Moments of gratitude……
How much this holiday calls my mind back to all of the beauty that dances around me and invokes in my heart all the blessings and gifts that are laid at my feet on a daily basis.
I am grateful for every experience that has shaped this little life of mine.
I am grateful for the lines on my face….the ones from laughter and even the ones from a broken heart.
I am grateful for all of the tears that have escaped from my eyes….for they make me appreciate the moments when I am laughing so hard that I can hardly breathe.
I am grateful for the storms that have darkened the skies of my dreams…..for that makes it all the more amazing when that ray of sunlight finally breaks through and allows me to feel the warmth on my face….
I am grateful for all of the relationships that have found their way into my heart. The good ones and yes, even the bad. For they have given life to my emotions and have allowed me to love and to learn and to trust.
I am grateful for the pain that sometimes lays beside me….for it has taught me compassion for those who suffer….
I am grateful that I do not have all that my heart desires….for if I did there would be nothing to look forward to…..
I am thankful for the times that I do not know something….for it gives me the opportunity to learn and to grow.
I am grateful for the moments that I am tired and weary….for it means that I have spent my time well and have made a difference in the world……
And today…today I am grateful that I am here. That I am standing. That I continue to fight and try and grow and succeed.
I am grateful to be me….
And that is enough.
one moment of perfection…..
My hands they ache and cannot catch
The moments that slip away,
Tears do fall and mouth cries out
And begs them just to stay.
Yet in your eyes I find it there
Forgiveness so divine,
And boundless love to wrap about
Oh little child, of mine.
As of late, the marks upon the moments of my life, have been thick, laced in dark somber colors of blue’s and black’s. My mind heavy with worries and regrets.
I find myself lost and walking the paths of my memories and look to see a girl that I use to know…what seems like a lifetime ago.
She looks like me this girl. I can see the little light of familiarity the flicker in her eyes, I recognize the laughter that rolls from her red stained lips…..but I have forgotten her now.
Today as I stood brushing the hair of my youngest child, I watched the teeth of the comb slide through her golden locks…..and I stopped.
I just stood there listening to her talk about this and that…..and I felt the tears begin to fall.
Right then in that moment……I realized that she, was my one moment of perfection.
That four times in my life, with the creation of each of my children, I achieved moments of divine brilliance.
Most of the time I am surrounded with things and thoughts and ides that don’t always turn out the way that I plan. I am served up all of my failures and shortcomings on a silver platter. I am faced with a mirror that shows the face of a broken woman, but today….
Today, God reminded me that perfection is possible.
Today when I was held in the recesses of my daughters chocolate brown eyes……
I found love
I found forgiveness
I found peace
I found faith
I found hope
She helped me find myself again…….
For the moments of surrender will find me again soon enough. But in that moment, I got to breath. My mouth found a smile….where for the last few days there was none.
Just a little girl………. my little girl, reminded me that I have courage enough for one more day.
So forward we delve.
Silent winter…..
My favorite…when its minutes away from the sky filling with snowflakes….there is an electricity that hangs in the air…… hums with such beauty your soul can almost hear it.
~
Stillness…….
My thoughts are with my Alan tonight.
Once in a while he is there, and I feel him……and pain reminds me she is always there.
Dear Alan…..
I think about that night. I can’t help it. I wonder…..what was going through your mind as you drove that lonely stretch of dark highway….lit only from the stars above.
You must have been in a place so far away that you could not feel my love. The place that found you that night….must have been so dark that you just could not remember the light in my eyes, the sparkle in the laughter of our children….
I am alone tonight. In front of a fire, the flickering of the light dances on my face and makes my tears sparkle like diamonds…..I would give anything to have you here.
I am haunted by that night…..that night you decided it was time to leave …was there anything I could have said, anything I could have done, anything to keep you safe…….I would have.
It is impossible to not feel ashamed that I did not see the pain, the mask that you wore…..
I cry out to God…..begging for the words that will allow me peace. For I know….that only he knows what went wrong……Oh Alan.
