Ben’s Bells and the Power of Kindess

~Deliberately seek opportunities for kindness, sympathy, and patience.
Evelyn Underhill

This morning I had the priviledge of participating in the “belling” of Phoenix.  All over the valley, volunteers hung Ben’s Bells to spread the message of kindness and remind us of its power to soothe broken lives, create hope, and affect positive change.

My friend, Diane, and I were entrusted with twenty hand-made bells, twenty pieces of wire, and a rough hewn map on a blue index card. As we walked to the car, I carried this bundle with reverence for it wasn’t just an old grocery bag crammed with ceramic  flowers and bells, this was a bag filled with hope. And hope is the most powerful force on the the planet.

We drove carefully to our designated area and began to choose unlikely spots: a tree in a parking lot, a vacant playground, a bench along a bike path.  We understood that our role was to deliver the kindness, and it would be someone else’s to receive it.  With each bell that we tied to a random location, we knew that it would become a bridge to hope to the person meant to find it.  Each bell would become a chapter in a story of healing.

When I returned home, I began to check the Ben’s Bells webpage where people will often post their story about finding a bell, or how a bell found them in a dark moment of their day.  A few of the stories were about bells Diane and I had placed. The circle of kindess complete.

Here are a few of the stories:

Jackie writes…

Thank you for restoring my faith in… well, faith. I have been feeling so alone since losing my husband to cancer last year and now raising three boys. Some days are just so long and hard and on this night I was rushing to my son’s baseball game after working a 12 hour day. I parked the car and as I walked past a tree on the jogging path, I caught a glimpse of a yellow flower hanging beautifully from a tree. I remembered reading about Ben’s Bell’s a while back and wondered if maybe I had found one. As I read the card and happily untied it, I felt such a connection to the heavens. Someone was watching over me! I truly felt that this daisy bell (my favorite flower) was put in my path for a reason. Thank you Ben’s family for making my heart lighter and putting a spring in my step. I will be sure to spread the kindness in honor of Ben (and Bill.) My husbanded loved Tucson dearly, but ironically the bell found its way to me in Scottsdale.

aurelia b writes…

Today I woke up missing my daughter, Violet. She died almost five years ago. As I often do on days that I feel a bit more overwhelmed and unsure. I performed my own random act of kindness this morning in honor of my daughter. My day was long and griefy. I got home and my boyfriend(Violet’s dad) gave me Ben’s Bell. Someone had left it in a tree near his truck. It was just what my soul needed. Thank you for allowing me to know your son and be a part of this kindness.

Julie writes…

I found myself having somewhat of a stressful day today at work (I am a RN in Phoenix) so I decided to head out and get away during lunchtime. I caught a glimpse of something colorful hanging in a tree by my car–a beautiful Ben’s Bell. I read the tag attached and later looked up the website. I was so moved by this project, especially the story behind it, as I, too, have lost a child. It’s almost as if the bell found me instead of me finding the bell. I immediately knew where this bell would hang – 9 years ago we had planted a gorgeous, flower blooming tree in our backyard to honor our son Trey’s memory and it would be perfect for this bell! So after work today I told my family about this bell and tonight we hung it on a branch. Thank you a million times for making me smile today and reminding me that kindness does go a long way.

Jeannette and Dean, Ben’s parents and the founders of Ben’s Bells tell the story of their son and the meaning behind the bells.  Please take a moment to read about it here.

Our simple acts of kindness to strangers as we go about our days are as important as those shown to our loved ones. As you travel through life remember that your choice to be kind will light a dark day for another.

Peace and Kindness to you~

 

Christmas Cards

God's Peace to You

Christmas cards hold a magic I find impossible to resist. Like most holiday traditions, the process is sacred, and, thus, it must unfold the same way each year.  In late November I will buy boxes of cards, stamps, and order prints of our children, sometimes of the four of us if I am feeling visually acceptable.  Next I’ll stack it all on the kitchen counter, a jagged heap of paper that will irritate my husband for days or even weeks.

