Lazy W Marie

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

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more new than ever before

I find myself wondering whether this springtime is among the most luscious of all my life or my eyes and heart are simply more open than ever before. Everything feels new, but more than new; everything has a wet, trembling quality, and it feels like more than just the abundance of rainfall.

When seeds germinate and break through the topsoil lately, they seem to do so with music playing. When the chicks run across their flight pen, they return the other direction a full size bigger. And have you heard the news that one of our young hens has learned to quack, no doubt by living with two ducks? The skies are probably the same colors as before, but more crystalline, more kinetic. The pine trees are growing arms and fingers and reaching for brand new ideas, learning new languages I think. Walking around the farm, you can smell fresh energy like it’s incense or very good cookies and bread baking.

Old thought patterns are falling apart like charred wood, burned (I believe) by truth. And I can leave them where they fall or sweep them up and replace them with better thoughts, stronger ones, more loving ones, more exciting ideas about life and God and all of our complex human relationships. Fear is almost fully edged out now, and the Worry Door has not cracked open in so long.

A new friend recently loaned me her treasured paperback copy of Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. Somehow this author had been completely foreign to me, and now I want time to stop so I can gobble up all of his work, because his term “Christian spirituality” is right on target for my life. Here are a couple of passages that have struck me beautifully this past week:

I believe the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather to have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.”

I love that. And it speaks straight to me, because I am such a creature of habit. I thrive on not only physical daily routines but also meditative practices, which certainly have value. But when little interruptions ruffle my feathers or when I am so cemented in habits that I am wasting time, it all has a kind of soundproofing effect between God and me. Don’t get me started on excessive volunteering or millions of obligatory social connections.

Okay, and then this:

Passion is tricky, though. because it can point to nothing as easily as it points to something.

Somewhere around that sentence in the book, Miller describes his thought process around what he would die for and what he is living for. It’s all kind of the front burner for me now. The moments when we might be asked to die for someone or something may come rarely, if ever, but every hour of every day we are actively or passively exchanging both our time and our life force, our God given human energy for something else. We give ourselves away in pieces, big and small, over and over again, and I wonder how many of those transactions are beneath us, how much of it is waste. A lot, you know? Maybe unintentionally? But so very much is exchanged for good, too, for strong, solid, worthwhile purposes. We trade our time and energy and human life force for love of family and friends, for personal passions that are linked directly to some aspect of our creation that leads us right back to God. How thrilling to see that our intrinsic passions can be connections to God and thereby pipelines for more abundant life. I love that we are all created in such unique ways and that He can draw us near and put us to work based on our passions. I want to find more ways to facilitate exactly that.

So. The farm. All of these nine acres are pure joy to me. The creatures who live here, even when they frustrate me, the plants, the wildness, the work and creativity, our romance and our human fabric, all of it. It has become my home and sanctuary, classroom and temple. And for all of the physical, sensory pleasures here, I know in my bones that the real magic is unseen. The real magic and power and drama can easily be extracted and reinvested elsewhere, should that time ever come. This is just the stage.

This is how I know the shimmer and pulse of our current season is owed to more than the mild Oklahoma springtime; God is doing something here with us that brings it all into focus for me. The old fears and worries are burned up and crumbling; worldly distractions are falling back and losing their noisy power in favor of birdsong in the morning and frog symphonies at night. More beauty than I have ever seen is front and center, both for the physical senses and for that part of me that can’t find the words. Hope, joy, belief in the power of Love, compassion for the weird things we all need and chase, patience, silliness, healing. Lots of healing. So much more.

I’ll take the flowers and the vegetables and even the snakes. I’ll take the skies changing and the air tasting like candy, as temporary as it all is. They are outward proof of an unseen Power. For me, this is something worth living for, day after day. Our lives are filled with more goodness than we can manage, despite our efforts to soak it in. And the shifting details just press me to live attentively, to find balance in movement too. It’s all constantly changing and never-ending. Such magic!

Thank you for introducing me to Donald Miller, Stefanie. My mind is churning from it all. Happy weekend, friends. I wish you magic and Love and clear vision.