I played games with your babies tonight. I watched them laughing and happy. You would have loved those moments.
I still hear them in the stillness of the night….crying for you. Crying for their daddy…..and it brings me to my knees. I cried for my daddy too….I know that hurt all to well.
And I am scared Alan. What if I am not strong enough to save them…..to put the pieces of their broken hearts back together again….
Tangled thoughts of you make the tears fall. It was so not like you to leave. To leave me…..and our children….Oh Alan. What I would not give to take back the moments before the carbon monoxide cradled you to sleep.
What would I not do….to just have been there.
We were in the middle of a beautiful life, we had the whole world at out feet and all the love and beauty a heart could hold.
What was so wrong, that could not have been mended without you leaving in the middle of our life.
I promised you my heart. I promised you love you till the end of time, and stand at your side through good times and bad…through happy and sad…..
and you changed your mind.
and I am broken.
I can hardly remember you hands. The curves of your face….the sound of your beating heart.
I remember when I walked in the room to see your body…for the first time. How I crumpled to the ground and cried out to God….no. Please.
No.
Yet there you were. I didn’t even get the chance to tell you goodbye.
You just did not trust our love, trust anyone’s love…..trust that together we could have weathered any storm…..
and now I am alone….walking through the waters that threaten to carry me away.
My Alan……I miss you so.
Sunday afternoon thoughts….
Last night I went out on the town and found myself consumed in the goings on of the world. We went to three very different places and were surrounded by souls who have sought out very different paths from one another. Lives that were so different that you would assume they have nothing in common.
I am always amazed that there are such a diverse medley of people who all share this place called my life.
I am going to tell you about our experience at the “Saloon.”
We went to support a group of my friends who were hosting a “Battle of the Band’s” to raise money for the YMCA, specifically the battered woman’s organization.
The bar was located in Salt Lake and we had never been there before so we were not sure what to expect.
Looking back we now laugh at how out of place we looked. Jennifer was cussing me out all the way back to the car about our attire.
I wore a black skirt and a sweater and boots with over the knee socks…(picture in your mind an outfit on the cover of a J Crew catalog). Jennifer wore grey slacks and a white blouse and boots. We looked good…. conservative, classy and like COMPLETE fools at the bar.
I look back now and wonder if the roles would have been reversed…… would those who appeared to be “social outcasts” have been as graciously welcomed within the social circles in which I reside?
I think about any one of them showing up to a gathering that I frequent….would there have been the same outstretched arms and thank you’s offered for attending? Or would those who accepted us without pre conceived notions, dressed in our bourgeois attire, be judged immediately and shunned?
We walked in and immediately noted the plethora of tough looking woman decorated in tattoos, with butch hair cuts with piercing’s everywhere you looked.
Needless to say Jennifer looked at me and said, “Next time we come support your friends I am going to need to talk to someone to see what the dress code IS!” We did look completely out of our element.
So we walk in and there is a band playing on the stage and people partying everywhere and all having a great time.
My eyes are HUGE!! Jennifer has to keep smacking me on the back to telling me to close my mouth.
Luckily there were pool tables sprinkled about, so we had something to do, rather then standing around staring at all of the people….looking horrified on my part.
I have to tell you I am immediately on high alert. I think there is going to be a fight, or someone is going to pull a knife or that something bad is going to happen because these people to me, look scary.
This is where my view of the world changed, just for a moment.
I took a breath and closed my eyes and thought…I am not going to judge, I am not going to assume, I am simply going to experience this life at this moment. I am going to take from it the beauty that is here and though it is very different from the life that I live….it is not better, nor is it worse. It is simply divergent.
We spoke to the people there, some that I would be afraid to approach on the street and heard how excited they were about the money being raised for this shelter.
Saw the glimmer of hope pleated in the folds of their soul as they were given the opportunity to give back, in some small way.
People, who most likely, were overlooked by the throngs of society, who now, in their own particular way, were giving back to the world.
