Living-Deliberately.com

Full hearts, full tummies, full house.

Happy Thanksgiving from our house to yours!

My attitude is kind of sucky this morning. I had some special plans, the kind that are one-of-a-kind and can’t replicate, that abruptly got changed for me today. Happens to everyone now and then, I know. But before coffee, caught off guard, was not a great time to hear the news and it sent me on a little pout fest for about an hour. I had this list on my list of things to do, together with a reminder that I’m still working on my posts for “What’s Right”, and have not wanted to break away from my self-pity party in order to do it. Cryin’ in my coffee cup, sniffling worse than any recent cold, and thinking dire thoughts about the future all were given some space ahead of thinking about what I’m thankful for. This is kind of rebellion on my part because I know as soon as I do this list I’m going to feel better and part of me DOES NOT WANT TO (dammit ). I deliberately did not want to feel better. If I had a day to it, I’d watch sad movies and eat junk food, and really wallow hard in it.

However, there is pie to make. And cleaning to get done. And that leads to the reason why…my little neice and nephew are on their way and I’m going to get baby luvin’ in a few hours. My awesome sister and her husband are coming (yes, they are more than just baby transportation…we miss them too!). The thought of little “Doris Day and Brother” are enough to push those pouty thoughts a little out of the way. And the sound of my happy birthday boy in the next room giggling with his new toys pushes them a little further. I can hardly believe my baby is turning 4! Being active in the preparations for Thankgiving Day makes it very hard to sulk and fret over what I don’t have that I wanted. So like dry sand through my fingers, my negativity is going to sift away, which is really a good thing.

And here are 5 other good things that are going to get it started. I”m thankful for:

• Ernesto, the old fishing bird I watch over a friend’s pond. He seems to know my voice and he sits like a sentinel on an old log watching me. He’s part of a nature scape that has come to mean a lot to me, part of a cherishing of Florida that was slow in coming as I let go of living in Tennessee this year. Ernesto reminds me of a line in a poem I read, “think of what the trees have seen”, and I gain perspective every time I think of it. Birds and trees sit constant through our passing tumults. We can learn from that.
• The contemplativeness of cooking. Of something slow and deliberate to put my hands to, that results in a product, that communicates effort and care, that doesn’t require language in order to succeed.  Many times the act of cooking and preparing food gives me time to work through a struggle or express a thought that I otherwise would leave stifled.
• An injury-less year, with running and training that could have very easily resulted in strains and pulls and aches and pains. Exercise is a huge stress-reliever for me and an injury would have had a ripple effect. In a year without medical insurance, it’s even more important to remain strong and healthy. Daily blessing.
• Water. If Tennessee’s strong point is those waves of blue and green mountains (now autumnal shades of brown and purple), Florida’s is water. Our massive river, the expanse of the ocean…I try to integrate as much of it into my life as possible. Often I’ll drive out of my way to take a bridge or be near the intercoastal waterway, just for the deep breath of air and openness I feel when I see the water and smell the salt air. It can easily be the boost needed to keep on keepin’ on.
• Life changes. Sometimes the other side of this coin is also my biggest grief. I’m hungry for settlement, consistency, and an end to certain processes. I get weary of no two days ever being the same. But there also is an openness that defies despair…life changes so much that it’s impossible to know for certain that “it will never get better”. Chances are high that it’s at least not going to stay the same and who knows the future? It very well could be better than anything I have dreamed.

Join me, comment, or Tweet…but leave a link! Happy Thankgiving everyone and here’s a toast to “Living Deliberately”…. in attitude, word, and deed.

As ever, comment, join me (and link), or tweet…just a week away from Turkey Day!

5 Things I’m Thankful for today:

• solutions to problems and inner strength
• my beautiful children and how in-arguably well they are doing
• imagination, dreams, hope, and art
• a roaring fire on a cold day
• buttery pastries made with macaroon coconut, apricots, 3 kinds of berries, and struessel topping, served with warm tea and friendship on a hideous day

And if anyone can spare a little prayer our way for our cat, my mother’s cat Jaasper is missing. He’s a pampered and spoiled housecat without claws or manly fighting skills, out on a night with a 6 hour hard freeze. My grandma moved north today and we’ve had some other intense family stuff present so it would be especially comforting to find our kitty safe and sound. A small thing in the universe I know but sometimes the Little Things matter quite a bit. Thanks, Tia

In my Thanksgiving Countdown list every week, a recurring point has always been the friendships in my life. And having those people in my heart and life really are one of the biggest elements of my life right now that is “right”.