“You have found the life underneath your life situation.”
~Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
XOXOXOXO

worry door cracked open

This is the door to our smoke house, which is actually more of a garden shed right now. The door was salvaged from a century-old Land Run house in northwestern Oklahoma, a property belonging to my husband’s family. I fell in love with the chipped milk paint (original, not fashioned in a trendy boutique), the heft of the door, the memories attached. Its hinges are rusted and the window opening is only covered by hand pleated drop cloth fabric stapled on, a band aid really, but it’s beautiful to me. I love how ivy grows around it and how it creaks and swells with rain. How difficult it is to open and close. You have to kinda lift and scoot it. At the threshold, mud collects and sometimes we find snakes and scorpions.

worry door

Most doors are easy to open and close. That’s the nature of most doors, to be used and used easily and often. But we barely use this outbuilding, at least not on a daily basis, so having a cumbersome but beautiful door here is fine.

Speaking of doors that aren’t supposed to open much…

Do you remember the Worry Door? The vision I had almost exactly three years ago of the big, thick door that was forcibly (but lovingly) sealed shut against a room containing all of my worst fears? Well, something strange and wonderful has been evolving here lately. The Worry Door has been cracking open, only to be either pushed shut in a spongy, gentle way (like we do this antique wooden door with the muddy scorpion-rich threshold) or maybe, sometimes, left just barely ajar.

Weird, right? After so many lessons on keeping it locked shut, no matter what?

Well, in the time since my first hard lesson that worry is wrong, I have been on a spiritual and emotional roller coaster. I’ve learned a lot not just about the direction to worry not and only trust but also about my own personal strengths and weaknesses, my own propensities and, honestly, addictions to negative thinking.

And you know something? I have made a ton of progress. I have literally broken my addiction to negative thinking, and now I kind of have a healthy aversion to it. When I am in the company of people who cannot resist bitterness or anger or something similar, I get itchy. My vision narrows and turns inward to sort of protect myself, you know? Like a filter. My heart can feel some fear but now I deal with it swiftly. My mind can be aware of horrible possibilities but sort through them and take action instead of simmering in awfulness and poisoning my reality. I’m learning how to magnetize for amazing things, not terrible.

For these changes I am so deeply grateful.

The reason it is now safe for me to sometimes leave the worry door cracked open is that I have learned how to funnel that previously dangerous energy into prayer and allow a healthy amount of fear to fuel my days instead of douse them. Does that make sense? This is such a far cry from how life was before the Worry Door vision. The world is expanding, in really tangible ways and in beautifully abstract ones, to so many possibilities. Imagination, prayers, faith, and exponential growth. Love is ruling everything, even the cracked open doors.

We have a lot going on in life, a whole lot of really heavy stuff that never makes it to this blog. Private struggles, family issues, church problems, seriously life altering stuff that Handsome and I never thought we would face. As cathartic as writing can be, I have so far felt like sharing most of it here is just not appropriate. We barely even discuss most of this stuff with our closest friends and loved ones, because we know by now that only prayer and trust will change anything. Talking about problems tends to grow them, you know? Still, some people know a little about what we are dealing with, and occasionally a well meaning friend will ask me a question like, “Well have you heard from…? How long has it been now?” And when I answer truthfully the look of shock or maybe disappointment in me as a person is pretty hurtful. Or maybe, in an incredulous tone, someone challenges me, “Well what if (this) happens? What will you do? What is your legal recourse? Aren’t you gong to do anything?” Surely from the outside some people may think me apathetic by taking less action than they would in my situation, but they don’t see how firmly I am trusting God. How excited I am by what is coming.

Maybe they don’t see that praying and believing is doing.

Yep, I know this sounds a little vague and for that I’m sorry, but it’s just an example of how your Worry Door can be cracked open by someone else. Despite your best efforts, sometimes other people will very nearly insist that you fret over stuff. They mean it with love, usually. They want what they perceive to be the best thing for you. Okay. And sometimes they could be projecting their own fear onto you. Trying to find solutions ahead of time in case the same tragedy befalls them later. That’s human nature. Don’t waste energy being mad about this, and please don’t let it end any otherwise good friendships; just learn how to field it.

One more thought, then I will leave you to your beautiful Sunday: Yoga has been a useful tool in this journey. Often in a sequence, the instructor of choice will offer advice to just acknowledge a toxic thought and let it pass. Spending too much energy resisting or battling opposition can sometimes heighten the threat. Instead, combat these moments with a flood of positive thought. Replace the What if this horrible thing happens with What if this amazing thing happens? Try that for a while and see if your outlook improves.

Love is far more powerful that you are by yourself. Learn to tap into the power of prayer and faith and stop relying on your own muscles to hold this door shut.

Deep breath. Balance. Center. Clear mind. Peaceful heart. Trust that Love is in control of everything and faith can move mountains.

XOXOXOXO