Trust-Me Boulevard.

 thin skinned beauty

The other day as I was driving home, I ploughed through a mass of dandelion fluff floating through the air.  Millions of feathery seeds once attached to a stem had  uplifted from the field beside the road and then got caught in a breezy travelling draft only to eventually disperse and settle to begin the cycle again on someone else's lawn.  My car parted through the fluff.  Before I knew it, I was on the other side this dandelion storm heading in the same direction.  Smiling.  It was a very cool experience.

I was reminded of this tiny burst of a moment tonight when I was trying to figure out where I've been and why I haven't been able to settle down enough to write.  I realized that whenever I've tried, I couldn't harness my thoughts.  I couldn't remain attached to the stem of an idea.   I have been emotionally, cognitively, physically uprooted.  Spiritually too. 

At first inward glance, I focused on the negative reasons.  We tend to do that don't we?  As much as I strive to be a "glass half full" person and can encourage someone else to alter their inward glances from the negative to a more productive positive, when I'm at my worst I can't make the switch very well at all.  So, I looked at it from that angle and this is what I saw...........

There have been days when I've felt like a train wreck and I'm so bloody busy trying to keep up with everything I have to do around here!  Exhausted, alone, overwhelmed.  Discarded.  I second guess myself.  I let my confidence sag like milkless breasts.  OOOOOoooooo!  I get all chilled and flushed at the same time even writing about it/thinking about it because the most predominant feelings that stream through me are shame and guilt. Failure. My emotions are so raw and on the surface way too much these days. There are many reasons for this which have left me with a sense of stalled vulnerability.... a heart open too wide and for too long.  This leads to serious brain flooding and over reacting!  And a jumble of questions........ ones that certainly don't have easy answers.

How do you love like you've never been hurt when you've been hurt?  How do you truly forget or let go of past shambles so that it doesn't impact a new relationship?  There has to be a way.  There has to be a different avenue.  I keep seeking.  I want the street I seek to be named Trust-Me Boulevard, but I think it will have a new name.  I just don't know where it is or what it will be called but let me catch a draft heading in that direction. Please! 

What happens if allow your inward glance to lean towards a more positive perspective? This is actually where I am tonight.  For the first time in weeks, I am breathing differently.  I think.  For now anyways.  No doubt I have been scattering my energy in too many different directions.  Scampering and scattering.  Unbalanced.  Seemingly floating in air without the tendrils to keep me grounded.  Caught in a draft.  Seeking and fearfully uncomfortable as I take new risks, form new relationships and TRY to juggle everything else in my life I must focus my attention on.  

However, it may not be such a bad place to be at all.  Challenging!  FOR sure!  Taxing? YES!  Messy?  YOU BET!  But, being in this place of transitional movement is ripe for opportunity.  I'm learning every day.  I'm also getting things done around here.  Maybe not as efficiently as I should or would or could.  But, I am.  New front steps.  Repainted another room.  Decluttering as best as I can.  I've got a load of gravel sitting in my driveway just waiting for someone to shovel and level it!  Any offers?!!  

The garden is blooming.  So are the weeds.  The lawn is lush green and where there were patches of winter kill, it is newly seeded.  The laundry isn't folded. There are cobwebs and dust in the corners of my home.  But my kids are thriving and so am I.  In spurts and starts and stalls and stops.  My love life is a bit of a minefield, but that's to be expected.  I'm learning to trust again.  Tearfully, fearfully, bravely.... in my own wonky way.

I'm also experiencing many many many light bulb awakening moments.  Big stuff!  Big blooming stuff..... like how messed up my boundaries are with the people in my life ...... and how much they have altered.  I'm learning that I have a long way to travel when it comes to trust again...... and I realized tonight that the name of the avenue I am looking for won't be named Trust-Me Boulevard.  Rather, the first street I seek out will be  Trust-IN-Me Place.  This comes with letting myself off the hook by stopping the shame and guilt feelings.  Acknowledging them of course, but then telling them to piss off!

If I'm ever going to be like that dandelion fluff and settle down again to begin a new cycle,  I have to be patient with the journey, and accept the fact that it will never be a straight arrow path.  Air drafts, like the pockets of unexpected life messes take you to destinations you may never have seen before.

