Lazy W Marie

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

river not reservoir

Will you follow me on a short, meandering train of thought? This all occurred to me simultaneously, early this morning.

Are you, like me, a borderline obsessive list maker and goal tender? I keep a planner and myriad lists and charts for habit tracking, miles and paces ran, farm projects, holidays, seasonal work, animal needs, garden jobs, you name it. It helps me “stay on track,” I tell myself, but really what it does is soothe lots of insecurities about my contribution. It gives me an inky representation of my work, because deep down I know that I don’t do enough. Or maybe sometimes I do plenty, but I need the written proof, because no one else knows. Maybe if I die suddenly and someone asks, “What did she do with her life?” they could look at my multicolored planner and see. “Oh, good those habits seem very tidy. Nice.”

What if instead of keeping lists and calendars, instead of charting accomplishments and habits to make myself feel like a good enough person, I get back to counting blessings?

I had this thought early this morning, between a few picturesque moments. I lifted the east facing blinds to see the cotton candy daybreak, and then I walked outside with Klaus. The air was fresh and sweet, the cats were stretching on the sidewalk, campaigning for belly scratches and breakfast, and the birds were singing. SINGING. They produced actual music, not orchestrated by any human, and really beautiful. My mind was mechanically in gear about what to do first today, but the beauty of the moment, the safety and abundance of my life, quite undeserved (Or do I deserve it, a little? Have I fought hard enough for this, evolved enough finally?) overwhelmed me. I came back inside to make two very different cups of coffee, and the thought burst into my mind: “What if you stop counting the things you do and return to counting your blessings?””

I cannot tell you how scary this though felt at first, and then I judged myself for being scared of it. “Why? What is wrong with you?” I demanded of myself. What a clear message, that I have been relying so heavily on self and have been so feverishly feeding my ego, that I need to prove to my own mind so many ridiculous little things. No one else ever sees my lists; it is all for self assurance and carrot motivation.

And then there’s the notion of flow.

A few years ago, just before Pandemic actually, I had an unsolicited and overwhelming experience of Love that has stuck with me and taught me many lessons, the more I reflect on it. Part of the experience was being personally showered with specific encouragement about the ways I had impacted the lives of my friends and family. Dozens of people contributed, and I cried and cried. I wrote something at the time about “Leak Stop” in order to prevent my usual fleeting confidence from forgetting or dismissing it all. I tried to muscle myself into hoarding it all in my heart, you know? And that worked, to an extent. But I don’t think that’s what we’re really supposed to do with Love.

I don’t think we’re supposed to collect Love and keep it for ourselves, just be un-leaky reservoirs that receive lots of water and share it only in emergencies, or maybe grow stagnant. I think we’re supposed to be more like rivers that flow free and strong like the Thompson in Colorado. I think that instead of stopping up the leaks so I could keep more Love for myself, for bad days, I was fine being flexible and open, to share Love more boldly. Receive, give, receive, give, and flow with life giving energy day after day after day. How wonderful to be aligned daily with blessings and purposes. This has been one of my prayers for a few years, and I see it manifesting constantly. Weirdly, haha, I found a way to make that meditation into a task as well. Cool.

And maybe being obsessed with lists and accomplishments ironically stunts my contribution; maybe this lifestyle keeps me too oriented to self and keeps me from allowing Love to flow.

Counting blessings opens me up much more to wonder and gratitude, to magic and limitlessness. Not just small gorgeous details but also catastrophes avoided, abundance realized, joys fulfilled. I know this. I have known it for years, and still I sometimes need the reminder.

Our family has been in a little storm this past month that challenged my ability to stay in the moment and asked me to demonstrate what I have been learning these recent years about prayer, imagination, faith, trust, and free will. Will I spend energy worrying, regretting, and spiraling into what-if scenarios, or will I redeem energy for miracles? It’s been a private and inward job mostly, but the effects are very much three dimensional, very real and impactful to loved ones. What I’m saying is that prayer is a real force. Thoughts are things. And so, it matters where we focus. We have influence, but only by accessing Love. I am so thankful for the redirection this morning away from tasks and ego and back to the Absolute, the Source, the Field, as so many books refer to Love. Back to God.

