Build: #wholemama

I woke up recently to a powerful realization –

It has been 20 years since I graduated – with my second post-secondary degree.

This was a “OH MY GOODNESS I HAVE BEEN AN ADULT FOR A LONG TIME NOW” kind of realization.

20 years – it is an undeniable amount of time. It is solid and weighty … 20 years. If you have done anything for 20 years – you get a plaque or pen or watch or something. Right?

Graduating with my teaching degree 20 years ago – I felt I had my tiny tool belt fitted out and I was ready to start building a life. A real adult-y life – one which would include a full-time teaching position, eventually a husband, and probably 2 kids …maybe 3. The blueprint was simple, clear, and “god willing” achievable.

But isn’t it interesting how a simple, clear vision is emptied out of all “upset”, all “unevenness,” and anything “unexpected.” Who would enjoy reading that predictable story? But my head/heart desired as normal a life as I could muster considering my early beginnings were rife with “upset,” “unevenness,” and all things “unexpected.” I wanted a TV simple life.

But 20 years ago … all within a 10 month span … my little plan proved inadequate, my tools insufficient to the task, and my vision too small for all that was to come.

First, there came the “upset” — the world’s crowbar prying up my life, my home.

A sister plus a baby after trauma equaled an irrevocable decision to uproot and move back to a place I swore I would never return. Thus opting to leave my established sphere and the groundwork of the life I foresaw. My careful plans – thrown into boxes, rolled away in hopes that I would find myself back again – barring that – at least somewhere equally desirable. Despite it all – I knew it was the right decision, despite my misgivings about the place I was headed, I knew I was moving toward something. My plan could still work out, perhaps with a new view.

Next, there came the great “unevenness” – the tilting of the world upon its head, the shaking out of broken bits, the gutting out of the structure, and then the rough process of preparing a surface for repair.

A father diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer equaled a world changer. The staring down of the inevitable – the long slow walk toward a new reality charging forward relentless, the light of a train barring down. Months of waiting for what came too quickly, too hard upon a heart unprepared. There was nothing to be done but wait and see what remained, to see what the bones of life look like after been stripped bare. My little plans so small in the light of loss – but still they were the warmth beyond the cold, the embers smoldering within.

Finally, my plans fell to the “unexpected” – the plans righted, reworked, and readied for what I had not anticipated.

His eyes; the ones which looked with such intensity, curiosity, and tenderness upon this timid and independent creature. Eyes which could only have been found in the place I had not wanted to return to. Eyes which took in my new life as auntie, full-time sister, and grieving broken daughter and wanted to see more. Eyes which would look upon my plan and ask to add to them his own – building together a new plan. Equally unexpected, was my own willingness to forego my original plans – to let them be rewritten, to be shaken up, and to let the new into my life. Ultimately, building toward a much more interesting story.

20 years ago … my life was turned upside down. I am fortunate to look back at the wondrous underside of it all, alongside the man behind those eyes and our 4 kids, in a place I have grown to love. Our roots go back 20 years – and I am still reaping the rewards which upset, unevenness, and the unexpected have built into the plan, and I am ever grateful. It is all much better than a plaque or watch or pen.

20 years from now – I anticipate there will be even more upset, unevenness, and unexpectedness – I still shake and tremble at their potential to re-write my plan, to turn everything upon a dime. But … I cannot anticipate the winds instead I will need to trust and have faith that my days are in hands greater than my own. The ones which have been re-writing the plan since the beginning, which turned my pale plans into a world of colour and texture and wonder.

This week’s word for #wholemama is: Build. Find us here – Overflow

 

Create: #wholemama

“In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction in was coming. Sometimes it seems to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. It was hardly a tune. But it was beyond comparison, the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. – C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

Can you hear it? That song. The one which stirs up the air and ruffles your senses. It gets inside your body and jumps along your veins, itching and jittering about and seeking.

It is the call sung into the world from the beginning – the call to dream, to build, to make, to create. It is a call, undeniable.

