Posted on by followerofchrist3

Two+ Weeks In….

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

Posted on by followerofchrist3

Welcome, 2015!

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….