How scary to realize the thinness of that line, the difference between trusting myself and trusting God.

And how wonderful to relax into being a conduit for power rather than needing to be a source of it, which is obviously impossible. There is only one Source.

Ok gotta go. I have a certain number of miles to run and a list of chores to finish, Ha! Otherwise I am not a real person, ok? I’m mostly kidding.

Harness your thoughts. Direct your energy. Love your life. It’s all here for us to enjoy and share, flowing back and forth.

XOXOXOXO

cultivating hope & beauty, mari’s pandemic story

In early February, 2020, Mari was planning a 50th birthday party for her husband Tony. Though well plugged into the news, they didn’t yet feel that the new flu-like virus was anything to worry about here in Oklahoma. “There had been other pandemics that happened and never quite hit me where I lived.” So they kept their plans, and a small group of loved ones gathered at their home. It was supposed to be the first in a long list of milestone celebrations that year: Tony’s 50th birthday, their two kids’ 18th and 16th birthdays, the anniversary of Tony and Mari’s first date (which is on Leap Day, so they only get to celebrate it every four years), and high school graduation and the start of college for their oldest. It was going to be an extraordinary season for this tight knit family. “2020 was such a year of milestones for us, and we cancelled a lot.”

Shortly after that party, Mari and Tony were enjoying a regular monthly date night with friends at Osteria, an Italian restaurant in Oklahoma City. She imagines she probably ordered a cheesy baked pasta dish. They were excited and getting geared up for a much anticipated Spring Break in California, a family trip to celebrate Spencer turning 18 and soon graduating high school. 

But as news reports about covid-19 gained momentum, anxiety built nationwide. The tension crept closer and closer to home. Things began to feel very different, and Mari and Tony made the difficult decision to cancel their family’s trip. “Things were starting to ramp up and get serious; we were all wondering if some semblance of social distancing was enough. Soon after, it seemed like everything changed completely.” Just two days after deciding to stay home, the state of California entered lockdown. “It felt really real then.”

((Mari is a noticer of quiet, unusual beauty))

Being a military family accustomed to deployment and all kinds of emergency management protocols, Mari and Tony had no trouble slipping into gear when Oklahoma shut down. They are smart and responsive, and they fell easily into their new, necessary routines. Mari’s job transitioned immediately to full time remote work, which was perfectly conducive to Spencer and Marcus both tackling a brand new online high school schedule. The family dog, Trixie, seemed happy to have everyone home, but Mari said, “Sometimes I feel like she looks at me like what are you still doing here?”

Tony was the only one of the group who still had to physically be at work every day, so he was designated as the family shopper. He remembers his first pandemic shopping trip being overwhelming. “People were hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes, he was shocked,” Mari said. “We started buying a pack of toilet paper, Kleenex, paper towels, cleaning wipes, and hand soap every time the stores had a full stock. Not hoarding but keeping a little bit extra on hand.”

Their first covid masks were crafted out of flannel by a friend. “It felt like such a novelty!” Gradually they started ordering more masks online, and now they all have extensive collections.

Lockdown stress snacking included what also became one of many quarantine hobbies for Mom: Home baking! She threw herself into experimenting with cookies, cakes, bread, and tarts, with special mention for a lemon-olive oil tart. She also perfected her schnitzel and pork carnitas recipes. “Baking is good stress relief. Initially, wine was my go to stress reliever, but I quit drinking during this pandemic year, which was not planned but just kind of happened.”

((Mari’s lemon olive oil tart))

Something special this busy Mom accomplished for herself during pandemic was to train independently for her first half marathon. Prior to shut downs, she had already publicly declared her intention to run “Half by Half,” meaning a 13.1 mile race by age 50. She wasn’t going to let a global pandemic stop her, so she and Tony trained that entire spring and summer. Then in the fall, when the virtual race dates rolled around (both the in person OKC Memorial and Tulsa’s Route 66 were cancelled), Mari successfully completed not one but two virtual half marathons. With her husband Tony’s support and motivation even when knee pain interrupted his own running, she met her goal of running each in under three hours.  She said, “My goal became our goal. I just ran around my neighborhood and wherever I could reach by sidewalk.” Incredible! What a respectable accomplishment, to tackle this challenge for the first time and with no crowd support!

