A Date!

I have a date this weekend!

Not a romantic date, but a friendship date. It is no less exciting and in fact I am probably even more excited!

You see, one of my goals over the past year has been to increase my friendship base. For lots of very legitimate life reasons, I haven't developed that many close friendships in the past 8 years. And the amazing friends I do have - most have moved away to other parts of the country or do not live close to me. They are still incredible friends, but we can no longer just hang out or go to the movies without a plane ticket being involved.

Although I was seriously dating someone for almost three years, I have been a single, stay-at-home mom and just finished graduate school. As a therapist, the people I meet on a daily basis could never be friends...So, I found myself finally lifting my head up and looking around thinking I need to work on this!

What do you do when you decide you want to make friends as an adult? It's not as easy as when you were in school, or even working in a larger office. There you see people on a daily basis.

How do you meet new people? Then moving a relationship from an acquaintance to friendship takes effort. First of all there has to be some sort of attraction - similar interests, similar views on life, or for some reason you just want to get to know them better.

But then what? Do you ask them out? Do you keep calling? What if your kids don't get along?

Juggling work, kids, husbands, boyfriends and families while trying to develop friendships is much harder than it once was! Because in addition, the time I spend with my friends is time something else is not getting done - laundry, housework, yard work, painting, reading...and really I have a fairly tenuous grip on those things anyways!

I recently ran across a new blog that is asking similar questions. And even though I had been thinking about this issue and in fact had written something last year, I never wanted to publish it because I felt a little, well, crazy. Even though we talk about making friends, and wish for deep connections with others, we don't really talk about how or why. Reading her posts on her own search for a deep friendship made me realize that deep down, we all have the same feelings. We all feel isolated and alone, scared and lonely, and even a little bit crazy.

And sometimes, sharing these feelings brings us closer together because we realize that we are not alone. We are not crazy. We are not isolated. We all long for someone to understand our own personal brand of crazy. Someone to make us laugh. Someone that can honestly say that your outfit isn't the most flattering on you and we appreciate it! Someone that can make us laugh. And someone that we can call up and be with, just because.

Husbands and boyfriends are wonderful, but nothing can replace the fellowship, friendship and love of other women! (Oh, and I have realized that friends are directly related to my goals of joy!)

Dreams

I had a strange dream last night. To those of you who know me, this is really nothing new, but it had a different quality to it than my normal, run of the mill, someone is trying to kill me dreams. First of all, I was in the Olympics. Which to many of you is not strange at all considering the Olympics are everywhere right now; except, I haven’t seen one second of them. Not because I don’t care, actually the Winter Olympics are my favorite; I just haven’t had the TV on at all in the past week.

I was given a pony, with a saddle that was too small, and my legs were up around my chest. For some reason, I was afraid of the pony (really strange since I grew up on a horse) and then they just sent me out into the snow without any snow clothes. I tried to fix the saddle, but my trainers kept telling me I was doing it wrong. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, or where I was supposed to go, only that I was in a competition and I had better win because all of my team mates were depending on me.

In other words, I was in a race, with the wrong equipment, no protection and no directions – sounds kind of like life and parenting in many respects. How often are we given all of the information before we are required to make life altering decisions? How often do we feel ill-equipped and afraid of the tools we are given? How often do we have other people who supposedly know better, telling us the way we are trying to fix our lives to make it easier or better is the wrong way? How often do we know where we are going? Or how often do we feel the weight of trying to take care of our families, children and everyone else who we have signed up to be in the race with?

I do know that I miss the feeling of being on my horse, running through a field. The sense of freedom. The feeling of the horse’s power underneath me. The feeling of the wind on my face. The smell of the horse and the ground being turned up by her hooves. The sense of just being. When I was riding my horse, I was in the moment. I was relaxed. I was confident. I was happy. I wasn’t striving for someone to like me, or to do it right, or to be successful, or make decisions – I just was.

Joy is my project for this year. Learning to be in the moment, to enjoy every day and every gift God has given me. Not looking to the troubles of tomorrow, but relishing every day. Along with this comes trust. Trusting in God. Learning to trust myself – not spending my time constantly second guessing. Trusting others. And trusting that joy isn’t something that can be taken away.

The Sad State of My Garden

My garden did not perform well this past year. Actually, to say it was pretty bad would be an understatement! Part of the problem was that I did not give it the attention it deserved - just too much going on. Secondly, I did a huge expansion of the my original space. Because the ground was so compacted and terrible, I brought in loads and loads of compost as well as shredded leaves, horse manure, chicken manure, shredded bills, straw and just about anything else I could find and think of to use. Not sure the plants like this very much.