Soon there will be a conversation that will resemble this:

 

“I noticed you have a new stack growing on the kitchen counter.”

“Christmas cards.”

“I see that.”

“Aren’t they cute?”

“How long are they going to sit here?” he will gently inquire knowing I won’t have a definite answer.

“Oh, they’ll be gone before Christmas, Honey.  I can promise you that.”

 

Then, on an ordinary December evening, I will get the inner nod.  This will be the night.  Perhaps Matt will have a volleyball practice, or Tim detained by a client dinner.  Whatever the happenstance, I will be presented with an evening alone.

I’ll light a fire in the fireplace, a few candles to add to the glow, and pour a glass of pinot noir. I’ll pull out the old George Winston December CD and pop it in the stereo. As the piano fills the room I’ll move the jagged paper stack from the kitchen counter to the floor by the hearth and lean my back against a worn leather ottoman.

Then it will begin, a journey through time that only I can claim.  I’ll open a ragged address book that today’s internet savvy people would scoff at.  But I love to see friends’ names, scratched out as they have moved from place to place, putting their family thumbprints upon communities here and there.  A well worn address book tells a story.  It reveals that life is a trail of smiles and tears.

I’ll start at “A” and work my way through a vast list of entries.  And each precious name holds a life story that will capture me for a long moment.  As I write a note, I will fear that it feels trite, like I have written it a thousand times already…but it is a wish, pure and powerful to all of those whom I have loved.

 

God’s peace to you.

 

Peace:

 

…to the girl I met at seven.  The deck of cards we kept handy in back pockets along with the chalk for hopscotch in the street. I can still hear your laugh and count the freckles on your nose. God’s peace to you as you search for meaning in a city of lights and trolley cars upon great hills.

 

…to the teen that slammed her locker shut next to mine for four years in high school. Your  infectious smile and energy live on in my memory. I loved the way your blonde pony tail was always perfect, smooth against your head and tied with a bow.  I wonder if it is perfect now during the long hours you spend by the bedside of your beautiful mother.  God’s peace to lift your heavy heart.

 

…to my college roommates. You have held my secrets close for a quarter century.  What would I do without you?  Who would I have become with your laughter? God’s peace to you as we wonder how those carefree girls became women with lives of challenge.

 

…to my parents. You have raised six children to love and cherish their families. Your example is the compass by which I direct my life.  God’s peace to you as you continue to seize each day and squeeze joy from it.

 

…to my brothers so brave and wondrous.  The life stories we could tell and often do. You are the husbands and fathers I knew you would be. God’s peace to you in your homes as you mold a generation.

 

…to my husband’s family.  I arrived one day, a city girl to your country home. I have never felt such warmth. God’s peace to thank you for years of love and acceptance.

 

…to the neighbor that welcomed me to my first house, to the mom I met at the park when my daughter was five, to the women that taught me the meaning of community and support.  God’s peace to your families as you lead them, strong and powerful.

 

…to each and every relative that brings depth to the puzzle that is my heritage. God’s peace as you continue to reveal our American story.

 

…to the boss that believed in me, the usher at church who can’t help but smile, the friends along the way.  All those friends along the way.

 

Before I know it, I will have spent time with each of you, the lovely and inspiring human beings that have graced my life.  I will have held you in my heart, remembered the angle of your smile, the color of your eyes, the unexpected joys and heart wrenching sorrows that have knocked upon our doors.

By the evening’s end I will be reminded that, regardless of whatever the future holds, I have already lived a life of meaning.  I have loved and been loved.  I have laughed more than my share, and cried the tears needed to water the gardens of friendship.

At evening’s end, my will husband arrive, rumpled from a day’s work, my son will enter loud and hungry, and the phone will ring with a daughter’s need to share a giggle.  So I will lay down my pen, knowing I will have a few more cards to write before the Holiday is over.

And so I will wait, until I get that inner nod  to complete them. It is never planned. But I will know when it is time to finish the Christmas cards, share a memory, and wish God’s peace to you…

 

Advent and the Nature of Hope

 

I love Advent. I love everything about this time of grace.  It is a thought-provoking, layered season when a family remembers that it is holy, or at the very least, wants to be.

