Most Profound Doubt

"Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity…"
Vaclav Havel

Here…here! There you have it. Clarity amongst chaos. How does one really judge the absurdity or, for that matter, the reality of life?

When we only know people from our encounters at church on Sunday do we really know everything about them? Do we know who they really are or who they want us to think they are?

A simple mind can even answer that. Absolutely not. No, absolutely not…. Or can we?

Behaviors in the end are predictable. Eventually everyone will be unveiled and their characters will show through. Time is the best indicator of who and what a person is all about.

Let’s take this example. A recent immigrant gives a talk in church. He has spoken English for only a few years and his talk is not as much spiritual as it is a well done "Rotary" talk. He gives an absolutely hilarious story and gets tons of laughs. He ties it into communication and then sits down.

Another member of the congregation then comments that though the talk was funny; in was not appropriate for church and therefore highly inappropriate. What do you say and how to you judge the person by that comment… or do you? Do you have any right to judge it?

If someone were to take all things into consideration, this man who less than five years ago could neither speak, read nor understand English and did a pretty amazing job. What he accomplished was inspiring. Was it appropriate? I don’t know but do you think the Savior cares? Maybe, looking past the argument here and just seeing the accomplishment is really what is expected of us.

Then I wonder, what would possess someone to put that much thought into that kind of attitude. How must their life be if they need to draw attention away from themselves and place it on others? Is that a burden I would ever want to carry?

I am never certain of very much during my days. I spend most of the time trusting my instincts and hoping and praying that I am doing it somewhat right. The one thing that is certain is my intent. I have the intention of being a great mother, a good friend, daughter, sister, whatever role it is and in the absurdities of failure I always improve in those roles. My mistakes make me want to improve and I am in no way anywhere near perfect. Actually, I am quite a bit away from it.

Here I am, a little more than four months into a complete role of a single parent with a non-existent ex. Whose is neither financially, spiritually ,emotionally or physically involved in or helping in the carrying of this family. Oh my gosh; I am going to make a ton of mistakes but I think I have taught my kids well enough now to know that mistakes are those things that make us that much stronger. If we hadn’t have been through all that we have been through how would we ever have the faith to know that we can, in fact, make it through this at all?

What am I on about? Helping each other cope in a very difficult world and making sure that we give ourselves the credit to at least forgive some of our own mistakes and the mistakes of those around us. My kind of mistakes may have no resemblance at all to your mistakes and to put my paradigm onto yours would be highly inappropriate and judgmental.

We cannot say that the talk given by this man should in any way equal someone’s whose has spoken and thought in English his entire life. That is unfair.

Please know that I fall short in this all the time. I am still learning to live my life for myself and not worrying so much about what others do or think. Comparison to others creates depression, comparing yourself to God is humility. Being humble is a virtue, being depressed is not. (Side note here - there are cases of depression that are a result of medical conditions and a huge mulligan factor is at play in those cases!) It is in finding the balance that we live our lives. Maybe, at the end, the balance is simpler because experience has brought us there.

It is when I look the deepest into myself and recognize the mistakes that I make that I learn and grow. I fail at so many things but knowing those failures and pushing forward again to try and not make the mistake again is curing to the soul. Profound doubt is a part of my life but faith is what propels me forward and gives me wings.

"However much we guard ourselves against it,
we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us. It is not so much the example of others we imitate, as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words."

- Eric Hoffer

When I came across this quote, I stopped, and thought about it. I moved on and my mind kept coming back to it. This is a thinker and it made me wonder how much of who I am and was is a direct result of the reflection of myself with others?

The kicker here is that I am a very bad judge of perception. My self esteem is at an infancy of being positive and more often than not I read into people very differently than what is there. It is only within the last few years that I have been able to somewhat trust my judgement and so I ask; How much of who I think I am is off to what I really am and does this go against my new self admonition to care less about what people think and more about trusting my judgement?

So what am I on about?

Finding within yourself the ability to filter both the positive and negative and to know for yourself what is and isn't going to be good for you.

This means that even though I may think that someone has pronounced a judgement on me I need to find the ability within myself to filter it and bring to me the part of it that will allow me to grow to become a better person. This is a very daunting task.

