Posts from — December 2007

Okay, ya’ll. Life is just TOO much for me these days!

The latest, for those of you who don’t know:

Hubby called today to tell me that his job ends as of tomorrow- the business is going bankrupt, so two weeks to Christmas they can’t even afford to keep the staff hired. We did in many ways see the writing on the wall for this one, so he had several resumes out there and had spent some time focusing in on what kind of jobs he’s looking for in the past few weeks. We just didn’t expect it to be RIGHT NOW without much warning. Luckily, he will be able to file for unemployment and is planning to go into a staffing agency on Monday.

Not 4 hours later, I got a call from an interview I had yesterday that went really well, offering me the job! There’s lots of details, which to me are quite exciting, but I won’t go into them all. Suffice to say, I’m looking forward to what this new job entails and the opportunity for what it might lead to long term. I will be the part-time (mostly from home) web content manager and personal assistant for an “international speaker and national best-selling author” small business guru, who in person is just a hoot! It was a very encouraging process getting the job, and I’m hopeful not only about the supplemental income it will provide (in conjunction with Wiley) but also the experience I will no doubt gain.

All this nutso stuff, not just with our job situations but with my dad, friends who are going through some crazy circumstances right now, so on- it’s just been a strange couple of weeks!  I can only imagine what God is cookin up and all that hot pepper He’s throwing into the pot for FLAVA!

Though these opening and shutting of doors is enough to give any one a major headache, I feel more than anything a sense of gratitude and comfort. Today, anyway!

How did Book Group go last week? Check out my synopsis!

I came across this relatively new blog as announced on EmergentVillage.org, and I am very encouraged that it is out there and would love to draw attention to it for any one interested. It’s for “holistic, emerging parenting”, and if you’re wondering what the heck that even means, check it out for yourself!

Funky moods lately leave me bewildered. I have this nagging suspicion of something major trying to come up for air, yet I can’t place my finger on it or jerk it out so I can scream “what the he** is wrong with you?!”

Social situations aggravate the situation, I go in with energy and leave with defeat; suspicion, anger, annoyance. My aptitude for putting up with crap is enormously lower than usual and my shoulder shrugging and sighing is at an all time high. What to do, what to do?

So I’ve brought out a handful of my favorite books this past week, scouring them for tidbits of wisdom on how to handle myself with more grace. As usual, they do not disappoint me.

“There is something in the depths of our being that hungers for wholeness and finality. Because we are made for eternal life, we are made for an act that gathers up all the powers and capacities of our being and offers them simultaneously and forever to God. The blind spiritual instinct that tells us obscurely that our own lives have a particular importance and purpose, and which urges us to find out our vocation, seeks in so doing to bring us to a decision that will dedicate our lives irrevocably to their true purpose. The man who loses this sense of his own personal destiny, and who renounces all hope of having any kind of vocation in life has either lost all hope of happiness or else has entered upon some mysterious vocation that God alone can understand.”

“We know we are following our [destiny/career/vocation] when our soul is set free from preoccupation with itself and is able to seek God and even to find Him, even though it may not appear to find Him. Gratitude and confidence and freedom from ourselves: these are signs that we have found our vocation and are living up to it even though everything else may seem to have gone wrong. They give us peace in any suffering. They teach us to laugh at despair. And we may have to.” – Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island (both quotes above)

In writer Kathleen Norris’ book Amazing Grace, there is a chapter on her struggle with being a part of the Christian church while an avid reader (and, in her words, therefore believer) of feminist theology. I drew parallels from her struggle to my own tension with this, though not with feminism so specifically. I found her sentence sitting with me, lingering : “It was the false purity of ideology I had to reject, in order to move toward the more realistic give-and-take of community.”

Last week in yoga class, we recited a chant as part of our meditation. As I understand it, the meditation reflects on the cycle of life (I consider re-birth to be a spiritual one, for the record, not reincarnation on earth). The other times we meditate in class, we simply lie still, lights dimmed, listening to the silence. This has made me want to revisit the practice of Lectio Divina that I have read about but never quite got into. I found conviction and frustration in the introductory chapter to The Inner Experience, which are Thomas Merton notes on contemplation, because it is precisely some of the below description of this exterior self that battles for the “contemplative” identity the moment I try to approach the search at all. I am certainly suspicious of my own self-love to bother my way:

“The inner self is precisely that self which cannot be tricked or manipulated by anyone, even by the devil. He is like a very shy wild animal that never appears at all whenever alien presence is at hand, and comes out only when all is perfectly peaceful, in silence, when he is untroubled and alone. He cannot be lured by anyone or anything, because he responds to no lure except that of divine freedom.
Sad is the case of that exterior self that imagines himself contemplative, and seeks to achieve contemplation as the fruit of planned effort and of spiritual ambition. He will assume varied attitudes, meditate on the inner significance of his own postures, and try to fabricate for himself a contemplative identity: and all the while there is nobody there. There is only an illusory, fictional “I” which seeks itself, struggles to create itself out of nothing, maintained in being by its own compulsion and the prisoner of his private illusion.”

