In An Instant

A moment in time, and your world can change.  Have you seen the Sprint commercial where because something has downloaded so quickly on her phone a woman is able to bend down faster, and therefore bumps into someone and she ends up a prima ballerina, while the same person with a slower phone ends up a ballet teacher of small children?  A moment, and your world can change.

We've all felt it.  Sometimes it is like we are watching it unfold in slow motion.  A month ago I didn't use the "holder dilly" on the mandolin, and used my hand to hold the potato, and well, sliced a chunk out of my finger.  I watched that unfold in slow motion, but couldn't stop it from occurring because the path was already set in motion.  Sometimes your life changes, and you didn't even see it coming.  You simply picked up the phone and boom!  Life is no longer as it was before.

We can't go back.  We don't have a remote control to push the rewind button.  While cutting that potato, I couldn't push pause when my consciousness realized what was about to occur.  So we have to live with the consequences of that moment.  Me?  I had to get a bandaid.  Sometimes though the consequences are greater than a simple bandaid can alleviate.  It is in those moments when growth happens.

When you find yourself in that situation, your life has drastically changed, you may feel lost.  You may even be angry.  How could one moment change so much?  How could one seemingly small decision change my life so drastically?  There is grief.  You have lost the life you thought you were leading.  There is sorrow.

After the grief, the shock, and the pain is over, you find you still have life.  How do we live after the change?  Do we learn something and become better people?  Do we adapt and in adapting become more?  Or do we let it become a crutch?  Do we then just make bad decisions because life has already changed so why the hell not?

One moment, and your life can change.  So what are you gonna do?

My son's 18th birthday

Today my son turns 18.  He is at college, and I am at home.  This is the first birthday which I have not been with him.  This is our first apart.  We drove down last weekend to watch him play ball and to take him to lunch.  But it was weird.  It was different.  We all felt it.  He got a little choked up and I got, well, I cried.

I never gave much thought to that mother bird.  I have always marveled at the baby birds and how they fly away from the nest and all the cool adventures they will have in life, but never gave a seconds notice to that mother.  What must go through her mind?  Well, after the relief of getting them fed, and all out of the nest, then what?  Basically, she starts the next chapter of her life.  Which for that bird is more eggs.  Well, I am glad we differ there.  I am not at all interested in starting another family, even if it was possible!

I am beginning a new chapter in my life.  I am trying new things, planning new adventures, and trying to stay busy.  I am excited about the possibilities that lay ahead.

Today...today it is not so easy.  It is rainy and cool outside.  It is the kind of day that both my boy and I hate.  We really like the sun.  Not the heat, but the sun.  So, it is the kind of day we would snuggle up and watch a movie.  Of course, as he got older, that would be him snuggled upstairs or over on the couch and me in my chair.  Long gone are the days when he snuggled next to me.  :-)  We might still share a movie, but likely not.  Still, we both knew there was someone else in the house that was battling the weather blues with them.

I miss my boy so terribly.  Yet at the same time I am so very proud of him.  I know it was time.  I know he will succeed.  I am living in the time of Happy/Sads as a friend recently told me.  Happy that he is gone and doing well and sad that he is not still here with me.  A time of change.

So today I will remember.  Remember his birth story, his funny toddler stories, his school days, his baseball stories, his successes as well as his defeats.  Then I will send forth into the universe my hopes for his future.  Hopes of peace, love and tranquility.  I will also probably be sure and hug the girl that is still here.

So, if your kids are still home, go hug them.  If they aren't, well you know where I am.

Peace.

Day Two of the Chicken Experiment

Tonight we had Chicken Tortilla Soup!  This is by far one of my favorite soups!  I usually cut up one or two raw chicken breast and saute it in the pan, but tonight, I used my handy dandy chicken from the one I cooked on Sunday.  The chicken fell apart in the soup instead of being in chunks, but I like it.  PLUS, it is very low in calories!!!  One cup = One bowl = 60 calories!!!!  Of course, we add some cheese and fritos, but not many!  What is your favorite soup recipe?

Chicken Tortilla Soup

7 oz. chicken cut up
1 qt. canned tomatoes
1qt. chicken broth
1 can chopped green chilies
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
1 t. chili powder
1 t. cumin

Saute the onions and garlic, add the spices, then the chilies, let them blend together a bit, then add the tomatoes, chicken broth and the chicken.  Let simmer for a bit and eat!!