And the plants themselves just acted weird. I would get blooms, but no fruit set. Both the tomatoes and potatoes ended up with blight, and even the over producing squash just languished. I had one tomato plant that gave me one tomato. And three plants that didn't produce a single ripe tomato all year! The grapes weren't happy campers either.

The surprise star of the garden was the lone eggplant planted next to the driveway - It produced at least two dozen nice sized eggplants if not more.

I was going to plant a cover crop this fall and turn everything over and try again this spring, however the possibility of losing my house has me not wanting to put much effort into something I might not see.

As I'm writing this, I am reminded of a book I recently read, Farm City. It was a great book, full of humor and city-bound, homesteading insights, where the author farmed an empty plot next door with the constant threat of having everything torn down. But she did it anyway, for the love of growing and harvesting and seeing living things thrive.

I love to garden. That's why I became a Master Gardener. But lately, it has become just one more thing that's not getting done right. I guess that is my perfectionism/procrastination coming out - if it can't be done perfect, why do it at all?! And after all that hard work, to see everything just fail...

The state of my yard and garden is atrocious! But last weekend I got out there for a while and pulled all the dead plants out of the garden, cleaned out the chicken coop and spread it over the top of the beds and let the chickens in to scratch and claw away...I got out my seeds and garlic heads which I will plant when this deluge stops...If I get to harvest - that's just a bonus!

I will be happy when...

I have a hard time being happy. For a reason that God only knows, I was born with a more somber personality. I’m not an Eyore, but I’m definitely not a Pollyanna either. I run kind of in the middle and have anxiety issues to boot.

I want to be happy. I want to be joyful. I want to be a person that makes others smile. I want to leave fear behind. I felt that I was on my way for a while and then life got in the way. For the past 6 and a half years I feel like I have been clawing my way out of a deep hole and trying to figure out who I am in the aftermath of my daughter’s death and then divorce.

Last year, I was asked by one of my dearest and oldest friends, “What happened to you? You used to be so full of life.”

This question really hurt, but as so many questions that evoke large emotional responses – was right on. What had happened to me? I can answer with a litany of things and situations, but more than that, it is my responses to those events that truly shape who I am.

I know that I am a different person than I used to be. Everyone grows and changes, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse; and most of us have a combination of the two. I’m not as happy-go-lucky as I used to be. I’m not as bitchy, not as much of a know-it-all, not as sure that everything will turn out the way I want it.

I don’t want to be Eyore. I don’t want to be angry, bitter, disappointed and I know that I have made HUGE inroads in that department! My faith is growing by leaps and bounds. I still have questions and am constantly working on trusting God in the midst of whatever is happening in my life. And this coming year already has some big challenges coming!

But for the first time in a very long time – I have hope…

My life is not the way I envisioned it. That doesn’t make it bad, just different. Right now, I am working on what I want my life to look like this next year. Not new year’s resolutions, but more a general feeling. What is important for me to have in my life? What makes me happy? What makes me smile? How can I leave fear behind?

So, my goal for this next year is to work on joy. To be joyful in the midst of whatever life is currently offering…With that in mind, the following is a poem that I have read over and over to myself. Every time, it helps remind me that there is nothing outside of myself that will make me happy. Not another person, not a new tv, not a house, or a garden…

The Station
By Robert Hastings

Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision.
We see ourselves on a long trip that spans the continent.
We are traveling by train.
Out the windows we drink in the passing scenes

of cars on nearby highways,
of children waving at a crossing,

of cattle grazing on a distant hillside,
of smoke pouring from a power plant,

of row upon row of corn and wheat,
of flatlands and valleys, of mountains and rolling hills,
of city skylines and village halls.

But uppermost in our minds is the final destination.
On a certain day, at a certain hour we will pull into the station.
Bands will be playing and flags will be waving.
Once we get there so many wonderful dreams will come true

and the pieces of our lives

will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle.
How restlessly we pace the aisles,
damning the minutes for loitering- waiting,
waiting, waiting for the station.

“When we reach the station, that will be it,” we cry!
“When I’m 18…” “When I buy a new BMW…”
“When I put the last kid through college…”

“When I have paid off the mortgage…”
“When I get a promotion…”

“When I reach retirement I shall live happily ever after!”

Sooner or later we must realize there is no station,
no one place to arrive at once and for all.
The true joy of life is the trip.
The station is only a dream.
It constantly outdistances us.

“Relish the moment” is a good motto,
especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24:
“This is the day which the Lord hath made;
we will rejoice and be glad in it.”
It isn’t the burdens of today that drive people mad.
It’s the regrets over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow.
Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us of today.

So, stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles.
Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice-cream,
go barefoot more often, swim more rivers,

watch more sunsets,
laugh more, cry less – life must be lived as we go along.
The station will come soon enough.