((Tony & Mari, training partners for her Half by Half goal!))

Speaking of accomplishments, I don’t know anyone who reads more books than Mari does. She considers it a good escape and touts the Book of the Month Club subscription as a wonderful investment. She has passed on her love of reading to their youngest, too, who haunts the library and has a passion for mycology, government, social issues, and much more.

When they weren’t finishing school work or baking, gardening, painting, or knitting and crocheting beautiful new creations, this passionate, multi-talented group used the long months of social isolation for binging great television. Together, these four happy roommates enjoyed Criminal Minds, vintage Cold Case Files, and every iteration of the Law and Order franchise. I should mention that these folks are true music lovers, and Mari touts the soundtrack for Cold Case Files as especially good. They balanced these dark shows with lighter fare like The Great British Baking Show, Modern Family, Schitt’s Creek, and, of course, Tiger King. This is Oklahoma, after all; Tiger King was almost required viewing during the spring of 2020.

One of their longstanding household traditions took on a more special meaning during pandemic: They keep an open jar on their kitchen counter into which anyone in the family, as well as visitors, can deposit handwritten notes commemorating special events and memories from throughout the year, all meant for emptying out and reading aloud on New Year’s Eve or Day. It’s a collective daily diary and gratitude journal of sorts, but for the whole family. Mari remembers writing something one day early in quarantine to memorialize the strange unfolding: “Remember back in spring when there was a pandemic? That was crazy!” She later laughed to think that she had once believed it would all be so brief.

Tony and Mari certainly never imagined that their kids’ high school finishes would be eclipsed by a global pandemic. But somehow they managed to discover some hidden treasures in the chaos and complication. When Marcus started his junior year of high school, he would spend almost another semester at home doing remote learning, and although a traditional classroom setting was needed and preferred for many reasons, it was only by spending so much extra time with their youngest that Mom and Dad became more keenly aware of some symptoms they called “neurodivergent.” They managed to arrange a medical screening and received a helpful autism diagnosis for their child. “I don’t think this is something that we would have discovered had we not had this time, and I’m very thankful for that.”

Then, Spencer was off to college, facing an especially complicated social distancing residential environment and many unknowns. But after all those months in quarantine, he left home with that wonderful cushion of intense quality time with his family. Without the previous year’s bizarre circumstances, his final months at home might have been much more hectic and much less memory-rich. “The family time was a blessing in that we were able to spend lots of quality time with our oldest before he went to college,” Mari said appreciatively.

As the world slowly reopened, Mari and Tony celebrated their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary with a short trip to a small casino resort in Durant, Oklahoma. This year they are looking forward to celebrating their thirtieth! She said of her 29-year marriage: “We’ve had lots of ups and downs and good and bad, though this was definitely a first. We make a good team and are usually able to give each other space when we need it. We’ve learned to talk instead of pop off when we’re feeling feelings, and that has made all the difference. Not that it wasn’t a challenge, but we tried to understand that we were both going through it, and neither of us is spared.”

For Thanksgiving 2021, this tight knit crew happily trekked to Washington DC, thankful for the freedom and means to travel again. Another of their shared passions is a reverence for the seat of government. Mari’s career also happens to be centered in D.C., so this trip was special on many levels, a meaningful compensation after so many delayed milestone celebrations.

Regarding politics, Mari is gentle and mostly guarded with her commentary, but she did divulge her belief that, “Government should calm, not craze, people.” She expressed sadness and anger about last January’s insurrection then relief when things calmed down. She gushed with affection for Amanda Gorman, admitting to having wept during the young woman’s poetic offering at the Presidential Inauguration. Mari said she began to feel calmer and happier around that time, and we talked about helpers and the constant presence of good people in the midst of social chaos.  

Staying connected to loved ones during lockdown was made easier by the internet, a modern convenience for which they all are so grateful. Like many, they had to wait more than a year before visiting family in Wisconsin. In the mean time, everyone was thankful for protected health and, eventually, for the vaccine rollout.

