Learning to face the darkness . . .

Thanks to all of you for your kind comments on my last entry. The skies were beautifully clear and sunny this weekend but my days were filled with storms of emotions. Sadly, our beloved neighbor took a turn for the worse on Friday and wasn't able to come home as planned. Thursday and Friday were filled with emotion as we helped her husband process the possibility that she might not come home from the hospital as planned.

Saturday morning he arrived on my doorstep at 8:30 am with the news that the doctors did not think she would survive the day. Brad was at a meeting and my little guy had basketball pictures but we managed to make it to the hospital by about 11:00 am. We were able to see her and give a hug and kiss and tell her we loved her. She was still lucid and really looked lovely and much like her old self except for her labored breathing. She was tired so we only stayed a few minutes. It was heartbreaking to think this was probably the last time I would see her.

I had to rush home and finish prepping food for a baby shower I was helping to throw for my niece in Salem that night. So a few hours after saying goodbye to my good friend, I had to wipe my tears and put on a happy face and be the gracious hostess. It was a long afternoon - we left our house for the shower at 2:00 pm and didn't get home until 10:00 pm that night. At 9:39 pm my cell phone rang and it was my dear friend's husband. She had just passed from this life in a peaceful sleep.

As I mentioned before, this place, this thing, death - is a frightening and unfamiliar place in my life. I'm still processing this heaviness that hangs over me and this renewed sense of knowing that our time here is fleeting and never guaranteed. Sorry to sound like a downer - it's just hard to be real cheery tonight when I think of the heartbroken man sleeping alone two doors down.

I promise, clear skies in the forecast. The sun will come again and the posts will lighten up. Until then, hug your loved ones tight, live, love and laugh.

Learning to take refuge in the storm . . .

I have very vivid dreams. Usually they are variations on the same themes. Fear of getting lost, fear of falling behind, fear of not knowing - see a theme here? The one I used to have the most was about not finishing school and having to go back to high-school as a thirty something to finish up missing class credits.

Last night I had a new dream. One I've never had before but one that doesn't surprise me. I was walking in a small town, browsing the shop windows and saying hello to the people walking on the street. There were all the signs of a peaceful existence, women pushing strollers, men out jogging, an older couple walking their dog, a woman talking on her cell phone while her pre-teen daughter and her friend giggled at a secret joke. I watched it all and felt the warm of the sun on my face and breathed in what smelled like the fresh smell of spring. Suddenly, the sky began to darken and the soft breeze turned into a stiff wind. Bits of garbage started to blow in the street, people clutched their packages a bit tighter but everyone went about their business as normal.

Suddenly, the skies grew dark. That grayish, greenish kind of dark that those from the south and the mid-west know all too well. I felt my heart beat faster and had trouble catching my breath. I knew what was coming.

Frantically, I started yelling at everyone I saw, "We need to get inside. We need to take cover." Some people listened and quickly followed my advice. Others laughed, others shook their heads like they didn't understand. I pleaded with them, called to them, waved them to the doorway of the bookstore (of course!) that I was standing in front of. By now, the winds were so strong it was difficult to walk. And yet, some people stubbornly refused to stop their activities and look at the storm.

Me? I got to a point where I was so frightened, so tired of yelling, so overwhelmed, that I crawled in to the bookstore and curled in the fetal position. I cried as I heard the wind screaming over the roof of the little bookstore and heard the glass of businesses along the little street break in the wind. There was nothing I could do to avoid the wrath of the storm - just hide and try to survive and try to warn others to do the same.

I don't know all the deep meanings of this dream or pretend that it has any profound meanings to you, my dear friends. I know that yesterday, we got the bad news that one of our beloved neighbor ladies has terminal cancer and will likely not live to see her beautiful roses bloom this spring. The couple is estranged from their children and the families of our neighborhood are their only "family". Death is such an uncomfortable and foreign landscape in my life. I've only had to visit within its fences a few times in my life and I've never been comfortable in the places of grieving and loss. The emotions in myself and others scare me with their power and range. Needless to say, I think the I know where that helpless feeling of being caught in a storm came from.

And yet, I take comfort in knowing that even in the fiercest of life's storms, I am not alone. God has given me the precious gifts of His presence, his promises and the support of others who will walk with me (or sit with me!) through life's storms. He promises to be a refuge in those storms. (I think it's no accident that I took refuge in a place that I love - a bookstore! Other than an old church - there's no other building I'd rather visit.)

