Uncategorized – Long walks and dark chocolate

A little thought before the words might do wonders

December 21, 2012 3 Comments

“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”
― Emily Dickinson

In my morning devotions, I was reading in the book of James about the tongue and how difficult it is to bridle, how it’s so small, yet can set a forest to blaze, so to speak. Since I try to not only read, but meditate on these truths, I started pondering some daily scenarios regarding our speech. Our words really are so powerful and the minute they leave our mouths, can set forth producing good or evil.

Think about your morning. If you were kind, encouraging, kissed your spouse or children goodbye covering them with words of love and blessing, you set the course for a good day. On the other hand, if you grumbled and complained, argued or belittled, and didn’t bother to say goodbyes because you were just being stubborn (or whatever the case may be), the day started on a sour note. I remember back in the days when I actually had to take a child to school and they would get out of the car angry with me, I would always say, “I love you” anyway, whether they responded or not. I wanted them to know my love was unconditional. I’m very blessed that my husband will not leave in the morning without kisses, hugs and “I love you”.

I’m not saying any of this is easy; we all have our bad days, the mornings when we wish the house was quiet and we could drink our coffee all by ourselves. Maybe you don’t feel well (which I’ve struggled with the past few mornings), or you couldn’t sleep or you have worries that are plaguing your heart. However, the first step to making things better is realizing there is a problem. Maybe we can all reflect on our words this morning and set out to produce change.

We can look at Facebook posts and see how people set the tone for their day and those around them by their words. We can be positive and try to say something useful, or we can offer negativity, hatefulness and bitterness. I cringe when I read some of the posts because I know the power that words have to bless and heal, but also to hurt and destroy. I love the saying of Thumper in the Disney movie, Bambi; “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin at all”. My kids heard that over and over again growing up.

I also believe that if we sit and listen to the gossip and ill-will that is spoken against others, we become partakers. People might stop talking so much trash if we simply refused to listen to it. Let’s think about our words before they pour forth from our mouths. Are they daggers or arrows, headed off our tongues to offend or hurt? Or are they more like honey? Do they soothe and comfort, bringing happiness and peace?

Blessings on this beautiful Friday morning!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Bambi, Blessing, Epistle of James, Facebook, God, Thumper

It’s already been a month!

December 21, 2012 4 Comments

So, today is my 1 month blogging anniversary. I think I have managed to post almost every single day of that month, even though some days were more challenging than others. I’m enjoying myself immensely and already learning a few things that will improve my writing skills.

I think this is a good time to thank those who faithfully read my attempts at insight and humor and those who encourage me with their comments and emails. Some of my wonderful friends jumped right on board without even the knowledge of whether I could properly form a sentence. Thank you all very much for your support! My hope is that we can all become better friends, share knowledge and help each other in this journey we call life!

Love and Blessings!

Lisa

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: blog, love, writing

Let love abound

December 20, 2012 1 Comment

Some of my Christmas ornaments

I’m not sure why I always look forward to Christmas so much, but I do. As the calendar rolls forward and the day draws closer, I want to put time on hold and continue to bask in the season. I love the decorations, the scent of sumptuous feasts cooking, the Christmas plays featuring children, the get-togethers, the gift giving and the way that people tend to come together and lend a hand to one another.

I know there are many out there who don’t share my opinion of Christmas. There are those who are grieving because they are missing someone, those who are hungry and can’t pay their bills, much less think about gifts, some are filled with bitterness and can’t find it in their hearts to celebrate much of anything. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could collectively reach out and hug them all, somehow make the season brighter for them? That’s not possible, but we can do something, even if it’s something small. It’s up to each and everyone of us to find out what that is; how we can help.

For me, Christmas has always been about the birth of our Savior and all that this event represents; the love, joy, hope and peace that seems to be shared more greatly among all during this season. We tend to be more generous, show more compassion and make more time for one another.

I pray that this won’t change just because the season passes. I pray that goodwill not only continues to abound, but that it increases, that we will persist in our efforts to “pay it forward” and that our lives will manifest love, patience, mercy, and grace.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Christmas, God, Pay it forward

Ribbons and bows or bags and tags

December 18, 2012 5 Comments

I’m sitting here looking at all of the wrapped gifts under my beautiful tree. My daughter was wrapping last night and complained about how many she had to do. I said, “Use bags”. But, she prefers having to actually rip open the paper and work a little for what’s inside, so she assumes others do as well. I think I agree with her on that one. The pros to using the bag are of course, convenience and they are easier to recycle. They are also very cute and sport flashy graphics and tags. However, some people consider the use of bags the “lazy” way and if you don’t tape them up well, they are super easy to peek into if you are prone to that sneaky habit.