As the time moved us slowly into the deeper hours of the night, I began to see the humanity around me in ways that I never would have supposed.
I think sometimes we reside in these little bubbles of our own creation and we look out and we think, “I have nothing in common with you. You are nothing like me, therefore you do not matter.”
I learned a great lesson last night, in the dark corners of a local bar.
Grace, and kindness and charity and goodwill…..Remain.
Hope and generosity and willingness to serve…..live on.
Too often we have the horrible things of this world served up to us on a daily basis. We have the dismal, selfish side of mankind provided as the hallmark.
If we are brave enough, believe enough and for a brief moment remove that biased film from our eyes….
We will behold soul inspiring beauty within one another….
And aside from the moment when a strange girl approached Jennifer and asked her if she was “willing to celebrate life” (which we TOTALLY thought was some kind of drug code…..we not the hippest bar flies) it was a testament to me……..
There is a divine ordering to the affairs of the world. There are opportunities to be better, to give more…..
simple notes that sing of humanity…..just waiting for hands to raise them to the sky…..where they can take flight and find their places in the musical composition of time.
broken clocks….
I have always loved clocks. I don’t even care if they are working clocks. I have hundreds in my home, some that work but most do not. They are tucked into every corner and all of their hands tell a different time.
As the darkness of the night laid with me, I pondered my love with keepers of time. Wondering why it gives me comfort to have the clocks all holding still at a different hour. The answer found me, lost deep in my dreams last night.
Each clock holds a memory for me….a time be it happy or sad. An assigned stolen moment from my life…. held just beneath the face and the ornate hands of brass, a little piece of me remains.
One clock…..old, olive green, a well worn clock, carried clear from Germany and given to my mother from my grandmother, holds a little girl lost.
I can let my eyes fall upon that clock and I am carried back to my days of childhood fancy. Back to the days when the sun would seek out my hair of golden blonde. My parents grew flowers……beds laid out all around our house, filled to the brim with smiling blossoms of every kind of flower you could imagine. It was then that I learned to love the earth. The smell and feel of soil can instantly carry me home.
My father built the garage in my childhood home…..and when the concrete was still soft and warm from the afternoon sun he took us out there and buried our hands deep, leaving prints that would mark that moment shared, forever.
Those memories of mine are gathered just beneath the face of that very old clock. Memories that remain there, for me to take out and caress when ever my heart needs to remember.
How much my eyes seek out beautiful keepers of time. I suppose in a way I am drawn to them also, because really, isn’t time the only thing that we possess that is truly of any value?
Time flows along through the turns of years and it is how we spend those stolen moments……that is what matters.
I think last night when these thoughts crawled inside my head and played tag round and round that I made a decision. I will try harder to nourish the moments that remind me what this whole life is all about. Shelter the moments that heal me and foster the ones that invoke in me the need, to be a better woman then I was yesterday.
This Earth turns slowly, as the years ebb. Each only assigned one life, that will flicker by in the blink of an eye.
A kindred spirit danced into my life about a week ago. At times his words get tangled up inside mine and I cannot tell where his end and mine begin. A fellow lover of words, he shares with me the melody of his heart and reminds me that we are not so different you and I.
He serenades me with lessons he has learned about his sojourn through this life. And though we have barely just found one another, our hurts and fears and joys and wishes, our lullaby’s, share many of the same notes. He is part of me now, this fellow traveler through life and he reminds me that there are so many beautiful moments, just waiting to emerge in my life.
Remember the clocks of your life, and give them more then just a passing glance. Breathe deep when you feel that you are coming undone, look deep even when it sounds like the same old story. For there are words tucked there, for those who look.
Winter is waiting just outside my window today. A time for the earth to be blanketed in frozen peace. A time to rest. A time to reflect.
My thoughts fall to the ones I love. To the ones who have since traveled on, and to the ones that still remain. To the man, who rests in the tender earth, beside his father in the Logan cemetery. I hope he sleeps well through the winter, and the pieces of frozen happiness that blanket him, whisper of a love that lingers on.
