Camping anyone?

I don't always have to write with a deep, brooding tone.  I can be silly. In fact, in real life, I'm pretty hyper and silly a lot of the time.  So to lighten the mood a bit- here's a post about my adventure.

I took the kids camping last night. Alone. For the first time.
I really love being outside.  I love hiking, and swimming, and being in the forest. I always wanted to go camping as a family in years past,  but often I was the only one who wanted to go.  Since life has changed, and I can make the decisions now, I decided I would take it upon myself to get out there and do it.  It was awesome. It was enlightening. Fun. A good education.

Here is my fun list of our Family's Camping 101.

1.  When setting up your tent, either be super humble and ask someone for help, or be super confident and just pretend like you know exactly what you're doing.  Sneak glances around you to see if it looks like everyone else's and pray that no big wind comes and carries it away.  (I did both. I set it up very confidently, and then asked one of the guys in the registration office to pop on by and make sure I did it right.  Guess that thought that I needed a man to tell me if it was right or not is taking a bit to go away. He came by and guess what? I had done a great job!)

2.  I can make a fire.  Really!  I can.  And not a smoky, smoldering mess.  A real roaring fire that calmed into a slow burn for hot dog cooking and s'mores. It was beautiful. And yes, I'm very proud.

3.  Remind your almost-a-teen son not to wander around the site with his swiss army knife drawn.  He said he was looking for wood to whittle, but all I could see was us getting kicked out of the campsite for brandishing a weapon.  Next time I'll remind him before he goes exploring.

4.  I'm not too prissy to sleep on the ground.  I may however, be too old and bony.  I took my yoga mat, a blanket and my sleeping bag. My hips didn't like digging into the earth and while I did sleep some, I think I will need more padding in the future.

5.  Birds are noisy in late evening and early morning- and I loved it.  So many songs joining, and so incredibly beautiful.

6.  I like the smell of fire, earth and even sweaty kids all mingled together.

7. Drunk people were annoying in college and drunk people are still annoying now.  (Go to sleep you silly annoying drunk people! )

8.  Sleeping through the night in a tent with four other people under the age of 13 will not happen. You will be awakened at 3am by a naked child standing over you shivering and loudly whispering that he has had an accident and is now frozen and wet.  You will sit up and realize that your 'extra' blanket choices are limited and will try to bundle him up as best you can, without waking anyone else, and then pray that he doesn't die of hypothermia as you settle back into sleep.

9. Take more blankets next time.

10.  The thought to take .97 cent solar torches was brilliant.  I used one set on top of a jug of water (which softly illuminated the whole thing) as well as one in two different corners as really low nightlights.  It helped the kids a ton.

11.  None of my children are too old to be sung to sleep.  My lullabies saved the night.

12.  Bug spray. Even more than you think.  Ticks? Oh they are already having parties.. some of them were having parties in my kids underwear. yeah.  For real.  Thank heavens for the tweezers on the swiss army knife.

13.  I should have asked for more help setting up our site, but I was so excited to be alone in the QUIET that I kicked them out. Made them go play. It was heaven.

14.  Insist that every child use the bathroom before bedding down.  See #8.  Enough said.

15.  Don't let the kids go in and out of the tent in excitement before it's time to bed down. What seems so fun will turn your tent into a bowl of sand and dirt, and you will be using your car broom to try and get it as clean as you can before realizing you're just going to be lying in it all night and what the heck, we're made from dust, we go back to dust and tonight? We sleep in dust.

16.  Keep expectations low.

17.  Remind children at 6am that it is still time to be quiet and the sides of the tents are not, in fact, solid walls. Whisper loudly to them that their exclamations of 'There's a tick on my testicles' and 'I need to throw away my pull-up' can be heard by everyone within a 1/2 mile radius.

18.  Don't make eye contact with anyone after you emerge from your tent when everyone has just heard about the tick and its choice of location.

