I was experiencing through the processes like the loss of my mother, the loss of my marriage, the trauma that is Nursing School, my transformation into a nurse, etc. I have scattered journals but wish I had more.
As a daughter, I wish I had my Mother's journals so that I could try to gleen some lessons from her life. I wish I knew the thoughts of my ancestors who accomplished great (and minor) things in their life. I wish I knew my grandmother's caramel cake recipe...I just wish there was more documentation darnit!
So I have created this post. This is my way of documenting the lesson as it unfolds. This is my little piece of "this is what I know, what I have learned." And this is my act of bravery for this year. I am fully exposed here. Somehow it seems easier to share lessons with each other in this format. (Gen Xer Syndrome I guess!)
I hope that this little blog will help me to remember clearly as the year passes. And, I hope that I can include lessons that I want to share with my children, memories that I want to last, joys that were shared with me....and lessons that I have been taught.
My disclaimers are few -
1.) Please excuse my writing style. I am pretty much a punctation and format rebel. I just write the way I think and I throw in a few commas and dots to make it look like I know what I am doing. The truth really is that I don't care! I believe that the content that flows from the heart is more important than the "rules" of how things should be put down on paper. (Editors-at-Heart....feel free to let me know my mistakes and I will try to incorporate those lessons too. )
2.) Please know that I believe what I believe passionately but I do NOT expect all to embrace my beliefs every single time. You may not be able to change my way of thinking to match your own (control-freaks take note) but I would not try to force anyone to think like I do.
3.) I am in love with my children so I am sure that I will constantly share lessons I learn from their amazingness. Sorry if I am sometimes the annoying mom who thinks her kids are the best. (They are, by the way, but I digress!)
I am impulsive by nature and so I can only say that I am diving into this with hopes of seeing what will happen. I hope that I can share lessons along the way and I am grateful to be able to "speak out loud" as I process all the Universe shows me. I hope we can enjoy this together!
Tracy
But this year I am going to try to approach it differently. I am going to take a two-fold approach to this amazing gift that is another year on this planet. I am going to look both backward and forward. The last several years have been wrought (is that how you spell that word?) with amazing lessons, horrible and heart-wrenching tragedies, and joys beyond my wildest dreams...and still I regret that I did not document those lessons along the way. (and that is truly what every single one of those events has been - a piece of this lesson that is life)
I have found that in those highly emotional times, memory goes into some strange mode. Do you remember those plastic toys we had as kids that were full of colored sand? Mine was a big flat oval and you could turn it in multiple directions and the sand would swirl and move and make all these delightful patterns and designs. I remember the beauty of it but not the specifics. I think that is how our memory processes things when we are overloaded emotionally. We remember the general overview but the specifics get lost in the mix of colored sand.
I don't believe in regrets because I feel they are wasteful of our time but I do believe in learning from our disappointments. I am disappointed that I only have scattered journal entries to look back on. I wish I could clearly remember what I was experiencing through the processes like the loss of my mother, the loss of my marriage, the trauma that is Nursing School, my transformation into a nurse, etc. I have scattered journals but wish I had more.
As a daughter, I wish I had my Mother's journals so that I could try to gleen some lessons from her life. I wish I knew the thoughts of my ancestors who accomplished great (and minor) things in their life. I wish I knew my grandmother's caramel cake recipe...I just wish there was more documentation darnit!
So I have created this post. This is my way of documenting the lesson as it unfolds. This is my little piece of "this is what I know, what I have learned." And this is my act of bravery for this year. I am fully exposed here. Somehow it seems easier to share lessons with each other in this format. (Gen Xer Syndrome I guess!)
I hope that this little blog will help me to remember clearly as the year passes. And, I hope that I can include lessons that I want to share with my children, memories that I want to last, joys that were shared with me....and lessons that I have been taught.
My disclaimers are few -
1.) Please excuse my writing style. I am pretty much a punctation and format rebel. I just write the way I think and I throw in a few commas and dots to make it look like I know what I am doing. The truth really is that I don't care! I believe that the content that flows from the heart is more important than the "rules" of how things should be put down on paper. (Editors-at-Heart....feel free to let me know my mistakes and I will try to incorporate those lessons too. )
2.) Please know that I believe what I believe passionately but I do NOT expect all to embrace my beliefs every single time. You may not be able to change my way of thinking to match your own (control-freaks take note) but I would not try to force anyone to think like I do.
3.) I am in love with my children so I am sure that I will constantly share lessons I learn from their amazingness. Sorry if I am sometimes the annoying mom who thinks her kids are the best. (They are, by the way, but I digress!)
I am impulsive by nature and so I can only say that I am diving into this with hopes of seeing what will happen. I hope that I can share lessons along the way and I am grateful to be able to "speak out loud" as I process all the Universe shows me. I hope we can enjoy this together!
Tracy
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