Lazy W Marie

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

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Merry Christmas Eve from the farm, friends. I am thankful for you and for all the richness and connection my life enjoys because of this intermittent meeting.

Handsome, Klaus and I are luxuriating in stillness today. It is perhaps the first time in a few months we have done so, and it may be the last such day off together for a while. I knew it was coming, this brief reprieve with no errands or difficult work, not even shopping or running, so I readied myself for it and am so happy.

Our tree is surrounded with wrapped surprises for friends and family. Our kitchen is overflowing with good things to eat. And, most importantly, our hearts have never been more deeply rooted in hope. I feel the vibrations of that inaudible bass drum of anticipation for bigger, brighter miracles than we have ever seen before.

Life exactly as it is, right this minute, is unbelievably beautiful, the big picture marred only by being temporarily separated from Jocelyn. To say that I miss her is an understatement; but I know after all we have been through to trust. We cling to promises and thrive on hope and the power of Love and joy to bridge us again, just as they did a few years ago, just as they did with Jessica more recently. Then we return our attention to the millions of beautiful details in this day, to the incredible miracles already at work in our world. How can I ever doubt Him?

Nothing is lost. All things are possible. Love has a vibration, a unique and unparalleled power.

And? The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Words matter, friends. They become real, tangible things. They save us. It’s how everything was created, by words. It’s how we are designed. Just a little reminder and (hopefully) an encouragement.

So, a very Merry Christmas from everyone here at the farm, to you and everyone in your world. Whatever your burdens and losses, may your joys far outweigh them. However you celebrate, may Love be the root and fulfilling motivation behind it all. Talk again soon.

XOXOXO

https://lazywmarie.com/8923-2/

Merry Christmas Eve from the farm, friends. I am thankful for you and for all the richness and connection my life enjoys because of this intermittent meeting.

Handsome, Klaus and I are luxuriating in stillness today. It is perhaps the first time in a few months we have done so, and it may be the last such day off together for a while. I knew it was coming, this brief reprieve with no errands or difficult work, not even shopping or running, so I readied myself for it and am so happy.

Our tree is surrounded with wrapped surprises for friends and family. Our kitchen is overflowing with good things to eat. And, most importantly, our hearts have never been more deeply rooted in hope. I feel the vibrations of that inaudible bass drum of anticipation for bigger, brighter miracles than we have ever seen before.

Life exactly as it is, right this minute, is unbelievably beautiful, the big picture marred only by being temporarily separated from Jocelyn. To say that I miss her is an understatement; but I know after all we have been through to trust. We cling to promises and thrive on hope and the power of Love and joy to bridge us again, just as they did a few years ago, just as they did with Jessica more recently. Then we return our attention to the millions of beautiful details in this day, to the incredible miracles already at work in our world. How can I ever doubt Him?

Nothing is lost. All things are possible. Love has a vibration, a unique and unparalleled power.

And? The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

Words matter, friends. They become real, tangible things. They save us. It’s how everything was created, by words. It’s how we are designed. Just a little reminder and (hopefully) an encouragement.

So, a very Merry Christmas from everyone here at the farm, to you and everyone in your world. Whatever your burdens and losses, may your joys far outweigh them. However you celebrate, may Love be the root and fulfilling motivation behind it all. Talk again soon.

XOXOXO

https://lazywmarie.com/8922-2/

monday, jack handey style

Today was as Mondayish as Mondays get around here. I procrastinated and then wrecked my treadmill workout and barely got four miles to register on my Garmin. My good intentions for a shampoo and manicure never came to fruition. Also, a possum was in the chicken feed bin and we terrified each other and screamed right at each others’ haggard faces. I did get almost all of my work list accomplished, though, including every speck of sweeping, laundry and ironing, and so far am keeping healthy despite some mean germs floating around. Tonight I am going to indulge in a brain-purge and call it good. Onward to Tuesday!

stop

Song lyrics by Dido: “No love without freedom, no freedom without love.”

On a recent episode of The Daring Romantics podcast, Lindsey Eryn offers encouragement to finish the calendar year strong, to keep up your good momentum. She suggested, among other actionable things, that we spend three hours per week on “future” projects, on goals that propel us forward. This feels so familiar and good. Back in my mutual funds selling days, we had marketing that used actual galvanized buckets as visual aids to illustrate short term, middle term, and long term financial planning: “Cash-Income-Growth. ” Time is as valuable as money. How we spend it could be divided into “work for this day,” or cash, “work for tomorrow and short term progress” or income, and “work for the future,” or long term growth goals. Love it.