No one in Mari’s household ever contracted the virus, though they have several friends and acquaintances that did. Some loved ones tested positive but were asymptomatic; others were so sick they were hospitalized for weeks. To emerge from this long, difficult year with their physical health is no small blessing. As of this writing, the entire family is fully vaccinated and deeply grateful for that. Mari said of the vaccine, “We weren’t the first in line, but I trust the process and think it’s important.” With every expression of gratitude for their health and their good fortune during pandemic, Mari also expressed compassion for others who were far less fortunate. She was reluctant to celebrate the beauty of their experience, cognizant of the suffering around her.

Looking back over their pandemic experience, it’s easy to see that while this sweet family didn’t have the year of extraordinary milestone celebrations they had planned, they certainly had an extraordinary year in other ways. They accepted the hand they were dealt and played it beautifully, with great love and responsiveness. They humbly gave thanks for their good luck through it all. They extracted from the ever shifting storm some truly meaningful personal connections, improved mental health, more fully developed hobbies and talents, and intimate family memories that will last a lifetime. They traveled intentionally when it made sense. They lived with authenticity and calm. Moreover, they nourished a very real sense of optimism about the world, about life. Mari said that they “spent more time focusing on the good rather than the bad. The good that happens when people pull together in community and support and love one another.”

Mari and I chatted in a soft, circular way about people and groups and human nature, about how we as a population have coped with covid-19 and all the fallout. Through it all, her perspective had that gracious upturned quality: “I’m shocked by how easily the world adapted.” She expressed genuine amazement. Rather than focus on the division or the difficulties, she has focused on how everyone pulled together and found ways to thrive. She has been dazzled by hard workers not seeking attention, celebrating, “good people doing good things just because they need to be done.”

I asked Mari to describe for me her spirituality, because while she never mentioned a particular church community, she emits such a sense of behind-the-scenes Zen, an inner sense of orderly peace, it made me curious. She is “technically Lutheran,” but had what she called a “self-reckoning with religion” in her mid-twenties. She now is actively working through her personal beliefs about heaven and hell, about God and organized religion and even reincarnation. This is far from a dismissal, though, and feels more like a wide-eyed exploration. She took Buddhist meditation classes and appreciates modern writers like Brene Brown and Glennon Doyle in varying amounts and for different reasons, and she affirms there is strength in vulnerability but feels like it should be more accessible to more people. Mari feels that we all are on “different paths to the same place, all just trying to get there.” And she wants to live in a way that “inspires better behavior, inspires others to be a good person.” Then she said, “At the cellular level we all need connection and love. Every person just wants love.”

Perhaps the most beautiful thing she said is something that just fell out of her lips so naturally: “There is nothing more holy to me than my kids.” So much of what Mari shared with me about her pandemic experience centered on what her two children were experiencing month to month, day to day, how they were growing, what she feared for their lives or celebrated about them. She is a fully engaged Mom who expects the best from her offspring and wonders how the world will treat them, pandemic or not. This is her religion, it seems, the crafting and feathering of a nest, a strong place from which Spencer and Marcus will soon be flying.

From the outside looking in, she and Tony are doing great. Mari has cultivated a sense of wonder and optimism, saying again and again in so many ways, “There are still things to be happy about!”

Wonder, optimism, and gratitude are the underpinnings to everything here. “I remember back at the beginning, seeing my kids with their eyes reflecting panic and despair at us, and working on trying to hear them out but also encourage them not to panic or get despondent. Now we say to them: Look at what you lived through. Look at what you can do. Look at what the world is doing to make the world a better place than it was when this all began. Because that’s the important thing, right? How we respond to difficult experiences.”

Looking forward? Mari asserted, gently, that she is in no hurry to reclaim the busyness of their life “before.” She craves deeper, if less frequent, connection with friends instead of the more common surface level contact. I love that. I also love her ability to kick off her shoes and curl up her sock feet and sit and talk. To sip hot tea and make prolonged eye contact. I love her ability to share a story and its core meaning, without stuttering or backtracking, without apologizing, just unwinding a golden thread with restful vulnerability. Sitting across from her on the afternoon that we finally spoke face to face, I drank in the slowness and fulfillment that we all were collectively seeking in those sourdough and puzzle-assembling months. She embodies both stillness and exploration, and it is quite beautiful. 