The words of the Psalmist give me comfort. "Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken." Psalm 62:5-6

The lesson I think I need to learn from this dream? Don't be stubborn - take the shelter that is offered to you when you need to weather the storms. I think I'll need this lesson in the coming days.

Learning New Words . . .

Last week we had dinner at Brad's mom and dad's house. A tradition in our family is to play games at the table after a meal. They are not really board games, but more along the lines of guessing games, 20 questions, etc. We decided to play the "Dictionary" game and pulled out a couple of copies of dictionaries for reference.

The instructions were to look up a word, say and spell the word and each person around the table would offer up a definition. Each round had two winners - the definition closest to the actual definition and the most creative option. The person choosing the word would pick the winners each round.

My 9-year old son flipped through the pages, plunked his finger down on the page and announced, "Trowloup." Hmmm - trowloup? Wow that is an interesting sounding word. Never heard it.

"Buddy - can you spell it for us?" I asked.

"T-r-o-l-l-o-p. Trowloup." He said proudly.

Grandma and Dad start to snicker.

"I have a definition," I said. "A fruit filled dessert. Like a tart."

Grandma just about fell off her chair she was trying so to contain her giggles.

And by the way, I won that round. But I had some explaining to do later about the words in the real definition. I was hoping to expand our kids' vocabulary but not with words like, prostitute, promiscuous, and sexual exploits. Maybe we should go back to 20 questions next time.

Learning patience . . .

Hooray! The buttons are back! The buttons are back!

It's been about 3+ weeks that I've been wiggling around the fact that my blogger page was messed up, but today, what a sweet surprise! The buttons are back!

Sometimes things take time. Like a good meal needs some time to cook. Like an art project needs time to dry or set or cure. Like a good story needs time to develop and the author needs time to write and rewrite, and rewrite, and . . . . Like a prayer hopes to be answered.

Today I read the news that Darlene's son Mark that was seriously injured in a car accident the week before Christmas is heading home. It has already been a long and treacherous road for them but what an amazing answer to the prayers and well wishes of hundreds of bloggers who have been visiting her site over the past few weeks. If you are one of them, celebrate with me and lift up an offering of a thankful heart for our friend today. If you are new to Darlene's story, you can read more of her heartfelt and raw writings of this difficult journey here.

There are real and important lessons to be learned in the waiting. It's the place where hope and trust and faith are sown and nurtured to become the tall, strong, deeply rooted oak trees in our lives that will shelter us from the coming storms. I encourage us all to not miss the lessons in the waiting. I'd love to hear what you have learned in your life in times of waiting.

Bless you all! (And a special blessing to the blogger folks for finally coming through! It was worth the wait!)

Learning to Play . . .

From the masters.

Sunday Scribbling: Ideas

I'm a day late. But here's an idea that came from a conversation with some soccer moms at my son's game last week.

We were chatting about David Beckham, the English soccer phenom coming to America to play for a team in Los Angeles and the amazingly ridiculous amount of money he would be making from his contract which included several endorsement deals. He will be making the amazing sum of $250 million in the next five years.

So here's my idea. How much can any one person really expect to spend in their lifetime? Even if they have the noble intentions of providing for their future generations, they just don't need unlimited amounts of cash when others in the world are in such need. So I propose an earning cap on all sports, entertainment and corporate executives. Something very generous like 15 million per year. Any money earned after that, would be required to be donated to legitimate charities. So sports stars, celebrities and other rich folks would be required to share the wealth but they would get to choose the causes they would like to support. They could decide to give to charities that support literacy, global causes, environmental issues, health and science, etc. But the basic principle would be that the money they make from adoration/support/business of others would be shared and benefit the greater good of humanity. (One caveat - there would be caps on the amount they could give to any one charity to prevent favoritism and there would be some sort of tax break incentives for the givers as they increase the number of charities they help. The more they work to spread their wealth, the better for them.)

Just an idea, but I'd love to see how this could change our world.

For more great ideas, go here.

Learning to slow down . . .

This morning I put my contacts in like I always do. Something didn't feel right. They both seemed blurry and the right one felt like it was in upside down. I took the right one out, cleaned it off, flipped it inside out and put it back in.

Still felt weird.

Took it out, flipped it right side out, cleaned it again, put it back in.

Still not right.

Decided to tough it out, made breakfast for the kids, sat down at the computer to answer a few emails and check a few blogs. Finally, I couldn't stand it. I went into the bathroom and took out my right contact.