It never occurred to me that I was “creative” until other people began using the word to describe me – often in comparison to themselves. “Oh, but you are so creative.” Said or unsaid it implied they were not. It saddened me.

Years ago, before children, I stashed this quote into my bible – it has been a long-time companion, a solace in the dark “I can’t believe this is my life” moments, in the “what am I doing with this life” moments, even the “this can’t be the all of my life” moments. It reminds me that every moment is an opportunity to create something – creation isn’t only found in the physical, it is in all the moments that make up a life, a family, a home, and a marriage. None of these people have ever been together like this before – we are the beginning, the world being sung into being, and in every moment we are creating a legacy, a part of the whole fabric of life – each thread twining in and around, pulling and looping.

We are all creating the moments of our lives alongside other creating, dreaming, building people – to create is a mandate, proof positive that the world is called into being. You are creative – you are the created.

“Whether we are poets, or parents, or teachers, or artists, or gardeners, we must start where we are and use what we have. In the process of creation and relationship, what seems mundane and trivial may show itself to be holy, precious, part of a pattern.”  – Luci Shaw , Horizons: Exploring the Creation

We are creation – and within us the blueprint for creation calls out. I might sometimes pull thread through fabric, put pencil to paper, or splash paint over canvas but I also sing silly jingles to my kids, make references to obscure movies, fold clothes, wash dishes, and throw things in a pot and call it soup. I am, in turn, creating a life and so are you.

“Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

Yes, yes, and again yes.  GO and BE.

Today’s word for #wholemama is: Create. Find us here – Overflow

Called to Contentment: #wholemama

 Contentment: “An internal satisfaction which does not demand changes in external circumstances”—Holman Bible Dictionary.

These are uncomfortable words which I cannot read without a justifiable flush of shame leaking out of this, my discontented heart.

There is no denial to fall back on – there is no excuse or explanation which can alter the state of things within because my eyes have been focused so completely on the without.

My without – my lacking, my not having, my jealous wanting. These are the walls from which I most often survey the world.

Behind these walls, there is an eerie hollowness – I guard an empty growing space within. I have been too long on my walls.

And yet, there is a call.

A steady, unfaltering, unaltered call …

“Come…

Come in.

Let Peace be with you. Come in.”

I tremble at the offer – my insides are so tender and untended too.

“Perfect – come in.”

The #wholemama word this week is: Contentment     Follow me over to Overflow to read more stories from lovely #wholemama storytellers.

 

Home at last: #wholemama

I have lived in many homes – not only were my parents divorced – they lived in different towns and my mother often moved to new towns – and she often moved us to new houses. We moved with a regularity which made becoming overly attached to a home difficult. But there are a few homes which stick out with greater significance than others.

The milk house for example – literally – it was a milking house for cows before we lived there, it was re-purposed before repurposing was a “thing”. I slept on what occurs to me now was a “shelf” attached to the wall. My mother insists that it was built to be a bed, all I know is it was a wooden “shelf” like thing attached to the wall and that my brother, who slept on the top “shelf”, had to have a scarf tied around the metal pole above him, so he would stop banging his head on it when he woke up in the morning. There were also rugs used as walls, a dirt floor, a traditional wood burning stovetop (like Anne used), no electricity, no running indoor water, and long iron bars which held the building together and were perfect to hang upside down from like a bat.

This home was my childhood paradise, the happiest place I had ever lived. I loved the rock upon which the milk house stood, lichen covered and mossy. I loved the view down to Stark’s bog, the little bitty leech infested lake along the edge of the property. I loved the spearmint plants that grew along its edges releasing their great wafting scent as we stepped over and through them on our adventures. On days when, we were truly brave, we drove into the water and swam as fast as we could toward the lopsided dock out in the lake – trying to outswim the leeches. But we still found them attached to legs and cheeks and forearms. We compared their size and girth and gritted our teeth as we removed them and observed the blood red birthmarks they left behind.

