Ash Wednesday and recaps on the last eleven months

Well, it's been about 11 months since the last time I blogged here.... Looking back at the last time I was quite surprised at the length of time that had passed since my last jottings on "Chabot's Corner". I guess it just all seemed so trivial to me. As I had mentioned in my previous posting, my husband, Chris, and I were about to travel with the children to Portland for 3 weeks, during which the kids would stay with our good friends the Torsons and we would be staying in a hotel in the alphabet district called Northrup Station while Chris underwent surgery to donate his left kidney to a former dialysis patient of his.
 Crazy, right? Yes.
The surgery went splendidly, though there were a couple minor complications afterwards with Chris' system adjusting. It was a beautiful, spiritual thing even in the midst of his pain. It was awful seeing my husband like that. But he got through it, stronger, and so did his recipient, Kathy. She is now thriving like she never has before, and a lifelong bond has been formed between all of us, including her lovely husband Tom.
Our stay following in Portland was magical. I'm not even kidding...when we returned we seriously played with the idea of moving there. We aborted that plan soon after, though, when reality hit and we remembered that Chris is now a full-time musician as his trade, and his client base is now here in California for the time being. That said, Portland is now embedded in our hearts like a chunk of gold in the side of a rock inside of us that can never be removed. We are drawn to it..the green, living soul of Portland, the gritty yet clean city streets and mossy forest with the high trees like an overgrown ceiling obscuring the sun. But mainly we are drawn to the connections to our beautiful friends that supported us while we were there. Abby and Tano, and Leanne and Brent and all of their children. They have become family to us for life. They fed us, they drove us, they put us up. They let me cry. They took us to church and prayed for us. It was surreal to be loved like that.
When we returned and Chris' recovery time began here in California, there was a feasible letdown. A low hit me pretty hard. Portland in the spring (or summer, or autumn) can do that to a soul.

California has been good to us though. Thank God, there's been a good amount of rain this autumn through the winter so that everything has turned from dusty brown to a glowing neon green, which always stirs life in me and in Chris.
The kids are happy, attending the charter school around the corner from our home, and Eli, the high school behind us. We are thankful, out loud, every single day. We see that we are blessed. That we are favored somehow. That this simplistic, sometimes penniless life is the sweet life. We feel lucky.
We have peace, and a lot of joy. We get out and hike on those expansive green hills. We go to the ocean and taste the salt in the air and get breathless.
We are loving the process of life. Each day has something sparkling in the midst of the mundane.

Of course, we have dreams and aspirations to fulfill, but we hold them a bit loosely, not allowing our happiness to be dependent on those things. Chris would love to record a couple more albums full of the songs he has been given in the wake of all of the inspiring life happenings he has gone through. Donating a kidney..loving someone so consciously in that way...I mean, it's huge. It leaves this space in a person, from what I have witnessed, where humility and new life can enter in in abundance. And so fresh songs have filled that place. Beautiful songs that have touched people deeply. It's amazing to watch. We'd love to travel to Europe and share his music there. I would love to write books. We would love to someday have a home of our own where we could keep chickens and a goat.
We'd love to not have to worry so much about money.
But right now. Right now is sweet. Each day is this luscious gift with hidden jewels to discover, and I won't hide my eyes from the search.

Today is Ash Wednesday. I have never gotten the ash placed on my forehead symbolizing the cross and that as man, we are dust and shall return to dust. But I think it's a beautiful practice. I think it puts the fragility of life and how fleeting it is into perspective, We have today. What will we make of today? I'm going to look for the gems. I know I'll find them.

Sprouting Wings

Towards the end of last month, Chris quit his day job, after many conversations about and loosely planning a more adventurous life filled with our true passions, rather than plugging along in what appears to be the American Dream.We just came to the conclusion, What's the worst thing? Failing to try or trying and failing? So we leapt. It has been, so far, the best decision we could have agreed to make. I've never seen my husband happier, more radiant, and excited about life. And in his joy, mine has been even more full.

This coming April, there are so many good things coming up. We are road-tripping to Portland as a family, Chris is recording a live album in a barn in Tumalo, a small community on the outskirts of Bend, and soon after that, he is undergoing surgery to donate his kidney to a woman, who, in the beginning he hardly knew, but now is glad to become so closely intertwined with. I couldn't be more proud of him.

