A Soft Landing

        An event has occurred today that I want to share with my blogger friends.   Several months ago, I was led to a blog called Trains, Tutus and Teatime.  Written by Corinne Cunningham, it is a story of her life as a mom of two young children.  Corinne has a beautiful, thoughtful writing style and a great eye for capturing small, sweet moments in her photography.  Corinne is a recovering alcoholic who has a brilliant mind to match her sensitive, generous heart.
     When I visit her blog, I see life differently.  I am reminded to invest more time noticing small, fleeting moments.  Reading her blog has improved the appreciation I have for my own life.   As an ex smoker, I celebrate her journey of turning away from a destructive lifestyle to embrace hope and love and simplicity.
    Today I am celebrating Corinne.  I want her to know that I have been touched by her writing many times, and uplifted by the moments of her life that she shares with her readers.
    In the last few weeks, I have been anticipating the opening of Corinne's Etsy shop, A Soft Landing.   Today, it is officially open.   Congratulations, Corinne!  

Welcome to Etsy!

http://www.asoftlanding.etsy.com

If You Build a Boy a Tree House

If you build a boy a tree house, he's going to want a friend to go with it. 

A friend to look up to.

A friend who is worth waiting for.

A friend who will help construct your dreams when you are small.

 

Who will be there with you to enjoy the view.

After a dinner of hot dogs and hamburgers, Elliot wrapped his arms around Richard's neck and said, very sweetly, "Dad, you are my dad.  And you are my friend.  I love you. You are my best friend and I love you so much."

And Richard told Elliot how good that made him feel. He said that sometimes he needed to be a dad more than a friend, and that was because he loves him more than anything else in the world.

The Power of Anticipation

   As I browsed the shelves of our library, the glossy light blue spine of Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project caught my eye.  It was just the kind of book that I like these days.
   While Rubin's perfectionism is something that makes me feel a little messy, her attitude and approach to improving the quality of her life is honorable.  I especially like that she studies happiness in a scientific way, and develops a method to apply this in her own life and to share it with the world.
    According to Rubin, one variable affecting a person's level of happiness is anticipation.  And this discovery is in contradiction to the great meditation practices that attempt to teach people to stay focused on the present moment.

    I have a big imagination.  I practice anticipation instead of meditation.

     In anticipating that I'm going to have a wonderful life, I do.   It is a useful tool that creates joy in my life.  Today I am anticipating the arrival of my new (used) camera.  It is the first camera that I've ever purchased. Having a husband who understands technical language has allowed me to focus on other things, so it was a great feeling to do this for myself.

     While my happiness gets a boost in anticipating great things, this cycle of hope can also work in another way.  In anticipating the worst, my emotions immediately plummet.   During my father's battle with cancer, I anticipated the suffering he must have felt.  I even went so far as to project that I would share the same fate.   While he was sick, I felt sick.  While he slept for hours, I felt tired.

     This is why I have an aversion to watching the evening news.  It's hard for me not to imagine and anticipate the entire obliteration of our planet.
     But this morning, before getting out of bed, I prayed for a miracle for Japan.  It helped me to get out of bed and anticipate something good.

      I know this might seem childish or unrealistic of me.  But I need to have faith in good outcomes.  I need to see the first rays of light on the horizon, a sign that anticipates a brand new day.



   

Playing it Cool

   I sometimes forget to give up my problems to God.  To keep my cool and remember that it's okay to ask for help.  Perhaps my nerves have been on the edge this week due to the horrifying disaster in Japan.  It's difficult to go on with ordinary life when thinking about the massive suffering and fear that so many people are experiencing right now.   I know that we are all connected.  It unsettles me.

   And I have been drinking way too much coffee.


     Yesterday, I couldn't access my business email account.  This made me nervous.  So I kept trying to change the password, over and over.  I felt violated.  I had to learn about phishing.  This sent me into  a minor anxiety attack.  But then, just as I was sweating a little and tearing up, I remembered that the most important thing to do at the moment you feel most helpless is to ask God for help.  To tell Him that you don't know how to solve this problem.  Then walk away with trust and faith.

     So I did.  And I felt better.  I remembered to relax and think of all the other things in life that are so much more important than an email account.  I called my mom and had a nice long conversation.   Then Elliot read a bed time story to me while we cuddled with Ozzie.

     This morning, I was able to access the email account.  And I discovered some pictures that Jen from Tutu's Bliss had sent that I didn't even know were there.    Opening that missed email was a gift. 

 

 A gift that I wouldn't have discovered if I had not been paying close attention to every email in my inbox.  

I'm celebrating this as a sign to keep moving forward.  

And to remember to pray when I feel most helpless.  Every time I see an image from Japan, or have a thought of the people who suffer.  Or when I wonder what impact this has on our planet.  Or when I worry that major disasters keep happening all over the world.

I know we are not meant to live in fear.

But sometimes I can't help it.