I know this because as I analyze this stuff I am getting better. I know that the process is changing all the time and with each change comes a stronger ability to be whole and in the end, that is the ultimate goal.

The task is difficult because there are people who will give false readings. To find the truth in all the clouds of perceived friendships requires a keen and discerning mind. You must be able to trust and after everything I have been through trust is something that doesn't come easily. This is where the work lies. I find myself with a closed heart sometimes and with it I don't allow myself to grow.

I need to work on this. I need to learn to trust again. It is coming and no doubt I will be hurt again. This is life. Life is our classroom and I would rather find myself growing than remain stagnant and stale, stuck in the processes that simply doesn't work.

So here is to finding my true self in the reflections of others and to truly know of where I stand in this life I am living.

Full Bloom

“There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.”

Chogyam Trungpa

I love new days and new beginnings.

Welcome to 2009.

Just this minute my disabled young neighbour came and delivered the new ads. This young man is wonderful and when he visits his first priority is always Rocky. Today, he asked the profound question; “Why did Rocky need a haircut?” My beautiful daughter, K2, answered that Rocky had tangles and it was required. “Oh”; he said. That was sufficient. He cheerily pronounced on us a “Happy New Year!” and went on to his next delivery. Every time I talk with this young man it brings a smile to my heart. His simple ways make the world a better place.

For most people in the world this is just another day. Some work, most play, others watch football games. Whatever the activity it is usually routine and becomes part of a family’s life patterns. We are gathering again today as well. We are down one and missing K3 so much. We are meeting new potential family and I am excited to meet the parents of the young man who makes my K2 so happy. They raised an incredible son.

This new life we have is now routine. It begins and ends like the rhythmic breathing of a body, instinctual and core. As I walked into the kitchen the girls were having a conversation and in remembering my resolution they stopped, laughed that reminded me I wasn’t able to join in, and then changed the subject.

So far, day 1 of this resolution is going great. It is healing the wounds and opening my heart.

So here I sit at my computer, glad that my words can memorialize our family’s journey to wholeness.

Someday, I hope, my children and grandchildren will remember that anything is possible and everything can be overcome by the mere virtue of unconditional love!

The Greatest Moments

"One of the greatest moments in anybodies developing experience is when he no longer tries to hide from himself but determines to get acquainted with himself as he really is."

Norman Vincent Peale

Well, it New Year's Eve and I can bet that many of us are reflecting on this past year. What did we accomplish? What burdens did we carry? Who did we lose and who did we gain?

When I think of all this my heart smiles and I proudly state, 2008 was a great year!

So what of 2009? What does it have in store for me?

It will be peaceful and happy. It will involve adventure and gaining new friendships and nourishing those I already have. It will be about growth and compromise. It will be wonderful. It will be.

2008 gave me who I am.

I look forward to uncovering more of who I am and I have hopes for this year. I have a hope that my soul may come to rest from all the questions and that the answers may not matter. That everyone everywhere will survive the hard economic times and know that through turmoil we gain strenght. That those with beautiful voices will share thier songs and that love will find it's way into the lonelist of hearts. That my heart my open to the possibility and that my childrens hearts won't explode from the possibilites that are in their lives already!

I hope for contentment. For the knowlege that it doesn't ever matter what others think and that working at this isn't the chore it is now but just becomes an instinct. With that being said, I hope I always instinctually know the hearts of my family and friends and that I can be there for them when needed like they have been there for me this past year. I hope for the completion of the process and that the scars become unnoticable and don't impede people from knowing who I really am.

To a New Year I say welcome. Come and stay awhile. We're glad you are finally here.

And to the old year..... Thank-you. Without you I would never have grown to the woman I am now.

What You Think

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

Robert McCloskey



I have had an experience tonight that made me realize that I doubt I will ever be fully understood. The misconception of an abused women interferes with people seeing me for who I am and what I mean to say.

I am not sure how to overcome this.

I have never felt more healthy and secure in my life. I have brought my family....., well, let me rephrase this; all of us together have brought this family out of a very dark and dismal place and we are all functioning in a way that defines emotional recovery.

