Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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mid-December and definitely choosing JOY

Friends, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and experiences with “toxic positivity.” Your comments on that blog entry and long exchanges on Facebook and Instagram have had my wheels turning all week. I am thankful to be surrounded by people who place a high value on authenticity as well as deliberate hopefulness, joyfulness, and faith.

((my first amaryllis are blooming!!))

The week before last week we were finishing up a fun little seasonal cold or flu or who knows what and scraped together enough energy to dive headfirst into Christmas. Our house had been decorated for a festive winter since right after Halloween, haha, including dried citrus garland everywhere, paperwhites potted up, and lots of plain evergreens with white lights; but as soon as the Thanksgiving feast was cleared away we surrendered it all to truly Christmas, and I have been adding fun stuff daily. Handsome surprised me one day while I was out running by adding the house lights and constructing our Santa sleigh, inflatables, you name it. Every year he does something new and festive, and I love it.

Christmas activities have kept us busy already, too.

Early in the month, with our friends Rex and Cathy, we tried a local fried chicken spot that was built in what used to be an actual feed store and lumber yard. In fact it was the first place we ever bought farm supplies when we moved here in 2007. After a delicious, greasy, filling meal the four of us watched the Harrah Christmas parade and let that really cement our holiday spirit. Then our three pups exchanged early gifts, ha! They are like children, no joke, ripping through wrapping paper and wrestling around the living room. Pure joy!

On a different morning, we took Klaus to our traditional Cowboy Christmas parade in Cowtown. We shivered and chattered our teeth and waved our cold, numb hands at all the heavily festooned float characters and “reindeer” horses, not to mention the state’s best Santa. Our friends from the Jedi OKC group had entered a float for the first time, and when everyone saw us they waved and screamed Klaus’ name, ha! So fun!

This past Sunday night we hosted a perfectly ridiculous Christmas party for friends, opting for a Griswold family vacation movie theme. Ha! I am married to the Clarkiest of Clark, after all. It was silly and lighthearted, a great release of tension for everyone in the midst of a busy season. Everyone brought delicious treats. We played a couple of dumb games. Old friends got caught up and new friends got acquainted. We even surprised the newlyweds in our friends’ group with a one month anniversary cake! They had eloped to Vegas exactly one month before the party, so it was perfect. High fives and big cheers for random, laughter filled parties that eschew tradition a little bit.

One weeknight after work we drove to Oklahoma City to hear Chloe, our oldest niece, play her violin. Her school orchestra has performed every December for several years, and it always sets the holiday tone for me. Our entire local family tries to attend all at once, and we take up a long row, usually right up front. I can hardly stand to think of one or two Christmases from now, when she will have graduated high school and there is no Christmas concert to enjoy. This year they were invited to play at the Oklahoma City University performing arts center, and they treated us to a nearly perfect rendition of Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Stunning! We all had chills. Great job as always, Chloe!

On another night, Cathy, Jessica and I piled into my car to drive to the Community College to watch our youngest niece Kenzie dance a hip hop version of the Nutcracker. If you ever have a chance to see this, friends, secure your tickets and do not look back. How awe-inspiring to watch these talented young people dance their hearts out! And the hip hop was a great twist on a classic story. We loved it. As a bonus, the night we attended was narrated in full Spanish. I am actively relearning Spanish for Jess and Alex, so that was a fun challenge to keep up with what was being said!

As I write this, most of our gifts are wrapped, leaving only the stockings to be stuffed with treasure, plus some baking and a few easy gatherings still to enjoy. I am luxuriating in the freedom to slow down on weeknights and make fun plans for us on weekends, to enjoy the holiday season for all it offers. The fast, the slow, the loud and glittering and the soft spoken and cozy. I am staying home as much as possible, taking time every day to stay centered on the Nativity and really sink into the cold and the dark when it comes. It’s all a gift. And the invitation to be still and accept the gift has never pulsed more vividly.

Do you feel Christmas miracles brewing in the distance? I really do. I feel lots of them building steam to get here at their appointed times, so much so that the traditional gifts and cookies and music are just set dressing. Beautiful decorations for our spirit, to invite us to Enjoy. Rejoice. Choose Joy.

All of this goodness, all of this Soul Cake, already in our bellies, and today is only December 16th. We have so much December still to feast on!

