START with Yes

Five Minute Friday is one of my favorite things! It keeps me writing and keeps the time investment to a minimum - perfect for my life right now. Every week we get a one word prompt and a whole bunch of us set our timers for five minutes and write on that word. We go back and read each other's posts and leave comments. It is a wonderful encouragement and I have been participating off and on for many years.

This week's word prompt is START:
Timer set - GO

When I START something, it is usually with great passion and enthusiasm. I am a fantastic starter... but not such a great follow through or finisher... so I am STARTing again, from the middle, in the midst of the noise and chaos, with a re-fresh-moment or three to check on my Yes - goals, purpose and planning with a personal retreat this weekend.

The view out of my window this morning. Peace. Beauty. Refresh.

To START is sacred. How many people don't even have the chance to START the things they wanted to, let alone finish them?

I STARTed triathlons because I desperately wanted to finish something, anything, when my kids were younger.

I STARTed school last December because I knew if I didn't get my brain rolling on something important and deadline driven, I would collapse into the usual Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) I get buried in every winter.

I STARTed a new job, to be a part of the community that cared for me.

There are so many reasons to START. But all of it begins with a simple Yes. Yes to my calling - Yes to my purpose. Yes to my family. Yes to my marriage. Yes to the world I live in.

In a culture full of "say Yes to whatever feels good", my Yes is intentional based on my purpose and design.

When I START with Yes, it is a purpose driven choice.

STOP.

I have had decades of coaching and counseling to land solid in my purpose and my design. I help others because others helped me. Staying on track and focused in those areas are key to my physical, mental and emotional health. Let me know if you need help with such things.

Blessings! Thanks for reading!

Five Minute Friday: BEAUTY in spite of Pain

It's Five Minute Friday!

We write for five minutes on a one word prompt. This week: BEAUTY

Ready, set, GO!

I've been in pain with a migraine for 39 days now. I spent 19 days in the hospital while they tried everything imaginable to get rid of it to no avail. On my 6th IV I developed a blood clot and now have to be treated with blood thinners.



SO. BEAUTY has felt rather elusive.

However, BEAUTY is wherever you look. When I am in massive pain, yes, I have to look harder. So I started taking pictures. To help me. To see.









I wish things were different. I miss the old me. I miss driving and the noise of my life. I miss being in the sunshine and yes, even shoveling snow.

I am learning, again, how I am NOT what I do. The BEAUTY inside of me and the BEAUTY around me cannot be contained or even distorted by pain, unless... I LET IT.

When I am so sick of the pain and I just want it to go away - legit, right?! I honestly want to stop breathing till its over. I am NOT suicidal. I want to live, I just want the pain to stop. Then it sucks me in like an undertow dragging me out to the sea of self pity.

Sometimes it is easier to break free than others, but eventually I do. To look for BEAUTY, again.

STOP.

Light saber storage, just in case.

What Can I Control?

Joining the Five Minute Friday writing gang again today.

I find that when I feel out of control I am flooded with anxiety and my productivity is severely unhinged.

When I stop and focus on what I can control -  ME - my actions, responses, reactions and behavior everything in my world comes into order.

What I can control is deciding what I will do and how I will proceed with whatever is happening in my world in any given moment.

I have 3 boys who are super busy, challenging, and incredibly brilliant - I'm their mom - I'm supposed to feel that way... but they are also like standing in front of a pitching machine with a bat in my hand and every ball coming toward me is unpredictable.

As I type they are yelling battle cries, shooting Nerf guns and careening about the house fighting with each other about whose is what and jockeying for position in the hierarchy of our world...

I can control me, type, focus on the benefits to letting them work things out for themselves while I carve out 5 minutes to blog.

The difference between peace and anxiety for me is knowing what I can control is me.

2017 the Year of Joy

It was 10 years ago, I had to say goodbye. Losing a baby changes you.

This past week my body has had more memories than I have. Back to back anxiety attacks, sadness, restlessness, and random mood swings that seem connected to nothing, I have been reliving it. The uncertainty, the fear, all came back like a tidal wave of history. The week of waiting to know if she was going to grow.

