*happy dancing like a mad woman*
Goodness gracious. I felt like a duck out of water without means to write, esp once I had decided this is the year to do so! Thank the Lord and thank my wonderful boyfriend, who managed to save everything on the hard drive that I thought was lost, and fix what was wrong and get it going again. I feel like a kid in a candy store….OK, ok, I’ll stop now *VBG*
So my last little post was the first Haiku I’ve ever written. There will be more poetry to come, I can feel it, but it is fluttery and light at this time, landing only long enough to drop a word or a thought, then taking flight again before I can catch it.
In the past 3 weeks, 2 families dear to my heart have buried sons. One, a 23 yr old, who lost his battle with cancer. The other, a 24 yr old, killed on his way to his job as a high school band director, in an auto accident.
I am not sure for which set of my friends it was, is, hardest. The family that watched their much-loved son battle for 5 years with an enemy (brain cancer) that should have taken him much sooner, per his doctors…who was so ready to live, to have a family and work and love and follow his Lord. Or the son who was doing all of that already, with a wife, a small daughter, another child on the way, and a bright and promising future laid in front of him that he was already walking in to.
“No parent should have to bury their child” said Theoden, King of Rohan in LotR, and he was right. Unfortunately, too many do.
Grief…I think I will be writing on that subject. I have had to hug my own sons a bit tighter, for which they complain a bit more, but they are at that age *wink*. Hug your kids. You need it as much as they do.
“Why?!”, we cry
Yet there is little solace
Young men, gone too soon
I love this picture. Besides featuring one of my favorite flowers and colors, it sparkles and shimmers with newness and life and delicate hope. Very fitting for the move into the new year.
This first day of 2015 has been an over-busy one, but a good one. I haven’t had time yet for reflection, or for looking ahead, setting goals, dreaming. I hope to do that tomorrow, as my heart needs it, along with a new notebook (the paper kind). I am an old fashioned girl still in many ways, if paper is old-fashioned now. There is something about dreaming in writing in a beautiful notebook that nothing else can capture. As thankful as I am for our leaps and bounds in technology just in my lifetime, I hope we never lose touch with the things that matter from “the old days”.
I am going into this new year in some ways as blank a slate as the year. An equestrian accident last July left me with a spine injury and unemployed. A good doctor and physical therapist are getting me mobile again, but lifestyle changes are in order-and no, they don’t include giving up horses! Depression dogged my heels this past year, but does not feel to have crossed the threshold with me. I feel hopeful. Perhaps my lines of work will evolve and change, and I will embrace being a writer. Perhaps that and more will open before me. I have lived too much of my life in fear, and with regret. The first came through a combination of survival mechanisms and learned, forced behavior. The second often came due to the first, and to self punishment for it. I have four precious sons, all on the verge of manhood or stepping into it, that I must show a better way, and help through the processing of the pain they have endured, the behaviors they have learned. There is no greater challenge, or honor.
So those are initial musing on goals for 2015. I must re-invent myself to some degree…but honestly I expect that “re-inventing” to be more along the lines of becoming who I was created to be. I am a writer, an equestrian, a mother, not necessarily in that order. I love to learn, and will be embracing that more. I am a follower of Christ, and really loved my last job working in home with the elderly. I love to garden, to homestead, and to bake, though there is much yet I need to learn there, and to put into practice. I often wonder how it all fits together, or what needs to be set aside. Dreams caught in fragile bubbles….
It is 11:17pm, December 31, 2014. I am sitting in a hot bath, with a cup of hot tea and my computer. No, maybe not the wisest thing, but for some reason the only way I can seem to get solitude and my thoughts together today
2014 has been a year of trials and pain, new challenges and hopefully growth, things boiling to a head and things settling. For whatever reason, for the past month, it has been growing in my breast that it is time to start a new blog. I am not who I have been, though I am made up of all those puzzle pieces-and more. So I have been tinkering with themes, titles, reasons, and who I am. The New Year seems like the fitting time to begin. So, here we are…with a grin and a prayer and new resolve for the coming year.
I have been a “sometimes writer” since my teens, with snatches of published poetry, articles, and story scattered along the way. I mostly lost that along the journey, not sure where it was discarded by the path but I am certain it had something to do with the beatings physical, mental, and verbal. Withering has that affect…all that was life pumping in the veins drains out slowly, leaving you dry and twisting in on yourself. You forget what it IS to live, or that it is even possible. 2015 though is eight years since my Lord began to coax me out, calling and culling, pruning and grafting, ever since. Eight…the number of new beginnings. Perhaps that is why it is time to start anew, here. I can’t toast the coming of 2015 with a glass of wine due to the medications I am on for a recent back injury, but I can toast it with a mug of tea. *raises tea* Here’s to the end of a difficult year, and the coming of a new one!
The Time We Have Been Given 