I had always known I wouldn't lead an average life, and up until recently, I sort of felt stuck in a rut of normalcy and the mundane. Just going from one day to the next, waking up, sending my husband off to a job he despised, schooling the kids, eating meals, going for walks, sipping wine, looking forward to the tiny windows of time together on the weekends when Chris wasn't doing music at different venues, reading in bed, falling into bed tired enough to sleep with colorless dreams, then doing it all over again. A cycle, not terrible, but definitely not what it's supposed to be. For us at least.

There is a safety in the sameness of life. Of constancy. It can be uncomfortable to break out of. But if you have dreams that are alive in your soul, dreams that make you lifted up in your spirit to think on, then those dreams have to be acted on. It would nearly be a travesty not to.

I'm definitely excited to see what lies ahead for our family on this current road, but in that excitement, I'm also fully embracing each moment as it comes. There's just so much hope welling up in me over today and tomorrow, and always, as long as I keep my mind constantly fixed on the good that continues to pour out of knowing that each little act of love, a smile, a soft answer, or just being still in peace, shoots out glittering spider webs of relationship, kindness, intimacy with  fellow humans,
I feel like, for me, I'm so intense and I tend to over-think and analyze things to death, but lately, just settling into BEING, to let the heavy things pass over me rather than soak into me like gray-gathering pools of rain into my mind, Perhaps it's not so much standing still beneath a protective umbrella shielding me from sorrow and the weight of depression, but continuing to walk despite the state of the weather, so to speak, knowing eventually, the pockets of sunshine will be there for me to step in, lift my face into, and bask in. But the days when the sun is hidden behind black, sodden clouds, I hold my own measurement of joy still near to me like a supply of rations that should have run out a long time ago but keeps going, because the source is from within now.
So much of my life was lived getting affirmation and worth from outside sources. So based on feeling, were my responses and love. I am learning to use the wings I have to fly over that junk now. I don't need to feel love in order to cultivate love, or spread love anymore. We can choose to be little containers for the stuff. Love is something that doesn't need a perfect, shady, or sunny space to thrive in. We just invite it in, we say yes, and it dwells in us, and spills over onto the people we get near. It's so cool. It's basically all I trip out on these days. Love. I know my blogs have been pretty steadily on this subject, but I simply haven't been able to move away from the focus of it. I guess I started out pretty dry and low on it. We can't give out what we haven't first received.
I'm still so bad at loving people the way I need to. I think I'm getting better at loving my family. Now I think I'll try to love my enemies... or at least my neighbors.

I will try to keep more current with what is going on in our lives since we are in this crazy new transition. Our dream is to travel, take this show on the road as a family.
Harmony has been singing more with her daddy, and it is so amazing to watch the two of them flow together in song and entertaining. It's their passion, so that reflects out onto the crowd. Anyways, I'm rambling. But I just want to give hope to anyone feeling lost or stranded..hang in there. Let hope fester. Let love penetrate the dry places in your heart. Allow yourself to believe that life is not merely about existing, but growing wings, and shooting into the blue. Cheesy, but, hey, there it is. You're worth it.

Go Love. Now.