I am not ashamed, (although maybe I should be) to say that as a child I always snooped and it was very time consuming as well as cumbersome having to actually unwrap and re-wrap. Unfortunately, no one used bags back then; they were all wrapped. I had to be not only swift, but good at it too; those gifts had to look just as pretty when I was finished with them. I considered myself very fortunate the day I discovered my mother’s “list of gifts by child”, the mother lode, in her beside dresser drawer. It’s probably no surprise that this was forbidden territory as well.

My kids always liked to be surprised (as far as I know anyway) as did my brother and sister back in the day. I’ve changed as well. I’m not even tempted to peek or try to discover what’s under the tree for me anymore. I’m not sure why it was so important back then for me to know what was there; maybe it was the attention I got; or maybe I was just a devious little sneak. Who knows? Now that I understand, honor and appreciate the true meaning of Christmas so much more, it just wouldn’t seem right to deprive someone of the joy over my surprise at their choice of gift for me.

Happy wrapping or bagging or whatever your preference! I’ll be doing some of both.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Christmas, Gift, Gift wrapping

Digging to China

December 17, 2012 3 Comments

My sister, brother and I

I am always silently thankful when I see a parent explaining something tenderly and patiently to a child instead of demeaning them or yelling at them. It grieves me when I see adults talking to children in a belittling or humiliating way, in a way that causes the child to lose their confidence. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely opposed to rebellion from children and wholeheartedly believe that children should be obedient and respectful. I’m referring to those times when a child is just being a child; they spill something or they ask a simple innocent question; or they can’t sit still for very long. These aren’t reasons for yelling and screaming and treating them like imbeciles.

When my sister, brother and I were kids, my paternal grandparents lived in a wood frame house, but the support structure underneath wasn’t one huge slab of concrete. From what I remember they were more like columns of concrete. It wasn’t on stilts, but it was high enough off the ground that we could crawl under there and sit down very comfortably with plenty of room overhead to spare. I should know. My brother, sister and I spent enough time under there playing. There was some type of lattice around the base of the house and we could look out and spy on people, another favorite past time. This particular memory took me back to a time when had been outside playing and decided that we could probably dig our way to China if we worked together.

There was a porch by the back door and we would get under there to hide while playing hide and seek or to make mud pies, or if we were hiding a new stray kitten from Poppy. We had noticed that we could keep crawling and get to a rather large (or so it seemed at the time) area near the front/center of the house. This is where we decided to begin digging. I can still remember the smell of dirt and the musty, dark, coolness under the house.

Now, before you ask why in the world we would go under a house to dig to China, please remember we were quite young. However, we also felt we wouldn’t be discovered this way so we could dig to our hearts content without getting into trouble. We lived in a very safe neighborhood and had free rein to run all over the place so we knew granny wouldn’t come looking for us for quite some time.

We began to dig with our spoons, sticks, toy shovels and we may have even found an adult size shovel in the backyard. We dug until we were filthy and bored with it and then went on about our business doing something else. I don’t remember how many days we continued to pursue our efforts, but we were bound and determined. I’m not sure how we thought we would communicate if and when we got there.

If my memory serves me correct, as the event loomed ever closer (reaching China, of course), we finally ended up nearly bursting with excitement and had to tell granny about our wonderful plan. If you’ve read prior blogs about my granny, you will understand why it was so easy to tell her and then so natural for her to insist on coming under the house to inspect our project. Granny never yelled. She never told us that our ideas were ludicrous or made us feel stupid in any way. She merely explained that it was more likely for the house to cave in than it was for us to reach China. And she explained it in such a funny, simple way that it all made sense and somehow we ended up almost feeling like it was our decision to stop the excavation. Thus, it became a sweet memory and not one filled with shame and embarrassment.