One chicken, how many meals? Day One

Well, yesterday I poached a $4 organic whole chicken.  I scavenged all the meat and put it in a baggie for the week.  Tonight was Chicken Enchiladas Salsa Verde.  Wow!  It was really good!!!  I liked that you could make the salsa verde early in the day and then just assemble at dinner time.  I also really liked the salad on top.  The bad part is that it was 450 calories!!  Got to figure out how to lower that!

So stay tune to see how the chicken gets used tomorrow night.  Oh yea, I am feeding 3 people, btw!  What is your favorite way to use shredded chicken?  Is it low calorie?

Thoughts on my god

Sitting outdoors in the cool temps with my hot coffee.  I love this.  The only thing that could make it better is all of you, my friends, here with me.  I have decided that this is the place for me to worship at this time in my life.  The world seems so crystal clear to me right now.  The blues in the sky are brighter than I remember and the green on the plants and trees, is so vibrant with life.  I feel the pulse of nature through my veins.  It is here I see god.  She is present in so much out here.  I feel her presence in the cool breeze that wafts my hair.  In the warmth of the sun I feel her love.  This is what I know.  This is god.  This is all that I know about god right now.  And this is enough.

I am not one to talk a lot about god.  Don't know if you noticed or not.  I don't claim to have many answers, just a lot of questions.  So I try to focus only on what I know.  The facts that have been made known to me.  For instance, I know that I will make it through the bad times in my life.  I know I will feel alone, but will not be.  I can not say that god only gives us as much as we can handle.  I can't say that because there have been many times in my life I have felt pretty overwhelmed.  But I do know that during those moments, if I took a breath and looked around me, I saw god.  Maybe in my baby's smile, or a friends' hug, or a nurses' soft touch, but god was there.  I don't know about all things work together for good.  There have been plenty of not so good things in my life.  They didn't all work out to be good. Or should I say, I haven't let them all work out for good.  I think we make choices.  I think that is god's gift to us.  We have free-will.  So sometimes I do choose to see the good in events, but sometimes, all I see is the bad.     Sometimes I choose to look back and see how it all came together, other times I see only how it didn't.  But I know that god was there.

Today, god, I give you thanks that even though my body fails me, I have been given a gift.  The gift of time.  I have time to sit out here and feel the warmth of your smile, the soft caress of your breath, your creativity through creation.  My life is slow, just how I like it.  I am not rushed and hurried, I have time to take a breath.  Time to look around me.  Time to let a harried mother go in front of me at the grocery line.  Time to watch football with my husband.  Thank you.  I choose today to look at my    "not working"  as a gift.  Thank you.

Do you see god today?  Do you take the time that is around you?  Even if it is only a minute?  Do you look for god?  I hope so.

May god's smile find you today, may her caress bring you comfort and may her creativity inspire you.  Amen.

Grief

I don't like being sad.  I don't like feeling down.  I don't like feeling like I want to cry all the time.  I don't like being depressed.  I don't like grieving.

Grief is unpredictable.  And that my friends, does not work well with me.  Anyone who knows me, knows I like order and predictability.  Not that my house is clean, or my life in complete order, but I enjoy living with the illusion that my life is pretty ordered.  I detest the unknown.  So I prepare.  I play the "What-If" game lots.   I like to think through every scenario possible and then I feel like I am prepared.  I know, you are laughing.  And well, no, it doesn't work most of the time, okay, hardly ever.  Then I have wasted lots of time and energy on nothing.  But it is what it is.  Grief, comes in and tears that veneer all down.  I can be going along feeling pretty good about myself and my life, and thinking how good I am doing about my sadness over _____(fill in the blank).  And then BAM!!!!  Out of nowhere Grief tears through my order and brings the chaos of sadness and depression.  And sometimes the grief is over something I thought I had gotten over.

I had a conversation last night after dinner with Jack.  We were talking about grief and how each of us was handling it and I asked him if it was possible that my grief was over for Stephen.  The last two days I had felt pretty good and had a really good attitude, so I was thinking that maybe I actually have gotten through this better than I expected.  Then Jack, ever the voice of Truth in my life said, "Grief is like the waves of the ocean.  You stand with your back against the tide and sometimes the waves crash over your head and send you flying off your feet.  And gradually for some, the waves get tamer and you don't get knocked flat by them as often.  And for some, the waves just keep crashing."