((Some of the slow, lovely handiwork Mari produced during the pandemic months))

As our conversation expanded, Mari added this final layer of humility: “We definitely struggled as much as anyone during this time; we fought and cried and yelled and got sick and dealt with messes and ice storm damage and had disappointments and avoided each other and dealt with hardships, but in the end, the things I want to focus on is not what we endured, but rather what we learned and how we grew. I will never deny the messy or difficult things we lived through, but I will focus on the fact that we lived through them and hopefully learned something.” Personally, I adore this perspective. Acknowledging the hard times is valuable, and making a deliberate choice about how you memorialize those hard times is even moreso.

Mari, thank you for sharing your pandemic memories and for sharing your heart. You make me feel exactly how you said of the world at large: You make me, “want to hope for the best.”

XOXOXOXO

a close call with Dusty and a story about the leaf blower guy

The other day we had a scare with one of our horses, Dusty, the squatty, deep voiced grey and white cutie pie who has grown up with our girls. He is fine now, everything turned out great, but it was a tense and scary few hours.

Dusty in his younger, slimmer, fashion model days xoxo

In the middle of a hectic morning at work, my husband rushed home to help, and after an hour or so of watching and evaluating, we felt comfortable enough with Dusty’s progress to drive up the road to Tractor Supply Co for electrolytes and probiotic chews.

Tuesday was a warm and bright, violently windy day. The weather was beginning to turn, with both straight-line gusts and the twirling, circular kind of wind that creates sudden little leaf-and-stick tornadoes.

As we drove the few miles north, we passed a man tending his lawn with a leaf blower. In Oklahoma. On a wind advisory day.

He was really bundled up, as if the temperatures were actually about thirty degrees colder. He was wearing a thermal hat and massive gloves and jeans and boots, plus a substantial brown canvas coat, no doubt thickly insulated. I registered all of this plus his solemn expression. Then I marveled at the tedious attention he was paying to his leaf blower chore.

The dried oak leaves flew slightly away from his mechanical dismissal then spiraled back on him, then scattered sideways, then blew ahead of him in short, straight bursts, then flew wildly again, caught in another random gust. They flew up and away and directly over his hat. He was in the middle of a late winter ticker tape parade, like a cash tornado for people who believe that decomposing organic matter is black gold (these people are correct).

He was making exactly zero progress, but still he gripped that power tool with an air of focus and calm determination. He remained bent over his incomprehensible task. He walked slowly across the curved concrete driveway, pointing himself and his apparatus at each next area of chaos, and he never looked up or ahead of his immediate steps.

I have so many questions for him.

Maybe he was commanded by a spouse or an employer to do this job, regardless of weather, and dared not argue.

Maybe he recently received this leaf blower as a gift and thought a windy day would make for a fun maiden voyage.

Maybe he was in shock from some catastrophic family news and needed a rote, mind numbing activity to distract him, to help him gather his strength.

Maybe he was in covid-19 quarantine and needed to be outdoors for his mental health but couldn’t allow himself to just sit still.

Maybe he was an environmental scientist studying wind shears, but on, like, a really small scale.

Maybe he was a gardener desperate for some kind of gardening activity but couldn’t find his shovel.

Did he think he was helping something, serving some purpose? Was he having fun? Was that even his house, his leaf blower, his heavy coat? Maybe he was a shape shifter or an alien invader occupying Choctaw, Oklahoma, mimicking human behavior without really understanding the hilarity of the situation. (Forgive me, we have been watching lots of vintage X-Files.)

We drove past this man in the briefest moment, but he made such in impression on me. After we purchased the horse medicine at TSC and drove back south toward the farm, I looked for him. He was gone by then, but the leaves on his property (or on the property where the aliens had recently landed or where he is being held captive by a weird, mind-games playing taskmaster) were still swirling and thrusting against nothing with wild energy.

Maybe I had imagined him, except that I think my husband had seen him, too.

May be an image of 1 person, horse, nature and grass
We are so very thankful this boy is healthy and happy again!