It was bizarrly misshapen. What in the world??? There were TWO contacts stuck together. I had put both contacts in my right eye!!! In 26 years of wearing contacts, this is a first! Guess it's time to learn to slow down a bit in the mornings, that or post a sign on my mirror that says, "ONE CONTACT PER EYE, GENIUS!"

Learning to deal with the root of the issue . . .

** Whiny Post Warning ** Be advised that the following post contains an excess of melancholy musings and may not be suitable for friends who are already down in the dumps, suffering from pink-eye, the flu or are trying to quit their nicotine addiction this week. If you don't feel up to reading the whingings of a middle-class, white woman with nothing of merit to complain about, please stop back tomorrow when the outlook for a sunnier post seems more likely.*** Whiny Post Warning Complete ****
It's been a rough week. But even as I type that, I blow air out in a disgusted snort thinking, "Really, Kim. What do YOU have to complain about?"

Your family is healthy.
You have a job.
You have a home.
You're not fighting a war in the dessert against people who want to destroy you.
You're not sitting in a jail cell for sharing the hope you have found in a personal God because the rulers of your country consider such testimony a threat to their politics and culture.
You don't have to wonder where or how you will feed your children today.
You're not watching your loved one struggle through incredible pain as his body tries valiantly to put itself back together again after a horrific car accident.
You're not watching your child fight invisible cells that are trying to kill her from the inside out.
Even your pets are healthy . . .
You really have it pretty good compared to most of the world.

It's never hard to find someone who has it rougher than I do. And in the past, that is how I have dealt with the disappointments, struggles, and frustrations that creep in the back door like unwanted stray animals looking for a warm place to sleep for the night. But unfortunately, just running to the "find someone worse off than me" game pulls my attention away from the things that are bothering me but only for a short time. I wonder if I really do myself any favors by never dealing with these things. Do I really make myself stronger by ignoring or running from my struggles rather than dealing with them? I think I'm learning there's a fine line between self-absorbed and self-aware and the space in between is a large rocky, craggy field waiting to be worked, tilled and planted with more productive thoughts, behaviors and disciplines.

It makes me think of earlier this year when we cut down a large pine tree in our front yard. Brad spent weeks cutting out the roots of this thing (he wound up with a nasty foot infection from the strain of working on it!). There were points in the process where I said, "That's good enough, just cover the rest!" But no - Brad would have nothing of that. He wanted every bit of root taken out and never wanted these things to be a problem again. I think maybe this is an example I need to follow with some of the "issues" in my life that I struggle with. Avoidance or covering them up with something else isn't going to "solve" the problems. The roots of these things will eventually make their way to the surface.

So today, though I know others have it much worse, I give myself permission to feel crummy. It doesn't mean I'm not so very grateful for all I have, it means that my crud, the baggage of my life, is weighing extra heavy today and it's okay to feel the weight as I drag it along the path. Maybe I'll open the bag and see what's in there that doesn't even belong to me. It might be that I've picked up someone else's stuff along the way. Maybe there's stuff in my bags that I don't need anymore. (I'm notorious for holding onto things too long!) I know that as I work on making choices to trust God's direction, his leading and his provision in my life, tomorrow the same bags might feel a bit lighter and eventually, they'll feel so light, maybe I'll be able to help someone else carry their luggage for awhile.

Learning to Adapt

So I pulled one of the lessons from my previous post about perservering and creativity and found a way around my blogger problems. It seems that the missing buttons have something to do with my browser on my home computer. When I went into blogger at work (on a break, of course!), I could see the buttons just fine. But when I came home, they were gone again. When I tried to research this problem on the blogger message boards, they seemed to all say that the solution to the problem is running a different browser program like Firefox. As I read that, I grabbed the edge of my keyboard and shouted at the little man behind the screen, "But I DO run Firefox! At home AND at work. That can't be the problem!!" I tried a few more suggestions, emptying the cashe, rebooting - nothing. Still no buttons. The really frustrating thing - besides not being able to create a post with pictures or links, I wasn't able to leave a comment on any posts that require word verifications. The letters wouldn't appear on my screen. It was keeping me from commenting on some of my favorites and THAT was pushing me near the edge of a knicker-twisting fit of rage!

HMMMM . . . Creativity, perserverance, use the whole play book . . . my own lessons from the previous blog post swam in my head along with a few choice words for the invisible, inaudible, absent with no sign of returning, blogger support geeks who have yet to answer my cries for help. And then, a thought. What would happen if I went back to using Internet Explorer for my browser? What do you know - voila - the buttons are back!