It was my first trimester, elated, I was already attached. Our toddler boys and I came up with a song to celebrate her existence only to have to change the lyrics once she died. They saw her, like a diamond on a ring when heart was beating, she was real to them. Having a sister in Heaven changed them too.

I’d walked with beloved friends through this loss. I’d seen the grieving, the heartbreak, the leaning in to Jesus when temptation is to push Him away. I begged Him to show me who I’d lost. In the haze of sleep and waking, the day after loss-discovery, He showed her to me. Tucked in His arms, girl-pink blanket swaddling and white knit cap revealing dark eyebrows, feathery lashes on eyes closed asleep, sweet teeny nose, rosebud lips relaxed, peaceful. For a few moments, only moments, the agony was replaced with beauty.

My middle name is Joy. I’ve loved and hated having an emotion as a part of my title. I wanted a girl and thought having a little girl named Joy would be delightful. My logical linear thinking Love said naming a child after an emotion wasn’t something he would consider. Until now.

We were overJoyed when we discovered I was pregnant for the third time. She only knew our Joy for her arrival. She would never know the pain of earth-living, Joy was the perfect choice for her.

Ten years later, I type in the early hours, Sophie-dog in my lap, releasing again the darling little lady waiting for us in Heaven. Grateful for the gift of her. The knowing of grief while embracing Joy is the declaration to dive deep and rise.

2017 the Year of Joy.

Re"Fine"

Joining the gang at Five Minute Friday today...


Choking again on another day of anxiety attacks.

The sun is shining, the sky is blue and I’m sobbing in my truck.

I went to lunch with my hubby, which I typically love, but instead today we talked of grocery budgets, his opinions and mine on expenses and I mentioned how I feel buried in my MUST DO NOW list. I’m sure he didn’t enjoy it any more than I did. He feels helpless with this crazy place that happens in our world. After 25 years, it’s still a challenge despite the professional resources we are grateful for.

And so, I sob, all the way home and cry at my keyboard as I type.

I see the word prompt for today is REFINE.

I feel like taking it in a non-normal direction and say re-fine is to say you are fine, and then when someone else asks, “How are you?” you say “fine”. So you re-“fine”. And you keep saying it because when you are feeling sucked in the blackness despite the sunny soggy-snow-melty blue sky day, that is how you are. Fine.

I don’t imagine off-ing myself. My suicidal thoughts died when my psychiatrist told me that often kids follow their parents if they commit suicide. That horrified me. Never. Ever. Ever.

Today I am just fine. Crying, sniffling, trying to push through the anxiety that is coursing through my veins I will continue to re"fine” until I believe it. 

I'll be "fine".

Waiting

My friend prayed for me this morning because my level of frustration was too much to bear on my own

I am writing this without punctuation at the end of sentences because that’s what waiting feels like So much of what I am doing now feels like doing then waiting then doing some more without a real end in sight I know there will be one But when

I have waited for so many things in my life and in this season it feels like the waiting just goes on and on Many of the people around me don’t see the waiting because it is held close

Deep

Prayers that long to be answered and the discomfort of waiting just festers some days and other days there is peace

But not today

Today there is anger in the waiting I write to keep the bitterness at bay Praying for others in the waiting season brings a reprieve from my own pain and frustration only to have it return in some crescendo like holler at Heaven I know waiting transforms exposes releases reveals

Today I’m going for a walk with my dog while I wait some more

Free

I'm writing with the Five Minute Friday crowd again on Saturday morning.

Start:

So many times in the past few months I have felt like I'm stuck living under a microscope watching and waiting to see what would happen... Stumbling in and out of caring.

And now, after some spiritual recalibration - I am FREE.

It's not about me! It's about Him!

Pride is such a nasty thing, sucking me into defensive mode and tempting me to forget that key truth!

Refreshing as the sun breaking through the clouds on a stormy day I am to live in being "FOR" and not worrying about what might be "against".

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love kindness and mercy, and to humble yourself and walk humbly with your God? [Deut. 10:12, 13.]”
‭‭Micah‬ ‭6:8‬ ‭AMP‬‬
http://bible.com/8/mic.6.8.amp

The clouds are rolling in, lightning and thunder returns, I remain FREE to do what He has shown me knowing the sun will come out.
Stop.