Word of the Year

A word for the year. That is so my speed. I read it somewhere (there are so many smart people on the internet). Instead of a long list of resolutions at year's start, select just one word. A word that represents what you will strive for, search for, attempt to infuse into your life over the coming 365 days. I'm easily carried away with grandiose goals, resolutions and lists of things to do, things to be done. Which isn't bad in itself, but there is so much I want to do, see, accomplish, become. Overwhelming, that's what all that mess is. And so the idea of a word soothes me and appeals to me at the most basic level of my heart.

In 2010, the word was Gratitude. I posted a whiteboard on the refrigerator and vowed to find one thing every day for which I could be grateful. Sometimes I was grateful for the most simple of things: Hot coffee with cream. A warm bed. A clean kitchen. The abundance of tap water. Sometimes my gratitude went deeper: Healthy children. Knowing my grandparents. Our jobs. Sometimes, without my prompting, the children would express their thankfulness on the board: Mommy and Daddy. Our house. My cat.

I skipped a couple of years. Worries were rather abundant at that time, as I recall. Maslow's pyramid kicked in perhaps? But as we began to emerge from the Anxious Time, I selected a new word for 2013: Joy. Joy is an interesting word. Different from happiness with its pesky dependence upon circumstances. Joy is something you have in spite of circumstances. How in the world can I get me some of that? After a couple of years of head-down, survival-mode seriousness, I wanted to know. Needed to know. Strangely, I could feel it coming. It was coming because the Lord was teaching me that to experience Joy, I had to divorce my heart from Circumstances. In other words, I had to let go of everything to get the one thing that I really wanted. I had to redefine Security. That darn Security was elusive! It was not in any bank. I couldn't find it inside the walls of my pretty house, on the beautiful street on which we live or in the faces of my beloved neighbors. I couldn't even find it in any earthly relationship, no matter how lovely and wonderful that relationship was. My Security was someplace else altogether, and when I finally found it...well, what do you know? There was Joy as well.

This year my word is an exciting one. I came to it the first day I opened the Word in 2014. January 6. "I am able to do far beyond all that you ask or imagine." Or as it appears in Ephesians 3:20: "Now glory be to God who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even Dream of -- infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts or hopes."  Wow, now there's a promise! A great word to start the year. It's got it all: hope, excitement, energy, promise, courage and boldness.

I'm looking forward to see what Dreams He has for us in 2014.

5 Minute Friday: Broken

Go.

My dad fixes things that are broken. So does my husband. Evidence: Two hours spent trying to fix my outgoing email last night. What a man! Me? I'm far more likely to throw it out and buy a new one. Why? Because I like new things? Yes, that is true. Because there is something a little magical about new things? Remember when you'd get gifts for your birthday, and it would lead to an entire bedroom clean-out because your beautiful new doll just couldn't lay in a big heap with all the one-eyed, frizzy haired uglies with the torn dresses. Which leads to cleaning out the toybox, which leads to cleaning out the closet etc. etc.

But my children are different. They treasure the things they already have and often have trouble with my logic of throw-it-away-and-get-a-new-one. That 10-cent Polly Pocket who lost her arm is simply too valuable to toss in the trash. And that's where my dad, the hero, comes in. He will fix anything, even a teeny Polly Pocket doll who has seen better days. For the love of his granddaughters, he will do it. And it will probably be better than before. He may even add a teeny necklace made out of rice or have my mom sew a pink satin pillow for her to lay her puny head.

Broken is beautiful around these parts because it reveals the love of a man for two little girls.

Joining the writers over here today for five minutes of unedited free writing in five minutes, based on the prompt: Broken. Fun!

That Was Fun. Let's Do it Again.

The black old lady stretched and yawned, rolling her neck from side to side and blinking her wide, green eyes rapidly to chase the sleep out of them. Her bed was a nest, soft and cozy, positioned inches from the radiator. This should be a good day, she thought to herself. A cheshire grin crept on to her cheeks. As usual, her mind turned to murder.

That nasty little girl, the one they brought here--to her HOME, mind you--the Interloper...certainly that childish little brat was gone by now. Surely! There were traps set all over the house, and she grinned as she imagined the Brat falling into any one of them while the rest of the world slept peacefully. Drowning, electrocution, hanging, poisoned food...any one of those would do. All of them were too good for that kid.

She ambled to the door, stretching again for good measure. She asked to be let in, softly at first, then more insistently. Finally, the door opened, and she darted in. Ugh. What was that smell? Why wasn't everyone crying and wailing over the death of the kid? What was going on anyway?