Dusty continued to make progress all day, eventually acting exactly like his normal sweet, spicy self, eager to rejoin the bachelor herd and eat a late breakfast. I gave thanks constantly (gosh I love this horse) and thought too much about the things we do for animals, the care we try to provide, the good habits we try to maintain, the love we try to show. I thought about the prayers we whisper urgently when none of that seems to add up to enough.

I marveled at how little control we have over some things.

About as much control as the leaf blower guy.

XOXOXOXO

the thank you habit that helps me

For the past several days I have been employing an old standby habit, something that felt awkward at first but then got me through a crisis when my girls were toddlers, and these recent days it has felt luscious. I call it the Thank You Habit: While still lying in bed, in the dark, before speaking to anyone or even checking the time, before my feet hit the carpeted floor, I start silently saying thank you for as much as I can think of.

I let my mind float from person to person in my life and say thank you for them, then thank you for every modern convenience and insane material comfort we have, for the specific problems we overcame the day before and for the satisfying goals we met, thank you for the food I know is in the kitchen waiting to be prepared (and for the coffee that is probably brewing automatically at that moment), for the animals outside who trust me to meet their daily needs and for the supplies I have available to make my job so pleasant.

I say thank you for the hundreds of miracles we have witnessed over the years, as they come randomly to mind (these will gain momentum if you allow them to!), and thank you for the miracles still on their way. Thank you for my husband’s job which provides not just abundance in the practical sense but also abundance for the state of Oklahoma, for the people on his team, and for him as a person who was born to do this work and much more. Thank you that both of my girls are breathing and have hope, beauty and spiritual gifts to develop, despite their intense grief. I say thank you that both of my parents are alive and nearby, and that I enjoy true adult friendships with every single one of my siblings. These are blessings that only few of my friends have, and the older I get the more I see them as wild, amazing gifts.

thick night snow, moonglow, & a flashlight path…
I believe some moments of deliberate thanksgiving
can slice through the dark just like this

Before even standing up, I say thank you to God for the day ahead, for the problems we will inevitably face, because I know He has help available, and I know that in facing them we always emerge stronger. I tell Him how excited I am to see what kind of sunrise he has designed that day (I imagine Him staying up all night like an artist feverishly painting, waiting to display His new work), and thank you for what I will learn or enjoy on my run, and for what random surprises might happen. Thank you for the colorful fresh eggs our hens will lay. Thank you for the phone calls and texts with loved ones I might receive or make, thank you for the many people my sister will help that day and for the students at school and just as much as my mind will collect. Thank you for every hour coming, for every scrap of grace I will be afforded in the new day. Thank you for the near misses and close calls, for crises averted (there are many, you know).

This is just paving the way ahead with generous rivers of heartfelt gratitude, a way of attaching my day and my mind to the best possible outcomes.

This habit may sound goofy or trite, but I promise you it will feel smoother and more natural the more you practice it. After a couple of days, it tends to give me a glowy buoyancy, an inner sense of expectation that good things actually are coming. After this predawn ritual, I often catch myself throughout the rest of that day taking mental notes, “Oohh, tomorrow morning you can say thank you for that! That was cool.” This thought of course just sparks a midday thank you fest, which feels wonderful.

What this habit does not do is perfectly insulate me from dark thoughts or bad attitudes, for slipping emotionally from faith into fear. I am still susceptible to all of these errors and more; but the ongoing habit of saying thank you can even permeate this very real part of life: “Thank you for this frustrating challenge, thank you for this important relationship that may not come easily to me right now, but I know you are growing me here. Thank you for this deep pain, because it shows met how deeply I feel love, and it reminds me to be more loving. Thank you for the dreary landscape that makes me crave color, because I know you have built in this season of rest for a purpose, and I know this appetite for new life will help me enjoy springtime so much more. Thank you for this anger that awakens my protectiveness, and thank you for absorbing it cooling me down before I lashed out.”

If you try this one day and find your mind blocked or your words jammed up, or maybe you are in such abject pain that you cannot fathom a sincere thank you, I believe in my heart that is okay, too. This is not meant to be a saccharine exercise. I encourage you to try privately thinking only the words thank you a few times in a row, with no expectations or embellishments, and breathe deeply and say it again, while you are still in bed. Just rest for a moment longer before lunging desperately and painfully into your day. Whatever you face next, you have taken control of your energy for a moment. You have set the tone.