And purposefully, lastly, provokingly; lyrics that resonate this week:

“Two Faces” Bruce Springsteen

I met a girl and we ran away
I swore I’d make her happy every day
And how I made her cry
Two faces have I.

Sometimes, mister, I feel sunny and wild
Lord I love to see my baby smile
Then dark clouds come rolling by
Two faces have I.

One that laughs, one that cries
One says hello, one says good-bye
One does things I don’t understand
Makes me feel like half a man.

At night I get down on my knees and pray
Our love will make that other man go away
But he’ll never say good-bye
Two faces have I.

Last night as I kissed you ‘neath the willow tree
He swore he’d take your love away from me
He said our life was just a lie
And two faces have I
Well go ahead and let him try.

For as long as I can remember, my dad was in the home building industry. The Bureau of Labor Statics explains:

“Construction workers often work with potentially dangerous tools and equipment amidst a clutter of building materials; some work on temporary scaffolding or at great heights and in bad weather. Consequently, they are more prone to injuries than are workers in other jobs.”

My dad’s fall off 16′ of scaffolding just before Christmas 2001, when I was a senior in high school, was pretty bad. (Though the time he pulled a 3′ nail out of the meat of his thigh in front of me was kinda gross, and the numerous nerves he’s lost in some finger tips from the table saw, and the time he pulled his finger out of socket and it got all blue and nasty…ok, nuf of that I suppose.) From what I know, the ankle fractured and after one bad surgery and then another to correct it, he was left out of work for over a year. His foot would ache even 6 years later, but he was back on the ladders 6, sometimes 7 days a week (Did I mention he celebrated his 55th birthday this year? -though, no, you don’t look at day over 30, dad!… and ya’ll, I’m almost not exaggerating, I got good genes, lol!)

Friday morning my ol’ man took another fall, though not as high up, that did worse damage to his “good” leg. I won’t go into gory details, but suffice it to say it will be a long process, probably more than one surgery to reconstruct everything that is broken/fractured (he’s already gone through one surgery to “set” the leg).

Why am I writing about this? As you know, I almost never mention family members in my blog out of respect for their privacy. But I’m going to go out on a limb here (hope you don’t mind, fam!) because I would like to ask that any one who prays please make mention of this man if you think of it. He’s still got a family to support and if I know him, having to wait and rest and heal can be hard on him. He’s so tough and works so hard, almost too hard, and I just want nothing but comfort going his way. My dad raised me by himself, and when its all said and done, he’s really pretty much my hero. I and the rest of his family, my step-mother and siblings, are likewise concerned for him and could use any prayers/thoughts/vibes for healing and support and trust in God’s plan and all that good stuff, cool?

Thanks, pals.

Office Max has this goofy little thing to do if you’re bored and have 5 minutes… and if you’ve always wondered upon looking in the mirror if you look kinda like an elf…

Check out ours, and make your own!

OH- and HAPPY 200th POST!

Tonight the fam tried out the Flexcar for the first time, reserving it for a 6 hour excursion out to Hood River city to climb aboard the Mt. Hood Railway train “Polar Express” themed ride. (Flexcar was fab, btw). Lil’ E started off the ride a bit bewildered- the Polar Express is one of his all time favorite movies to watch and he’s very familiar with tunes and music in movies, so when we boarded to the movie’s soundtrack he was trying to piece it all together for awhile. Eventually the Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate and the molasses cookie was enough of a sugar high to make him go a little bananas (he even tried to eat the table a bit at one point.) The ride was neat, you listen to music, have a little snack, and hear the cd version of the Polar Express book read aloud. At the end you get to the “north pole” where the train picks up Santa and he comes around to each table. EACH TABLE, each child, out of sooo many on 3 cars of this train. So, instead of the scheduled 6:30pm end time, the train went back and forth on the tracks (and every one knows how motion sensitive I am, right?) until Santa could make it to all the kids, which didn’t happen until 7:15pm. Suffice to say, the second half of the evening was dragged on more than necessary. They did have some caroler’s come sing to us while we waited for Santa, and they were even kind enough to honor Lil’ E’s unorthodox request of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (see video below).

As far as how Lil’ E liked St. Nick, I’ll just let you watch the video for yourself!

Enjoy!

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Bewildered Lil’ E
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Twinkle Twinkle, by request
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Santa experience…
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Once I sat down in Santa’s lap with him, it was all good
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Unlike LAST YEAR, this year’s tree cutting experience was slightly more traditional. We had a blast out at Helvetia Farms, not 20 minutes away, cutting down our beautiful 6′ Noble Fir. So purty!

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