Hey God are you around these days??  Will you take a moment to check on me... just for some reassurance.  Please let me learn to be more accepting and less sensitive to judgement.  Let me settle where I land.  Let me bloom there on Trust-In-Me Place.  I just know its where I belong........ it's where I can learn that hard lesson of loving again like Ive never been hurt.  Gotta trust in me first, right God? 

the blur of grief.

Sometimes you have to grieve a thousand times to be able to inhale the fresh scent of an old breeze.  Sometimes you have to walk into the centre of your vulnerable holy space over and over again to touch upon the wound that weeps those trapped tears when you least expect it. 

When its not proper to cry.
Like............
When you're standing in the self checkout line with a bunch of "boost me up" tulips in your arms.

Or, when you're telling a funny story only to realize you have lost the person who would've enjoyed it the most.

Damn those tears. November remembrance tears.  They have a lonelier echo to them as they fall into a space stretched between the notes of the last birdsong.  Raven tears.  Not the timbre of the spring warble-desire that pling when the flocks return at dawn.  Not the tears that hang suspended from the eaves in a summer downpour until they cascade into a puddle warmed by pavement.  Raven tears echo past laments.

The yearning to relieve the grief..... to feel the soft feathery touch of another's fingertips on your salt stinging cheeks, to feel the power bounce in your step again motivates, inspires, moves us past the soul sticking sorrow that initially grabs your guts, catches your breath until you exhale the jolting "It can't BE!"

Grief prompts us to turn our hands upward open for guidance, to fold them in prayer.  It cradles us to rock back and forth until you find the centre of gravity.  It offers us a spiritual audience to spill out those fierce words that are poisoning the heart wound, to act out with adolescent limbs grasping for balance again.  It is the flint needed to catch a spark of soulful hope which in turn ignites the lantern of soft light.  Soft light carries us to safety and stillness.........where we once again can gaze inside the stories, memories and familiarity without it rubbing against the wound anymore. 

Sometimes you have to grieve a thousand times to inhale the fresh scent of an old breeze.   Sometimes you have to let the tears stream down your stinging cheeks a thousand times or more before the story is ready to be told with a merciful heart........... one still on the mend. 


ps.  My thoughts after a walk through a Labyrinth on the retreat this weekend.  It was helpful insight.  It was good to let go of another layer of grief.  It doesn't seem like "miles to go" anymore for this little pilgrim. :)

crossing muddied waters.......

Boundaries have a life of their own.  Just when you think they are set up in a fashion you can live with, a new situation, perspective or person seems to come along and knock over the fort.  Or they swim across the moat..........or you reluctantly let the drawbridge down and Badaboom!  In they walk....... into your life, into your space, under your skin.  They seep into your awareness circle and alter the boundaries you have so purposefully and thoughtfully laid out.  Space invaders! 

Most of the time, you have some control over who gets to come in close.  Other times, you have no choice.  And of course, those are the times when it really takes a good "letting go" of the control panel to eventually come to terms with the new boundary.  How do you do that?  I've been working on this now for a month or so when I learned that the nefarious other woman was moving into the vicinity.  I know it is illogical for me to be all flustered about it, but dammit I am! 

Personal growth resides most effectively in the neighbourhood of Discomfort Heights.  But, do I want to live there?  Its nice to visit from time to time, but do I really want the neighbourhood I call home uncomfortable ? .......  the few square mile radius to be rattled by a boundary crosser........one who has upturned, upset, and upstarted my life and the lives of my children? NO!

Since there isn't a hope in hell this woman is leaving anytime soon, I have to seriously alter my thinking and feelings even though I certainly didn't welcome her to move close to my neighbourhood.  I don't even know what she looks like, though I've been given a vague description which has only informed me that she is most likely the direct opposite of me physically and personality wise.  Yet, this apparitious paramour is already ensconced as a permanent fixture in my life because she will eventually develop some kind of friendly rapport with my children and obviously has with the person I once considered the love of my life.  So, please tell me..... how do I get to a point of not caring about this? 

For anyone who doesn't live in this God forsaken small town we call a city, this place is notoriously TINY!  There are no degrees of separation between folks.  Everyone seems to be related or at least connected through one friend/cousin/acquaintance.  It's uncanny really.  So, my obsessive compulsiveness concerning this uncontrollable boundary move has some merit.  Even if it didn't, it does in my pointy little head. 