As for me, I shall carry on. Be grateful for the ones who touch my heart. Who cause me to reflect and give me hope to rise again.
Come forward winter, my old friend, and allow my heart to rest.
Once in a while……
If I have learned anything in this journey of mine…it is that laughter can save your very life. There is nothing better in the whole wide world, then to forget all your worries and take a moment and play.
For some odd reason that has always come very easily to me.
Laughter and levity and happiness. I have always found immense joy in my life, even when the moments are dark and somber there is always something to laugh about.
In a way that reminds us all, that it is never the end of the world.
I remember when Alan died and my family was staying at the house with me and Jennifer was there and I was sobbing. I just was still in such a state of complete shock and dismay that for a moment I wondered if I would ever laugh again.
I remember that Jennifer came in and we were all sitting there and she looked and me and I looked back with my puffy red, tear stained face and she uttered seven words to me.
Seven simple words from one best friend to another in a moment of complete despair.
“Can I call you the Black Widow?”
It makes me laugh hard even now. I looked at her and thought what the hell is she talking about…..
Then she repeated. “Can I call you the Black Widow?”
Well how can you NOT laugh at that.
I pretty much burst out laughing and found myself laughing and sobbing and wailing and crying and blowing snot all over the place….and in that moment……..I remembered how it feels to laugh.
I remembered how it felt to play and to be silly, to take one moment and just let it all go. It would all still be there waiting for me when I was done laughing…….
I needed that. She looked at me in that moment when I was the most broken and she knew the only way to fix me is to help me remember the thing that saves me everyday……
Laughter.
False Advertising
With all of this insane exercise I have become obsessed with, my body is changing back to how it looked in high school.
Needless to say the toned legs and firm rear end come with a price.
I can honestly say in the boob department I rather look like a 12 year old boy. I use to have lovely boobs but now….ummmmm not much there.
So a good friend of mine told me about these little, or big, which ever floats your boat, inserts that you can put in your bra to fill out the cups.
The girls around here call them “cookies.”
So the other day I was in Victoria’s Secret and I saw the “cookies.”
I snatched up a few pairs and bought them.
The next day I got ready for the day and had on some jeans and a tight fitting shirt and thought, “Hey! This is the perfect opportunity to try out the new ta ta’s”
So I put them in my bra and then put my shirt on…and I have to tell you people my body was SMOKIN!
I stood there looking in the mirror thinking, I have not looked this amazing in at least two days.
I had to run a few errands and had to go to the post office here in Bountiful and as I walked in I smiled at the bazillion people in line. (You can always count on a crowd at the Bountiful Post Office)
I was walking extra cocky because I knew that all eyes would be on me….how could they not!
So I get my packages together and as I am writing the addresses on them I keep hearing this funny little crinkling noise.
I look around, look at the bottom of my boot to see if I had a piece of plastic stuck on it, and nothing.
So I just finish my business and go get in line.
Ok so at LEAST three of the men kept looking at me and a few of the women and I was thinking….”HA HA HA! Why in the hell did I not buy these sooner. People cannot stop staring at me!”
So the line moves forward a bit and I am standing there and every time I move I hear that stupid crinkle noise.
It is driving me mad because I cannot figure out what it is, so I put my packages on the counter and start looking my body over.
The shirt I have on is a v neck and goes kinda low and soon enough I discover the source of the noise.
I had forgotten to take the plastic backing off the backs of the false boobs and stick them on…..so the right one was still in place but the left one had migrated to the middle of my chest and was now about 3/4 out of my bra and half way out the v neck of my shirt.
It looked like a raw chicken breast cutlet sticking out of my shirt.
NO WONDER people were staring at me…..
Only I would walk around with a third boob prominently stuck to my chest.
Needless to say I ripped them both out….right there in front of everyone and put them in my purse and smiled and said……
“Thats what I get for false advertising!”
It is a sad sad day when a girl cannot pull off fake boob inserts 