A look at my Facebook list was interesting: I’ve been blessed to have friends in every state I’ve lived in, friends since I was a baby, friends since I was a bushy-headed 13 year old. Friends since high school, friends who I met in the gap between school and marriage. Friends who’s babies were born when mine were, friends in every church along the way, friends inside of the box and out. Friends who homeschool, public and private school, friends who unschool. Single and married, black and white, gay and straight, longterm and new. I have friends who walked through the door of divorce before me, friends who’ve been through violence to the other side and encourage me along my way, friends who’ve been married 40 years and Understand. I have friends who waited through and were Still There when I went years disallowed from contacting them. Friends who have protected me, sheltered me, challenged me, and been painfully honest and straight with me. Friends who understand the reasons behind my journey and friends who don’t but love me anyway. Friends who voted McCain/Palin and friends who canvassed for Obama. Friends who have never seen my face but read every word I wrote this year, and I, theirs. Friends who don’t own a computer. Friends who giggle at my exploits and friends who won’t let me take things (or myself) too seriously. Friends who saved my life and friends who saved my cupcakes. I’m glad it’s a big, big world.

If you’re reading this, you know who you are.

One of the things that was pointed out this year is that having a variety of friendships is a sign of a healthy life. When a person is evaluated for personality disorders and mental illness, one thing that is looked at is the relationships around them. Are there large gaps of time where they don’t communicate with their siblings? Do they still talk to anyone who served in their wedding? Are they in touch with anyone from their childhood? How long can they hold the same job in the same office? When is the last time they went out with someone for fun? Do they have a balance between old friendships and new, in a variety of settings? After all, the buddy you chat with about yesterday’s game over the cubical wall is different than your old roommate yet being able to maintain both with stability requires mental balance and health. People who only have old friends probably don’t get out much or handle their daily stress well. And people who only have new friends who cycle through quickly probably have a host of other, mostly narcissistic, issues as well. Or so the discovery has gone.

So, if having relationships is a sign of health, I think it also encourages health. Having a lot of people in your life means you have a support system. You aren’t alone. And you can’t be small…. people are all so different. So challenging. You have to learn to ebb and flow and let people be Who They Are, which in turn sharpens you into a Better You. I can see the contrast through my years of how I’ve been challenged to listen more, say things better, reach out of myself, hear someone else’s need. Loneliness isn’t just about the one who is isolated and can sometimes be very selfish. I can’t know or address anyone else’s need if I’m locked away to myself. And they can’t know mine. The world shrinks.

Controllers know this. They like the world small because it means more of it is under their thumb. It’s more easily managed. Eliminate abusive control and the world grows; freedom blooms.

People Are Beautiful and variety keeps life growing. You can’t have Spring without Winter or Summer without Spring and who would really want one long, never-changing season? My friends who try new foods with me know this, as do my friends who read new books and my friends digging into musical history for an old classic or salvaging windows from that old house for a cold-frame. I grow when I find a common interest over native grains with someone of a foreign (to me) faith.

I’m a big believer that God always does His work through people. That means, when we pray, we’ll see the answer very often via another human being and maybe it doesn’t look like what we expected. Many, many times I find myself near tears with gratitude of the friendships that are in my life. For years I was told I didn’t have time to give them and to let them go. Or that they were hazardous people that I should avoid. Or that I’d outgrown them. But life in the Light has shown that not to be the case at all. Even busy lives can include times to connect. Maybe not as often as anyone would like but enough to communicate caring, interest, and the hope for more. Someone’s idea is not dangerous to me or mine unless they force it upon me and ironically, friends don’t do that…controllers do. And how can someone really “outgrow” another human soul? None of us is at our destination yet and everyone is growing.

So, dear friends, you are one thing that is right in my life right now. If I could change anything about it, it would only be that there continue to become more of you, with more time to really nurture and discover. What I have, I hope to preserve. I want to be a better friend, listen more, grow more, discover and give. New, old, casual, intense, same as me, different than me… It’s an honor to be on the path of life with you. Thank you.