Why do I even care?  It's not rational. But then again, am I normally a rational kind of human being?  Hell no!  I'm a spontaneously combusting emotionally driven overly sensitive trash talking spouse who was dumped because of all those unpredictable feelings!  I AM SCARY!  BOO! What a hellish embarrassment I turned out to be.  Hmmmmmm...........maybe I'm not the one who should be nervous?

I can be rational when I'm forced to be.  I can be when I am emotionally literate.  I can be if I put my mind to it......... if I let go of an uncontrollable issue, if I remind myself that in the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter and I shouldn't give a rat's ass about it.   But, really..........did she have to move in just up the hill from me?  Weren't there other homes on the other side of the river far away from the shops and services I frequent?  I already know she's a keener for Saturday market from reading her blog last winter, so chances are I'll cross paths with her there.  Its a public place.

I can get over these soulfully hurting feelings if I turn my cheeky cheeks, and just carry on. I have to let go of my ego driven selfish thoughts and give it up to just another situation I must learn to surrender up to a Higher Power.  There seems to be an awful lot of surrendering in life isn't there??

I have such an abundant life, and am even surrounded by neighbours who are looking out for me.  I have friends and family who protect me and most importantly help me get on with a new life.  And I have worked purposefully and slowly with this grieving and healing.   I've made unbelievable strides simply by taking new risks, forming deeper friendships, allowing my vulnerability to express itself, praying a lot, doing my own thing, finding waterfalls.........!  Do I need to put in any more time thinking about this? 

It all comes down to why we have boundaries in the first place.  They protect us for different reasons I guess......... and what do my boundaries protect me from?  Quite simply (but in no means simple) rejection.  The moment our paths cross, I just know I will feel the biggest jolt of rejection I have ever felt, and believe me this has been the most predominant feeling I have face in the last couple of years....... my awareness of how much it grew inside my marriage has ballooned over the past few months as I have chipped away at trying to understand just what went wrong.

So, where do I go from here?  How do I detach myself from these unhelpful thoughts?  The first step I've just completed.  I've given the issue wings and words.........I've flushed it out of my inner thoughts.  Then,  I will continue to remind myself that what is such a big freaking deal right now won't be a year from now.  It's just that when you are in the middle of living it, a year from now seems like eternity.  Then, I rethink and re-establish my boundaries and move on.

I wonder if she is still reading my blog?  I doubt it.  She's probably busy unpacking. 

interim .....

get over it
get on with it.
you've got to move on......

not that i particularly enjoy sitting in the field during the interim, i know there is a purpose.  to reach a place where bitterness is left behind, where unanswered questions can be laid to rest, where some answers can be discovered, i have to restlessly remain in a place between "back there and over there...."

sure, i'd love to know the secret timeline for "getting over it....."  does anyone know? 
what are the rules to this process?  OH!  It's an individual thing...... nice.   this isn't a good answer for a chronic perambulating thinker. 

I wish there were times when I could just stop the incessant thinking.  But, that's an impossibility, and absurd in my case.  prayer helps this.... will do more of that. 

just remember..........God provides minimum protection and maximum support.......

yes, yes.......... He's there in that field.... holding me as I face the elements. He's in the ground below where I sit, offering me a pretty fantastic view.....360 degrees, past, present and future.  He keeps reminding me to...

Sit, go slow, walk to clear your head, write to let the feelings and pent up words out, to connect with others,  to do things,  to push outside of the comfort zone often,  to talk it out........ to pray.  He keeps showing up in the most interesting places with a smile and a listening ear.  He lets me be.  He lets me be.  Unprotected but supported. 

I'm learning...... when I think of what I've learned in just a short month, I smile.  I'm smiling.

grief knows no boundaries.  sure there are certain rules of decorum.  i mean you can't prostrate yourself in the middle of a busy intersection without someone calling for the straight jacket.  people grow weary quickly if you carry on too openly with your vitriolic woe is me schtick.  on the other hand, they look at you with judgemental eyes if move too quickly too.  so, what are the rules?  what is the timeline? 