I’m thankful for the adults in my life that took time to explain things and showed me so much love. There was the occasional offender but for the most part I was very blessed to be surrounded by loving, compassionate, kind people; the type of people who saw the innocence and joy in the eyes of a child and wanted to bring their dreams to life instead of raining on their parade. Praise and encouragement really should be lavished whenever possible, especially on children.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Children Youth and Family, Family, grandparent, Granny

Weekly Photo Challenge: Delicate

December 14, 2012 9 Comments

Weekly Photo Challenge: Delicate

I found this when trimming my hibiscus; not only are the eggs delicate, but some of the materials the bird found to make the nest with. Sadly, the mama bird never came back for these and I felt terrible!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: birds, blue, nest

WIth love and prayers to CT

December 14, 2012 4 Comments

My thoughts and prayers go out to all of those who are affected by the tragedy in Newtown, CT today. There is nothing I can say or do to take away the pain or make sense of this horrific event. What I can do is pray. We are called to feel the pain of others, to share their burdens with them. When I heard this on the news today, I immediately thought of my own children and my beautiful granddaughter.

I tried to put myself in the place of all of those who got the calls this morning that something was amiss, in the place of the teachers and the children who witnessed this firsthand and the first responders who had to see this and probably knew some of the victims.

I want to continue to cry over this, I welcome the ache in my heart. I want it to hurt and to feel the disgust for such a mindless, senseless tragedy and I want to have the overwhelming compassion that brings tears to my eyes. We should. It’s the least we can do. Our prayers must be heartfelt and we must continue to lift these folks up, not just today, but for as long as we will.

Tell the ones you love how much they mean to you. Hug them, kiss them, squeeze them.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: compassion, love, newtown

to 50 and beyond!!!

December 13, 2012 7 Comments

As I stand in line at Starbucks, gazing over the myriad of drool inducing confections, I try to decide which will be the least likely to wrap around my thighs or waistline tomorrow. A memory comes crashing out of the recesses of my mind, bringing me back to the days when I would come home from school and eat a double-decker ham and cheese sandwich with a tall glass of chocolate milk and eat two Entenmann’s donuts (the ones with the sprinkles on top that (when I consider in retrospect) resemble rabbit pellets). This was done in my efforts to gain a little weight. Those efforts weren’t in vain, they just caught up with me a little later.

What would I give for those days? Nothing, nada, zero, zilch, I tell ya! When I say I am loving my forties, I’m not fibbing; not in the least.

Humor me for a moment and let’s walk down memory lane. We can all admit that our bodies were probably in their prime in our teenage years and yes, even our twenties. Now, with that said, how many of us can admit that we KNEW it then? Yes, there were some of us that were confident in that regard, but I assure you if we had that one figured out, we probably struggled with another type of monster.

Enter good old high school, where everyone assumes that everyone else is something they are not. You have a potpourri of kids, all being raised in particular types of homes, some loving and supportive, some dysfunctional and even harmful. Add in a profusion of personalities, different styles, habits, gifts and talents, and what do you get? A large, diverse community of differences being forced to converge and learn the same curriculum, in most cases, in the same way (One important factor here; we aren’t all the same and we don’t learn the same way). We don’t share the same gifts and talents. God created us unique and it’s unique we should be. But, I digress; that is a different topic.

My point is, we either don’t really know who we are and how to fit in at that age or maturity level so we either succeed naturally, fail miserably, give it our best try or we fake it. This is a tough time in many lives. Some of us emerged unscathed or stronger from the experience, but I’ve heard stories from some that make me weep.

For me, I would give the high school experience about a 7 on a scale of 1-10. This was largely due to moving from an area I had lived most of my life, to a new school with kids who had lived out their school career together. Although I did fit in to a point and had some great relationships, I cringe inside when I think of all of the missed opportunities that I let slip by for fear of trying and failing. If you add to this the insecurity I felt and the challenges at home as my parent’s marriage crashed and burned, the ranking probably fell to about a 5 by my senior year. However, my story is a pleasant one if judged alongside many others that I’ve heard.

Alas, we grow up and move on. Our lives continue to race on and as we make our choices, we live and we learn. Our youth is filled with fun and foolishness (for most of us) and as we begin to age, we begin to value the important things. We learn that memories and moments are way more precious than things. We discover that family and friends are valuable and when we say I love you, we mean it with every fiber of our being. We realize that aging is inevitable and there is nothing we can do to stop it, so we might as well embrace it and enjoy the ride! We’ve been through a lot by now, we’ve earned our grey (even if we choose to hide it). By now, many of us have lost a parent or someone else we held dear, some of us have been through divorce and custody battles. We’ve had ups and downs in the work world, we’ve parented teenagers, experienced illness and life in general.