So another reminder that these lessons that we learn on the journey, can be applied in so many different ways in our lives. The blog, in the grand scheme of things, not such a critical thing, but relationships, our passions, our convictions - they deserve the same attention to creativity and perserverance as we seek to make the journey richer for ourselves and the ones we love.

Delia over at Left Handed Trees wrote in her last post about intentions rather than resolutions. I told her I was going to adopt that word - bring it home, feed it cookies and give it a warm bed to sleep in. I want to be intentional in 2007. Intentional in my relationships, intentional in pursuing my passions and intentional in growing in my faith and following my God. I intend to write more about learning and how I can put into practice what I learn and hopefully something along the way will encourage you in your own intentions. (At the very least, you'll have one trick for finding missing blogger buttons!)

Lessons for a New Year

Grrrr. My blogger buttons are still MIA. (I’m missing the buttons that show up on your “new post” page that allow you to add formatting like bold and italics, post pictures and make live links in your post.) Thanks Kasmin for the encouragement that you have been through this and eventually you got your buttons back. I’ve sent two messages to the Blogger folks but still no reply. GAH! I miss my pictures.

Well, one of my resolutions was to make sure something on the little ole’ blog was worth reading. A few months ago, I took a strengths finder test by the Gallup Organization. I thought for at least a little while, I might focus my posts on these strengths and how I’ve been learning to use them in all areas of my life.

OK – when I read back over that, it sounds a bit self centered. But actually, I’m hoping that this process will give you encouragement to work in your strengths as well. Actually, the premise is that we have abilities in almost all the 34 strengths but we clearly are strongest in just a few and those are our “sweet spots” – when we are working in our strengths, we feel complete, content and fulfilled.

One of my strengths is titled “Learner”. “People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.”

Even before I took the test, I knew this would be among my top five. I’ve always been a big reader and these days, I could surf the net for hours reading new articles, and find new tidbits of knowledge to store away. The problem comes in that I’m not always the best at application. My other four top strengths, while unique and helpful in many ways, are very passive and cerebral kinds of strengths. The frustration comes for me in that I’m great at collecting information, not so good at putting it to use.

Monday night, after we said good-bye to Brad’s family, put the kids to bed and did a final quick pick-up of the house, Brad and I settled in to catch the last quarter of the Fiesta Bowl. I love college football and the busy New Year’s weekend with houseguests didn’t give us much time to catch any of the games. We watched the most incredible end to a game we’ve ever seen! If you don’t follow college ball, the game was between University of Oklahoma – a team used to bowl games and the favorite for the night, and Boise State – a real underdog who hadn’t been to a bowl game in ages. Boise State led for almost the whole ball game until Oklahoma had two quick scores at the end of the 4th quarter to move to the lead. The second score was from an intercepted pass thrown by the Boise quarterback. With only a minute left in the game, it really looked like the Oklahoma Sooners had stolen the win from Boise. In an incredible run of great plays, Boise came back to tie the game and force it into overtime. In an incredibly exciting finale, Boise St. won due to some incredible factors.

And so I give to you, “Lessons Learned from the Boise St. Performance in the Fiesta Bowl”

Lesson #1 – Never give up even when things look impossible.
Don’t let the clock tell you what is possible. The impossible can happen when you least expect it!

Lesson #2 – Surround yourself with people who believe in you.
When interviewed after the game about the intercepted pass he threw, the Boise quarterback said he got past the mistake quickly when about 10 of his teammates came up to him and said, “We believe in you.” Wow! I want to surround myself with people like that. Ones who will lift me up and believe in me even when I fail.

Lesson #3 – Use the whole play book.
Boise State’s final score in regulation play was a “trick” play – a lateral pass between two players who weren’t the quarter back (I can’t remember what positions they played.) Their winning score in the OT was the old “Statue of Liberty” play. Creativity and perseverance make for a winning combination.

Lesson #4 – Take advice from others.
Those creative plays used to win the game – they were brought to the table by the 2nd and 3rd string quarterbacks. The coach was quick to give these players the credit at the awards ceremony. (Another lesson – share the spotlight with those who help you.)

Lesson #5 – Success doesn’t mean much without the ones we love by our sides.
After his game-winning two-point conversion, running back Ian Johnson proposed to his girlfriend, Broncos cheerleader Chrissy Popadics. She said yes.

Who knew there was so much to learn from football?