More soon. Till then, happy December! I hope your are celebrating and carpe-ing every single diem to your heart’s content. I hope you are clinging to the miracles you need and crave. Here are a few Advent posts from last year, if you need them:

Choosing HOPE as a strategy

LOVE Week

Another post about HOPE for Advent

XOXOXOXO

checking in on a dewy morning (and my lesson on toxic positivity)

Hello friends, and happy December! How was your Thanksgiving? How is your holiday spirit in general? How is the weather where you living out your life story?

((still rewilding the front field…xoxo))

Here at the farm we are enjoying dark, dewy nature walks and dense fog advisories, plus the luscious promise of more rain soon. We hosted a small, magical family Thanksgiving here, and our holiday spirits are high. From our nieces’ high school orchestra concerts and dance recitals to silly parties with friends and lots of simple weekly gatherings, we have more seasonal thrills and pleasures than we can count. I hope you do, too. I also hope that on the days your calendar is less full, you breathe deeply and rest. Soak up the nutrients of all those traditions and activities.

Do you have a moment for me to share a little lesson I learned recently?

Last week I ran across a simple passage about the value of letting people feel however they feel. Often I rail against charges of “toxic positivity” because, in my own experience, I have suffered greatly and fought hard for my outlook on life, so I see with unshakable clarity the fundamental and life-changing value of hope and optimism. For anyone to call me toxic because of that has so far felt hurtful and, ironically, umm, toxic? haha… A simple reminder shifted my perspective even on this: Denying anyone the space to fully experience their emotions, whatever they are, dehumanizes them.

OUCH. I would never consciously dehumanize another person, not even in an effort to help them. This was such a valuable redirection for me. Since reading this, I have noticed something beautiful. I am giving fewer pep talks to rescue people from sadness or despair, and I am spending much more time in private prayer. I ask for more miracles on their behalf but offer fewer bright sides and silver linings to gaze at. (Maybe I just offer encouragement to keep going.)

Many of those prayers are already being answered, and I know more answers are coming. I get to witness my loved ones enjoying not only better circumstances but also better outlooks, all on their own, without me possibly annoying them (or dehumanizing them) with the spiritual cheerleader bit.

Privately, of course, I am still free to maintain my own outlook and convictions. All by myself I know that life is good, that counting joys produces miracles, and that believing in Love means things tend to work out in our favor.

fog, lazy w, oklahoma, faith

Choosing to step back and allow others to feel their emotions fully and experience their days and perspectives means I get to do the same, whether anyone agrees with me or not. Seeing this also showed me that all along I may have had a grain of loneliness in my pep talks, something in my heart that needed someone “out there” to agree with me that things were going to be ok, in order to fully believe so myself. I guess that’s human. But now, it feels incredible to pray and believe in impossible things all by myself, with just that intense, private assurance that God is listening and acting behind the scenes. He has been all along. He has been showing me new and amazing power in my life story, and He is doing the same for my loved ones. Why would I deny anyone that beautiful adventure?

Advent 2021 post about LOVE

Advent 2021 post about JOY

A 2018 post about fractals

A different mustard seed parable than we grew up hearing

Count it All Joy

Witness Me

I want to be an encouragement but not a stumbling block, as they say. If you need me to pray and agree with you about a miracle you need, speak up. If you want a specific encouragement, let me know. Otherwise I will just be here, quietly knowing that things are going to work out. Probably in ways you have yet to imagine.

“Faith is the bird that feels the light
and sings when the dawn is still dark.”
~Rabindranath Tagore
XOXOXOXO

JOY WEEK and Christmas Eve!!

Hey friends, Merry Christmas Eve! I missed writing to you guys about JOY week for Advent. If you have a minute, my heart is thrumming.

This photo represents one of the most incredible Christmas surprises to date.
I cannot wait to share this hilarious story!

Have you been celebrating Advent, either traditionally or in your own special way? I love a mix of the two. There is always a place for tradition, and there is also a need for making traditions very personal, for infusing everything we do with purpose and meaning. With personality! After all, the only traditions that really stick are the ones we make our own, the ones that serve us with the most authentic JOY. So dig in and be honest about how you want the holidays to be. Less obligation, more intention.