19.  Decide that the tent WILL in fact go back in the bag. Refuse defeat.  You will do this. Shake it out, fold it up, pull it into the bag where one lip of the bag will always slide off until you realize that you do not, in fact, have the super power needed to do this particular camping task, ball it up and put it into your car. With the bag on top.  To fix at home. Or, to ask your neighbor to help you fix it.

20.  Cheer the kids on and tell them how wonderful they did.  Chuckle at the preteen who arrived with an attitude that it wasn't rustic enough who is now sitting by a morning fire with a mouth full of pop tarts exclaiming that 'This is my most favorite place ever'. Decide to do this. Again, and again.  Healing comes amongst the trees.

The Knife's Healing Work

Healing is a process and I'm at a weary place in mine.  My heart has hung ragged, bloodied and slashed, and I have taken the time to carefully pick up the flesh and hand it over to God and allow Him to begin to sew it back together.
But being open, being vulnerable, being ready to receive revelation of places of hurt and wounding, being honest and transparent .... is sometimes tiring work.
I lived a very long time in happy land.  I am, by nature, a happy, hyper and energetic person.  I like to have fun, I like to do, and I like to be moving and busy. Healing is slow work. Often still work.  Many times healing can look like nothing at all, and the desire and urge to jump up and move on to the next shiny thing can take over my head space and try to divert me from the healing path that I'm walking.

I have likened my journey to a car crash.  The day that everything came crashing down was the impact of the crash. I then had to be cut out of the wreckage, life flighted to help, triaged through the hospital, then stabilized.  Once I was stablized I had to be prepped for surgery and then endure a long surgical procedure.  I now see myself as being in post-op.  If you've ever had a lingering illness, or a surgery, you understand that during the healing process there are moments where you feel more energetic or stronger than you really are.  You are tempted to push yourself as you long to stretch your body and legs back into routines they have been used to. Often, you are forced back to bed where you concede that you might have rushed into activity too soon and more rest is necessary.  I am finding myself dipping my toes back into leadership roles, and into the primary parent role,  and while I feel I am moving carefully and slowly, there are times where my heart feels that it isn't strong enough yet, not healed up enough to endure the pressure of the job at hand.  Healing takes intention, attention, and effort.  I have to make the time to feed my physical body as well as my heart.  I have to be still... and with four needy, hurting children, that can often feel unattainable.

My knee-jerk reaction is to do more than I should, with frustration, and then numb the pain;  with food, or noise, or reading, or any of a million other things I can do other than sit with the struggle that swirls and swishes around me.  The hard thing to do is to be still. To asess how I am feeling, how I can respond, and to take my time in reacting.  To allow the new behavior I'm learning to take effect, to slowly stretch and build those muscles that have sat unused for so long.
I have discovered that I tend towards codependency and in that new realization, I'm having to learn to respond to people in new ways, and stop and think before I respond. It's all too easy for me to try and rescue people, or 'save' them from discomfort, and sacrifice chunks of myself all along the journey.
For now, as I do the still work of healing, I am giving myself permission to move slowly. To stop and rest. To make mistakes with the ever-present desire of forward motion. To refuse to punish myself for detours.  Maya Angelou says "When you know better, you do better."  I'm taking that to heart and running with it.  Each day I learn more... about myself, about how I operate with other people, where some of my weaknesses are, and how I tend to worry more about the feelings of others than my own.

Healing isn't sedentary. It's a slow, careful walk out of hurt and wounding.  It's intentional choice that can go against what your brain is telling you to do. It's the cautious tending to raw wounds that can be pulled open again and gently covering them with prayer, rest, and love so that instead of a long lasting slashed festering of flesh, the scar can begin to form.  It is grace and change and growing pains and doctor visits and time and rest and work.  As I continue to heal, I will next move into physical therapy; where what I'm learning about myself can begin to be put to work in a controlled environment.  I'm determined to do my work. I trust that as I keep growing and aging and moving through this earth journey that there will be more work to do, and I pray I can stay focused and close to the surgeon for any other procedures I need to have done.

