Tag Archives: living with change

The In and Out of Season

20 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in Nature, The unexpected

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

20180120_165654

It is coffee-o’clock in the afternoon, and I am pondering the things that were on my mind as I walked Auggie just after noon today. With temperatures between 40 and 50, many folks around here are getting their wish for a thaw. As the saying goes, there’s a blessing and a curse in this. The sound of our walk has changed from the quiet whump whump of boots on snow, to the slosh slush of melting ice and snow underfoot. It is actually more difficult to keep my footing in this than it was on solid ice and fluffy snow.

What was beautiful white snow is now poxed with surfacing mud, weed and grass sprigs, and the gazillion tracks and seed shells strewn by grateful birds. The gleam of sunshine over a white field is clouded over today, and today’s 40 felt colder than 10 degrees did on a sunny day.  After a week of putting Auggie and myself into and out of  sweaters, coat, hood, scarf, boots, gloves, and even at times extra layers, plus a leash, well – I’m easing up on the job and thinking I wouldn’t make a good Alaskan!

No, the sounds and sights are not as pleasing to me, but 6 days without mail and the cancelled plans weren’t great either. Oh, I am not complaining. We certainly don’t experience this scenario much around here. I rather enjoyed the quiet time. I felt a purpose in life – keeping the birds fed, checking on my elderly family members, using groceries judiciously and preparing meals that would keep my man happy (smile – I know how old-fashioned that sounds) and keeping the household prepared just incase we lost electricity along the way.

But this isn’t the crux of my thoughts this morning. It was change. I think a lot about that lately. We went overnight from a 60 degree rain to temps in the teens with a layer of ice and several inches of snow.  Likewise, we went from teens back to 50 degrees in less than 24 hours today. My sister says my reaction time emotionally goes from zero to 90 in a moment. We go from stocked shelves and full refrigerator to “whats for dinner?’ in a few days of home cooking. I went from a peaceful moment of “I think I’ll get something out of the freezer” to a mad race for towels, containers, and yells for help. The freezer was off and our food had thawed. I cooked a great deal, gave some away, threw away  even more, and I now have a clean freezer ready to be refilled. I may have cried a tear or two, recalling the work I put into those garden veggies. It’s a small thing really, and I’m over it. But all those huge things that people endure as their seasons change are not coped with so easily. My heart bleeds for them. As I prepare to speak in March at a Ladies Retreat I will be giving a greater portion of thought to this thing we call change. Seasons.  Our seasons within seasons. The beauty and the beast of seasons as they come and go. And especially the Letting Go as we prepare for another!

Enjoy your season, whatever it is. They go by too quickly to miss a moment of each one. In a flash I will be watching for little garden seeds to sprout, bringing more of those vegetables we love. “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and teaching.” (II Timothy 4:2 NKJV)

“

A Time to Suit Yourself

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Life, Reflections

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Betty Ann put down her glass of iced tea and said “As I’ve grown older, I find I am arranging things in my house just to suit me”. Looking around my kitchen and dining areas in response to Paula’s comment about how I arrange things “just so”, I realized I do tend to group things by the way I like to see them. We three girls were enjoying an all too seldom visit early this spring, and I’d arranged the visit, not the house. On that day I didn’t feel worthy of it,  but I was happy for the compliment. The very old and the very new may sit side by side just because I like the colors together. Then again, the colors within a group may not be complimentary but the items remind me of an event or someone special; or I group items  just because I like the way they fill the space. (Kind of like the way we fill our lives with so many different kinds of people; all ages, and walks of life.) So yes, my house is full of stuff, just to suit me. At the same time, I know the arrangements will be seen by others, who may or may not share my decorating taste. Not to sound unkind, but, so what?  Problem is I’m a sentimental collector; a dangerous combination. Minimizing is attractive in theory, but to a collector who sees a memory or  a loved one in each cherished possession, letting it go is next to climbing Mt. Rushmore. So maybe my space is getting a bit cluttered. So is my mind, so I guess it’s a nice fit.

     I once looked at life as a buzzing busy bee,

     Or butterflies all aflutter.

     But as the days grow tired on me,

     I see it all as clutter.

 The down side of having a moment to look around the room, was that I saw so many things I didn’t do to prepare for guests, that I would have done a few years ago. There was a puppy pee pad on the floor across the room, and I didn’t get the floor mopped. I didn’t cut a bouquet of flowers, light a candle for fragrance, nor clean the windows. Yes, those are things I would have done a few years ago, along with moving and dusting under all those collector bric-a-brac just mentioned. Before you judge me, keep in mind that it was how I was raised. My mother may not have had the newest carpet, but it was clean; her windows were shining and the curtains were clean and ironed. God bless her sweet soul, she even cleaned the grooves in the linoleum flooring with a toothbrush when the floor wax built up there. My point is, we learn what we live. And I lived with a woman who loved her home, and her company. She wanted to present her very best. So do I. But like Betty Ann, my attitude has changed over the years. How I define my very best, now has more to do with conversation, time spent, food they’ll enjoy, and being rested  rather than frazzled. I settled for vacuumed without mopped; a good quiche and iced tea; gratitude for the people I was blessed to have in our home, laughter instead of being tired and sensitive (which is what I become when I lose sleep, and sleep is lost if I do all that other stuff). My nap the day before was a luxury I didn’t used to afford myself, but I was a better person afterwards.

