Happy New Year!

Are there no flowers of joy in your life today?  
Do not despair.  
The seeds are all around you.  
They may be in the snow for the moment, but when the heat gets turned up, and the fertilizer gets dumped on,
A thousand more flowers will bloom.

Patience...

I had a moment of Peace today.  It might seem unlikely.  Invisible, even.  But it mattered.  
I saw A Bolt. 


One bolt.


It was smaller than a dime.  I was at the gigantic Mall of America, riding a merry-go-round with my kids, and fighting dizziness.  The world was spinning, colors flashing, noise bombarding, and I was feeling woozy.  I grabbed a horse, but it was charging up and down as well as spinning around the frenzied mall.  A question briefly crossed my mind:  Did seasick moms ever fly off the merry-go-round while standing watch over their kids who were buckled in atop the colorful animals?  


Because I didn’t want to be the one that did.


Suddenly, in the middle of the cacophony, I remembered some sage advice I learned on a similar seasick moment on a sailboat in the Pacific.  


Find one stationary thing on the horizon, and keep your eyes on it. 


I scanned the MOA, searching for something, anything, that was unmoving.  But EVERYTHING jumped, flowed, charged, flashed, and spun.  Until I saw the Bolt. 


The bolt was screwed into the center of the merry-go-round, where it faithfully and quietly stayed.  It seemed to hold the whole merry-go-round world together.   I kept my eyes on that bolt the rest of the ride, and although the entire mall world was spinning and racing around me, my equilibrium stayed balanced.  My spirits soared!  I had found balance!  For one ephemeral moment, I became transformed into a Prima Ballerina. I floated above heavenly clouds of misty tulle, spinning on my toes in graceful, balanced perfection, far above the whirling crowd!


Thank you, Bolt.  


I’ve never been en pointe before.  


Because I focused on One Bolt, I went from middle aged mom, spun out of control, to Odette the Swan Princess.


Today when my world starts to spin out of control, I’m going to remember to find One Bolt, and keep my eyes on it. 




God is my Bolt. 

I introduced a kid to pastels.  

It was a marvelous, quiet night.  I found a forgotten old box of cast-off pastels that hadn't been used in years...  I brought it out, and he smiled.  It simply meant a Free License to Make a Mess.  We opened the treasure chest of colors, and put some large papers down on the kitchen table.  Peel the colors, break them into pieces.  Use the sides, the tops, the hard edge on the bottom.  No lines, just your imagination.  

​Scribbling makes the best pastel art.

​In front of my eyes, his blank white page grew entangled with roots and vines.  Nordic myth and legend spilled over a pastel waterfall, alive with mystery.   

We drew together until late in the night.  

No technology.  No screen.  Just colors and paper... And his imagination.

Peace Out.

For Christmas, we gave one of the little kids a small point-and-shoot camera.  He strapped it to his wrist, and has not taken it off.  He clicks the shutter constantly, capturing fractions of moments in the cheap plastic box.  When he showed me the photos he’d taken, I was quite surprised.  


Is this what he saw?  Really?  We all have our points of perspective, I know.  But he has been strolling through life, seeing things differently than I do.  For example,  the coffee pot is right at his eye level.  He has a snapshot of a dirty, empty coffee pot.  Very depressing and unnerving, I think.  From my perspective, coffee pots are happiness-givers, filled with joy and awake-ness!  The child also has a picture of his toes.  And a photo of my nostrils when I am sleeping.  


I am not sure I want to relive the moments he has captured.  Not at all.  Some things are better left unsaid…Unremembered.   Did I really look like that as I made breakfast, Kiddo?  Why didn’t you run in fear?  


His photography has brought me to a new point of understanding.  I want to be choosy about what I remember.  I want to save the very best of each day, and put it in my little treasure box of experiences to keep.  


So I have an idea.


For the next 365 days, I am going to capture a moment of Love, Joy or Peace. 


And share it. 


Every. Single. Day.  


When Doug reads this, he will laugh, I am sure.  I am an Idea Person, not a Follow-Through Person.  I always have big ideas, and usually I can follow through for a couple of weeks, at best.  Then I’m off, wandering after another new idea, another new project.  But this is important.  The days pass quickly, and I won’t get another chance at today.  This is it.  


I’m going to need a lot of help to stay on track.  I know that some days will be so dark that I will struggle to find that one moment of joy.  Too busy to find one moment of peace.  Too angry to see the joy.   And truthfully, the only thing that I’ve probably ever followed through on every day for a full year was changing diapers.  Not much cause for joy, heh?    I am going to need help staying on track here.  So please post your moments of love, joy, and peace in the comments.  Let’s help each other to have the best year, ever.


Okay, so here we go.  This is today’s moment of Joy:  


My kiddo looked at the empty coffee pot picture that I found so depressing.  Just a dirty, empty, depressing coffee pot.  


“Mom! No!  You got it all wrong!” he yelled.  “That’s not empty and dirty!  That’s the exact moment the coffee started to drip through when you turned it on!  See it splashing?  It’s the beginning of a fresh pot of coffee!”




Wow.  




Good beginning.  

Are you ready for Christmas?  