From behind the door, the kitten jumped onto her back and they rolled, all hiss, teeth and claws, across the kitchen floor. Curses! She was still here! And alive. Another day begins.


The prompt, from Write Starts by Hal Zina Bennett: Find Your Inner Cat.

5 Minute Friday: Remember

Remember when you were her whole world? Just the two of you, all day long. Anyone who wanted to be in her life had to go through you. If there was a kid who didn't play nicely, they were cut out of the picture. Just like that. No mercy. You didn't care a whit about that poor mom's insecurities, the problems she was facing or that child's socializing deficits. Chop. And you didn't have to do no 'splainin' to nobody.

Now? You don't get to chop. You send her out into the world for seven hours and forty-five minutes, give or take. Not to mention weekends, sleepovers, trips to the mall. If someone's mean to her, you have to stand back and "guide" her, in all your flawed and insufficient wisdom. You grasp for that just-right piece of talk-show advice, that encouraging nugget from that parenting book you read so long ago...What was it? What was it? "You teach people how to treat you."

And then you bite your tongue until it bleeds.

It would be so much easier to chop.

Joining the writers at over here today for five minutes of unedited free writing in five minutes, based on the prompt: Remember. Fun!

Merry Christmas Ya'll!

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What did you do today, mom?

So I'm reading a post today about blogging written by my new favorite writer crush. The post is entitled "Focus." I am laughing all the way through the post. Not because it was a comedic piece. Mainly because I'm reading it like a 5-year-old reading about the birth of the universe. I know such a thing exists, this mysterious focus (woooooo), but I really can't grasp the concept. Take today, for instance. I had the whole school day to do anything I wanted. No obligations, per se, no appointments. I thought, YEAH BABY. I'm going to sit down at that computer as soon as I finish my breakfast, & I'm going to WRITE. Nothing will stop me. Here's what happened instead:

1. Clean kitchen from last night. (I had to watch The Voice.)
2. Re-do sour laundry that didn't get dry because of Adam Levine obession.
3. Make beds, pick up upstairs
4. More laundry
5. Change clothes four times. Who invented shorts?
6. Resolve to lose weight & get in shape.
7. Situps after remembering I can't work out today due to sprained muscle resulting from yesterday's resolution to lose weight & get in shape.
8. Start a new food journal.
9. Sit down at desk, finally!
10. Make a snack because I can't concentrate over my stomach growling. 10 almonds and half an apple, see #6.
11. Clean up papers and mail obscuring my laptop from view. Grumble about thieving children who steal my office supplies. Wonder if this would make a good blog post.
12. Obsessively open and read all new email. Possibly open a virus.
13. Panicked calls to Cutie Pie for help. Must wait for him to get out of a meeting.
14. Run virus scan and install updates.
15. Read about celebrity deaths, DUIs, Beyonce's butt and other uplifting & inspirational news while running virus scan.
16. Lunchtime!
17. Back at my desk, finally.
18. Run upstairs to find Tums to counteract lunch.
19. Open a document and start writing. Hooray!
20. Hear the cat throwing up in the next room. Shoo her outside to avert disaster.
21. More laundry.
22. Sit down at desk, finally!
23. Hear the bus. Sigh loudly.

So what were we talking about? Oh yeah, focus. To heck with it. I'm going to Starbucks.

Deep

I was reading something about love today. Deep-heart love. A funny way to describe the indescribable. I had a vision of a body, stumbling off a cliff head over heels into the abyss. As she hits the water with a piercing crash, it envelops her and closes over her head, filling her ears with its great silence. She swims down, down, down, like the Little Mermaid...no need to know what is ahead or even to draw a breath. The deep, dark unknown.

My picture of Deep is the ocean, so much of its vastness never seen by the human eye, nor touched by a ray of light and yet life is present there. Life happens, whether we know it or not, whether we've seen it with our own eyes or not.

True love is down deep also. We may think it's up on the surface, on the bright pink raft, with the fruity adult beverage in our hand, the sun on our faces. But it's really under the surface, way under, where everything is not so apparent. The deeper you go, the more pressure is applied. It's not easy to go deep, but most things worth having are not...

There is always something new to discover in the Deep. The reward of going there is being the first to see what there is to see. You may get eaten by a shark. Or you may fall down the rabbit hole into a new country, the delights of which you have never known. Either way, the deep holds secrets that I want to know.