Leave

This word prompt "leave" is a difficult word to write. My thoughts go back to times when I had to leave people I  desperately missed. My family comes to mind but also friends who changed me. I can remember the day we drove out of Provo. My friend Julie stayed to help put the last items in the moving van. I saw her tearful face in the rear window, standing on our lawn and my heart hurt. Never seeing her again was not real. I do see her still. The hurtful part was knowing a chapter of my life with her was over.

    We had growing experiences that are still useful and nurturing today. She helped bring about ideas and spiritual experiences rich and full. Some I have not experienced again. It happens that I call her sometimes to review how we did something back then. I inquire of her if my memory is accurate. She always concurs.
   A second thought brings me to the supper where Jesus closed his chapter of loving, tutoring, and expanding his disciples the apostles. Did his heart hurt? Did he look extra long into their faces? His famous last words were, "As I have loved you, love one another."

      Leaving is painful even when you will still have a relationship to rely on. Leaving means change and change is for sure.

I write on Fridays with a large group who inspire me. Only five minutes and without much thought to perfection. I write, prompted by one word that sends my thoughts to the keyboard and hopefully make sense.

A Feather In The Wind

I am a feather in the wind, up and down again. I've been to some amazing places in my mind but I have also struggled with darkness. These feathers remind me that being thankful brings me back.

 
  I made a thankfulness banner. Each day in November I will look around and see. The feathers will hold my thoughts of gratitude. I started with Distress Inks by dabbing them on my craft paper. A little spritz of water activates the ink.

      I lay each piece of water color paper on the ink. Sometimes I just hold it there. Other times I smear. There is no wrong way. 

   

 The feathers are connected on twine and hung on my mantle.

   Waiting to hold all my gratitude in the coming month, I think I will have a chance to be more mindful and present.

Dare

     I'm going to DARE to toot my own horn today. It's my birthday and birthdays mean something to me. I don't want to ignore them or forget them or to discount them, especially my own.
    As the youngest child, born to older parents I was told that I made my family happy by showing up at the end. I was not an after thought but a not even, ever, thought. A girl at the end of three boys set me up for being the center of attention. I was there, the center of attention, since birth and I believe I really liked it until I stopped being my own friend. That happened during adolescence.

     Friends are honest but loving, hopeful about our future yet truthful about our past, and loyal without being blind. I want to regain the friendship with myself so last year I started doing the work to deserve myself as a friend. I did good this year. I was daring in ways that make me smile. I am hopeful and not in need of being the center of attention but mindful of how grateful I am for the attention I get for being me.

 
 I am a daughter of God and with that heritage I know what true friends are like. Jesus Christ is my best friend and on him I bestow what I know about friendship up until now. I hope to know more in time.

I write on Fridays with a large group who inspire me. Only five minutes and without much thought to perfection. I write, prompted by one word that sends my thoughts to the keyboard and hopefully make sense.

A Little Altered Board Book Entitled "The Gifts Of Imperfection"- A Brené Brown Journal

     Some weeks back I was invited into my friend's art studio to work on a new project. With recycled children's board books we created new journals.

    My theme was easy to identify because I'm reading 'Daring Greatly" in a women's group online and offline with my daughter and friends. I wanted a little journal to remind me of the most important messages of both "Daring Greatly" and "The Gifts of Imperfection".

      I started off with the three gifts, courage, compassion, and connection. These gifts truly are real.

   I want to remember that compassionate people are also those who honor boundaries around themselves and those around others.

   "We are wired for connection." I find that connecting to others who may seem different or far away from us brings unexpected joy. The best treat of doing my online class was making a friend from Michigan who reached out and surprised me with her interest and openness.

     I don't see myself as a perfectionist but this definition encompasses my response to many things in life. Perhaps another way to look at it is a process of self-justification. Perfectionism moves us along a path of suffering. Riding the "hot wheels" of perfectionism is grueling.

Simplify! I need these words as I head into the next two months of holidays.

   Perfectionism rides with shame.  Shame is a big subject. I want to remember that a shaming experience becomes bigger when we don't talk about it. 

    Solving problems is a God given gift. After all, when Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit God gave them options to solve their problem. Part of being creative is seeing another way to make the whole beautiful.

    Staying humble and vulnerable is something I must take in small steps. I do a lot of backsliding and getting back in the game.

   Wow! Numbing is big for me. This week I tried to eat at the table at every meal to avoid numbing feelings with food at the TV. I only made it once a day. I will try again this week.