The night of Christ’s birth holds every possible intrigue.  It is a storyteller’s delight. Year after year we tell and retell these themes of journeying, wonder, mystery and promise. We look into the bright eyes of our children, snuggled in new pajamas around the hearth, and whisper of cold mangers, wise shepherds, angels and silent midnights that hold only peace.

As an adult I have grown to treasure Advent’s grand reminder of  the nature of HOPE. That God does unimaginable work with unlikely beginnings and difficult situations. His elaborate plan of salvation began with the creation of a family in precarious circumstances. A frightened young, pregnant girl with an entire village looking at her askance, an older husband who is not so sure about the whole thing (certainly not used to having angels tell him what to do while he is busy dreaming), and a birthplace that was far from home and extraordinarily unsanitary.

I sometime imagine a chummy angel leaning over to Mary during one of her 3:00 AM feedings and whispering in her ear things like “…just a reminder that this IS the Son of God, don’t make any parenting mistakes as the salvation of the entire world is at stake (no pressure or anything). Oh, and the family business?  He won’t be taking that over.  Your baby will become the greatest revolutionary of all times so don’t be surprised when the empire turns against you after you are forced to watch your sweet boy die the death of a common criminal.”

The holiest of families didn’t have it easy. Not by a long shot. So why is it that we think we should?  Their hardships remind me that God does not live on Easy Street.  That is not where we will witness His great power.  Rather, He lives on Damn This Is Hard Avenue.  Difficulties push us from our safe havens to seek answers.  Pain calls us to wander down that unexplored, often scary, side of town knocking on doors we never would have chosen.  How surprised we are when we find Him in the unlikeliest of places.

He is tricky like that. A king disguised as a baby leads me to open myself to the thought that other miraculous contradictions await if we slow down to consider the nature of HOPE.  If we embrace the notion that God offers possibility when there is no evidence present. To see that sometimes beginnings are disguised as endings.

Advent reminds me to choose Hope as a way of life. To pull my family close and recognize our sanctity in good times and in bad times.  That God uses our joys to strengthen our love, and He uses our sorrows as teachable moments that draw us close to Him and to each other.

The life of a holy family is not always an easy one, but it is the Christmas Story, the one so many of us seek. May God bless us all as we tackle the challenges inherent to family life in this season and every season. As a mother with children off to college and life beyond, I look forward to December 24th, when, God willing, we will  sit as a family, perhaps visited by friends and sung to by angels, on a midnight that holds only peace.

A Peaceful Heart and a Happy Home

What does the pursuit of happiness look like in your house? In our home, it used to mean the quest to actualize the picture perfect life; a lovely home, big careers, high achieving children. However, our search for the American Dream was quietly laid to rest once we figured out that the stress  that came along with that dream did nothing but drive a big, fat exhausted wedge between the four of us.  Our wildest dream is now about owning less and simplifying even more.

This month, take a step back and see how much of marital and family strain might be fueled by cultural norms that you may never have given yourself permission to question. The abundance available to us in our communities and our constant search for happiness and a sense of accomplishment outside of ourselves begins, at some point, to work against relationships. Begins, at some point, to erode the sense of intimacy that keeps families close.  A lifestyle anchored in achievement does not necessarily equate to happiness.

Years ago, my brother Joe, then employed in development for George Washington University, called me one day and invited me to be his guest at a dinner party at Arianna Huffington’s house in Los Angeles.  Not one to ever pass up an interesting party, I met him there and proceeded to endure a most humbling evening.  Sharing space with the likes of Gloria Allred and many big wigs of the Democratic party, I was clearly out of my league. When people around me made small talk and told uproarious jokes about issues and people I had never heard of, well, let’s just say I felt like a kindergartener at the eighth grade lunch table.