There was a chigger weed in my iris beds, maybe more. But the irises were beautiful. There was laundry piled up because we’d been fighting our washer, but the laundry room door slid shut nicely. The hardwood floors didn’t shine like they once did, but there’s a bathed and pampered puppy to enjoy instead. Our once grassy lawn was a weedy bog, but on it stands a home that I hope and pray extends hospitality and love. Anyway, I’m working on it. Perhaps one day, I will look around and see all the beauty of a wonderful visit without seeing these undone things.  So, if you are tempted to give your house a “spit-polish shine” before I come to see you, don’t do it. Take a nap instead, have a cup of coffee ready, and let us enjoy a time “arranged just to suit ourselves”!

 

A Bitter Cup

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

January 16, 2014

Happy Birthday to my sister.

Change. Change can have such a bitter taste. Like that cheap coffee in the hospital waiting rooms, or a gas station’s left-from-yesterday-coffee, there’s a bitter aftertaste. More for some than for others. For me, change has never been very welcome; partially because it requires energy – more energy than I want to use. When things stay the same, there is no moving mentally, emotionally, nor physically to accommodate it. At the age of 60, I readily recognize that change is a necessary part of life; and in fact it can accommodate, facilitate, recreate, and do all those other modern moves that keep up with life for us. Without change in my own daily life, I won’t be ready for the changes outside my inner circle. But sometimes, just sometimes, it is not good. Admit it modern world, not all the changes have been for our good. I don’t wish to be a negative person. On the contrary, I am very positive when I say that I like something, and I like it to stay as it is. I look at several situations in a way that one may accuse me of being negative, when all the time, I am being positive about the opposite of what will be, if changed. See? So what has my apple cart teetering? Note that I did not say ‘turned over’, just teetering. Who has moved my cheese this time (to quote a well-known book title written by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard) and why was my lip quivering?

My little sister said as we returned from her birthday lunch, “I need to tell you something”; and she said it very gravely. It caused a wave through my stomach and several scenarios to blow through my mind – was her marriage ok? was a child or grandchild in trouble? was one of my kids about to throw me for a loop? was , was, was… Well, I guess she knew how to manage my expectations so that the real issue wouldn’t be so shocking. The news is that they are going to sell their house, about a mile from us, and move to the city life. Convenience, in general, is the reasoning. But I like having them near me. I like, no I adore, her very large shady, peaceful backyard and all its gorgeous landscaping. That’s been my sister’s house for too many years for me to imagine her anywhere else. Where will I borrow a cup of sugar, or where will I drop by for a dip in the pool; where will I run in to give the kids a hug and a batch of cookies? Oh wait a minute, town is where I work. It’s where our dad lives; where we go to church; and it’s only seven or eight miles from here. Oh, ok, some change is good. But I had to sweeten that bitter cup of coffee, and pour in some cream. I actually handled it pretty well. I took her hand and said, “Change is part of life – we both have learned that! Of course it hurts me to think of you moving, but thank Goodness, you aren’t telling me you’re packing it all off to Florida or some such far off place!!” We laughed, and I look forward to helping her select things for a new house someday. And I’m reminded that God has worked on me a great deal about this change thing. Several years ago, my brother-in-law tried to talk her into this move, but she wasn’t going for it, and I bawled and squawled when she told me he wanted to move. Since then, I’ve been through more difficult transitions, changes, dreams on the edge of dissolving, and with each one God has refined me, chiseled out little receptacles, whereby I can accept and live more in harmony with change. We all have those unique traits that need tweaking in order to survive – mine was change acceptance. True, God still has much work to do on me, but I am better able to help Him with this one. Now I am able to see the positive side. I am thankful for all the years I have had my sister and her family right in my back door, to borrow and lend, to cry, to rejoice, to be a part of her family. How many can say that? And it is exciting to think of their building a new home, of the convenience that it will bring for her trying times, and that she will still be so near. As I write, I realize that I am using the relocation issue as a bucket to hold all the tremendous changes that have occurred in her family’s life, and the lack of it other than aging, in my own. These are not things easily written, nor spoken, and so it was good to have an avenue by which I could harp a bit on the subject of change. All we need to take away from this is in Ephesians 2:10: ” For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” HIS workmanship, not my own. If not for change, how could He make me better?! His knowledge of me is what will sustain me throughout life’s changes. So, since change is always here, ugly or not, to be dealt with, I call on the Lord to equip me that I may in turn be a comfort to another who may not be dealing well with their particular changing times. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties”, Psalm 139:23. How wonderful that God has given me so much time and circumstance to become a “changed person”, in order that I may accept the bigger changes of aging, and such. “Oh Lord you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. …Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.” Psalm 139: 1-3 and  vs 6. Wow. It even blew the great king David’s mind. Some things never change.