Bob Goff reminds us:

“God never promised we’d have all the answers. What He offers to us is a box of crayons and the opportunity to let love draw bigger circles around the people we meet than they thought were possible.”

Joy is a super power. It truly is. Joy overcomes, transcends, illuminates, and emulsifies so many other efforts. It is the whole point, as someone else once said.

A local blogging friend of mine shared with me that she has been blogging less because she and her husband have been happily burdened with other projects. They are discovering fulfillment in other efforts, in family and a brand new ministry projects, and they love it. She described it as being “pulled by things eternal,” and being at peace with retreating from some of the more public activities. I love this.

One day last month I noticed an online blurb about it being “Fibonacci Spiral Day.” Of all the frivolous special days on the imaginary world calendar, this one made me happy. Jocelyn was the first person in my life to get really excited about it. She used to love talking about it on our hikes in Colorado, just the two of us, memories I will forever treasure. Since then I have noticed it in so many areas of life. So much synchronicity, you wouldn’t believe. And I have heard a few friends mention it here and there,  most recently Julia. Life cycles, patterns, descending and expanding ratios. Beautiful, pulsing repetition. It is mesmerizing on every level, how the Universe offers me this cellular rhythm. Julia lost her Dad this week, and I felt her pain like a hammer on my chest all the way from California. Send some comforting wishes in Julia’s direction. And please pray for Jocelyn, friends.

I have been reading and listening to podcasts a lot on the physical and spiritual benefits of fasting, far removed from fat loss. Amazing. Exciting! So many health benefits and so much long standing tradition. Handsome and I touched briefly on the topic of Biblical references to different sorts of fasts, different lengths and purposes, the meanings behind number of days, etc. Really interesting. Our bodies and spirits are so beautifully aligned. More synchronicity, more patterns.

Psalm 118:24 and so many other love notes from God, reminding me to stay present. Stay in this day and re-joy myself. We are designed to handle this much at once. This moment is where we can affect change. Today is gorgeous and perfect and is a gift.

Cannot stop thinking about the nature or character of God, gender or no, remote or internal (both?), timeless no doubt. I just have these creeping tendrils of curiosity about heaven and hell, too, because (feel free to call me crazy) I just don’t think these are future geographies or eventual destinations. I don’t believe we are on our way to either place, exactly. I believe more and more that we choose our heavenly or hellish state day to day, moment by moment. Our thoughts, our choices, the lives we design for ourselves, both the physical structures and habits and the interior landscapes, our relationships, all of it. All of it combined becomes our realities of personal paradise or personal torture. Okay. Feel free to ignore that thought. It is not quite complete anyway.

Also, just one more weird twisty thought please: I am gleaning so much from so many different sources that gets me feeling like our moral instruction is not about how we should be living, but rather, it all is just informing us about how the universe operates, how we can best thrive within the normal operating systems already in place. So it’s less about good and evil and more about alignment and friction. Typing those words make it seem suddenly and eye-rollingly elementary. But for me it replaces shame and false authority with calm and boldness. It’s a subtle but powerful shift in perspective. Leaves lots more room for co-creativity and for JOY! Okay, I’m done.

Seneca, paraphrased: “As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” This is exactly what Carpe Diem means to me. Identifying what is unique and brief about the next slice of time before us, and making the most of those details., Also, seeing the best in a day, squeezing from it all the molten-lava-JOY you can! 

Quite out of the blue this past week, while doing some much needed, very average housework, I remembered lyrics from an ancient Christmas hymn: “That hope can flower from our grieving, that man can catch his breath and turn transfixed by faith.”

And here is a gem from Ann Voskamp, whose Advent book The Greatest Gift is sustaining me again:

“Sometimes the heart of waiting for the gift is the art of the gift.”

The waiting for the gift can be my art. My Advent. A way of staying awake and engaged with life, not just coasting, not numbing myself with running or cooking or doing rote chores in a passionless way. How we live and how we thrive in the midst of waiting for miracles matters very much. It can be a form of worship, the thankful and trusting spirit we harness and exude during dark times.

Have you ever thought about what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph while they searched for Jesus for THREE DAYS and he was just casually in the temple?? AHHH They suffered. Besides the foreshadowing of three days in the grave and the suffering they would do then, this briefly mentioned story in the gospel of Luke really gut-punched me this week. What a thing, to be asked to trust God with your child with no promise of how the story will end. And yet, who better to trust?

