Snow Day

I'm sure I looked quite a character trudging up the road, bundled from top to bottom in those mismatched winter clothes from the cupboard.  

But I felt warm wrapped in the scarf I knit myself with wool from Vermont sheep. Trudging up the road in my mismatched socks and clunky Sorels, I remembered the farmer's market where I bought those skeins of grey yarn, happily chatting with the vendor about her sheep.  Itchy as it is and uneven stitched as it may be, that scarf dresses me in memories.

These blizzard days off are magical in the way snow days probably only are for teachers and their students. Fresh air fills my lungs and pinks my cheeks This day after walk cleans all kinds of dusty places inside me.  My pace is slowed, sun smiles on my face, and I'm living under the bluest sky I think I've ever seen. Suddenly there's time. Time to think. To nap. To walk. To breathe.  There's beauty in my world and just down my road.

Gratitude walks by my side.  Awe tags along pointing out the snow-covered curve of that path and the gentle movement of those clouds.  How easy it feels to live in my world today.  How simple. Uncluttered. Peaceful.

Tomorrow's worries wander on some other horizon.  I won't be hurrying or worrying or scurrying today. Today, hope lives in the warmth of this very moment - tucked in and snug.  Maybe tomorrow, all my mismatched socks might frazzle me and maybe tomorrow, I'll find some new cobwebs in my corners.  But not today.

Today's a snow day and my branches stretch big and wide in all that open sky.

Peace, Barbara

Snow Hope

The snow's coming down like rain this morning. One flake after another covers our brittle, ice-hardened world. The whole house - hushed.  Our cars are parked. Muffins bake in the oven and candlelight dances on the kitchen ceiling. It's a quiet world today. Reflective. Calm. And a little sleepy.  It's a cleansing snow. Snow hope.

The world's whitewashing has me paying special attention today.  Hope's had a hard week around here.  Home hasn't felt all that warm or cozy or safe.  Just as we have slowly crossed the icy terrain in our front yard, this family's had to step carefully around each other this week. We've had some misses. Mistakes. Miscommunication. Missed opportunities.  Our priorities - misguided a bit.

We misunderstand. And we've been misunderstood.  Both. And it's at times like this hope needs to push past these missteps to clear away a new path for us walk. It's not easy, but hope can manage. Family life needs a new beginning sometimes. We need to find patience, forgiveness, and trust nestled among the soup cans on a snowy Saturday like this. We need hope's nourishment, warmth, and promise.

Tomorrow's new beginning will come, sun shining every frozen crystal out there with brilliance and beauty. but we can start in here today. Our home can be hope full today and we can count our blessings like snowflakes. We can remember all the ways we love curled up in the comfort of each other's company. We can forgive by the fire.  

And later, when we head out there to that snow-covered world, we'll breath more freely in all that's fresh, clean, and new. Working together, our shovels will toss our worry to the snow pile by the roadside.  And leave it out there.

Peace, Barbara

Peace, Barbara

A New Hopeful Year

Not sure of the best place to begin after four months away from writing here. Beginnings are always the most challenging part of any writing piece for me. So many possible directions to take or excuses to make about why I haven't written.  I could also just jump right in, like so ..

Ta-da!

It just feels like the right time to be back. To begin. Again.

Hopefully, I'll be getting some technical help in the not-too-distant future so this blog-o-mine can shift to WordPress and get some spiffy updates.  I realized awhile ago that I've been using that lack of techno-savvy as an excuse for not writing. Also? I've been playing around on Instagram much to my great satisfaction and delight.  No DSLR camera though until the new laptop's paid off. Yep. I'm full of reasons for not writing. No technical skill. No  camera. No time. No energy. No voice. No purpose .. what's this blog  supposed to be ABOUT anyway?

No. More. Excuses.

I write in my head all the time, so might as well make the time and just empty it all out.  Maybe I'll write about school one day and a really good granola recipe the next.  I might share a new book I've read or some ideas about spreading hope in this world of ours. It makes sense to me to share the bits and pieces of my life and the hope I find along the way. Being hopeful is sorta synonymous with new beginnings .. so here's mine. And you'll wait me out with the Iphone pics, right?

So, like some thousands of folks world-wide, I've been thinking about declaring a Word of the Year since the big ball dropped introducing 2015. And I've decided I really can't commit. Since each day has its own flavor, and my thoughts, moods, needs, and feelings shift around a bit, it makes more sense to work around a word of the day - or so. Lo and behold ... believe it or not ...  today's word was WRITE.  No time like NOW to get started then. I don't like breaking promises to myself.