Home, however, is a subjective illusion. If you asked my older sister about this home– she would elaborate more about the times we were left alone in our milk house on the rock – a 12 year old, a 11 year old and a 7 year old alone on a rock in the boondocks packing water in bulgy blue camping jugs to and from school so that we could make dinner and clean our faces – all while our parent and step-parent partied many kilometers away – at least a few hours and a ferryboat ride away. She might relay the tales of drunk and stoned guests, the shouting matches she had with my step-father regarding almost everything. My brother might tell half tales like mine and half tales like hers but then again his might have more to do with having to light a fire in the stove with wet logs and fresh cut kindling, or about making us oatmeal and fighting the persistent steam dragon who bubbled up from the depths of the porridge pot every morning before I was even awake. Home is a sweet illusion, a neglected shack, and a grand adventure all in one. Here, home is also easily swept away from a child– for her “own” good, for the good of all, or for all the right reasons or …not.

Home is temporal and shifty. As much as we long to dig into it and carve out our safe space – there are holes and leaks and tsunamis and terror which will drive us or others away. These events can play out on television screens or behind closed doors -regardless each reveals the truth that no home is safe. They can be good, bad, rich, poor, muddy, dry, cold, hot, moldy, or pristine but they are not impregnatable. The home of the heart cries out for wholeness and we are full of broken. In this we are the same regardless of circumstances.  Our hearts are not wrong, we are made to find wholeness, but we so often look for it in the wrong places.

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

Also wise unicorn by the name of Jewel is quoted as saying:

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”

― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

So there is hope yet.

The #wholemama word this week is: Home     Follow me over to Overflow to read more stories from lovely #wholemama storytellers.

 

 

 

Learning the Dance: #wholemama

I have been struggling inside lately about my changing, aging, outside self. I don’t want to, I am even a little ashamed that this struggle takes so much out of me. It doesn’t merit the attention, and there is nothing I could add to the discussion about my outer self that isn’t already overly present in our societal psyche. I wish I could ball these thoughts up and heave them into the garbage – I wish I could pull this insecurity out of myself and chop it up into a thousand tiny pieces and throw them into the air like confetti – I wish … But I can’t, I haven’t, I don’t yet know how to begin. I have written about it before, I have tried to excise this self-perpetuated belief out, out, out of my heart and head.

But I am beginning to see that it isn’t a case of simple removal – the feelings, the thoughts, the repetitive tape in my head remain despite my efforts because I have nothing to put in its place. Without a better something to take up the space where my negative thinking occurs, with nothing to push them aside, they are free to grow and continue and be.

I am therefore on a journey to find out new truths about myself – even my outside self. Truths which I believe can only be found not given. I am reconstructing the mirror I use to view myself, or I am trying to at present, there is a long journey ahead.

What does any of this have to do with dance you ask? Well – earlier this year I wrote a piece called Dance Lessons, about my rediscovery of what dancing means to my spirit, it was a small piece of my mirror – it reflected back to me – joy.

But before I found joy – I was confronted by a truth, one of those truths which goes in through your head via your heart then travels all the way down into your feet in one great wave – your blood knows, your cells know … you know. It isn’t exactly a pleasant feeling, more like a cold brace of water across your face.

Once again my husband, son, and I were excitedly sitting in our seats awaiting the moment the girls stepped out on stage and the music queued up. I await this moment every year, while I wait I feel my heart grow inside my body pushing up and aside everything else – I can feel it pound through my ribs. My heart pushes up further into my neck – I fear talking in case it should fly out.

Then it happens – they walk on stage and my eyes are already wet, I can feel my breath held deep inside.

They dance – and it takes my entire strength to not fall down weeping for the sheer beauty of it. I gasp – my heart cries out and I gasp. They are so beautiful – it flows down their arms and to the point of their toes, it surrounds them, emanates from their very beings. I dance my eyes between all three of my beautiful girls. I am undone.

