Friday, June 28, 2013

The Great IN BETWEEN

Oh, Lisa-Jo Baker, you dared us to write about the great IN BETWEEN.  If I open this gate sister, it might not stop flowing and certainly not in time for five-minute-friday.

When I saw the topic this Friday morning, I almost winced.  You see, I AM IN BETWEEN.  I live in between, with just an eye on the yesterday, driven toward tomorrow and more often than I wish, right in between them both.  And missing so much of what is in front of me.


Always, in between cities, in between friends, in between families.  Never quite there.  I referee in between kids, plant flowers at someone else's house while I am in between homes and live too much in the future.


But life is now, right here in between and I am missing it.

I am missing it because of my desire for what isn't.

Maybe I need to accept the great IN BETWEEN as the greater WHAT IS REAL.  The fields around us in this house that isn't mine are real.  My real kids play in those fields and I can go with them.

The future I imagine isn't real.  It can change or never even happen.  I can participate in it when I get there but I can't control it.

This life IN BETWEEN is real right now and begging to be lived.

The pool down the street in between the park and the cute green house is real and begging for wild, splashing kids right now.


The great IN BETWEEN THAT IS REAL is calling me and I don't think I want to miss it.

m.


Other posts about living life right where it is...
What I learned in June for Chatting at the Sky
Unplugged...Living a Real Life
The Truth, and I Saw It Right There In Sunday School

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

What I learned in June...

Emily at Chatting at the Sky is hosting a blog party inviting readers to post what they learned in June.  By the way, this chick has a great blog, definitely worthy of your email subscription.

Please comment on what you learned in June, then share or forward.  We'll call it a party within a party...

Here are just a few things that I learned in June:

  • Life is not, in fact, boring.  Sometimes things get wild.  Just when I think that I am going to be crushed under the sheer repetitiveness of cleaning this house and driving to the grocery store again, God grabs my whole basket of life and throws it in the air.  I have no idea where the pieces will land.  They will probably land exactly where they started and I learned in June, that I will NOT take that for granted.  Actually, I will probably will take it for granted, but not for quite awhile.

  • Sometimes it feels kind of good when your basket of life is in the air.

  • I glow.  This June, while our entire basket of life was in the air, my husband said I had a glow about me.  It's adrenaline.  I am not stressed by the pieces of my life careening around my head, landing who-knows-where, but I am awake, alive and aware.

  • Sometimes God is like a freight train, fast, loud and powerful rolling right through your life.  You can run alongside and grab on or you can watch it go by.  This has happened to me before.  I LOVE IT WHEN HE IS LIKE THIS.  LOVE IT!  Just grab the train and hold on.  It is one of the few things I do well and I encourage you to grab the Train next time He comes by.  It will take your breath away.  It will make you glow.

  • Running can be fun.  This is revolutionary.  I am a walker.  Two weeks ago I would tell you that I hate running.  My daughter and I started Couch to 5K.  It's fun.  I am embarrassed to admit that I  look forward to the three days a week that we run.  Seven weeks to go and we will be "runners" able to go three miles any time we want.

  • I can still surprise myself.  (I didn't say confuse myself, that happens every day.)  Forty-two years old and starting to run.  After a lifetime of faithful Dr. Pepper drinking, I now prefer Coke.  Goodbye 30 years of Hershey's with Almonds, my favorite candy bar is now Milky Way.  Maybe it's early menopause.

  • Don't take your local farmers' market for granted.  Their stuff really is better.  The weather here in NC is messed up this year though.  We had about three weeks of strawberries instead of six.  The blueberries and tomatoes are not here yet.  I miss my berries.  Next year I won't mess around. I will eat local strawberries because local strawberries taste like candy and store strawberries taste like cardboard unless you sprinkle sugar on top.  Then they taste like cardboard with sugar.
July may well bring the landing of the basket of life, most likely right where it was before.  But maybe not...

gotta go, there's a Train to catch,
m


Other posts you might like...


Tuesday, June 18, 2013

When You Show Up for the Trip and Get Sent Home

Ever have something you want?  Something you really want and it seems like you could have it, if you just did everything right.  But maybe it isn’t up to you.

