December was up and gone before I blinked.  It was filled with “catch-ups” through Christmas cards and annual holiday parties as well as more memory making trips.  Here are a few highlights despite the fact that next week I should be doing January’s reflections.  (Where has 2017 gone?  February can’t be happening.

Photo Review:

Christmas Eve Gingerbread Project — with CSI plot

Lantern Lift-Off for my Nephew, Caleb and Cousin-in-law, Emily’s birthday

Morning Walk in Veteran’s Oasis Park, Chandler, AZ. Love at first sight.  This lovely cactus I’ve never had the privilege of seeing before.  I wish I was around when it blossomed.  Now to figure out it’s name… Wildlife!  On the Way to Vegas…December 31st — Officially Happy 50th!New Year’s Eve on the Vegas Strip.  Bucket List!Quotes to Chew On:

“In this world, love is marked by suffering, crying out, and a deep and abiding longing for the day when God will wipe away every tear (Rev 21:4) Goggin & Strobel (Nov30CCCG.biola.edu)

From Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife

“If you want a healthy glow and a happy midlife, here’s a secret.  Give it away: your time, your money, whatever is at your disposal, give it to someone else.  Especially your time….As it happens, not all volunteering is equal.  Why you volunteer and how you volunteer actually matter (p. 300)…I must shift my eyes from the next step on the ladder, the one just outside of my reach, and scan the horizon for my unique contribution, that combination of storytelling and voice that I am tailor-made for — something, perhaps, that no one can do quite the way I can.” (p. 316)

Unspoken theme of the research on midlife…”autopilot is death, yes, you need to engage life with verve, but please note the fine print.  It’s arduous.  Flipping the switch from autopilot to engagement demands intention, energy, and effort every single day.” (p 356)

“But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the self nor of the other, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied for them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”                                                            from David Whyte (Friendship)

Songs on Repeat Mode:

Walls by Kings of Leon

Even So Come by Passion

It’s Quiet Uptown by Kelly Clarkson

On My Nightstand:

Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife by Barbara Bradley Hagerty (excellent!)

The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable? About Restoring Sanity To The Most Important Organization In Your Life by Patrick Lencioni (not well written but some good information)

The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves by Curt Thompson (enjoying)

Me Before You Jojo Moyes

Given April is almost half way through, I thought I’d better get my act together to review March.  It was a time of disciplined eating as I did the Whole30 diet the beginning of concert season…two.  :).  We entered in spring and remembered the sacrifice Jesus made for us.

Photo Review:

Tenth Avenue North concert:

Spring… Reptile Zoo…. Fall Out Boy… Spring outside… Quotes to Chew On:

Beyond that [caring], it involves virtues like generosity and the deliberate cultivation of empathy, without which it is impossible even to conceive of how to love my neighbor as myself.”                                                                                     – Iain Provan

“True and sound wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and ourselves.”   — Calvin, Institutes

The following three quotes are from Creatures of the Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin Yalom

“…anticipating endings may encourage us to grasp the present with greater vitality.” (p.29)

“I know my existence is drawing to a close, but the end has been there since the beginning.  What is different now is that I treasure the pleasures of sheer awareness.” (p. 48)

“Embarrassment is never a solitary event.  It always requires at least one other person — in this case, me.  I think it emanates from your expectation of how I’d receive your disclosure and how I’d feel about you.” (p. 67)

Songs on Repeat Mode:

Beautiful Addiction by Nate Feuerstein

Castle — Halsey

Alone Together — Fall Out Together

On My Nightstand

Deepening the Treatment by Jane S. Hall

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero

The Meaning of Marriage Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller

The Seven Principles for Making Marriages Work by John Gottman with Nan Silver

May you have a blessed month!

March very quickly blurred into April and by the time I realized I hadn’t done any reflections it was almost time for April reflections soooo I’m combining them.  I’ve been working diligently on a memoir I’m writing so I apologize that my blog has been a bit neglected.  I’m hoping to be done with a rewrite by the end of May, which will hopefully free up new writing time.

Photo Review:

I found this great raven in Sedona during our Christmas vacation there.  It’s done by artist, Henry Dupere.  We have several of his pieces.  Next on my wish list, his hanging bats.

We remodeled our downstairs floors from carpet to hardwood floors due to Eden’s allergies. It has worked beautifully and she wakes up with a lot less congestion. Well worth it! During school, a friday dinner tradition, no matter what month it is. Snuggly, sleeping on the stairs. Just depicting the amazing fashion sense of my son….He gets it from his father. Easter hunt with cousins
I don’t know what kind of moth this is, but thought it was a beauty.

When you take selfies on Mom’s iphone, this is what happens….it gets posted.

We had a marvelous hike with lil e’s class on the San Juan loop hike.