After the spring performance this year, I was as always a wreck, weak in the limbs from the strength of feeling wrung out of me. So full of pride and astonishment over another stunning dance performance – but also a sense that there was something deeper in my well of feelings than the overwhelmed heart of a proud mother. I was mourning.

I could see so clearly how lovely my daughters were, how beauty was infused into them and yet … somewhere inside I mourned for beauty in me.

I couldn’t see it – I couldn’t find it. I could see where it might be found, where it might be seen by others but I, myself, could not put a finger on a place which spoke of beauty in my own self. Just a longing … and so I mourned while I celebrated. The two-sided coin of joy and sorrow.

But then came that cold water upside my face –

But I made you. I made you – you are MY creation. Don’t you sulk and hang your puppy dog eyes at me. I made you – fearfully and wonderfully – I made you.

Like any child – I looked at my feet.

I weep when I watch my girls dance on stage – as a mother I see them, I see all of them, and it fills me with so strong a feeling, I gasp to breathe. I am fully aware of their beauty – all entwined in the bodies and limbs and hearts and smiles. I see it.

Just as my Father, my creator … sees me dance about through this life. And all the while, I have been fooling myself into believing the lie that beauty is a tangible product, a secure outer shell of a thing.

I am on a journey to dance free of this lie – to twirl and spin and rejoice in knowing what his beauty looks like in me. There may be stumbles, bruises, and frustration along the way – I will need to stretch, and practice, practice, practice until the knowledge is down into my bones. I will need to accept I won’t be great at it right away and the process will take patience and persistence. But there is a beauty in that too … and all the while I need to remember He is watching. Proud and weepy and maybe, just, maybe He gasps a little too.

The #wholemama word this week is: Dance   Follow me over to Overflow to read more stories from lovely #wholemama storytellers.

 

Calm: An Anchor #wholemama

Calm – another small word dense with meaning. Its weightiness misjudged even as the word rolls over my tongue and out of my mouth like a slow blessing.

I am mesmerized by the double-sided nature of the word – clear and glass and reflective and all the while sending out a prismatic array of colour. Its colour and weight exist only in tandem with all that excites and incites action, activity, and movement.

Calm –the cessation. The stillness on a lake which breathes peace and tranquility into one’s thoughts, notable and inviting for its beauty and for its rarity. The absence of wind and turmoil.

Calm – the extinguished fire. The point at which burning ends and smoke settles – the quiet after.

Calm –the focused lockdown. The clear mind in a crisis, moving without agitation, intent and reasoned.

I much prefer to walk the quiet road of calm. I have a low tolerance for “chaos.” The words “calm down,” and “keep calm,” are frequently spoken in my home. I say them like little prayers over my children wishing them into compliance. However, these children of mine are growing selves, full to bursting with wants, desires, passions, and deep feelings. Winds blow across the lake of our lives daily; gentle waves to whitecaps. Calm is rare.

I am an agent for calm. I walk around “putting out fires” to keep my calm. I douse flames as they rise up and threaten my peace and quiet. As a mother, I extinguish as routine. I temper. Might I also be dampening the spirits of passionate souls? This is the sidedness of calm which troubles me sometimes as I go to bed at night. What is the cost of calm above all else?

The story of Jesus and the disciples in the boat comes to mind. Jesus was calm, he slept while the storm raged; he did not rush to calm the waters. In fact, he only did so because his fellow boat mates were whipping up a fear storm on their own. I am certainly not Jesus, I am the seeker of calm, not the calm sleeper who trusts while in the storm. Am I, therefore “ye, of little faith”? Alas, I fear so.

The one very true thing I can say about being a mother is this: I am never settled or calm when it comes to the decisions I make regarding my own children. The waves lap relentless at the side of the boat; oftentimes threatening and worrisome. I want to see the placid lake, I want to know it is all clear sailing. I want this with a fierceness churning about in my heart.

And so my mind turns back again to the double-sidedness of calm. It is the weighty anchor, holding me in place while the storm within rages on.

