Don’t close your eyes. This is your life: Are you who you want to be? This is your life: Is it everything you dreamed that it would be? When the world was younger and you had everything to lose. Switchfoot It had a hard-hitting beat. I used to run with it blaring loudly into my earbuds. It has always been one of those songs that has pushed me to think deeply while charging through my pain even harder than I’d […]
Staples commercial circa 2009 It says it all really…I’m sorry, it just does. Meanwhile, I sit in a my counseling office doing Gestalt therapy* on myself. The session goes something like this: Q – Do I wish that a commercial highlighting the idea that summer is over and my four children have to return to brightly lit classrooms with assigned seating and designated computer use didn’t make me giddy with delight? A – Yes. Yes, […]
Her tattoo read “just be held” in black lowercase typewriter-key font. It was perhaps one of the most impulsive decisions she’d made for the time commitment it required of her body. She treated herself to those particular three words on a warm day in July when she felt like she was coming completely undone. Casting Crowns new release,Thrive, had premiered on Pandora. In a moment of utter despair their song, “Just Be Held” spoke to her. It cut […]
She looked up at me, tears streaming down both sides of her face. All I could see were her beautifully lilac-tinted eyes full of water. It must be the way her tears had accentuated the blueness that she’d been born with, I thought sensibly I don’t remember them being quite that distinctive a shade. I’m just buying time. I’m being observant while I think of how to respond to my overwhelmed woman-girl. Her long wavy hair – both […]
See that? Even these old rusted out cars aren’t alone. Wonder where they were headed? Seems I read about them travelling somewhere in Asia. An earthquake hit and everyone who was able, evacuated their cars and walked to safety. No one ever retrieved their cars as the road was no longer useable. Cars all crushed and mangled together. It’s been many years since. Vehicles as far as the eye can see. This is prompting me to think way more deeply than […]
Am I right, Ladies/Gentlemen?? Ha ha ha ha ha . I can’t stop laughing. I have shut out the world in my little sun-drenched makeshift office which, truth be told, used to be a lovely sunroom with flowing greenery and buds flowering in brilliant hues of yellows, reds and purples. (Getting to the funny part, bear with me.) Unfortunately, time went on and I forgot to water them. Who waters flowers weekly anyway? I thought maybe once a […]
Now that’s a concept “Both/And”….What the “F” am I talking about? (I refuse to use the f word in this blog as I am talking, in part, about my dream guy, who just happens to be a Franciscan Priest for Christ’s sake. That wasn’t a swear word either as I meant it quite literally. Geez…) In Richard Rohr’s amazing book, Falling Upward, he speaks about “Dualistic Thinking”. Much as the term “Manage My Now” in my last […]
Perhaps it’s “backwards day”, like my second grade son gets to participate in at school if the kids behave well enough to earn 100 marbles in a jar. Maybe it’s a full moon (as I write it is actually!) Maybe I’m bored. Or maybe I want to get stuff done and find that my lackadaisical, nonjudgmental, earth-and-creatures-big-and-small-loving self is finding inefficiencies in maintaining a daily practical routine where everything has a place and there’s a […]
How very appropriate, I’m thinking to myself as I self-soothe with another bite of my (forbidden) bagel with berry cream cheese. It’s raining…tears. From Heaven, right? How cliché. Do you know how many articles I’ve scanned, Facebook posts I’ve glanced at, Twitter commentary I’ve witnessed, news reports I’ve absorbed in the last 24 hours? The news about Robin Williams’ “apparent suicide” resonates everywhere. People relating to his disease, the major depression, that exhausted him completely as well as the drug […]
Her head was lowered just enough to keep from making eye contact with the small crowd, yet high enough to see dust beneath her sneakers kick up dancing particles in the light from a small stained glass window that featured deep multicolored panels in the shape of a cross. She was in the basement of the Westminster Presbyterian Church forty minutes from her town, fifty minutes from her house, another twenty from her parish church and the […]
They Don't Have a Greeting Card for This 