The last few weeks, I have been soaking up a magical rhythm of quiet time, reflection, and journaling, some very average farm chores and housework (soothing, you know), mixed with wild holiday activity, old songs and new understandings, lights and decorations, baking (so much baking), swimming in memories, time with friends, romance… Just keeping the current of life alive. We are all moving through time together, and I am here for it, as the kids say.

Joy is one of my favorite topics. A few years ago, you might remember, my husband started receiving this persistent message, “Count it all joy.” It became our mantra in a dark valley, and we have learned so much about it since then. Counting It All Joy is a post I wrote in 2017, when it was all fresh.

Joy has nourished us when we were tired and needed strength; it has floated gently us when we might have succumbed to grief; and joy has inspired us to build brand new things in our life. Joy changes everything. It’s the secret sauce.

How wonderful to learn that there are some ways to manufacture Joy, when it seems scarce or completely unavailable.

Have you ever tried a Joy Dare? I think Ann Voskamp first shared this idea. Find one of her templates, or better yet, make your own. Grab a notebook, have a list of prompts ready, then see how many days it takes you to journal one thousand expressions of joy. Last week I sat down to write out just a few thought prompts of my own and quickly listed 77 separate ways to count my own joy. Each of those immediately flowers into dozens of actual blessings in my life. It’s overwhelming in the best way. Joy comes to us and moves between us in such a variety of flavors and textures, it’s thrilling to articulate it all. And the act of taking stock is so empowering.

Also, learn what others have experienced. For reading material, I cannot fervently enough recommend The Book of Joy. Have you found it yet? We gobbled it up a couple of winters ago with a small group of friends, and we all gained so much from the material and from the subsequent conversations. It’s packed with wisdom and encouragement form Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The stories they share, the deep study, the timeless human-nature-wisdom and advice for good living, it’s all just priceless. Give it some time soon, if you haven’t already.*

Have you read The Book of Joy yet?

The 8 Pillars of Joy According to the Dalai-Lama

  • Perspective
  • Humility
  • Humor
  • Acceptance
  • Forgiveness
  • Gratitude
  • Compassion
  • Generosity

Some of my favorite Christmas carols are all about joy, and this past week I have been reflecting on the lyrics more deeply. Sing the songs that make you cry and laugh, get your family to sing with you, play the best music in your home while you work. There’s something about good music that we are designed to receive. Buddy the Elf was onto something.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

Let earth receive her king!

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And Heaven and nature sing

xoxoxoxo

I love how much God wants us to experience joy! He loves us so much! What He wants is for us to be joyful. We are repeatedly invited to rejoice. Re-joy ourselves and each other. It’s something we can do, not just something we occasionally, when we feel lucky, happen to notice. And then it an also be a total surprise! Of course our joy tanks can be depleted from time to time, but we can refill them. We can choose joy. We can walk the paths that pursue joy and allow it to flow generously for everyone.

I have learned that choosing joy is about a lot more than just looking on the bright side or finding the silver lining. It is that, but it is also deliberately living in whatever way cultivates the best life, the best reflection of Love, for the most people, day after day after average day, not just on holidays or for show. Choosing joy is an ongoing pattern of living that keeps us in alignment with Him.

Two more old blog posts about JOY:

A Different Mustard Seed Parable

Fractals Again, Joy Beyond Imagination, and Love

Okay, something amazing happened last week that I need to share. But it is a long story. It might need to be written in three or four chapters, so stay tuned. See the above photo.

For now, may all the details of your Christmas Eve be glowy and warm, centered in Love, steeped in just the right amount of tradition, and infused with your authentic personality. I am so excited to spend some quiet time with my own little family tomorrow. We are wildly thankful to be celebrating this Christmas in our own simple, joyful ways.

“Therefore being justified by faith,
We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
By whom also we have access by faith
into this grace wherein we stand,
and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
Romans 5:1
XOXOXO

* Side note: The co-author Douglas Abrams has now co-authored another book, this time with the much loved Jane Goodall. The Book of Hope is newly released, and the Lazy W will be hosting a discussion dinner in January or February. Please consider yourself invited!

advent 2021, LOVE

Two weeks until Christmas you guys!

The older I get, the more affection I have for the essence of every holiday. The more I sense that every good tradition is good because it is soaked in Love.