The #wholemama word this week is: Calm   Follow me over to Overflow to read more stories from lovely #wholemama storytellers.

Hope #wholemama

I once believed that hope was fragile like an egg; easily broken and spilled out everywhere.

In time, I learned I had mistaken expectation for hope.

Hope held on when my expectations were broken open and proven false – time and again.

For a while, I thought hope was synonymous with dream; both rose up from deep within like tiny sparkly bubbles along the side of glass.

But dreams, like bubbles, can burst – unpredictable, while hope rose again and again despite all circumstances.

I packed hope away as a small and insignificant word; a talisman against negative thinking.

“Yah, I hope so.” “Yah sure, that is the hope.” “I hope it turns out.”

But even when the worst came to pass, when all was lost, hope remained and grew bigger than the loss.

Slowly, I am learning to know hope, to understand that it is the light found in darkness, it is the colour in the grey, it is tender tenacious life growing beneath the ruins.

It is the unseen promise going on forever.

For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. –Romans 8:24-25

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. –Romans 5:3-5

The #wholemama word this week is: HOPE   Follow me over to Overflow to read more stories from lovely #wholemama storytellers.

Breathe …please just breathe: #wholemama

“Take a breath.”

“Calm down, and take a deep breath.

“In through the nose, slowly out through your mouth.”

“Breathe …please just breathe.”

For years, I have been begging my kids to breathe through their feelings – their big, messy, tear-filled feelings. I have walking into the middle of screaming matches, hauled kids out of bedrooms after doors have slammed, and I have watched each of them wind themselves up so tight their faces begin to turn red and pinched.

So, I remind them to breathe.  But every time they resist. Every – single – time

They fight this advice like it is bad tasting cough medicine. Instead they grasp at words and try to force them out through tensed up lips, they resist any effort which might stop them from trying to cram every breadth of space with reasons why they are so very upset and justified and ultimately …right. As if by overwhelming the quiet, they will overpower all sense before silence has a chance to fill up the space with reflection.

And so I begin again with “Breathe” and together we gradually work our way through the balled up helter-skelter feelings. We take a breath and slow down and start again. Trying again, but this time, breathing through the feelings, letting the emotions expand and fill out so that we can recognize them and name them, letting their fullness come into focus, and then together we let them go like overfilled balloons, letting them fizzle and shrink and look a little silly.

Mediation is a mothering task which has taken me some time to grow into- I learned it on the back of parenting toddlers and babies and preschoolers who were unequipped to deal with mum’s feelings and therefore the only adult in the room had to re-evaluate how she was managing her own self – she had to learn to breathe through her own messy, balled up feelings or explode. You would think I had it all mastered by now.

And then… something comes along and strikes a nerve, sets off my internal “rightness” button, or my “but I have a thing or eight to say about that” switch, or the “I can’t believe I think they think this thing about me” toggle. And off I go, usually internally, ranting and arguing and justifying or just plain conjuring things out of thin air which seem to support my internal feelings. I fill the space in my head with all kinds of imagined slights and hurts and injustices. I cram any and all perspectives out the window and slam it shut, rebreathing my own stale, mostly foul air. When finally I can’t keep up the internal waves of feelings –when the space is so stuffed up with me that there is no air – I sputter to a stop – hurting, aching.

And a still and quiet voice says:

“Take a breath.”

“Calm down, and take a deep breath.”

“In through the nose, slowly out through your mouth.”

“Breathe …please just breathe.”

And as soon as new air enters, something changes – a lightness comes in again – reminds me to look carefully, to name the feelings for what they are, to let them go like crazed overfilled balloons… again.

Reluctant child – I am. Reluctant children – they are. But then compassion fills the heart space between us and together we can rest in knowing that we are loved with a greater love, one which breathes life into our dry, obstinate bones.