I don't think I will ever grow weary of writing and pondering or meditating on the subject of love. There truly is no end to its depth. I find that every day I learn more, I dive deeper into the endless, all-encompassing warmth and reality of the abyss that love is.
When I wake in the morning, I wake to the face of love, kissing me out of grogginess into new light, with coffee in his hand for me. I get to see bright, sunshiney faces in mine that have somehow forgotten all of the strained endings of yesterday, and are exceedingly glad to see me again. As I go about my day, I randomly receive love through texts on my phone, and little lifts in my spirit, knowing my husband, family, or friends are thinking of me fondly. And this gives me strength. What if we came to the very real epiphany that we are a thousand (or more) times more loved even than the strongest of loves experienced here on earth, at all times, every second of each and every day?
Because we are.
By God.
I feel lately like the Grinch, when his heart grows three sizes....  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGSs33DQ1F0
Our hearts are capable of stretching. Of expanding to contain more, and more, and more. LOVE.
Love for people near us, love for the kids our children bring home, love for the neighbor child who drops in 100 times a day, love for the homeless person spewing hateful words as you walk by, love for the family member you simply cannot understand, love for yourself.
We humans are among the most incredible life form there is, period. We are able to do things no other life form can. One of the most amazing things is that we can have passions like nothing else. It may sometimes be fun to compare our passions to that of nature: the unyielding, stormy sea; the wind at work on trees; rainbows in all of their color-displaying glory; waterfalls at full-force; a mother lioness with her baby cub; eagles soaring together in harmony.
But we humans are the only ones that I believe feel this fiercely about others. We were created for this, to love and love well.
Then why do we not wield this weapon of grace and eccentric beauty more proudly and with more purpose? Why do we often sigh and walk in lonely, stewing silence, scrutinizing, sizing up, and generally judging every figure we come across in swift, precisely painful strides of eye-sweepings and casting away those who could be our companions, friends, targets of said fierce love?
I think we do not know, perhaps, the power of this love within us, we are probably often not able to see past the short-sightedness of our own insecurities and self-loathing and fears of rejection in order to love.
So, this is the key: We love not to get love back. We love because we are gifted at it, and it is a skill to be fine-tuned and perfected daily, without fear of failing, because there is tomorrow to learn more, to get up and be filled and to pour out more of this luscious, liquid, cleansing, treasure of love.
If we assess a person that we come across, and immediately, rather than thinking: If I show this person affection or kindness, maybe they will think I'm weird and forward, and they will walk away, creeped out by me, what if we threw away those measly thoughts, and we just loved like Pollyanna loved? I have been thinking about that silly movie a lot lately, mainly her character, because so many of the townspeople were total assholes, and undeserving, of her pure, un-jaded, forthcoming love that she directed on those folks who either laid in bed sick and bitter, or enclosed in their houses behind windows, casting silent stones.
Undeserving...
Aren't all of us undeserving, really, but some of us just disguise it better than others?
When people push us away because they are angry or they seem to hate us, what if we kept coming back, with good intentions, to make sure that that person knew...they deserved love just as much as anyone?
What if we loved without expecting anything, ANYTHING, in return. Simply making it our mission to lift people up with unwarranted smiles, a hug, an actual listening ear, a coffee brought to a friend, flowers to a stranger, cookies to our neighbor?
Okay, okay, I know..... It's uncomfortable, and I am just baby-stepping into this strange, unknown territory of all of this love stuff, because honestly, I have really been held back by MAJOR issues with self-scrutinizing insecurities and fears of rejection.  If I tried to be nice to someone, and they were in a bad mood that day and snapped at me, I would recoil for, like, months. Judging them as a jerk and hiding myself away from them so that I didn't have to feel the painful, searing loss of rejection the next time I saw them. But then it occured to me: Be nice again. Try again to smile and be friendly. And you know what? If they are crabby and rude again, try again the next time you see them. I have tried this, very slowly and with apprehension and falling on my hard head many a time, in my life, and I have seen nothing but good results. People want, NEED, to be loved. To feel wanted, listened to, heard, thought of, endeared to, LOVED.
If you say you don't, you're lying.
SO go. Get out there, and love the ones you got, the ones you don't, strangers, stray cats, mother-in-laws, irritating figures in your life who offended you in the past. Life is too damn short to hold grudges and be petty. Quit it. Go love.
Okay, I'm going to go take my own advice now.
I want to hear reports back. :)