I actively embrace all the frilly details and reject frustrations and complaints about “modern trappings” or “excessive human structures,” because I know why we like them so much: They’re expressions of Love! So I am free to dive in. Give me all the lushness of the season, so long as it is all centered in Love.

This just hit me recently. It hit me how everything that really matters is rooted in and bound by Love, and love encompasses all kinds of celebratory living, every bit as much as lowly service and humility. Sin doesn’t always look a certain way; it’s just anything that steps away from Love. Once in a while I think about this, and the simplicity and grandeur of it all brings me to tears. There is a school of thought that takes it a step further and says that anything we perceive that is not love is actually an illusion. And that “Well being is the only stream that flows,” so anything other than well being is not its own dark force but just what we feel when we interrupt the flow of love. Book mark that thought and get back with me!

How wonderful that we are free to sink in and really enjoy everything the Christmas season has to offer, without having to rail against any of it! Just let Love flow freely through you, between you and your friends and family and strangers. Let Love rule the day and infuse every effort with meaning. Make sure Love is in your thoughts, too. Cozy and safe, from the inside out. As Kellie said recently, “Let Love be your default.”

In her reality-shifting book A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson says, “By affirming that love is our priority in a situation, we actualize the power of God.” And isn’t that precisely what Christmas is, the arrival and actualization of God’s power on earth?

How refreshing and exciting that a whole week of Advent is dedicated to Love. Gifts can be chosen with love, and then that process becomes REALLY FUN instead of arduous. We can decorate our homes with love in our hearts, rather than mechanical habit, honoring traditions and surrounding each other with the colors and fragrances and details that boost our spirits. This sets me free for silliness and a crazy-quilt mix of styles and memories around the farm. Love on every side, in every room, at each animal habitat. When baking time rolls around, and when we plan our family feasts and parties, let’s do that with love too. Certainly, all cooking is at its best when done lovingly. You can taste the difference. Sandy Coughlin always said of opening your home, “Bless, not impress.”

Try filling your December calendar with only loving events and gatherings, and say no to invitations that feel off. If you are facing a difficult relationship or unavoidable confrontation, try to lay the groundwork ahead of time by thinking as many loving thoughts toward that person as you can (I promise you can, and I promise this helps). Use the three-to-one ratio if you need to. Definitely, when you feel the anxiety rising, rehearse loving sentences rather than arguments. Practice seeing the best in everyone, even if you never verbalize those thoughts. It will shift your energy, and this allows you to be a conduit for miracles.

I am huge fan of romance at Christmastime, too! Let it simmer, let it flame, let it warm everything up a few degrees. Romantic love is a gift as much as any other relationship. I feel so lucky that my husband and I get lots of time alone and that he is as much a fan of date nights and quiet nights at home as I am. But we also love double date with friends, eating out and looking at lights in the city, all kinds of fun stuff! I hope young couples (looking at you Jess and Alex) make an effort to spark happy, private memories that no one else knows about and build whatever little Christmas traditions are meaningful to them. Those moments will bind the years together and infuse a special, personal flavor of love into future holiday seasons.

If we believe that God is Love and that He took human form at Christmastime, then Jesus’ birth is nothing but Love incarnate. It’s so simple. We have been taught this all our lives, but it just clicked for me recently, the Advent, the coming, the arrival of Love. It means we literally can enjoy Christmas every single day of our lives. We are invited to do this.

One of the greatest thrills of my adult life has been learning about other religions and how many parallels we share with our friends who are not Christian. Love rules their cultures, too. We may have a very different vernacular, but light bursts open the dark of every culture’s deepest winter, and love is the miracle we all enjoy.

Here’s a passage from the incomparably beautiful novel This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger:

“We breathe love in and we breathe love out. It’s the essence of our existence, the very air of our souls.”

However you spend the next couple of weeks, whatever preparations you choose to make for Christmas weekend, I hope you can remain centered on Love and inspired by its sweetness and strength. I hope you and your people can welcome the arrival of Love in every relationship and every circumstance. I hope that you can feel Love being born over and over again, ever single day. Choose it. Choose Him.