My family will always have baggage but it is packed and put away. It may not appear that we have come out of this unscathed but the reality is we will have scars and that these scars are, for the most part, healed.

I tried to tell someone how I felt today. About the feelings I have when I am at church, about feeling invisible and I believe I was completely misunderstood.

I have been through so much and I have exercised more faith than I ever have in my entire life. To receive an admonition to have more faith seems repetitive and patronizing. Why do people think my tears or my frustrations indicate that I haven't let go. Please! Please try and hear what I am saying!

I can't communicate this anymore. I will never understand why I have to pay such a huge price for my life. I made every effort possible to avoid this outcome and yet everyday I pay a huge price for it. Why do divorced people have to sit back and just be invisible. Why does any expression of emotion or frustration mean instability or weakness? Why can't it indicate recovery and healing? What if all we want is for life to just be back to a normal way, the way you lived before.

If I learned anything today it is to just shut up and remain invisible and hope that someday someone will recognize my heart as healed not still wounded.

This is where I question my faith and ask myself why I bother. It's the point where some just give up.

I know people respect my journey. I know my news is old and over, believe it or not, it is for me too but I will never understand.

You say I am negative and yet I am trying to change a culture that breeds negativity.

I will put the smile back on my face and "keep sweet" and you will see me on my bench every Sunday because I know that is what the Big Guy needs me to do. But my underlying weariness is there .

And people wonder why singles are leaving the church in droves.

For those who are reading this please know I am still very happy in my life. As a matter of fact, I love what my life has become in so many ways except in church.

I can't change a culture, I just have to learn to accept its parameters and live within them.

Thinking About the New Year

"I come to you tonight with a plea that we stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight. I am suggesting that as we go through life we try to 'accentuate the positive.' I am asking that we look a little deeper for the good, that we still our voices of insult and sarcasm, that we more generously compliment virtue and effort. Now I am not asking that all criticism be silenced. Growth comes of correction. Strength comes of repentance. Wise is the man or woman who can acknowledge mistakes pointed out by others and change his or her course."What I am suggesting is that you turn from the negativism that so permeates our modern society and look for the remarkable good among those with whom you associate, that we speak of one another's virtues more than we speak of one another's faults, that optimism replace pessimism, that our faith exceed our fears."
Gordon B Hinckley

As I reflect on this past year and think about the one to come my thoughts are on those things that I can do that would improve my life. I have been through a lot and knowing that I want things to change. I want to purge the past and really hold on to the positive of my new life.

So here's to that and a resolution.

Purge the past and move forward in faith.

Children

“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.”

An Open Letter to My Children for Christmas!

I love you more now than I have ever and the thought that this love will continue to grow is so exhilarating to me.

Thank-you, for being so incredible and for making everyday the best days of my life while we share our lives.

We are together this Christmas and I want you to know just how much that means to me. To know that we gather in love and acceptance and that right now we are a family is so comforting and has made this journey that I have been on easier and more satisfying. Once again, thank-you!

Thank-you girls for bringing the most wonderful and happening friends into the picture. They add so much to us and seem to fit. At times, it feels like they were always here. We are missing one, he's in Thailand and he is missed. It's like the seat is empty waiting.

I think what I want most of all is to Thank-you kidlets for being so supportive and for knowing just the right thing to say at just the right time and for just being you. I have so many proud moments I can't even count them.

I love you all so much! I have been so blessed in my life. The Lord has truly placed his grace in my life. I can't think of anything more that I could have wanted than what I have now with you. You have grown beyond my children and become my friends.

Thank-you!

"Let us remember that the Christmas heart is a giving heart, a wide open heart that thinks of others first. The birth of the baby Jesus stands as the most significant event in all history, because it has meant the pouring into a sick world of the healing medicine of love which has transformed all manner of
hearts for almost two thousand years... Underneath all the bulging bundles is this beating Christmas heart. "
- George Mathew Adams

My mother taught me that in life there are two kinds of people. Those who give and those who take. She emphasized that life had a way of bring who you are to the surface at special times of the year like Christmas.