You know this drill, friends. We all know it in different expressions.

I just wanted to share my version as this brand new year takes hold, because the daily, hourly, private practice has helped me tremendously. My husband and I are facing some mammoth stressors lately, as I know you certainly are, and we are still enduring the same family heartaches as ever, still praying and watching for signs and still hoping for the next homecoming. Saying thank you ahead of time keeps me both tempered and lively. It keeps me happily tuned into good news, instead of staying vigilant, waiting for the next shoe to drop; and it helps me feel like the Universe is wired to my advantage, if that makes sense. That feeling that God is on your side, as silly as it may seem, works wonders. It magnetizes you for more goodness, and (at least for me) it sums up how it feels to trust God, to look Him straight in the eyes and willingly be held by His absolute goodness.

I heard a gorgeous interview that I will share in better ways soon, but for today, within the conversation the speaker shared a meditation:

“You are loved, you are held, you are guided, and you are never alone.”

Thank you for that assurance!

and just like that…

Just now while doing breakfast chores, I was praying for Jocelyn and something wonderful happened.

((an old photo of the boys with fresh hay…xoxo))

For several days I have been aggressively and tediously flaking hay for the bachelors from what is perhaps the most tightly wound large bale I have ever seen in my life. It is also wrapped in not wire, not netting, but twine, and lots and lots of it. It’s like a five year old wrapped a gift with cheap tape. The blue nylon twine is buried and criss-crossed in deep crevices throughout the hay, making the already tight spiral of tangled dry grass nearly impossible to loosen neatly. Every day is a slow unraveling task. Chipping and shredding, really. Generally this task is kind of fun, actually, I’m not complaining. Raking hay can be therapeutic, like collecting manure for compost or pulling weeds. It’s a repetitive motion and gentle physical exertion that makes it easy to get lost in thought, or prayer. But the twine has been a frustrating block.

So today I was chipping away, flaking off small, not pretty, tufts of hay to slowly collect into heaps for the boys’ breakfast, praying for Jocelyn. Praying for her to remember the best moments between us, from childhood to Colorado and everything in between. Praying for her to feel needed and appreciated and valued, to feel safe and warm when she thinks of home, to separate trauma and fact and fiction, to resist and replace the brainwashing, to grow whatever seeds of love and hope and health are in her heart. I swung my straight metal rake again and again, and suddenly the tines caught another strong, skinny bit of blue twine. So I stopped to cut it apart. (So much twine you guys.)

As soon as my scissors snapped the twine, it popped apart like a champagne cork! And a thick, fluffy, luxurious band of soft hay collapsed at my feet. I don’t know if you have ever felt that, the release of more hay than you needed, but it is wonderful. Hay falling at my feet is one of my favorite sensations, maybe because it is so clearly proof of lushness and abundance. Every day I hope it will happen, but as you might imagine, this particular large bale has been stingy with the magic.

Anyway, today it did happen. I couldn’t believe how much gorgeous, sweet smelling hay was being trapped by a single strand of blue nylon twine. It really doesn’t make sense. It hit my very cold toes (three cheers for wearing flip flops in December), and I stared at the now very lopsided large bale. Then I collected the food into my big green basket and called Chanta, Dusty, and Meh over to feast.

It hit my heart that God has worked this way in my life over and over again.

He has many times released fears or shame or toxic relationships, or simply erroneous thinking, in one powerful godly breath, thereby triggering cascades of goodness in my life.

And He can do this with my girl, too. He can release her from everything in one moment. All that goodness in her life can cascade again with the snapping apart of one lie or one dark thought or one influence or one circumstance. She feels far away but also very close right now. I hope that the blue nylon twines keeping her bound up are snapped away gradually, gradually, then all at once. She deserves absolute freedom.

((a very happy day on my first trip to visit her in Colorado))

I feel momentum building and a deep peace growing. Thank you so much for your love and continued prayers. Please let me know how we can be praying for you too! Tell me what blue twine needs cutting, so the hay can fall thickly at your feet.

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,
saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil,
to give you an expected end.”
Jeremiah 29:11
XOXOXO