Wild CucumberSunset reflected in the window Quotes Worth Remembering:

Your destiny shifts when emotional experiences open you up to yourself. You attract different energy and you put a different energy out. You are not controlled by unseen emotions: you have choices.  — Dr. Claudia Luiz  http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/08/why-you-should-try-psychoanalysis-before-you-die-dr-claudia-luiz/

Give Sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart and bids it break.                                                             — William Shakespeare, Macbeth

We can hardly bear to look.  The shadow may carry the best of the life we have not lived.  Go into the basement, the attic, the refuse bin.  Find gold there.  Find an animal who has not been fed or watered.  It is you!!!  The neglected, exiled animal, hungry for attention, is a part of your self.                                                 — Marion Woodman

“…the essence of a therapeutic relationship: finding words where words were absent before and, as a result, being able to share your deepest pain and deepest feelings with another human being.  This is one of the most profound experiences we can have, and such resonance, in which hitherto unspoken words can be discovered, uttered, and received, is fundamental to healing the isolation of trauma — especially if other people in our lives have ignored or silenced us.  Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.”                      — Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score

The following three poems are from Ruth Stones, What Love Comes to: New and Selected Poems

What to Do

In someone else’s house

you are not exactly at ease.

It’s a matter of protocol.

That is, sequence.

There are unspoken rules.

Some of these rules are

under the rug –

so to speak.

You employ

a mechanical mouse

to investigate.

Gone

Now fragmented as any bomb,

I make no lasting pattern;

and my ear, not cut off

in the logic of a van Gogh,

an offering of angry love,

is merely blown to bits

in a passing wave of violence.

Therefore I hear such fragments

as make no meaning.

A theater of the ridiculous,

beyond the absurd

and beyond that, scattered –

not like stars, but like the coalescing

weight of gravity; thin and meaningless,

until, tenuous, like the finest web

stretched out, it collapses and carries all

into a single disappearing zero.

Monetary Problems

The widow goes to the bank.

She needs a new roof,

or a new house; whichever.

Janet, the young woman in loans,

gives her the forms to fill out.

The print is small.

The spaces are small.

The widow tries to feel confident.

Social Security isn’t much

but it’s certainly something, she says.

Janet is busy, busy,

but she takes the ninety-seven

for the appraisal.

After a month the bank inspects the place,

Substandard, the bank says,

keeping the ninety-seven.

No fixed income.

Too much of a risk.

Perhaps if the widow had a brother

or a son-in-law to cosign.

That was just a gender suggestion,

of course, the muse says.

Silence helps us drop beneath the superficiality of our mental constructs to that place of the heart that is deeper in its reality than anything the mind can capture or express in words.  It is a place of longing and desire and reaching for that which we do not yet have.  In this wordless place the whole of our person turns itself toward God and waits to be addressed by God.  This kind of prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at the point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one.  There God’s spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place.  There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing within us. (pg. 78)           — Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Solitude and Silence

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in very foreign tongue.  Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

–Rainer Marie Rilke  Letters to a Young Poet

Songs on Repeat Mode:

I Don’t Want Your Love by Five for Fighting

Parachute  by Train

Dream by Imagine Dragons

Believe by Mumford and Sons

Chains by Nick Jonas

At the Cross (Love Ran Red) by Chris Tomlin

The Hurt & The Healer by MercyMe

Books on My Nightstand:

What Love Comes to: New and Selected Poems by Ruth Stone

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der kolk

An Invitation to Silence and Solitude by Ruth Haley Barton

May you have a blessed month full of spring!  What new beginnings will you find?

From Kevin Powers (2012) The Yellow Birds: A Novel.  “[War] tried to kill us every day, but it had not succeeded.  Not that our safety was preordained.  We were not destined to survive.  The fact is, we were not destined at all.  The war would take what it could get.  It was patient.  It didn’t care about objectives, or boundaries, whether you were loved by many or not at all.” (p.3,4)

From Charles Duhigg (2012). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House:

“Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.  Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.” p. 17

“Willpower isn’t just a skill.  It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms and legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.” p.137

From Elan Golomb (1992).  Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in their Struggle For Self.

“The more a person’s worth is exaggerated the smaller he feels.  False labeling destroys one’s sense of worth.” ….”[With a narcissistic parent] The child’s inner self, which requires unconditional love, is treated as identical with his external behavior and his products” (p. 29)

“A man with a healthy ego takes longer to establish his commitments since he looks before he leaps.” (p. 83)

From Brene Brown (2010) The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.

[A quote from Chodron in Brown’s book]…”Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.  Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” (p. 16)

“The heart of compassion is really acceptance.  The better we are at accepting ourselves and others, the more compassionate we become.  Well, it’s difficult to accept people when they are hurting us or taking advantage of us or walking all over us.  This research has taught me that if we really want to practice compassion, we have to start by setting boundaries and holding people accountable for their behavior.” (p. 16)

From James Finley’s Christian Meditation

“In passing from ego consciousness to meditative states of awareness, we are awakened to that eternal oneness with God that is the very reality of ourselves and of everyone and everything around us.” (location 162 ebook)

“We start out in ego consciousness, imagining that the union with God we seek is far off.  After all, ego consciousness is the subjective perception of being a separate self that has to find God, who is perceived as being other than one’s self.  But then, as ego consciousness yields and gives way to meditative awareness we begin to recognize the surprising nearness of God, already perfectly present in the intimate recesses of our very being.” (location 168,173 ebook)

From W.S. Merwin Migration: New and Selected Poems loved FINDING A TEACHER, for copyright reasons won’t reprint it but encourage you to look it up.