Come join me! Comment, Tweet (Follow me on Twitter.com), or blog it (but leave me a link so I can read yours too!).

• Fall weather, seeing it in 3 states, catching the “peak” in different places, and getting to show the beauty of it all to someone who had never seen it before
• friends who love me, who call me on “cryin’ and feelin’ sorry for myself” gently, with hugs and funnies, who are more of a connection to a place than sticks and stones will ever afford
• my growing family
• Magpies…cupcake nirvana, “All Butter All The Time”
• the sun setting on the Gypsie life, leaving peace, stability, consistency, and healing in it’s wake

I’m currently going through a self-evaluation of sorts as I decide what I want to set as my goals for the coming year. As a result, I’m contrasting different elements in my life. What works, what doesn’t work, what’s wrong, what’s right….and that’s when it occurred to me (somewhere between the pine trees, the dirt farm, the river, and the bridge on yet another long drive) that I don’t often spend a lot of time listing What’s Right In My Life.

I decided that I would make that my November emphasis. Together with the Wednesday 5 Thankfulness Countdown, I want to focus on what’s been great this year, what is just right in my life right now, what I want to work to preserve. In December there will be time for clarifying what needs to change and in January I’ll begin the list of deliberate goal setting and achievement. But for now I want to answer the cozy hearkening of contemplation.

Of course, this morning when I got up, day one of this attempt, everything went wonky. I overslept and felt crappy. The kids were crabby and so were The Parents. We ran late, couldn’t find hair bows and matching socks, decided on lunch in the cafeteria rather than pack (oh the pain!), my computer froze…it really was presenting itself in every way to be the kind of day that can only be dealt with under the covers with home improvement TV and fast food. And yet, that wasn’t an option as we all muttered and grumbled onward.

A quick chat with a long-distance friend set things right. “What is the sunny side this November 6 that wasn’t true last November 6?”. It is, of course, that a crabby morning in safety surely wins out against a crabby morning in fear. Within seconds I was reminded that safety has to be one of the biggest things that is RIGHT. And friends who are there through the thick and thin of our days is right there next to it.

Listing what is right in my life was a great exercise in gratitude yesterday. I did most of it on the beach, under gray and windy skies, while my little boy searched for shells and sea glass. More “right”, because access to the constancy of the ocean has been a huge benefit this year. Watching my little guy grow from a non-verbal baby 12 months ago to a very conversant man-child now is another “right”; babies don’t grow when things aren’t right and he grows as he should.

I’m looking forward to this process. I’m sure there will be some days with tea and a journal; others with only time in them to think while driving from point A to point B. Life still holds plenty of drama but it also consists of more stability than turbulence. This month, it’s time to focus on the part of the glass that is half full.

Join me, tweet, or comment! I’d love to hear your 5 too!

• for our new President-Elect, for the history of that vote, and for the waves of hope and optimism flowing forth
• for the list I’m working on, “What is Right In My Life”. I am soooo blessed!
• journeys, progress, and scents on the air that can remind me of how far I’ve come this year
• a calendar full of happy dates to look forward to
• provision, health, hope, healing, wholeness, direction, safety…this was my prayer this year and I’ve seen so much fruition

For the past year I’ve been a part of a weekly support group for survivors of Domestic Violence. One of the biggest benefits of this has been the discovery of commonality: each of us experienced things in isolation, went through a time of not understanding the irrationality, the insanity of what was happening, and through the group, we find that it really was all the same…that we actually have shared experiences.

This is because abusers are not unique. They don’t read their tactics in a handbook but strangely, they all do the same things, or variations on a theme. Likewise, the families they came from are shockingly similar. And the kind of women who find themselves married into it also are of a kind. We find our lives in the pages of books we thought were unrelated to us, using labels that we fought to deny, and in the discovery, find freedom.

So in a recent meeting the issue of grandparents came up. “Why”, one wanted to know, “would a grandparent refuse to engage with a child, or send them a birthday gift, or discontinue calling, because their son (the abuser) was prohibited from contacting the child?” In our group we have many women who are dealing with men under court order to have no contact with their children. This includes third parties only so much as that they may not pass on messages from the man to the child. Impartial judges grant these in cases of true danger and harassment; where one exists, it’s with merit.

