Tag: life

Favorite Things Friday

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Good morning, friends and readers. Welcome to the best day of the week!! My regular readers know that I typically keep it light and fun on Fridays. On Fridays, I list three favorite things, or songs, or websites or books, or life hacks that make my life more interesting and engaging. You, my readers, really like Fridays, at the blog. Interestingly, usually the most popular days on the blog are on Fridays, and on Sundays (the day that I devote to poetry. You never knew that one of your favorite things is poetry, did you? I caught you. ;)) So this tells me that you, my readers, are my favorite kind of people, a delicious mix of fun and frivolous, yet deep and soulful. It’s good to be well-rounded. Bravo!

As many of you know, we suffered another setback with my son’s epilepsy, this week. His new medications aren’t working out, which is deeply disappointing because the side effects of these medications were much more tolerable, than his last medications. We coaxed our baby to come home for the weekend, so I had the best sleep of my week last night, knowing that he was home safe with me, in my safely feathered nest. (I love sleep. It’s definitely one of my favorites.) My youngest son (the son with epilepsy) is obviously one of my favorite people in the world, and it is not just because he is my son. It is also because my son is funny, and smart, and ethical – almost to a fault; he is insightfully (and sometimes brutally) truthful – like no other person I have ever met, and so, so resilient. I admire him greatly. I love him beyond reason.

I’m drained, friends. These setbacks with epilepsy are hard on our family. These disappointments bring all of our fears and uncertainties, back up to the surface. People who live with serious disorders, know better than anyone, just how fragile life is, and how quickly it can be taken. After experiencing a major health setback, and once you calm down from the anxiety, and you let your shoulders drop, you can sometimes find the gift that comes from these painful realities of living with a disease, or a disability that can take your life, at any moment. It brings clarity and beauty and gratefulness for every simple moment of living a life. I can’t tell you how much my heart sang last night, to listen to my husband and my son yell, in unison, at the football game last night, as they have done so many times in the past. I savored that sound like it came from Heaven above. Because it did. Heaven is all around us, if we open up our eyes and connect our watchful eyes to our hearts.

I’m sorry to get so deep on a Friday. You readers don’t like that, I know. You might be thinking, “Lighten up, lady!”, but it’s my blog, and I’ll cry if I want to . . . .

Please always remember that when you are considering your favorite things in life, it’s never really “the thing”. It’s always the feeling that you get from “the thing.” If you think of one of your favorite things, or people, or places right now, you will get those wonderful feelings that those things give to you, seeping into your consciousness right away. Try it. Do it often. Your favorites are really your favorite feelings, and you are capable of dosing yourself with your favorite feelings regularly. They are just a thought away. Stay aware. That’s the only way to live.

Happy weekend, my favorite readers of my favorite blog! See you tomorrow.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Long Hike

I’ve decided that hiking brings the best out of people. Hikers are incredibly kind to one another. They always make way for people to pass through narrow pathways. They happily take pictures for other hikers. People come from all over the country, actually, people come from all over the world, to hike certain awe-inspiring trails, and the experience is always one of unified peace and pleasure, taking in the pure natural beauty of untouched nature.

Hikers never cut each other off, or jockey for positions on the resting rocks. The overall, unifying sense is one of unity, kindness, excitement, and care. There are all ages of people on hiking trails. I have seen babies in contraptions that didn’t exist when my kids were babies. The baby hikers are in containers that look like little Coleman tents strapped to their father’s or mother’s backs, and they all contain babbling or sleeping, precious, happy babies. Some people run the trails and some meander very slowly, their walking sticks poking at all the beautiful wildflowers and exposing what might be hidden underneath the blooms. Some hikers stop to take pictures at every bend, others hurry along, eager to make it to the highly anticipated destination in record time. And it is all okay. There is no one right way to hike a trail. The only thing every hiker seems to have in common, is an intellectual curiosity and an overwhelming joy to be beholding such unbelievable, marvelous sights. And then to look over at their fellow hikers and see that same joyous, anstonished awe-struck expression on their faces, reflecting their own feelings back to them.

I wish that we could live our lives like we were on an amazing, long, fascinating, sometimes harrowing, surprising, but always worthy adventure. If we hiked our lives with the same respect for other hikers, the same gratefulness for our natural world, and a genuine joy for the experience that one experiences when hiking one of many, many trails, life would be simple, but also grand.

And This is Eternity

I am at one of those particularly poignant, bittersweet times in parenthood. It is one of those times that almost every moment feels like an ending and a new beginning. My eldest son is now completely and totally independent of us, starting his new adult life, in his new state. My second son is almost halfway done with college. My youngest son starts college in the fall. My daughter just completed her first year of high school and is ready to practice driving.

The first couple of years of a child’s life feels like this – the feeling of constant endings and new beginnings. There are so many milestones that happen almost on a daily basis, it makes your head spin . . . and your heart overflow. Then there is this long period of late elementary/middle school years, where, as much as the changes are still happening in your family, they are not nearly as obvious and confronting, as times like these.

As we were driving home from my daughter’s high school tennis tournament yesterday, she and I were reflecting on her first year of high school and how well it went for her, despite the normal fears and hesitations that she felt at the beginning of the year. We laughed at how worried she was about making the tennis team and how now, it feels like “old hat”. High school, in itself, will be more of an “old hat” for her in the next three years before she departs for journeys further away from home.

My parenting style is doing a major shift right now, too. It is much more “hands off”, freeing of the reigns. I am much more of a sideline advocate and “wise” counsel (when sought) these days. I suppose my job is to worry less about their lives and to put the focus more on my own life now, so that they can worry less about me.

This passage is from a beautiful, enchanting old book by Gwen Frostic. The book, A Walk With Me, is printed by block carvings and it is as lovely to look at, as it is to read. Here it is:

The squirrels jump from limb to limb high in the trees that are ever the same . . . and . . . never the same . . . for each day . . . each hour . . . . all things change. . . . . .the trees . . . the flowers . . . rocks . . . .the sand and the waters . . . the birds and all the animals of earth . . . .

. . . .yet – life goes on unchanged . . . . . . . nothing is new

. . . . . . . nothing is old

this is life . . . . . . . .

and this is eternity . . . . . .