Ok. One last thing. What are the meaningful differences between yoga and stretching? How much does breath-work matter? And meditation? Can you stretch “cold” and still get the benefits, physically?

Also, can you get rabies if a possum screams his breath directly at your open mouth?

‘Bye!

turkey palooza love letter to my family

In our family, every person counts. We are a big, rambunctious crowd, and while from the outside it may seem that anyone could get lost in us, we always feel the absence of any one member.

In our family, we tease each other mercilessly, sometimes bordering on meanness, but we love each other fiercely and will defend each other to outsiders with everything we have. Sincere efforts are appreciated, too, and applauded. We love doing things for and with each other.

In our family, we value fun and silliness. Greatly. We laugh loudly and a lot. And at everything. Over and over and over again. We play games chance we get.

In our family, kids are precious. And the adults are also kids.

In our family we weep with each other. And although we no longer attend church together, we all feel and benefit from each other’s prayers.

We all crave deeper and continuing connection with each other. We are gently competitive, but we mostly help each other. Everyone contributes. Even the Whos in Whoville have nothing on our family’s sense of teamwork. You know what we should do? Go on Family Feud or maybe The Greatest Race or something.

For us, there is no such thing as a black sheep, because we all take turns being the odd man out, ha. At some time, each of us has wandered from the fold, and we always come back. This gives us hope for our babes who are hurting. We have learned that each of us has an ongoing need for grace and mercy. We all have said and done things to hurt each other, we all have been forgiven, we all want everybody else to stay close immediately and from now on, ok? There are no outsiders in our family. We are all of us, together, even when we are far flung. Every person is worth waiting for.  

(Come home, Joc. We miss you. We need you. We are here for anything you need.)

We love each other. We love each other’s babies and puppies. We feel at home in each other’s homes. It feels like childhood after a few hours or especially a few days together in a shared, confined space.

In our family, we eat really well. We are, I like to think, health conscious hedonists. Giving us home cooked food with whole milk and eating dinner at the table for 90% of our meals, Mom and Dad raised lots of very enthusiastic cooks! This Thanksgiving, two of their adult grandchildren some cooking for the feast, and we were so proud.

We care about beauty and lushness, but we are not too fancy.

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We value lots of traditions, if they serve our communal joy, and we won’t be shamed out of it. We don’t mind test driving new traditions either! The Saran Wrap game is only a few years old for us, but it’s not going anywhere. We also love to share memories and figure out which details we retain differently. (If you think we didn’t have a pet ferret, though, you’re wrong.)

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In our family we work hard and expect accountability. For example, when a projects falls flat, Dad might say, “What did you think would happen when you did that?” And this question doesn’t sting; it only points us back to the process.

We nap hard. We dance, draw,  create, play music, imagine, climb trees, study, clean, and work. Hard. Really hard. All of it.

Our family takes lots and lots of photos! Of everything. We do this because we are amazed by how quickly time passes. We want some documentation of all this life happening. But we also hate for our own photos to be posted to Face book without permission. Ask Genny about having cheeks full of banana at the 5K.

For our family, the two people who started everything as bright eyed, glossy faced teenagers are now our matriarch and patriarch, and for all of our juvenile complaining and petulance in the past, now… none of us know what we would do without them.

In our family we celebrate each other’s successes. We ask a lot about the future, and we love talking to each other about our plans, whatever they may be, big or small. We encourage each other. We have learned to not dwell too long in the past, except to celebrate it and hopefully laugh. We have learned that every single one of us needs some forward momentum. Some encouragement and a push here and there. Also some grace and compassion, all of which we happily provide for each other.

In our family, it’s a lot. It’s a lot of a lot, with no signs of it ever not being a lot. But we love it. Our two sweet members who married into all of this A-Lot-Ness  probably feel it the most. BW and Halee are often a bit wide-eyed by the end of a good reunion, but we trust that they too value the whirling dervish that is our family.

We all need a nap now. And a bit of quiet, maybe some Febreeze for the house and a few raw veggies for our bellies. But truly we just love the happy chaos so much. We love the intense texture and noise and wild flavor of us all together, because as messy as it is, as overwhelming as it can be, as much as the togetherness may stretch each other’s boundaries, this is where each of us originated.  This is the very real and powerful nucleus of Love and Intention and Effort from which all five of us sprouted and grew. How wonderful that we all have grown in such different directions and still “come home” to celebrate so often.

Come home. Touch base. Home base.