She was very much a Giver (By the way, read the book "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, it's fantastic at the concept) and spent her entire life in the act of improving the lives of others. Her first profession was a nurse, her second, a wedding florist. She made others lives better and she was a great example to me always.

So what am I on about.

The gathering of family is a time to find the truths in each other that make a family a whole. We are five now and I can not express enough how much more whole we are as compared to the past. I watch my kids and their efforts and I know I have raised givers. I am so proud of them.

My mother's legacy weaves its way through the hearts and minds of my children and will always be the corner stone of the philosophies of my family. I can't help but feel her spirit so intertwined with our spirit of Christmas because at that time she came alive and turned Christmas into the experience we search for always.

May we all find within us the "giver" and turn Christmas over to it's true meaning.

Merry Christmas everyone!

For everything there is a season,

And a time for every matter under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

A time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to seek, and a time to lose;

A time to keep, and a time to throw away;

A time to tear, and a time to sew;

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate,

A time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

I learned a very important lesson today on perspective. It came from a very unlikely source and it involved two very different points of view.

Someone was describing a time in the past and thanked my friends for the bonding and loving experience that it was, how the experience brought them closer and how he had such fond memories. In his opinion it was an activity that was truly inspirational.

My friends experience was very different. They remember this time as horrid and hard and if anything cemented the fracture in the relationship that has existed for a long time. In fact, PTS syndrome has been a result. It damaged them and they have nothing but bad memories of it.

How can there be such a different perspective on the same thing and here's the clicker; where is the truth?

So here's what I am on about.

From my past experiences I have learned that each of us draw to any experience our own perspective, our own truths. We see things from our own eyes, process it, give it reason and move on.

Good people will then understand that differences are real and that what one person may see as pleasurable and growing another may see as downright abuse and has no purpose at all.

Each has elements of truth, the fault lies in not understanding that each of us has a right to see things from our own point of view and also in not accepting that another truth may have reason in it as well.

My guess is that the individual I write about will never understand that his pleasurable experience ever caused the amount of pain that it did. He is quite incapable of understanding that. With that being said, it does not take away from the pain the others feel, it is real, for them and for those that care for them.

May we all find the self respect to see another light and to give them the God given right to feel and know that for them their truths are every bit the fabric that comforts their souls.

That when we comprehend the paradigms of those who share our life that we can see into them and support their truths so that they can know that they are loved and that by stepping out of ours we can understand what true compassion is.

Christmas is the perfect season to begin this. Find it in your heart to look beyond your own perspective, beyond your own point of view and try and understand someone else's world from their eyes. Covey calls this win - win.

I have endeavored to make this a practise in my life for some time. It has brought me great peace and understanding and I have learned that when I take the time to see this way I most often avoid unnecessary conflict. I always find peace in this endeavor.

"Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time."

~Laura Ingalls Wilder

I cannot even express the excitement that I feel as my family begins the gathering for Christmas. My heart is swelling with Joy! I just finished decorating the tree and in a few hours I'll be heading out to get the fixing's for a day of baking with the women of my family. It is every cliche personified and yet, I don't care!

I haven't been able to pull out the creche and nativity my mother so lovingly made for me. I need to work up to it. I know I'll feel her presence when I do and I am so excited for her to check in and see just how far we have come since she has been gone. I promised her that not only would I survive but that I would heal and grow to be everything she was. It will take years but am I ever adoring the journey. I think she would be proud of me and the children. We are so a family of love and caring and knowing the strength of just having each others back.

My first BBG gets home in less that 24 hours. She has given me her first gift. She wants to come to church with me. She knows how much it will mean and though she may face the words and cruelty that was there for her she is unselfish in her gift to me. The church just isn't for her but she knows how much it means to me. This is how I know my children's hearts are pure and loved. How can you ever not know she is one of Heavenly Fathers chosen children.

My family is so important to me. I understand my HF's plan for me. I know that my most divine role is in parenting and that in my case, my children are in God's ever so wonderful graces. We will have peace. We will have love. We will be filled with Joy! How can you not look to this great season as a child and then carry it throughout the whole year.

To all of my friends and family; Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and more than anything else, Thank-you for your support and love to all of us throughout this year. I am so much better for having all of you in my life.

Thank-you.