   And, lastly, my mantra for the next while. Courage over comfort may be the hardest thing I have ever tried to embrace.

     I love my little board book. Thank-you art friend for sharing your idea and time.

Long

   I made an agreement this week to eat my meals at the table whether I was with family or not. I thought it would be difficult but manageable. I am undone with how LONG it will take to change a habit. It is day four and I have only been successful once everyday. I am doing this to break a numbing habit of eating while watching TV, reading, etc. Numbing feelings is very easy to do when I eat while doing other things. It is however, very bad for my ability to know what I am consuming during the day.

   I numb feelings most often when I am tired, anxious, bored, or stressed out. The sobering facts are that I cannot numb feelings that are negative without numbing feelings of joy. That makes me sad. I wrote more about that here.

   Eating at the table brings calmness and gratitude as immediate rewards. I don't see why those rewards alone don't stop me from doing otherwise but, I have some deeply ingrained habits. Eating while watching TV feels like comfort until I think back on my lack of mindfulness.

    I am trying again today. Breakfast was good. It may take a LONG time.

I write on Fridays with a large group who inspire me. Only five minutes and without much thought to perfection. I write, prompted by one word that sends my thoughts to the keyboard and hopefully make sense.

Care

   I've been reflecting on the care of the elderly. When the light of our lives gets dimmer it seems that the intensity changes from casting our light wide to casting our light on those who care. It takes caring to be blessed with an older person's vision and view.

  

 I played at the funeral of a bubbly, young at heart sister with whom I have visited in the past 20 years. She was 92 and lovely in so many ways. I will remember her loving touch at our greeting, her questions about my family, which always came first, and her unfailing gratitude for her husband Jens. Her name was Midge.
  I loved the view from her living room window. It looked over the harbor and the trees were resplendent with color in the Fall. Friends would often bring her plants and bird feeders to hang just outside that view. We knew she spent many hours looking and thinking. I want to be more caring of the ones in the fall time of their life. Winter always comes.

I write on Fridays with a large group who inspire me. Only five minutes and without much thought to perfection. I write, prompted by one word that sends my thoughts to the keyboard and hopefully make

sense.

In The Details

  I am a global learner. I like to see where my learning is going and where it came from. My joy is seeing the whole and I admit I don't have much patience for the details. The two art classes I have taken rocked my reality. They were polar opposites to each other. One was a mixed media class that stressed painting and collaging without concern for the end.  The process was all. How I struggled against the impulse to see the ending, to hold out for the vision I saw in my head.

   Now I am in a classical drawing class. I have drawn at least 50 cubes this week. I am tempted to say "damn perspective". I mean that literally. I want to stop the constant correcting to see the right perspective. Below is a second drawing I sent to the teacher. He encouraged us to send our drawings so that we don't practice incorrect principles. As you can see by his white lines, I did not see correctly. My cubes somehow are more rectangles.

  My eyes are crossing in the task of seeing the cube from underneath, straight on, and from above. Almost always I say I'm done when that nagging voice says, "You don't have a cube yet."

   What I am learning about myself is not earth shattering or even new. I am reluctant to persist to perfection. Good enough may not cut it in all things. I am going to persist against the tendency to wrap it up when I am almost there.

    I find going back to mixed media painting a great release. Color and texture is pure joy after ruler and pencil. What I am hoping for as I struggle to draw is a better understanding of the underneath structure of my painting. Steffon tells us that drawing is like sculpture. I hope to see more accurately and be more patient with the details.

New

     Leaving the gym this morning I saw red, orange, and yellow peeking through the trees in the east. My car turned right, away from home, and started down toward the water. There were two other cars sitting before the beach. They must have felt the pull of the new day.

    I am not used to people using the greeting, "What's up?" or What's new?". If someone used that phrase today I'd say,"Did you see the new day rise?"

“You Are the New Day”

by John David

I will love you more than me and more than yesterday

if you can but prove to me you are the new day.

Send the sun in time for dawn, let the birds all hail the morning.

Love of life will urge me say, you are the new day.

When I lay me down at night, knowing we must pay,

thoughts occur that this night might stay yesterday.

Thoughts that we as humans small could slow worlds and end it all

lie around me where they fall, before the new day.

One more day when time is running out for ev’ryone,

like a breath I knew would come, I reach for a new day.

Hope is my philosophy, just needs days in which to be,

love of life means hope for me, born on a new day.

I write on Fridays with a large group who inspire me. Only five minutes and without much thought to perfection. I write, prompted by one word that sends my thoughts to the keyboard and hopefully make

sense.