I need a writing focus in my life. I need to explore writing from an artistic and communicative point of view, but I also need to write to learn. Writing is a work out. I write to learn about my relationships, spirituality, and thought patterns - both positive and destructive. I write to know me.

A Letter from Mom is a new series of letters I'm writing weekly to my children. They're love letters, really. Maybe someday they'll be important to them. Maybe someday they'll hold onto my words to remember my voice.  I wonder if I should record them somehow as an audio file? I don't need them to write back, I need them to know me. I weep to think I won't always be with them. I weep to know I'm beginning a a life independent from them just as they are beginning one independent of me. As they should. It's been a tough time for me. And I weep. Tears sometimes seep right out of me. Still, there's always hope - even in tears. Hope for a new kind of relationship with my grown children. Hope for a new life direction beginning for me.

There are bright spots in the hope of any beginning. I am at my most hopeful when I look for it. This little blog gives me an opportunity to find that hope and share it with all of you. I'll keep looking for those bright moments in each day's beginning, look for new words to think about and write about. And I know I'll find some hope in the bluest skies painted here and there - even in the middle of winter.

Hope is where you find it.

Peace ~ Barbara

Savor

I delight in today's collection of moments.  This one spent with the dog, snuffling his warm beagle smell until I'm full with the scent of him.  That next moment spent in absorbing a book I've been meaning to read. Another appreciating our house full of boys - knee-deep in testosterone and already anticipating their departure to their own lives. There's enough time later for work - so this moment, this one right here - I'm spending on the porch, pen and notebook in hand, sun on my face, still and at rest from my life's almost constant motion.

I can hear a cardinal calling and the rain of acorns cascading into the road from the tree across the street.  One of our neighbors runs a saw and just down the road, a mower starts its back and forth path across a lawn scattered with yellow, orange, and red autumn.  It's in these ordinary moments of work, rest, thought, and sun soaking that I want to live.  These nothing special barefooted and full-hearted moments of Sunday or tomorrow's Monday are where I will find my hope and happiness.

My life's next moment is still a minute away.  I only have this one here and now -  guaranteed.

Some moments test our patience, our strength, our willpower, and faith.  It's in these moments we spend our time anxious, worried, uncertain, and filled with doubt.  These are dark minutes, tossing and turning our nights and twisting our sheets.  We wish we could hurry past these moments to break through into the light of tomorrow's dawn and the return of another chance to get it right.

Some of our moments are spent with hands reaching out in friendship or service to others.  We use one or two of our of our moments for a kind word.  A phrase of encouragement.  A compliment.  A noticing of someone else's proximity to and importance in our living. It's a choice to - however briefly - walk in the shoes of another.

Other moments we gather for our very own - knowing full well we cannot hold them forever - but still, we can try.  Can't we?

Our life's moments can be heart-stopping or heart-sustaining, but either way, these are the moments that make up a life.  These grains of sand through the hour glass, beads on a string, and knots on our counting rope are the summary and accumulation of all the people we've been in one or another of our moments of time.

I want to savor and taste each and every moment of mine.  Moments filled with a range of emotion, dreams, rays of sun's compassion, clouds of confusion, and the breath of a fresh air breeze.  Each come and go with an inhale and exhale of the day's rhythm. Regular as the tide and certain as the sun's rise and set.  It's more than being present or being intentional - it's being.  Pure and simple. Here. Now. And now again.

I must train myself to roll each one of my moments like M&Ms around on my tongue so I experience the full flavor and sweetness of each. It is here we live our lives ... in the moment before each leaf falls, it's moment of downward drifting, and the one just after the leaf lands.

A Sprinkling of Some Hope

Despite any and all of my intentions, plans, or deepest resolve, stress sometimes elbows its way uninvited into my life. I try to keep it out. I try and then try some more. I'm ordinarily the queen of self-talk, looking on the bright side, and force feeding myself some gratitude (for goodness sake!)

Still, stress and its partner in crime, woe-is-me, whines into town on one random Tuesday, and takes over. I become someone I don't want to be - or even worse, someone I do not choose to be. I am momentarily possessed, a victim of my own circumstances. This petulant me pouts her way through the day, unresponsive to encouragement and temporarily ignorant of reason. I am horrified by this body and mind snatcher of a woman, embarrassed to admit she is me.

Please understand. I am aware of and feel so disappointed in this bratty version of the (usually) more optimistic person I am. She's just not me. Today. She's just not me today. Today, I am the stranger in town. I recite wrongs. List annoyances. Tally all my hardships. Not only can I do no right, all I can do and be and think is wrong.

