Lazy W Marie

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

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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

advent 2021, choosing HOPE as a strategy

Earlier today I was about 2,000 words deep in an overly effusive essay about hope. This is the first week of Advent, after all, a few days meant to celebrate the virtue. I was excited to share some stories and ideas with you and just typed feverishly all morning.

Then I received some disturbing news wrapped in painful, stabbing words that sparked some deep anger, and my enthusiasm plummeted. I let myself “feel the feelings,” so to speak, until it felt like I was actually spiraling out of control in those emotions. I am struggling lately, as hard as that is to admit, and it doesn’t take very much for me to lose my balance.

One valuable lesson I have learned in this ongoing emotional rollercoaster is that when I sense my feet are on the banks of quicksand, when I feel that out of control kind of grief about to overtake me, it’s time to reach out to someone else. Not for salvation necessarily, but to be a help if possible. It’s good to reach out to someone beyond the situation at hand, pray for someone totally unrelated to my current crisis, and widen my view until my heart expands past this immediate pain and I regain some perspective. Our grandmother Ina Lynne was know for practicing a version of this, and she was one of the gentlest, strongest, most forward-thinking women I have ever known.

So I called my sister Angela, just to say hi and let her know I was still praying about something she had shared with us. I used my most stupid fake-chipper voice.

Can I pause here and say what a blessing it is to have siblings who are your friends and confidants?

We chatted only briefly before she asked about my girls, and my stupid chipper voice faltered. We have grown close enough now that I can no longer hide much of what’s going on inside me, and actually this is wonderful.

“This is not hopeless,” Ang said. I physically crumbled against the wall and started crying. She did not know I had been writing for the past three hours about hope.

“You have every reason to be hopeful,” she asserted, in a low, denim-velvet voice, both soothing and authoritative. She knows a thing or two about hopelessness, recovery, addiction, alienation, and more.

She also knows about healing and the power of community and HOPE. She works for an agency by that exact name, by the way, and their mission is to usher the least hopeful among us into new lives.

We spoke for a few more minutes about odds and likelihoods and statistics, about patterns and trauma all the many hardships inflicted on our kids over the years. But the real message between us was the power of Love and prayer and the reality that hope flourishes into actual, living-proof results. She got me to refocus on the future instead of wallowing in hate for the people who have hurt my girls. I hate that I need this redirection, but I do sometimes, and I am grateful when I get it.

We get to choose hope. We get to let it warm us and strengthen us while we endure the unknowns. Hope leads us into better choices and better habits and better outlooks. We expect more from ourselves and hold higher standards for each other when we side with hope and remember that despair is a shifting illusion.

Sure, we get to feel the fear, and the pain, and even the rage, and then we get to actively set our feet on solid ground and walk the much better path.

I am so thankful Ang picked up the phone while I was still on the brink of emotional quicksand. Part of the magic, as I am sure you already know, is that in reaching out toward someone else, chances are pretty good that the connection will lift you, too.

For my family, I choose hope. I choose to believe that healing is real and overcoming is what we were born to do. I choose to believe that Love transcends literally every hardship, and the fate others have chosen does not have to be ours.

“Hope is not a strategy.”
“You must not have been here long.”
XOXOXOXO

family thanksgiving 2021

Our family just polished off a luscious, eventful, soul-satisfying Thanksgiving week. We filled not just one day but one glorious week with fun and love.

Dunaway family Thanksgiving, 2021

We shared meals and indulged in local outings. We played games and told stories. We swapped jokes, cooked, cleaned, cooked and cleaned again, and “helped” Dad with crossword puzzles. We played with all the many family dogs and teased Gen mercilessly for not wanting to play any dogs. “He’s breathing on me! He’s breathing on me!” (She’s smart, but also weird, so we don’t let this go.)

Ang caught lots of teasing for, well, one unforgettable recipe typo which will go down in family legend. (She’s weird, but also smart, so this mistake was delightful.)

We drew names for Christmas gifting, dove into an early round of the Saran Wrap game since we won’t all be together in December, big thanks to Ang for spontaneously gathering those supplies late the evening before our big feast. And we compared notes on how we will spend the coming winter months.