A Proposal Story

I was thinking last night about mine and Chris's beginning. Sometimes, to remember important things in life, you have to go back to the beginning. Not like living in the past, just recalling the things that first gave you joy and sprung up in your heart like a summer rainfall. (Something I miss, living here in California).
Our engagement didn't begin with flowers, a fancy restaurant, a moonlit walk, or anything well-planned and concocted in Chris's mind. It didn't even begin with a ring.
When he proposed to me, spontaneously in my room with the faded rose wallpaper at my father's house one evening, he sat with me on the edge of my bed, just talking as friends and totally in love, his arm protectively around me. He had his old, worn leather Bible in his other hand, and he opened it to the Psalms. He started to read to me from Psalm 37. When he got to the part that reads, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." He stopped and said that that was what we had found in each other. We had been doing just that: simply delighting in God. Being totally fixed on worshiping God in our lives.
You see, we both had led very messy lives previously. He had gotten a girl pregnant and married her at the age of fifteen, and I was partying hard and living chaotically, in a hellish relationship. We both seemed to be damaged goods, so to speak, until we found Jesus. Our lives transformed drastically when we began to walk that out in our separate lives. I had a child at age nineteen, which changed the course of my life, and he went off to rehab in San Diego.
When we met, things were not perfect. We both had a lot of baggage. Many said we would not last.
But we knew what we had found in each other. A friend, and more than that, surprisingly, a soul mate. It sounds gushy to say that, but it's true.
We just got each other, entirely. We still do.
Right after he read that verse to me, he dropped down to his knee on the wooden floor, and, looking me in the eye, my hands in his, he asked me if I would be his wife. I said yes. There was no ring, he said, we could pick it out together. It was not an important thing to either of us in that moment. When we were talking about that last night, we realized that the object of a ring becomes such a central thing in the beginning of engagement, whether it's due to tradition or symbolism. It becomes the centerpiece sometimes. But we talked about how our love was the centerpiece. It was the thing we glorified and danced around, celebrating, showing off to our friends and family. I had no ring, it was of no matter, until we got one, of course. Don't get me wrong, I was tremendously elated when we did get the ring, and I wore it proudly, and still do. But I am glad that our story is so simple in the beginning that it didn't need any frills or anything added to the simplicity that we were head over heels for each other and that was all we needed, and all we still need.

Bird Rescue

I think I've mentioned before the active bird life of our current dwelling place. There are many mature trees in our neighborhood, and they house anything from owls, hummingbirds, mockingbirds, to our beloved cooing mourning dove that we wake to each dawn and hear each evening from either our backyard telephone pole, or the lines directly in front of our house. It is a sound both soothing and routine now.
The other evening, the children and I were listening to music in my bedroom while Chris was away at one of his music engagements, when a tap came at the window and a whistle. I opened the shades to find our rough around the edges next door neighbor, Stan. He was wide-eyed and excitedly telling us about a scuffle with our dove (which Harmony, my daughter, has lovingly named Mac) and a red-tailed hawk. I ran out, and found Mac hiding himself within a thorned bush a couple houses away. The hawk waited on the branch of a nearby tree for his moment to swoop down once again and finish the job he had begun on it's prey.
I couldn't let nature take it's course this time. Mac was our friend! I reached into the bush, and took Mac gently out and placed him in a shoe box that I had told Jude to run and get. When I looked down at my hands, there was blood on them.
We brought the shoe box with the wounded dove into our house and I called my mom, the advanced bird-savior expert (ha), I call her Saint Franci of Assisi, because she has the tenderest heart towards nature and animals, and because her name is Franci. She advised to get a dropper, fill it with water and attempt to bring the poor hurt thing out of its shock by giving it water.
We also read that putting some apple cider vinegar in the water can be antibiotic for birds, so later I did that as well. I texted my husband about what had happened, knowing his heart towards creatures of the air as well. There happened to be, at his gig, an animal doctor who, when he read my text aloud to his small crowd, told him to tell me, put the thing back outside because it's cruel to interfere with the circle of life, both to the dove and the hawk. I responded that there was no possible way I could do that, after all, it was MAC!
I peeked at the wound, under Mac's wing, a wound which looked pretty bad to me. I put some Neosporin on it and gently rubbed it in, and wrapped the bird in a cloth. We left him alone to recuperate. Chris got home around 10pm, and the children were in bed by then. We sat on the front porch sipping wine and wondering what to do, discussing if we should try to take him to an emergency vet, or what the animal doctor had said, or what, we did not know. All along, I was praying, and hoping the dove would make a full recovery and not die from shock or the wound.
We put on dove sounds on youtube, wondering if it would encourage the little creature. He looked all about, searching for his mate, and then suddenly! Fluttered up to the tree in our front yard, sat there a moment, and promptly plopped to the grassy ground below. It was crazy! We looked at each other amazed at how it could have been so driven to find its love, even being so hurt.
We finally placed Mac back in the shoe box, open, but gently wrapped in the towel, so if he lived, he could fly easily away without being stuck. We went inside, me crying, at the beauty and sadness of it all, and went to bed.
The next morning, Sunday, I awoke to Chris throwing on clothes, and I was confused as it was his only day to sleep in. "What are you doing, honey?!" I asked. "I got a song in my dream, it was about my dad. I have to... write it down before I lose it." Ahh. I understood his cryptic message perfectly, he gets dreams with songs in them....it is a type of lovely gift he has.
As I lay there waiting to hear for the dove to coo or not, Harmony came into my room and asked about "Birdie"..."Is birdie okay?" "I don't know, but we can't disturb daddy to see right now. Let's look out the blinds." So, right as I opened the blinds, we saw an amazing sight! One dove was flying from the direction of the tree, the other the telephone pole, and they met in the air, and flew on top of each other for a moment, and landed. Harmony and I looked at each other in awe, then I flew out to the living room, half doubting what I'd seen, and wondering if there was some slim chance that there were more than just Mac and his mate in this neighborhood. I walked slowly up to the shoe box, which had the cloth poking all about, and I couldn't tell if there was anything in it or not."Please let it be empty." I prayed. I pulled back the cloth, and sure enough..empty! Chris came up behind me and with moist eyes, we said,"That's a miracle." He was so hurt! And there he was, above us, with his mate, cooing his tranquil sound. We stood mesmerized.
It just all seemed so symbolic somehow. The hawk, representing war. The dove, standing for peace. Driven by love. And life, all winning. It was too much for these green, tender hearts to bear without tears and sighs of awe.
Chris's song lyrics intertwine the story of the dove with the injured wing, and rising from darkness into light and life.
I cannot tell you how grateful I am for such an amazingly artistic and sensitive musician I happened to fall into love with, and am living my life with! It's all, just, almost too much goodness to bear. The lines have truly fallen for us in pleasant places. Psalm 16