Right now, there is something that I want.  I really want this thing.  Well, it isn’t a thing exactly, more like a circumstance.  I don’t mean to be all secretive but I can’t tell you what it is.   I mean, I love you all but some things just aren’t meant to be shared on the internet.  Not yet.

It doesn’t matter anyway because this is about all of us together so you just imagine your own thing because at the end, I am going to ask you something.

Okay, so the allegory goes like this:
I want to go on a trip.  I believe I can go if I just get everything ready.  I get all my ducks in a row, iron (insert muffled laughter here), get the dog and kids ready and five of us hop in the car.  We think, we believe, it is time for the trip.  We all want to go.

We get to the airport, grab our bags and head toward the counter to buy our tickets.  We have the money and all the paperwork.  Everything is as perfect as we can make it.

We arrive at the counter and announce our intention to board the plane.  The agent looks at us calmly.

“No.  Go home.” 

We ask questions.   I plead.

“No.  Go home.”  Nicely, gently, certainly.

I want to know why but there is only one answer.

“No.  Go home.”

Does this mean “not today” or “not ever?”

Have I done something wrong?  Do I wait?  I have done everything that I know to do.  I showed up for the trip and got sent home.  I don’t even know why or really even what the answer means.  I am a woman of faith so what do I do with this?

DO I GIVE UP?  Let go and move on?

When does “no” mean “no” and when does it mean “not now” and most importantly…

How do I know?
HOW DO YOU KNOW? 

Does it even matter if you know?  What do YOU do when you get sent home?

The actual circumstances don’t matter.  If you are going to forward or share this post, please consider doing so after you add your own insight in the comments.  The best way to go the unknown is together.

It is well,
m

On a lighter note...



Friday, June 14, 2013

sounds like life and living and love


"Listen-To-Me!" I must say it hundreds of times a day, begging for their attention so I can parent them.

"Hey you, listen up!" I say playfully, ready to give instructions for some new and no-doubt life changing project that will probably require a mop to clean up.

"Listen to me..." I think in my heart...wishing to be heard but truthfully, often too full of self-doubt to even speak.

He listened to me, and maybe that's why I married him.  He still listens.

Listen, I remind myself.  Listen, while they still want to talk.

Do more than listen, hear them.

Listen to what isn't said.

Listen with eyes and hands and heart.

Remember what it's like to want to be heard.


Sounds like breathing babies near me in the dark.
Sounds like a good man getting up early to make eggs and go to work in the dark while I sleep.
Sounds like angry sounds and crazy laughter because there are three of them.
Sounds like dishes and vacuums and the mundane things of life, call them boring or call them blessing.

Sounds like life and living and love.



Blogging today at the prompt of Lisa Jo Baker for Five Minute Friday.  Every Friday she invites the rest of us to share.  The only catch is that we do our writing in five minutes, share and encourage each other.


Other Traveler posts you might like...all about surviving life with kids...or maybe them surviving life with me...
My Name is Butmommy
Confessions of a Reformed Helicopter Parent
King Robert of the Wild Hair




Friday, June 7, 2013

Fall...

Everyday.  I fail and I fall.  And I fuss at myself for failing and falling again.  Seems like I had it together about twenty years ago, like I rarely fell at all.  But I was wrong.  I was falling down every moment and didn't even know it.


Can't learn new things if you don't risk a fall.  Can't learn to walk or ride a bike or ride a horse unless you risk a fall.  Seems like you fall all the time and then you fall less and then you walk and run and fly through the air.  And it's good.  Way better than staying on the ground all the time.


You know, jumping is just falling on purpose.



Everybody falls.  Only one man in all of history that didn't fall.  And then He sort of did only He did it on purpose and He did it for us.  He fell right down on our mistakes.



My kids fall all the time.  I sigh and think, "Don't you get tired of flailing around wild and falling into things and hurting yourself?"  

And then I complain because my life is so ordinary.  

They have the same life I do, only they don't think their lives are ordinary. They make them rather extraordinary.  

But there is a cost for this extraordinary.  

Sometimes they fall.

Joining the blog party over at Lisa Jo Baker's today for five-minute-friday.  Check it out!  http://lisajobaker.com/