“Safe!”
(unless you are playing Wago)
XOXOXOXO

using shadows to see the light

Once in a blue moon, I allow myself to wander the shadowy landscape of What Might Have Been. I briefly revisit so many surreal weeks in hospitals with our girls when they were tiny. Family funerals over the years. Bizarre relationship changes. Job loss and all of the precipitating life evolutions. Near misses on the highway. Injuries and illnesses with our farm animals. The terror of everything that happened in Colorado two years ago. All of the scary parts of life that my mind is mostly trained to not glorify, I will just sometimes glance at again.

I don’t do this often, or for very long, because I have learned that imagining things can bring them to fruition. Our most vibrant emotions have the power to magnify; they can either fuel or fight against our prayers. Those idle moments lost in thought can sharpen unseen possibilities, good and bad. So I am careful.

But I am as susceptible to triggers and as filled with memory as anyone, so sometimes I let it all drizzle over me for a few moments. If I am feeling strong and focused enough, I allow a good, steady gaze straight in the face of all those phantoms. I remember the terror, the grief, the uncertainty, whatever it is. Or whatever it was or could have been. I think that’s key.

Then inevitably I am flooded with visions of reality, for how things actually are, and I am shaken to my core with gratitude. At that point, my indulgence is over. My mental habit is to give thanks for as many true details as I can scoop up. Gratitude is easy for facts like sunsets and gardens. Art and music. Fat horses. Dramatic Oklahoma skies. Life and redemption. Lies burned through with truth. Healing. Financial provision. Relationships strengthened. Children returned home. Addictions dealt with. Breakthroughs. Peace. Unbridled joy in the midst of so much suffering.

I return intentionally to reality, to the present moment. And the beauty of the present moment always outshines the shadowy, phantom past.

A few weeks ago, on a whim, I texted a phone number still programmed in my phone to Jocelyn. It is no longer hers, I knew that, but in the bounce back of one of the indulgences I just described to you, I had to try. The new owner replied and I asked, if they knew Joc, to tell her know that her Mom loves her and misses her so much. This was a silly thing to do. I realize the odds of that person knowing her were ridiculous. But this person responded with compassion and a wish that I find her and that she knows we love her.

Then, just a few days ago, Handsome and I were driving on Northwest Expressway and stopped at a traffic light across from Baptist hospital. This was exactly the last part of town where I last spent time with Joc and her little sister, almost a year ago. Stopped at that light, in the driver’s seat, I spotted a petite young woman with dark hair and slim legs, an oversized coat, backpack on one shoulder. She was waiting to cross the Expressway. It only lasted for a moment, but I thought it was her. My body flooded and tensed with adrenaline, and I very nearly threw the car into park and flung open the door. I was ready to scream her name and sprint to her, but the young woman turned her head and showed me a face that was not Jocelyn’s. I sat there just kind of crumpled, you know that feeling when a flood of adrenaline drains quietly. It’s always such a sickening, nauseous moment. I held my breath, begging silently for the green light. When Handsome saw my face, all I told him was that I thought I had seen Joc. He put his hand on my leg and whispered a few words of prayer. Everything was warm and steady again. That familiar sensation of God being near us dissolved the sick.

I miss her. I miss so much I do not have the words for it. And I am dealing with lots of anger, too, with other adults in her life and her sisters’, in their upbringing, in their adulthood, just the world itself is so violent and treacherous. My beautiful, innocent babies. Yet… Layered with and connected to this ongoing grief is a strong, brilliant assurance that every single prayer is already answered. Reality is both; they seem inseparable.

If we never revisit the old wounds and fears, either near misses or catastrophes that actually did happen and actually did reshape our worlds, I think our gratitude can become dull, theoretical, rote. But laying hold of our darkest feelings and offering them to God is a good way to transform them. It’s that miraculous alchemy again. The gratitude that comes next is textured and colorful, vibrating with life because we know our gifts are real and worth appreciating.

  • Admitting our broken relationships and failures then giving thanks for the healing that has come since.
  • Looking at where we have been emptied out and scraped bare then giving thanks for the unprecedented ways God has refilled our stores, emotionally, financially, physically.
  • Remembering lost loved ones so we can keep their characters alive and also more actively treasure the people still with us.
  • Excitement in advance for miracles still brewing.
  • Gratitude for the true elasticity of time and for the timeless, omnipresent, unstoppable force that is Love.

Faith cooperates with imagination, but it hardly an imaginary whim. Every one of these moments in life, each choice to redirect our energy and recommit ourselves, counts. And the sharp contrast between Fear and Love is so delicious, such a gift in itself.

Come home, baby. I have so much to tell you.