Today I had an innocuous facebook exchange with an old high school friend.  We were bantering about something inane and I used the word "ass".  She came back with, "Wow, and you being a preacher's wife."  I quickly wrote back, "Not anymore!"  And just like that a wave came and crashed over my head.  Just like that.

Me, grieving the loss of being a preacher's wife?  Really?  Seriously?  Yes.  That was the only life I knew.  I am out here with no map.  No built-in safe guards.  I don't even know how to define myself anymore.  This ties into Stephen leaving and realizing that in the very near future, I won't have the definition, "Stephen's Mom" or "Allie's Mom".  In the sense that I won't be meeting people in that arena.  I will be meeting people simply as KaKi.  Who is she?  She is no longer a teacher.  She is no longer a preacher's wife.  Who is she?

I am in the midst of lots of change right now.  Change which brings chaos, grief, and adventure.  I know there are positives, but right now, in my grief,  I mourn my losses.  The grief of not being a teacher anymore, still crashes over my head at times.  The grief of not being a preacher's wife and the financial security (ha) that brought, still crashes over my head.  The grief of not having Stephen in our home anymore, is and will crash over my head.  How long?  Well, it has been almost five years since I stopped teaching, although that wave is getting more and more tolerable.

So I am grieving, gasping for breath as the wave recedes.  And I am left looking at the coastline.  I see options there that I have never been able to look at before.  There are adventures waiting for me.  It looks scary, but then I notice something to my right.  I glance over and Jack is standing beside me, reaching his hand out to walk out together.   That is my constant, my North Star.  I know that whatever the future holds, he will be there waiting for me to come up from the water.

What is marriage?

Marriage is many things.  What you normally hear about is the love, the romance, the companionship, and the intimacy.  All of which are true.  Most of the time.  Well some of the time.  Well hopefully more times than not.  What you don't hear much about are the times when it is not.  What about when the romance and intimacy are missing?  What about the times you feel lonely and unloved?  Is that marriage?

My definition of marriage has grown and changed over time.  When I was young the above definition was mine.  Then I got married.  We got jobs, he went to school, we tried unsuccessfully for many years to get pregnant, then had two kids, I became chronically ill, and well, life happened.  There were many times where there was no intimacy, try getting romantic after putting a screaming toddler to bed.  Most nights we just wanted to be alone and sleep or watch TV.  The last thing we wanted was someone else "needing" something from us.  There were times when we both felt we were in this alone.  

So why are we still married and even happily married?  Well, because through all that misery, I still chose him and he still chose me.  We didn't want to be going through all that with anyone else.  See, marriage is choice.  You feel attracted to someone, they feel attracted to you.  You fall in love.  And you choose to spend the rest of your life together.  Your life.  That means the mountaintops and the valleys.  That means when one is hanging over the toilet spilling their guts.  That means when one of you is being a complete asshole.  That means when one of you is totally depressed and can't get out of bed.  That means all of it.  You choose to be with that person.  Now it doesn't always work.  The other person has to choose you back and you can't make them choose you.  They may choose the easy way out and leave.  Because believe you me, staying and choosing during those times is hard work.  You have to listen, you have to compromise, you have to fight for what you believe, you have to tell what you need.  You have to communicate.  You choose to do the work, because you choose to be with that person for life.  And oh the joy when it works.  Man!  The comfort of knowing you have someone in your corner for life will let you jump off cliffs you never imagined.  The thrill of being wanted will help you conquer the world.  

"You reap what you sow."  How true.  Sowing is hard work.  You do it in cold, brutal weather.  You sow in hot, scorching weather and sometimes in beautiful weather.  But oh the joy when the crop comes in!  Of course, then you have to sow again, reap, sow, reap.  Marriage is like that.  You work hard and reap the benefits, then a new stage of life hits, you work hard and reap those benefits.  And pretty soon you have reaped a whole heap of benefits! 

If you aren't married, then you might not have enjoyed this article.  But, you might be counting your lucky stars you don't have to work that hard!  If you are married, go choose them.  Let them hear you say it.  Go do the work, for the benefits will come!