I can only be myself.  But, that didn't work did it?  I was who I am and was rejected. 
Still, I will be myself.
I am who I am.
I can change....... his perceptions of me seem so clearly wrong.  I can't change that.

i have few answers to the questions which bore deep inside me, and this isn't going to change. the answers are not forthcoming and will never be.   i can only twist myself into a pretzel trying to fill in the blanks, trying to face down my own part in the dance that ended.  the sorries have no depth, no meat to them.  things happen, i am told.  i didn't mean it to.  

no that was a choice i say.....a hurting one. a deeply sorrowful hurting one.

it makes me want to lash out.  sometimes i do.  most times i try my best to let it go.  it was not my choice. my choices have come after the dance ended.  the dance has ended. 

we danced so beautifully together..........lively and free......

yeah, we have choices and can choose bravery over weak-kneed escapes. 
the choices reverberate like a clanging gong...........inside me sometimes. 
other times, the gong settles..........
and i know the answers will not be forthcoming.
my apologies to myself and others do.
and soon forgiveness?
i tried.  not good enough it seems.  but i tried.

i'm in the iterim field of lonely still, but i do see that i've moved a speck to the left.  forgiveness is where i am.  forgiveness is where the lifting of the spirit resides.  breathing helps.  breathing is where i am. today.

did you know that the word spirit comes from the word breath?  did you know that the holy spirit is a feminine entity?  as a woman, I will breathe life back into my feminine soul........ like i did with my children.  they came from my breath. 

renewal begins in the spring.....in a field of interim.  I am breathing, filling my lungs the best i can.  my wings are evolving.   eventually a new dance will arise......

Let's see what today brings......... :)

creature comforts and riding the coaster....

Its not just family and friends who stumble through the painful transition of a marriage meltdown, it also includes the whole atmosphere around you.  Our lenses alter dramatically,  foisting us into seeing things in such a different way.  Its like a multi-sensory seismic shift on top of a teutonic plate of moving perspectives, shaky perceptions, and growing alternatives.  Everything has a different meaning.  Some things become more powerfully symbolic.  You can do your best to predict what may trigger your sensibilities, but you can't  prepare yourself fully.  

I guess this is all a part of the roller coaster ride I am on at the Camp Destructo Theme Park.  Frig, I wish they would shut down the power and turn the lights off for a spell!  They keep playing our songs! They keep throwing me curveball items that are attached to meaningful moments in the 25 years I shared with this man I still refer to as my husband but shouldn't.  Even where I am writing this (my kitchen), all I have to do is lift my eyes and I'm surrounded by "things" that were wedding presents, birthday gifts, pieces I use when we've had fabulously fun parties.  It is a minefield of memory triggers that tend to hit the hardest when I am the most raw and tired. Sweet Jesus!  I'm staring at a Bugs Bunny cookie jar that seems to be smiling back at me!  A birthday presnt to a Looney Tunes fanatic who despite everything still makes me laugh.

This list of these unpredictable triggers seems endless, even if I'm not so consciously aware of them because they make up my home.  The esthetics of comfort which display our personalites as individual family members, and as a whole family that we have carefully accumlated are like rings inside a mature tree.......... a giving tree.......... a tree we planted together with hope and dreams in our hearts.  

My home is shifting.  The pictures on the wall, the photos lovingly framed and displayed throughout the house, the furniture and colour scheme, the knicknacks and dinnerware, the bookshelves brimming with favourite stories, pottery given as gifts or chosen because it fit who we were,  shells picked up on beaches, candles which burned so brightly not so long ago..... all seem to have a layer of archeological dust on them now. They sit in inanimate silence, but hold stories that all seem to start with the same sentence..........."Once upon a time......"  Sometimes, their silence is deafening.

It used to be that this home felt like a haven, not just to me but to my family and to our friends who have joined us in many celebrations over the years.  It is an extension of us.  It is an extension of me, especially this kitchen.  I created this haven....... this place people felt so welcome to walk into.   It used to be that I was his home.  He told me so. Often. I was his home.  Like a broken platter, once used to carry cheer, I have been replaced.  His home is somewhere else.....restyled and fresh. It's where his heart is.  Comfort in a foreign land.

My heart is here.  The person I called home is gone.  I feel adrift. 

Its easy just to brush off the idea that stuff really has no meaning.  It does and not just for me. It holds meaning for all of us.  It holds meaning for my children......... much of it allows them a sense of security inside a place that is shifting. So, I can't just push it all away and start again from scratch.  I wouldn't want to do that anyways, because I know my sharp jolting feelings I get when the roller coaster takes a nasty curve will eventually slow down so I can readjust my senses and fix my windblown hair.  