I cannot find my bearings or my way out of the dark hole I'm hanging out in - at least not at the moment. For now I need to sit it out and wait it through to the end. But my reality today is just as relevant  a part of my life as whatever's on tomorrow's horizon or whatever may have sailed off into yesterday's sunset. All of the women I am day in and day out add to the sum of my living and the total of my learning.

I cannot prevent the bad days any more than I can gather only the good in my basket. Each and every day I'm granted has something to teach me and if I'm reflective enough, I may just discover whatever it is I'm supposed to know. This new awareness may not come in the unsettled moments of this bad, worse, worst mood. But I'm willing to wait and watch for it.

Today's dilemmas will be revealed in their own good time with a little luck, a lot of prayer, and a sprinkling of some hope.

Tomorrow is, after all, another day.

Finding Calm

Finding calm is not the same as finding peace. Peace, for me, is at some deeper level of my soul pool - longer lasting and a factor of being alright with who I am and my place in the world. No, calm is a current and in-the-moment place of mind. A stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off  pause of time ... an ellipses smack dab in the middle of my hectic life sentence. I need to look for it when I'm feeling all sorts of squirrely and tense and in need. And calm can be found in the most ordinary and humble places of home.

In water ... When our children were younger, I once read some parenting advice: "When your children are cranky, put them in water."  We followed that advice fairly regularly because we discovered ... it worked! The public pool, a shower or tub, even the hose or sprinkler ... all reverse the crankies ... and it works for adults too! Soak. Steam. Shower. Swim. The more bubbles the better.

In the sink  ... hot soapy water and a sinkful of dishes to wash is oddly soothing. Drying dishes doesn't give me the same satisfaction, but I love the clear shine of glass and watching the soap slip from plates. Clean anything creates calm.

In the laundry room ... fold warm from the dryer and find there's calm in the rhythm. Reach. Fold. Stack. Reach. Fold. Stack. Your calm increases in direct proportion to the pile. If you know you're going to be stressed later, plan ahead and wash/dry an entire load of towels. Neat. Tidy. Straight. Satisfying.

In the bedroom ... make your bed every morning and you will find calm there every evening when you return.

In the office ... clear the desk. Move those piles somewhere else for the moment. Wipe it clean. Start fresh. There's calm to be found on a clean flat surface.  You'll suddenly be able to hear yourself think and remember what you forgot. A clean sheet of paper helps too. A smooth surface opens my mind and unties knots of thought.

In the yard ... all of outdoors engages all of your senses at once ... crickets and birds and breezes and grass tickles and sun warmth and rose blooms and juicy tomato seed dripping deliciousness. Count the clouds adrift skyward and send those cares of yours aboard for the ride. Get busy feeling and tasting and hearing and smelling and seeing - you'll have no time left for stress or anxiety or hurry or worry.

In the kitchen ... a drink of something cold or hot. A nibble of this or that. Something fun and child-like like a popsicle will cheer and delight and you'll smile your way to calm.

Make your day.Take a break. Find your calm. And carry on.

Saturday Hope

There's a delight in the day that is Saturday.  It's a wide open wonder of a day, full of hope and possibility and breathing room.  Life's load feels lighter to carry and although Saturday's got work to do and wears overalls, there's a leisure to my pace and a happiness in my heart.

Saturday feels full of choice and a chance at good fortune.  Fling wide the window.  Turn up the music.  Light a candle or two.  There's gratitude for the good grace of home.  There's time to revel in.
Air to breathe.  Sun to feel on my face.  I'm holding all the cards and get to choose which ones to play.  Monday through Friday responsibilities are back there somewhere and all today is my future.

What feels overwhelming on Wednesday feels totally do-able on Saturday.  I'll find clean sheets for the bed and fluff the pillows.  Saturday morning shopping fills the fridge.  I like the hum of our washing machine and dance with our vacuum.  My mind wanders and my spirit recovers.  I am energized, capable, and filled to the tippy-top with happy.

It's Saturday's nourishment which hopes me through the rest of the week.  Sunday's worship strengthens and resolves me, but Saturday's hope inspires me.  Every other day of the week I wake with Today I have to ... but on Saturday ... Saturday I wonder, Shall I?

Shall I sew or bake?
Shall I write or walk?
Shall I read or nap?  Or read and nap?

I know Saturday's shine dulls a bit with Sunday's foreshadowing of the week to come so the gratitude of today, right this minute, fills my balloon and sweeps the clouds from my skies.  It's on Saturdays I live most in the moment.

I am present and living and loving my very best life on Saturday.

Wishing you Saturday hope and happiness.