Pop Up Playground

 

There is a grassroots movement happening now that I love.  It's all about families with children coming out to play.  I am borrowing this picture from Kaboom's website today in the hopes that it inspires us to think more about inventive ways to create communities where children can play with one another outside, in their neighborhoods.   In this picture, kids have been generously supplied with a variety of items that they can use to build their own pop-up play ground.  It is just the type of play that I used to do growing up.  The pop up playground here is more than just a playground.  Designed by the children, it suddenly becomes a street festival where imagination lives.  I want to do something like this in my community.  For more info, please check out the Kaboom! Hot Topics in Play page on this blog. Or click on this link:      

http://playschool.kaboom.org/series.php?id=1111

Weaknesses into Strengths

  Language and information bubbles around us, as we swim in a soup of facts, ideas, philosophies and opinions. We are media saturated.  And given that we are enmeshed in the exchange, it takes bull-headed determination to remain faithful to one's internal thoughts and voice. Luckily, being bull-headed is my natural attribute.  But often I feel like my interaction with the internet is similar to shopping in a bargain basement flea market.  Lots of stuff to sift through in the search for something valuable.  It can leave a person feeling defeated and mind-numb.


    Yesterday, I just needed a break.  I turned from my computer screen but found myself needing a print fix, so I picked up a book.  It was the only thing to do since I was experiencing an episode of mild food poisoning.  I had taken Elliot out to lunch as a way to add variety to our routine, but ended up spending the rest of the day on the couch with Bryson's Neither Here Nor There.  At first, I was amused by his comical storytelling, but midway through, I realized that this guy's journey around Europe felt pointless and sad.   I haven't finished it and I probably won't. 

     While I read, Elliot watched PBS.  I'm not sure what program was on, but I heard the phrase, "turn your weaknesses into strengths".   This was something I'd heard a long time ago, but never fully appreciated.  Then, this morning, I read the same thing on the Triumph and Tears Blog.

     I think God knows that my weakness is that I don't really listen to Him the first time.  He always has to repeat Himself.  So, this time I am going to take the hint.  I am going to examine a few weaknesses and attempt to turn them into strengths.

     Despite my weakness being that I don't listen the first time,  I have been attempting to help Elliot turn a weakness into a strength since we started home education.  After that terrible first grade conference when the teacher told me that Elliot could not write properly, he has just finished writing a 200 word story for the Go! Writer's Contest.  After the April 29 deadline has passed I will post some pictures of his work.  Our goal was to show Elliot the amazing progress he's made in his writing skills.  I am proud of his accomplishment. I am truly delighted that he is now writing sentences that are neatly written.  Every week, there is improvement. 

   It reminds me that there are things within each one of us that we didn't know were there.  It makes me wonder what I have yet to find within myself. 

On Life's Path

     Wow!  I feel like a nut that's been cracked open.  No one told me that blogging could be such a deeply personal kind of thing.  After a year of posting, suddenly I have some feelings attached to it.  While I understand that the unspoken rule here is honesty, I happen to like a little sugar with my truth.  So thank you, Michelle, for the very kind comment you posted yesterday.  I want to believe what you said.  In my liberal interpretation of teaching and learning, I've often thought that it doesn't take an official title to be a teacher (I consider myself to be one as I home school), and that it doesn't take a publishing house to make a person a writer.  
     For the first time in my life, I am doing exactly what I want to be doing.  Thank you, Thisisme, for helping me to realize this fact.   Your comment helped me to see that I am not like the Biblical Jonah, hiding in the belly of the whale, avoiding at all costs the calling to be a school teacher. I realize now that my childhood dream was

a.  the only response I could offer at family gatherings when aunts and uncles asked that question "what do you want to be when you grow up."  I was six years old and the only jobs I saw available to me in my rural town were teaching, mothering and farming.  Farming involved poop.  So did mothering.
b.  an idealized picture of me writing neatly on a chalkboard.
c.  I loved my teachers so much that I wanted to be lifelong friends with them.  When I grew up and moved away, they weren't there anymore.


     God has led me down so many paths and not one of them led me back to a brick and mortar classroom.  It's a great feeling to know that I can make a life for myself outside the security of the institutions that dominated my life for so many years.  Thinking about leaving behind a childhood dream to pursue something new and unexpected has helped me to stretch.  It is a faith journey.  It is my way of being a teacher to myself.

     I did not know how to operate a sewing machine when I started this activity.  I did not know how to make my computer do what I wanted it to do.  I knew pretty much nothing about photography (and am still working on that).  So if there is a lesson, it's that we all have something called neuroplasticity.  We each have the ability to rewire our brains to do things that we never thought we could.

      I am so thankful that this business wasn't on my to do list.  Because, if it was, the sheer number of things that I would have had to teach myself would be so overwhelming that I would have walked away.  Thankfully, I get to teach myself, in small, manageable chunks, and stay at home while reaching out to my community.  I have made some GREAT friends.  And, BONUS! I have customers who are not only satisfied but excited to be a part of something new.

It's true that I fall into the learner camp more than the teacher camp.  But this is okay with me.  One day, the memory of the things I learned will stand out more than the things that I taught.