There is so much to do!  Start checking off the long list:

Presents… ’Tis the season to bustle about, rushing to buy presents.  Make sure you don’t forget anyone!  Is this the right size?  Oh, forget it.  If a mom buys clothing for a teenager, it just ends up on the closet floor anyway.  This mom definitely doesn’t know what is cool.  Is cool even a word anymore?  I think they say “hot” now.  Personally, I would rather spontaneously combust than call my daughter’s clothing “hot”.  Good grief.  The thought of my little girls someday being hot is enough to engulf me in burning flames of panic.  That is hot.  Better stick to books.  Maybe if I buy them books, they’ll be more interested in the library.  Libraries are safe and quiet.  And socks.  Books and socks.  They’ll be so pleased with their Christmas presents…


Decorate…  Must I?  The house is so cluttered already, that I can’t bear to do it.  Can’t we just arrange your Playmobil characters on the mantel in a Christmas-y, manger scene and be happy?  You can add the giraffe and the orangutan, too, Dear.  I know they all want to see Baby Jesus.  I’ll even light some candles.  But that didn’t go so well this year.  The first night of advent, the lone candle flickered in the darkness, a glow of warmth like a halo while we sang Silent Night.  Then the flame scorched a hole in a lampshade.  I knew it was too cluttered in here!  I am done with candles. 


To the delight of the kids, we do now have a tree in the living room.  It’s not enough to have a huge family, a dog on the couch, and a rabbit dwelling in the living room.  We also have a Christmas tree.  It is completely covered with hundreds of sparkling things.  We had a lot of lights to string up.  This fake tree is supposed to automatically light up, but it is old and mostly doesn’t work.  After searching for stored strings of lights, finding the lights in the garage, untangling the lights, testing the lights,  dropping the lights, cleaning up the glass from the broken lights…I had enough of lights.  But one side of the tree was clearly still dark, and all we had left were nets of lights that are supposed to go outside on shrubs.  We have no shrubs.  Why do we own lights like this?  I figured no one will ever notice if we throw them on the Dark Side of the Tree.  The next day, my mom came over to visit, and see the tree.  She ooohed and aaahed and praised me completely for my newly-emerged home decorating skills.  Then she looked at me quizzically. “Why did you use shrub lights?”  Why, indeed.
Let this be a lesson to you.   
You can’t fool Mom. 


Bake… I did it.  I specially adapted my grandmother’s Christmas cookie recipe to be Gluten Free.   After years of trial and error, and more trial and error, they were finally perfect!  “These are great, Mom!”  “Can we frost them now?” “I get the green sprinkles!” The kitchen was filled with warmth and sugar and lovely memories of my grandma.  We can only do just one cookie sheet before bed, I warned.  Just one.  We are not eating all of these cookies before Christmas!  This is just a sample!  So we rolled and cut out and baked and finally, we all crowded around the table to frost and decorate the one pan of cookies.  As little hands grabbed for stars and trees and gingerbread shaped cookies, one little hand knocked over a rather large glass of water.  Yes.  Right onto the cookie sheet.  “Save the cookies!!!” the cry rang out.  Now, some cookies might be strong enough to be dunked in coffee, and enjoyed.  But not my gluten free genius cookies. They did not fare well with the mild drowning.  We decorated the few cookies that survived, trying not to stare at the mush in the pan.  At least we hadn’t baked them all.


Clean…  Clean?  I have nothing to say on this matter.  The more I clean, the more I realize that the walls need fresh paint.
You know, I can barely juggle my own regular stuff.  How can I add Christmas preparations as well?!   It is so frustrating!  It will never be clean, let alone perfect!  Our Christmas dinner will be loud and crowded, probably burnt, and someone will spill their drink, and the plates will have to be pushed aside and the tablecloth lifted and scrunched, and we will all laugh and be soggy and happy together anyway.  Reading books.  In our new socks.  


I guess that is our "perfect".


In all my preparation frustrations of last week, I grabbed my camera and went for a walk.  I needed some peace and quiet.  I needed an ‘all is calm, all is bright’ kind of moment.  A  new perspective.  In the frosty cold of the morning, with the sun just beginning to rise, here is what I found:

It's just an old barn.  That's all.  Run down, caving in.  Severely deficient, like my home decorating skills.   But some hard working people, a long time ago, picked rocks from their fields.  They gathered them together, and patiently stacked them.  One rock at a time, a bit of mortar here and there... added rough wood and nails.  It's not pretty.  It's not perfect.
But this barn is all that was needed.
It's all I need right now.  
I stood at the barn door, thinking about the holy night in Bethlehem long ago...
This is all I need to get ready for Christmas.  
I will muck out my own barn by going to confession, and saying I'm sorry to those I have hurt.  I will sweep away the stones of cynicism, and instead try to repair faith by putting the stones to more constructive use.
I will add some hay of gentleness.
That's it.  
And I will wait.

I'll be ready for Christmas, after all.

​Hope.  
​
That's all we need sometimes.

Around me, the plants are dry and dead, like paper in the wind.  The ice is moving in.  
It is so dark, so much of the time, and always growing darker.  
Winter is coming, and it will be brutally cold.   With it, truckloads of trouble will fall from the sky, and I will have to shovel it for months.  I know it.
The world can be a wretched, cold place.

But when the sun rose this morning,  everything changed.

Bright colors splashed on the lake, ricocheting off the ice crystals in a joyous explosion of light.  Geese floated, weightless, like angels, through the shimmering glass of water and ice.  The air was crisp and fresh.  

I stood silently on the shore...
Breathing in the joy and the peace  and the hope.
I thought of dancing, but I am a clumsy oaf, and the neighbors were nearby.  
Instead, I laughed.  Out loud.  The joy bubbled up like music and my heart danced inside.
Swan Lake in my head, I glided with the heavenly geese, through the rosy atmosphere.

The world is a glorious place!

The next time you feel the ache of the weight of the world, think of a middle aged fuddy-duddy standing on the shore at sunrise.  Laughing.

I hope you can hear the music, too.

​