Moonlight Dancer - My Messy Beautiful

I help lead a care group at my church on Tuesday mornings.  It's a privilege of epic proportions because the gift being given is women's stories; they bare their hearts and part of their very souls. 

The group is heavy, in the best of ways, filled with many soul-cleansing tears and shared looks of understanding, empathy, and grace.  It's a beautiful place of connection and I look forward to our meetings each week. 

This morning one woman was quiet.  The other leader pulled her aside afterwards to ask her if she was ok. Her heart and pain began spilling out as she shared her anger in not comprehending how any of us in the group could talk about joy and pain in the same breath. She hadn't yet seen that happen in her young life and was angry and believed somehow we must be misleading her.  When the leader shared this with me after the room had emptied, I wept.  I wanted to chase that beautiful woman down and hold her by her shoulders to look deeply into her eyes and let her see, truly see the pain that still hovers in my day to day life.  It’s true, my outlook on life is one of contentment, and peace; but pain and frustration and fear and disappointment haven't been washed away completely; instead those things have just become smaller in the heavy dense light of the healing grace I'm experiencing.  

You don't get to the joy, and you can’t get to the peace if you haven't weathered the storm. Before life’s storms knock you around and bang you up, it is easy to miss much of the beauty and blessing that wash around you daily. When you have been bruised and wounded and ripped wide open from life's places of dirt and grief, and you allow the healing power of grief to wash your eyes anew; you are freed up to begin to really see where you are standing.  When you learn that your life is better than any novel, more beautiful and dramatic than any box office success, and more full than a ridiculous soap opera, you are freed up to begin to interact with your life with different intentions.  When you know you can swim in deep waters, you learn to love the ocean.  When you know that pounding rain brings new growth, and fire can burn off chaff that blocks you from deeper connection, truer love and more powerful compassion, then you no longer run from the storm or flame.  That is how you can speak of both joy and pain in the same breath and be authentic.  That is where true interaction with others comes.  That is the sweet spot.  It is hard to live in the sweet spot, holding hope as a bird perched on a branch, because when you are there you are vulnerable.  Your heart can be wounded and pulled and bloodied and used.  But you also learn to see people. See them with eyes of love and grace.  See them with compassion and empathy.  When you walk through dark forests you can truly learn to love yourself and when you love yourself you are free to give your best self to the rest of us.  And your healing spills out like a warm balm that covers those around you with its powerful comfort. 

The simple truth is that we are all the same; yet in our sameness lies incredible difference- meaning: I am a single mother with special needs kids, and I am now divorced.  None of those facts about me are unique, or new, or rare.  There are millions of single mothers with special needs kids who have been through a divorce.  But just giving you the details of my story wouldn't be enough.... you might not be able to connect to me with just the details of my story- however when I  expose those shattered places where i feel like a failure, and am angry, and am grieving the loss of my lifelong dream, you can begin to relate; because those feelings can apply in places of your story.  In the realization that we are all the same we are set free to live our different lives and give the world what we were designed to give it.  

You don't need to know the details of my story to understand me.  The connection isn't in the details anyhow.  Where you will feel connected to me is in the feelings. The emotions and the pain I've experienced. You'll feel connected to me there because you have felt many of the same feelings in your journey.  Brene Brown warns that people need to earn the right to hear your story.  As I've navigated a long bumpy road through the death of my marriage over the last year and a half, I have found this to be true. While I don't consider my story a secret, I am careful with whom I lay the details.  There is power to be found in the details, but, as I've also learned and stated before, the connection isn't usually in those details.  Grief and hurt are universal struggles.  You can hear my grief without ever knowing the backstory.  