Thanks to Ang, we played the Saran Wrap game early this year!
He wastes nothing, especially if it can be fashioned into something majestic.

Gen, in town from Los Angeles for the first time since the winter holidays of 2019, ran six miles with me at the lake, and we were amazed by our ability to keep up a truly lively conversation while maintaining a pretty smooth pace.

Smiling’s our favorite!! (Me with Gen)

Philip made a decadent chocolate-peanutbutter cheesecake from scratch, and his patience was tested by his older sisters’ chaotic, well, everything. Kenzie taught us a Tik-Tok dance, we might soon be famous. There was a chopsticks prank, and there were tiny chalkboard easels for displaying our thankfulness.

Hundreds of unforgettable moments filled the hours, and several long strands of warm, binding affection encircled the days. We all needed this Thanksgiving Week, probably more than we realized. If last year we held our breath and muddled through, clinging to the bones of tradition, then this year we enjoyed the greatest exhale and then laughed until we felt it in every cell. We luxuriated in the best Thanksgiving has to offer.

The glory of a well executed family holiday is not any one person’s doing, but rather the result of every member’s best effort. Cooking, arranging, engineering games, tending to traditions and details, spearheading city events, amassing extra furniture, telling the best stories, laughing uncontrollably, dancing, listening, leading, following. Being the best looking and also the firstborn (brushes off shoulder).

Every ingredient matters. We rely on each person bring his or her A Game, then we all enjoy the alchemy of our vivid personalities blending into something greater then just the sum of our parts. To me this illustrates part of the magic of family. God gave us this beautiful lifelong gift. By design, it seems, we live more fully as a group when each person steps fully into his or her gifts.

Our parents make everything better,
and they work so hard to keep everyone connected.
The older I get, the more I am amazed by what an accomplishment this is.

That said, at the end of the day, we owe an extra debt to Mom and Dad. Their forty-eight years of pressing traditions into their kids’ hearts has yielded an insatiable appetite for more of everything. Why else would we be drawn so irresistibly to home base, to the same foods, the same seasonal activities, the same faces? I love it all. I am so thankful for this nourishing rhythm. So thankful for my small, young family of origin that has grown and matured into my very favorite group of adults and new children.

Of course we missed Joe (my middle brother) and Halee and their two handsome boys, who are living their U.S. Navy chapter in Spain, but they are happy and thriving. We enjoyed some Facetime screams and giggles with them as we feasted. They happened to be in Barcelona that day!

And we missed Dante (our first nephew) and his bride Deaven, who travelled to spend thanksgiving with her family in California. We had some Facetime laughs with Dante, too, and made sure he knew he was missing the most fun here with us.

Always, for so many holiday seasons over the years, we missed Jocelyn. We are hurting for her and for Jessica, as grief is complex and has a way of intensifying around holidays. Yet even in this, I can give thanks, because the dense, soft warmth of family absorbs so much pain. The safe, circular walls of family keep the worst of the world’s darkness at bay. We can help the girls when they let us, and we always pray and stay ready when they retreat tp privacy.

Can you even imagine the party we are going to have when every single family member is here with us?

This weekend, Gen is back in Los Angeles. Each of our local households has retreated for a bit of rest and maybe holiday cleanup, Christmas gift shopping, and decorating. We’re enjoying a few quiet autumn days before December gains its own glittering momentum.

When I say my heart is full, I mean I feel both short of breath from it all and deeply slowed and rested. Like the simplest things are all we need.

And how wonderful that such a magical week can land me right back on the threshold of my amazing normal life.

Thank you for stopping here. And thank you to everyone who left such loving notes on recent posts. I hope your Thanksgiving was everything you needed it to be, and if not, I hope you know how to step into the next chapter wisely and lovingly. As we begin to observe some Advent weeks, please consider checking in here for some inspiration. I have some good things brewing!

“Thanksgiving was never meant
to be shut up in a single day.”
~Robert Caspar Lintner
XOXOXO

do I have resting worried face?