“So to live as if you are unloved
is a limitation.
Living unloved is like
clipping a bird’s wings
and removing its ability to fly.”
~William Young
XOXOXO

another post about hope for advent 2021

Hey friends, hello and thanks for reading along here. Thanks, also, for so many comments and private messages after my most recent post about hope. Apparently lots of us are grappling with hard feelings right now, and it is wonderful to freely exchange the best reminders. Thank you!

P.S., let’s not waste time and energy feeling bad for feeling bad sometimes; we all are in very good company. You have every bit of the wisdom and strength you need for this exact moment in time.

Okay.

Today I have a more lighthearted story about hope.

A few years ago our precious friend Maddie invited us to one of her high school drama musicals, Shrek. (Locals, if you ever have a chance to see a theater production at Choctaw High School, buy your tickets and put on your party dress. The production quality is mind blowing.)

Sweet Maddie, celebrating with ice cream
on our final day of garden class a few years ago xoxo

In the story, as you may know from the animated film, Princess Fiona is held captive in a castle tower. Every day she pines for her romantic, royal rescue (a story worth exploring in its own right). She sings about it. She gazes artistically through the tower window and imagines how it will happen. She daydreams of her unknown Prince.

Every day of her captivity, Fiona lives in constant, positive expectation of the One True Thing for which her heart longs. She sings, “I know it’s today, I know it’s TODAY!” In the song she laments other princesses’ hard problems and their grim fates, and she continues to count her own days waiting (20, 21, 22, 23… What day is it?) yet constantly asserts. “I know it’s today!”

It occurs to me at this point that many of us are counting years, not days. If this is your situation, please know that I know how much that hurts. My heart goes out to you.

Back to Shrek.

Day after day, Fiona’s answer eludes her. She continues in hope, but night falls and no deliverance. Over and over again, she goes to bed still captive, still hoping. The audience is drawn into her suspenseful waiting.

Until one day.

One day it does happen. All along her rescuers had been on their own long journey, searching for her. She is found and freed and can finally celebrate. Do you know what she sings?

With even bigger exuberance than before, Fiona the Hopeful belts out, “I knew it would happen TODAY!!” The crowd screams as if Russell Westbrook, coached personally by Bob Stoops, just won the Showcase Showdown!! Energy ripples through the building. Strangers hug and high five and kiss each other right on the mouth. An old man stands up from a wheelchair and does a cartwheel. Giant, sequined confetti falls in a slow-motion whirlwind. A horse whinnies triumphantly.

Not exactly, BUT… The crowd definitely cheers, and I do vividly remember sitting there in the dark auditorium with Handsome and our friends, weeping and shaking a little bit, feeling overwhelming joy for this fictional character on stage, ha! Which just means I was feeling what it might feel like for my own prayers to be answered, again.

Because my prayers have absolutely been answered so many times in life, it’s unreal. The deliverance from fear and danger, from threat and grief and so many very real problems and crises… When I stop to reflect on it all, I get tearful giggles. How could I ever ask for more? And yet, life marches on and problems and heartaches are just part of it.

I’ll happily take it all, and lots and lots of it, thank you very much. The beautiful, the mundane, the terrifying, the delicious. I’ll take all the shadows, because I want all the blinding light too.

And when the prayers are hefty and the miracles we need are immense, like they are right now, again, I want to be like Fiona. I want to live in constant, positive anticipation of our deepest hopes being fulfilled TODAY.

One day it will be today. Our disciplined, hopeful singing will turn in an instant to shouting and celebration, all over again. The pain of waiting will be forgotten, all over again, out of the blue.

Out of the blue has been exactly how so many miracles have been delivered over the years.

Jocelyn, in her bliss, that first summer she lived in Colorado.
We rode horses and laughed so hard that day, and my sunglasses bounced off on the trail. xoxo
Jess, planting flowers at her first apartment,
the day she told me about this boy she had just met, named Alex. xoxo

Keep praying, friends, and I will too. Keep imagining and expecting the best of everything. Continue in hope. Every scripture invites us to enjoy this habit. Every good bit of spiritual literature will press you into some theme of inner buoyancy, which is what hope feels like to me.

“Despair is the development of pride so great
that it chooses one’s certitude rather than admit
God is more creative than we are.”
My sister Angela shared this beautiful quote with me
XOXOXOXO