So much of the joy and the healing and the good and beautiful comes with connection.  As I was jolted into a new reality the day I asked my husband to leave, I was a shattered shell of a woman.  My tribe circled round and pulled in tight to protect me, feed me, love me and make space for my hurt.  In that crisis mode, there was grace and hushed voices and random gifts in the mail and lots of acknowledgement in my pain.  It was part of the life blood that kept me on my feet and allowed me to survive and keep my children well.  As the immediate crisis stretched into a new reality and became my day to day, many people fell away and the tribe got smaller and tighter.  But here's the catch, here is a secret not shared by many;  there are parts of your healing that will have to be done all alone.  Sometimes you have to get alone with yourself and some good music as company.  Don't be afraid of this chapter.  Don't run to your places of escape, rather allow your heart to be safe with you.  Receive your own truth and pain with gentle hands and a tender heart.  Give yourself the gift of grace and love and space that you would give your dearest friend.  Treat your heart with the dignity it deserves and know that in those lonely places you and God can begin to forge a kinship that can't be found in the noise of other relationships.  Allow Him to tell you who you are and be careful not to identify yourself by the circumstance you are in. I have failed, but I am not a failure.  I have handled things wrongly, but I am not a mistake.  I have been wounded but I am not a victim.  

No matter how dark the night, somehow, in some miraculous mystery, the sun always rises. And while my night sometimes seems to stretch out for eternity, I have learned to dance in the moonlight (with a little Gypsy Kings on for company).

http://momastery.com/carry-on-warrior/

Strength in Vulnerability

An interesting side effect of going through grief and working on healing is that you can become raw, tender hearted, easily moved, and saturated in both beauty and empathy.

When you begin to look at your own heart, to really look at it and see the darkness and also that beautiful capacity for both hurt and love, there is a great awareness that begins to dawn- and in that awareness comes the realization that each of us walking around this muddy planet have places of darkness and beauty.  When you realize this basic truth, you begin to see yourself and others with new eyes.

I used to pride myself on my 'strength'.  I rarely cried and didn't like that show of emotion.  I didn't like the feeling I had of losing control of my emotions... except for anger.  The anger often ran over like water.

Suffering has a way of burning off the chaff so that new growth can blossom.  Seeds of beauty that haven't been nurtured and have been sleeping in the deep, dark soil, are freed to push through the ashes and grow into coverings of color, and beauty, and depth.

When I was still married, I knew at a soul-knowing level that things were wrong.  I mentioned before how I hoped my way along, and since I wasn't living with truth, I was powerless to change things.  When life exploded for me, when the truth was laid bare, the pain was at once blinding and freeing.  Knowing the reality of my life gave me the vantage point to be able to assess the damage and start the process of building.
As I waded through new realities that I had been living with on a daily basis but had been blind to, I began to learn how to weep. How to grieve.  How to allow the deep sadness and dark blanket of death to settle into my heart and begin its work.  When allowed, I believe that the grieving process can actually be the catalyst for new life.  As we give ourselves over to the death of what was, and make space for what needs to be birthed in us, the ability to feel not only our own hurts but to recognize and empathize with the hurts of those around us develops into a beautifully honed skill.

My personal grieving process has been quite self absorbed.  I wasn't able to maintain the relationships and commitments that I had previously carried.  Sitting with a new reality and laying my marriage to rest took everything I had to give.  I turned inward and began the painstaking task of sweeping clean the crevices of my heart and soul.  The energy spent just surviving a death (of any kind) is all consuming and laid waste to anything I had to give.  In the last few months, I have begun to see light again.  The heavy blanket that had been tucked around my heart has begun to lift and I am feeling lighter and brighter and very tender-hearted. I feel as though I have walked from a dark theater into the bright sun of day and have to blink and squint and rub my eyes to protect them against the blinding brightness that comes from the life giving sun.  With new eyes and a keen awareness of those around me, I now see pain behind so many cautious faces.  I am approached in public by people who know me as well as strangers who each want to tell me their story, and I believe it is because in my face there is now a light that shines and draws in the hurting.

I have been given the privilege in the last months of hearing the stories of many women.  Women who are working through their own places of disappointment, disillusionment, grief, and anger. I have found that as I listen, and watch them lay bare their souls to mine, that I can no longer stop the flow of tears.  The 'strength' I used to think I had in damming up that waterfall has been replaced with the tender place of grace I long to offer those who are courageous enough to share parts of their lives with me.