The situation is a sad one. The children usually don’t struggle too much with it on a day to day basis…grandparent relationships are very different than parental ones. If blessed with a good one, it’s additive. If an absent one exists, life generally moves on pretty smoothly. The real loss is What Could Have Been but as this is abstract, most children aren’t terribly aware of it and only become so in adulthood.

The answer is pretty equally sad. They do it because it’s an isolation technique: “Do what we want or we’re on strike”. Designed to manipulate or guilt, it’s subtle in nature, the desired intention to make it look like the mother is not “letting” contact occur because she had to seek protection from a violent man, which the grandparents tend to deny (they did create him after all and there is their own element of denial to deal with there). Trouble is…in every case in the room, while the woman may not approve of many aspects of the grandparents way of doing things, she’s worked to facilitate an open door between child and grandparent, only to experience a wall of silence or refusal to engage from the grandparent.

Conditional love at its…um… best.

These situations are not about the third party, no matter how much they want to strive to stick their foot into things. The solution is not about them either: it’s what is best for the child. Does it really benefit a child to hear, “we’re waiting to give you your gifts in person” when years go past without a physical visit? What child really believes long term that there is a room full of missed birthday gifts waiting for the eventual day with their father gets his act together and they can get those notes from their grandma (who could have mailed it any damn day along the way)? All a little one knows is Who Shows Up: if you’re there, you love them, you remembered them, you think of them. Gift giving like what is described, or phone calls or emails, reveal themselves to be so much darker in nature: done only for the feeling or benefit the giver gets from it. When they don’t get what they want, they withhold, and it was never about true giving in the first place.

So such are the things that come out in a sharing group. One woman shares what’s on her heart and a chorus of understanding results, because at least 2 or 3 have been there as well. Sometimes, like this week which has been very quiet for me, I’m just silent, blown away by the commonness of what goes on in people’s lives.

And other nights, little gems of statements surface and I think about them for days after. One of them went like this:

Men that abuse their wives are the kind of man who goes to the bathroom to look at his face. He sees something on his face so he gets the cleaner out and wipes the mirror. When he still sees something on his face he goes and gets his wife, and reams her out for her bad housekeeping, for the “filth” in their house, for her pathetic efforts. She apologizes and cleans the mirror for him, endeavoring to do better. He walks away feeling better, as if the smudge on his face was no longer there.

They really do seem like they’re cut from the same cloth. It’s how profiles are built I guess…assemble a room of them and they’ve all got similar rap sheets as well as the same outward positive traits. Support groups are brilliant ways to bring this out. More than mere sharing, it becomes a process of taking sin that has happened in the dark and pulling it into the light, where it looses it’s power over someone. It also builds understanding, which leads to empowerment and freedom. Communicating “you are not alone” can make the difference in surviving. When a woman comes in who has returned to her abusive situation, or not broken the pattern in her life with other relationships after leaving her first abuser, it’s almost always because she felt alone.

Most areas have women’s shelters and a growing number of these have support groups attached to them. You don’t have to be divorced to go, or even separated…you just have to take the first step of admitting you’re in a dysfunctional pattern that needs to change. If every day is fresh, with no mistakes, then every day forward can be a new day towards health.

I always think of “Five Little Pumpkins And How They Grew”.

Elvis, Alice in Wonderland, Abe Lincoln, and a Monkey.

I can take zero credit for the costumes…the ideas were all the kids’ and the brilliant creations, thanks to Grandma.

New family tradition for the day after our new family tradition (they’ve only trick-or-treated for two years now): CANDY PANCAKES!!

Take your favorite pancake batter (mine is half wheat, half white, with the wheat soaked in buttermilk overnight), add some wheat germ, mix like making regular pancakes and set aside. Raid the kids’ bags for the best of the chocolate (100 Grand bars and Twix had the best results) and chop to the size of chocolate chips. Pour the batter onto the skillet and sprinkle with some candy chunks. Flip when bubbly on one side. Serve without syrup…they are sweet enough! We had hashbrowns, sausage, and farm fresh eggs to go with them so the pancakes were just a fun touch!