A few days ago while grocery shopping, I accidentally caught my own reflection in a narrow mirrored pillar, but I didn’t realize it was my own reflection. I definitely thought, for a split second, it was a stranger, a very worried, deeply sad, visibly distressed stranger. Her eyebrows were knotted upward, mouth pressed thin and downturned, overall countenance gray and dull. I smiled at her to cheer her up just as I was realizing my mistake.

As I retreated from the mirror, it sunk in that I had been walking around like that in public. Just broadcasting to strangers an outward expression of some private pain. It was unintentional, and I felt really ashamed. When I shared all of this with my husband later he said, “Yeah babe, now you know why I am always asking you if you are ok.” Yikes. Do I always look so sad?

Since this weird moment, I have been trying to be more conscious of how my inner storms are leaking out. I am making an effort to interact with the world a bit more lightly. To be clear, I don’t mean to suggest that we fake happiness or deny anything real or worth examining, but I have learned the value of smiling anyway. I have learned to just to acknowledge and accept my sadness then choose as often as possible to smile anyway.

To choose joy despite loss and grief and worry.

To accept humor and fun surprises with open arms, because they can be powerful tonics. Everything that counterweights hardship is a gift.

To vote for hope and optimism in the face of some scary unknowns. Count the victories, dwell on them!

I have learned to actively express gratitude for so many blessings, so much emotional comfort and practical safety and stability in the world. What extravagance. We are so loved.

I will actively choose to invest in healthy relationships, happy memories, and hope for our family’s future. Give thanks for people still living, for whom our prayers matter greatly, joy for friendships that uplift us and traditions that keep us grounded. These are glittering gifts.

Because winter is coming, I am consciously accepting the many luscious gifts of a long, slow, mild autumn, a healthy and colorful farm dotted with well fed, affectionate, hilarious animals. A house that keeps us comfortable and stimulated. I remind myself to go walk around the farm after I have finished my work, thankful for the weather and all the beauty around us. Every single beautiful day is a gift.

Instead of focusing on the precious time we lost with Jocelyn and Jessica, instead of focusing on the abuse they endured all those years, I am focusing on their lives now, and on Alex and the pups, who we love dearly. We are focusing on these kids’ unbelievable capacity to heal and rebuild, on their tenacity and wisdom, their tender love and unnatural beauty. Every text, every visit, every hug, is a gift.

We truly have so much to celebrate. This doesn’t mean we are forgetting about yet unanswered prayers; it only means we are saying thank you for so many prayers that have already been answered, after years of waiting and hoping and striving.

How could we ever give up on any miracle we crave? So much has fallen straight out of the sky for us. I want to more often express that hope and joy physically. My face should more often reflect my deep hope and abiding joy, instead of my worry.

Today I was in a different grocery store and was actively framing my thoughts and making an effort to smile at and chat with everyone. My heart was freshly refilled with the same strong worries, the same toxins, but I just acknowledged them and persisted in drumming up the better schools of thought. Though I never accidentally caught my own reflection, I think my vibration was better than a few days ago. Everyone smiled back at me, and lots of people stopped to chat. It was wonderful and sweet. A young man approached me and asked my age, and how was I today, and a generous offering of just so pretty, and do I need anything at all? It was sweet and kind and unnecessary, and it helped me feel like I was back in society a little bit. Like maybe I wasn’t scaring people away with my facial expression.

Handsome and I talked things through over dinner, and my heart settled onto some good, warm truths. Yes, we are surrounded by worries. We are traumatized and wounded, and we are occasionally weary. We are waiting for some precious answers in the world, as you are too. It is wise and useful to share our concerns but not dwell on them. Much better to dwell on the amazing goodness and unseen beauty headed our way.

So, if I have crossed your path recently and resonated sadness, I am very sorry for that. I am sorry for ever spreading darkness over light. Maybe admitting this will at least let people know that my constant encouragement to choose joy do come from a place of knowing it is sometimes a very difficult choice. I know it is not always easy to cling to, but it is always worth it. Keep choosing joy.

Signed,
Mrs. Resting Worried Face