Breath enters our lungs the moment we hit the cold dry world – and our first impulse is to cry because it is a foreign thing – to let the lightness into ourselves, to have it fill us up, nurture our bodies, our hearts, our minds. We fight it and yet we cannot deny it.

Today the #wholemama word is: breath.  Follow me over to Overflow to read more stories from lovely #wholemama storytellers.

Jumping when a Leap is required #wholemama

To leap takes a great deal of faith, commitment, and energy … sometimes more than we, alone, can muster.

I have made big moves in my life – literal moves – but they were safe and predictable at least in my mind. I left my mother’s home and moved to Vancouver when I was just shy of 18 to live in a “riskier” neighbourhood and attend university. It was a huge change, leaving my friends, my family, my known world – but I wasn’t afraid and leaving my home at that time was necessary for my own sanity and safety. No one but me knew that fact so to some it might have looked like I was making a grand leap. But I knew it was more of a small jump off a sinking ship. It is easy to jump when it is the only way to survive.

It felt like a successful jump, I gradually found my footing, and found I could navigate on my own. Enough so, that I took another leap. It was a life changing leap – but very much one I felt I was led to and quite confident would be met with open arms on the other side. I asked to be forgiven and confessed that I believed. As hoped, there were great healing arms waiting to catch me.

However, when the anxiety of this leap soaked in, the fear of its meaning, its implications kept me hovering near the gap’s edge for a long time. I remained a dry seed, holding itself inside, hidden under rocks, and clouded by weeds. Dormant.

Then the phone rang.

Now the thing about jumping from sinking ships is that they are presumed lost. Having jumped from mine, out into a world of my own, I felt I was clear from the secret which had prompted me to flee. Free from it – I tried to move on, holding my hurting truth inside where I felt it could not reach anyone else. I carried it with me in hope that those dearest to me could carry on innocent and unaffected.

But what if jumping from that ship allowed it to stay afloat if slightly aslant. What if by staying afloat it convinced others it was safe to come aboard despite its inherent weakness. What if I was still very much connected, as by a thin rope about my heart, to the fate of this ship.

The phone rang – and upon listening to the tale told through it – that thin rope pulled tight around my life and heart and breath. I was going down with the ship – I became aware that I had never been truly free of it and I was in danger of forever drowning along with it if I couldn’t find the words to release my secret.

Leap: Cold beads of sweat down my spine. All I need do was speak … but it is hard to pull up words you have worked so hard to push down and away, words which have been scarring up your insides. My throat seizing up, turning to stone next to a heart gushing and broken. Through the pain, through the panic to breathe – I managed to gasp out a word, then two, though tears and anguish flooded through me, I could feel the ground give way beneath me as I spoke out the truth, my self thrown into a dark unknown, away and away and away from all that had come before, from all who had been who they were, before.

Laid out on the floor – fallen to pieces, tears and truth left me a hollowed out husk, all light and untethered. My whole self – hurt. I lay like a limp rag doll on my new shore, sobbing waves, upon waves. Far away and on my own, I wept – the crack I had leapt over was turning into a chasm removing me from everything past. I wept and was carried away on waves of grief.

But then, those arms; those healing arms I had leaned into before and then abandoned – they lay over me, covering me. Where shame, dark as pitch, had lived inside of me – where sorrow had dwelt, a light grew bright. My broken soul, re-broken, felt set to mend. I was in new territory – and I could feel a release burst forth as my tiny seed broke through its shell.

I needed to jump ship when I did, but in my finite human wisdom I missed the mark. He knew I needed to make a full leap in order to be broken open and made new.

Leaps are not always grand. They don’t always lead to a wondrous adventure. They don’t come without some pain. Sometimes they are necessary to survive; often times they are what is needed to grow.

Today the #wholemama word is: leap.  Follow me over to Overflow to read more stories from lovely #wholemama storytellers.

This is the ship my son drew for me but I could not use it for the title photo because I could not have it associated with a ship a person might want to jump off of. This is a beautiful ship full of amazing people – this is my ship.