Bed

The bed symbolizes a place of nurturing, a place where dreams are hatched and good things are able to thrive. It's a place where things flourish and we pour into richly. It can even be a sanctuary.
 It's a place of sanctification, or where dark motives lie. We can tenderly partake of intimacy there, or we can tap into the lusts of our depraved minds. We can rest, or we can toss and turn.
The mind either spirals down into a soft slumber or spins into a whirling dervish of thoughts we cannot seem to turn off. Minds that spew accusations of previous affairs or carelessly uttered words; Hurt and things we could have done instead.
 My mind goes down a staircase when I lie my head on cushioned pillow, one of the unfolding of events from my day, my life, my hidden self. Who I truly am is exposed to me and the undulating cover of night. Visions, pictures, voices, all heard with sharper clarity, in the curve of the mattress and shield of quilt.
 Many a day spent toiling or attempting to figure out my next move was calculated effortlessly under a ceiling sheathed by stars and crescent moon hovering just outside my window. It is where peace can fall on our hearts like veils of satin on closed lids or where the poisoned daggers of wrongs done and secrets withheld can pierce painfully.
 It is my opinion that dreams can be quite meaningful and telling of what we are experiencing internally as well as externally. They can refresh, excite, inspire or petrify. In the dark, with the dim glow of streetlights illuminating shadows on the walls, our imaginations are at their finest. But also, the silence that surrounds us is a potential birthing place of magical imagery. Clarity stems from the river of REM.
 I am not a slothful person by trait, I do not spend longer hours than necessary under bed sheets lazing about, but when I am there, in the solace of my bed, next to my quietly snoozing soul mate, I fully soak in the sweetness of all that dances around me. Especially the prayers sent up into galaxies beyond our own, being inevitably listened to by angels' ears and a thoughtful god.
 The bed is a place of poetry, written in the forgetful pages of my subconscious but engraved on the essence of who I am and what I do. It's where meditation can be most astutely applied in the recesses of my mind.

Garden Bed: A place where one plants their seeds, waters, weeds, prunes, gathers the growth and feasts. Digging hands like shovels into dark, fertile soil. Therapy in the green vitality of life.

Marriage Bed: A sacred place of intimacy, rest, and tranquility. Where one lays solitary repose, or entangles limbs and hearts with somebody.

Kiss

I Love This Little Man. My Jude Hezekiah :)