At this stage of life, I don’t want to wallow in regret – I want to press forward with my face set like flint, on the path that God has chosen for me. I’m not here for naught; there is a purpose. Every day is a new adventure and I strive to live them with faithful anticipation and joy. I’m thankful for grace and love and second chances and perfectly content at where I am and who I’ve become; in Him.

When my facebook status says “loving life” or something akin to that, I mean it. I don’t know about all of you, but I am truly enjoying the freedom of the forties; being able to express myself truthfully and transparently without fear of repercussion or any fear (or caring for that matter) of what someone might think. I feel alive and thriving and liberated and it’s wonderful!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Home away from home might be a stretch

December 12, 2012 1 Comment

I have been called a hotel snob. This is partly my dad’s fault. I remember in my youth when we were travelling, he would pull up and have my mom go in and check out the room. Her mission was to see if the sheets were clean, eyeball the bathroom, sniff around for cigarette smoke and check the floors. The three of us would wait in the back seat as patiently as we could. All we cared about at that point was whether or not there was a pool. Needless to say, sometimes we didn’t end up staying, pool or not. As I grew older, one of the key components to a successful trip was in procuring the right hotel to stay in. If I’m going to spend several hours a day there, it has to be as decent as I can afford.

Whatever you spend, it seems inevitable that you have some kind of trouble. My current dilemma is how I will stir my coffee in the morning. When I get back in my room after it’s been cleaned, one of the first things I check out is the coffee supplies. They get an A+ today for plenty of Starbucks coffee packets and adequate sugar and creamers. This is good and a rarity for more than 3 days in a row! However, I suppose I will be swirling my coffee around to mix in the morning or maybe I could use my toothbrush?

At least this trip I haven’t had some of the more common issues. My room is nowhere near the elevator, so I have been spared the 2 a.m. party crowd in all their drunken splendor; there are several pillows on each bed so even though a couple of them sink immediately when I lay my head down, I do have choices; and either I have no neighbors or they are very quiet. The wireless works wonderfully, the room service is excellent and the AC is easy to adjust and doesn’t make strange noises all night.

Although this trip has been a pleasant one as far as hotel stays go, I am ready to go home to my own bed. As I was lamenting having to wait another day, a family from NJ came on t.v. Their home has been declared unfit for occupancy after Hurricane Sandy and they are going on their 5th or 6th week of living in a hotel. The grandmother was crying because she had hoped to be home in time for Christmas. Once again, as I watch them decorate a tiny tabletop tree and make the best of their situation, I am reminded of how blessed I am. So, I will enjoy this comfy bed, and say a prayer for all of the displaced families, and the homeless and give thanks for all that I have. Blessings!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: hotel, Starbucks

Sissy, I love you to the moon and back!

December 11, 2012 7 Comments

My sis and I

This post will be dedicated to my younger sister, Deanna, who will be a year younger than me tomorrow.

My sister has been my biggest fan from day one. As soon as she was able to walk and talk she also deemed herself my protector. The sad thing about this is that I didn’t have sense enough to appreciate it until we were older. I saw her love, adoration and desire to protect me as an intrusion for many years. As mom was sewing matching dresses, I was striving to be different and separate, having little recognition of the little redheaded treasure I had by my side. Without getting too personal, can I say that I failed so many times? That instead of showing appreciation, companionship and love, I often took the low road and belittled her. Maybe I am being too personal, but it’s the truth and I think it happens all too often. Maybe if I share my regret, someone will read and apologize to their sibling or refrain from demeaning them to begin with.

We’ve always been close, but I had created a distance in those early years, that had to be righted. I’m extremely grateful to be able to say that my sister forgave me for all of my evil ways. There is nothing broken between us anymore, hasn’t been for years, no hovering darkness, and I praise God for that! But, I can’t help regret the situations that I could have handled much differently.

If I could give her the birthday gift of my choice, I would take back every unkind word or look that I ever said or gave. She never deserved anything less than my undying love and support. My sister isn’t just a wonderful sister, she is a great friend to anyone and everyone who has ever had the privilege of knowing her. She has this God-given ability to make you feel like the most important person in the world and she has mastered the gift of putting others first. She is strikingly beautiful inside and out and talented in too many areas to mention. She is a gift to our family and our community, bringing hope, inspiration, laughter and love to all. I am so blessed to have the most amazing sister that God ever created and I just want the world to know that I love her so much!

This Christmas season, if you have any words you’ve left unsaid or apologies that need to be given, give yourself the gift of delivering them as soon as you possibly can. You won’t regret it.

HAPPY, Happy Birthday, Dee – I love you!