I know I still have work to do.  There will never be a finish line where I get to stop running and know that I have the badge of 'healed up tight'. But I revel in that truth. I love knowing that as far as I've come, the road stretches ahead with more growing, more connection, more beauty, and even the knowing that I can swim in deep waters.  My tender heart is now my badge of strength.  The ability to be cut deeply by standing with a woman as she grieves her way, the knowing that all of us have deep and precious stories, the privilege of holding space for other women as they work through their dark and beautiful places is something I am proud of. Your stories are priceless.  Beautiful. At times both painful and dark; and I can't think of anything I'd rather do more than to be a player in your story as we learn to walk these roads together. Thank you for holding space for me, and know that I am here for you.
Much love. 

Out of darkness into light

Today was the first day of class for me in a new group at my church.

I mentioned before that I was going through a group on Thursday nights called Stuck- which has been incredible for me, and now I have the amazing privilege of being one of the leaders in a group that meets on Tuesday mornings.  It's a study (for lack of a better word) that deals with 'life's hurts, habits and hangups'.  I was a bit anxious before we met as I wasn't sure how many women would be in the group. There is a large group of women who come on Tuesday mornings from the community and today we kicked off several new studies- I really thought that our group wouldn't have many commit because the emotional work it will take will be intense.
I was blown away to see 15 women join us, and butterflies settled into my stomach.

The main leader of the group was out of town at a conference today and it was also the first day so it was a bit awkward.  After we spent time breaking the ice and going over the rules to protect one another's privacy, we broached the delicate subject of why each of us had come. One by one each woman bravely opened her mouth and shared a tiny piece of her heart. It was a sacred space to be in.  Our lives, our history, our struggle and our pain make up the very essence of who we are, and for those women to share part of themselves with the rest of us was a gift.

I have already learned this lesson over the last years, but today was another powerful example that every one of us walking this earth have hurts. If you get the honor of peeking behind the closed doors of someones life, you will always see places where they have been wounded, or felt rejected, or are struggling.  Wrestling with other people will always leave you banged up and so all of us have places where we're limping a bit, or possibly even ripped wide open.

It was beautiful to see each woman identify a place or multiple places in her life that needs attention- and so courageous to hear them say it was time to move on from that place of pain. To lay it to rest. To identify it, look at it, walk through the darkness surrounding it, and ultimately leave it behind.

I was talking with a friend yesterday who has walked a very dark road. Through no fault of her own, she was banged up and wounded deeply in her childhood and teen years. Those who should have protected her instead abused her in every way, and she was left with confusion, distrust, and pain I can't begin to imagine. She chose to do the work of stepping into that darkness and face it and she put it to rest. It wasn't easy or fast, and I had the incredible honor of watching her grow, heal, and change over the last 4 years.  But she did it.  The shame and pain that held her in bondage for so long has dissipated into the wind and she is now left with compassion, grace for herself, and a deep desire to tend to the hearts of others.  We were discussing one of her family members and the harmful choices that woman is making.  It is a clear situation where this woman is choosing to stay stuck and in pain to avoid the pain of walking through the dark places in order to heal and move on.  We all have to make the choice to walk into our dark tunnels on our own time, but I have learned that there are many treasures to be found in the dark; and true healing can't come without walking that dark and ragged path.  There is no way around that pain, only the way through, yet we are never alone... God is near to the broken hearted, and I can tell you from personal experience that the grace and beauty that was found there far exceeded the pain of surgery my heart had to go through.

I am excited to be able to be part of a group of women who long for healing. Women who are lacing up their boots in anticipation of walking down a bumpy dark path.  Women who are steeling themselves for a painful journey out of bondage and silence.  I can't wait to walk this road with them, and love that I get the chance to stand so closely to those who are ready to trust the process. Being with women who long for wholeness is one of most amazing experiences I can think of.