Some of the things will be moved out to join his new home (or maybe not....his new home may not want that.) Some will be tossed onto a heap for a yard sale, refreshed by a new colour scheme, a new "look", a new feel.  And some, will eventually be used over the seasons when the time is less ripe and more right and will represent a softer look back on a different time and place, when this was a dwelling for a family of four and a dog who hasn't quite figured out the lay of the land yet.  We are all suffering from a bit of canine confusion.

What triggers me now, I will eventually come to terms with.  What may take a much longer time to settle is the way I define home and the way he has chosen to define his.  In the meantime, I think I will avoid a few cupboards and choose carefully the soundtrack of music which used to send me into a place of comfort and joy....... which used to ground me into a sense of love and belonging, until the dust settles a bit.  Its the best I can do.  That and sometimes gather the courage to press play on a song from our past and have a good long cry.   Unfortunately, Van Morrison will have to wait a long, long time before I can return to his melodies.  It just too painful.

You know, I used to LOVE the amusement park.  I guess I still do. Roller coasters are my favourite rides.  Water slides too!  Maybe its time to chose another form of amusement.............. calm.   NO!  That's just not who I am. It may be what his other home offer more of........ calm.  But, here?  The rides may be painful and long at times, but they also offer an exhilarating array of joy and a sense of LIFE living.  I'll take the Polar Express option any time over a bland merry go round.

ps.  I have started making changes............. I now live in an indigo blue bedroom thanks to the help of my sister who came to visit over the Easter weekend. More to be done in there before it feels like a sanctuary again, but just by changing the colour and some of the decor I see hope through this long transitional time in my life.

I'll work towards refreshing my soundtrack too...........slowly.

miles to go..........

I've been silent here longer than ever.  There is much to say, yet i hold back the temptation to write it down.  For now, I speak them. In volumes.  With volume.   I speak them as they come to me. All jumbly and random, they spill out in stories and emotions so ripe, so starkly real, so in need to be released out into the vast sky where they can perhaps fuel the stars with energy.  If I write the finger pointing feelings along with the others that breathe passion, if I write it down, it somehow becomes eternally entombed.  I want them to soar out of me, and leave me empty.  

Empty for renewal.

Empty for renewal.

My life is in turmoil, and yet clarity will find me.  As I immerse myself in the love of family, and friends who have offered their energy to me in order to give it to my children, I will find calm and clarity.  Not overnight.  Not with the snap of my fingers.  I have hope. 

As i seek out guidance from the ones in my community who can provide it to me, I am finding new truths. As I learn the gift of what surrendering really means, I am recognizing the trap of resentment I allowed to encase my heart and turn it angry cold.  I see it in others too. Surrendering, expressing, resting, hanging on as best I can, ....... riding the waves of painful turmoil and change, I am feeling the softening caress of God.  It amazes me.   Here I am in the first shocking stages of marriage separation, and my faith is all around me sending little cosmic messages.  I'm not even looking for it!  It gives me strength and hope.  It cradles me when the waves get too big.

There are many topics I want to write about.  There are many stories I'd like to share.  Some I will....like the one where I meet the Prodigal Son.... or at least one of them.  He arrived in my office this week.  they will unfold as grace unfolds.......  I'm in no hurry.

Today, I was told........

Faith is a verb.

It made me smile.  I get that.  It makes sense.  And I believe it.  An action word.  From there, my first reflections brought this thought which I want to share with you......

Faith is a verb.
Love is a verb.
Life is a verb
Breath is a verb
Surrendering is a verb
Discomfort is a verb.
Beautiful is a verb.
Prayer is a living, loving, breathing, surrendering inner and outer faith  beauty of a verb, located in the village of discomfort.

I am a wandering little pilgrim right now, full of raw conflicting voices.  I shout them out into the darkening sky to give the stars energy.  I share them with my family and friends.  I'm also the minstrel entering the woods alone, a soulspace where faith just may reside in the silence of a prayer.  Empty for renewal.  Grieving loss. Living faith.  Unprotected but firmly supported by many.  I am blessed, tired, sad, confused, hurt but I'm going to be alright.  Yes I am.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."