I always remember that evening, feeling like I was less.  Like I would never live in an elegant home like Mrs. Huffington’s or be the type of person that would understand jokes about the inner workings of Washington, D.C.  I left that night promising myself to work harder, read more news magazines, watch more serious TV and avail myself to more intellectual discussions. I promised myself to find a way to have more.  More, more, more…faster, faster, faster to make sure I didn’t feel less.

In October 2009,  I saw that Mrs. Huffington had chosen, as her first book club pick, In Praise of Slowness, by Carl Honore, a book about less, less, less…slower, slower, slower to make us feel more.  Life has its ironies.

I agree with Carl Honore. In his book he discusses the current trend toward deceleration saying that “The problem is that our hunger for speed, for cramming more and more into less time, has gone too far.”  That “the current recession is a stark reminder that an economy based on fast growth, fast consumption, and fast profits is not sustainable.”

The pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction.  Not only can our economy not withstand such a pace, neither can our families.  Divorce rates remain around 50%.  I wonder how that might change, how children’s lives might remain innocent and intact, if families were given cultural permission to slow down and own less.  The greatest indicator of success is a happy family, not a beautiful home as glossy magazines and TV shows might suggest.

Our experience of selling all and living abroad for a year to reconnect as a family supports Honore’s theory.  It was a sacred time of owning nothing but possessing everything. Simplification has helped us maintain a level of sanity and intimacy that supports rather than strains our family. Perhaps the American Dream, as we know it, has run its course. Perhaps it is time for a new one. A slower, less materialistic one.

Taking things out of your life will help you and your spouse find more time for each other. So much of what we choose to fill our days can be argued as good, but too much of a good thing is still too much.  If you are seeking real change in the quality of your marriage, you must find a way to create the emotional space to interact in meaningful ways.

I challenge you, this month, to think outside our cultural box and create your own recipe for happiness according to what works best for you and your spouse.  My wildest dream is a peaceful heart and happy home, the very same two things that I wish for you!

The Woman with All the Answers

In honor of Mother’s Day.  A gentle reminder to spend time with the people you love~

The Woman with All the Answers

As a child, I loved going to the movies and live theater with my mother.  Though neither happened often, the experiences captivated me.  The Sound of Music became an obsession, Fiddler on the Roof almost did me in. I knew that ‘Sunrise, Sunset‘ would be sung at my wedding the very first time I heard it.

I also learned other important things that have come in handy in life. Such as: there is nothing like a dame, a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, Gary, Indiana is the place where I belong, the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, Oklahoma is where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, when you’re Jet, you’re a Jet all the way, and the Phantom composes the music of the night.

I shock my family, sometimes, when I belt out a few stanzas from show tunes we might inadvertently hear on on the radio as we are searching for something more hip.  “How do you know that song?” Matt would implore as I channeled my inner Carol Channing.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped going to live theater, other than school plays.  I stopped seeking the magic of performance for no good reason other than it cost money, and I was too lazy to plan ahead. I stopped spending art filled afternoons with my mother because I was busy with important things like shopping at Walmart and Home Depot.

Yet, any time I would fill out some silly questionnaire or worksheet that would ask for my hobbies and likes, I would always include theater.  And every time I checked that box, I would smirk to myself, ‘Big Fat Liar! You used to, but who are you now?’

When the theaters in town sent out their pre-season info this time, I made a conscious decision to put this experience back on my priority list. Why do we do that? Why do we stop doing the things we loved to do when we were growing up? I met my mother for coffee and we made an afternoon of it, poring over the glossy brochures deciding which performances we’d choose.  We decided to be sophisticated and choose three dramas we had never of, wrote out checks on the spot, and sent them in before we could come up with reasons why it was an unnecessary extravagance.

We met on a Sunday at the Phoenix Art Museum where my mother had been a docent for many years and dined in their café.  An artful, fitting start  to our year of theater.  Afterwards we followed our map-quested directions further downtown to the Herberger Theater, a lovely venue in downtown Phoenix. We were seeing The Woman with All the Answers, a one woman play about Ann Landers. Okay, it wasn’t exactly Phantom of the Opera, but it was a start.

Once settled into our seats we looked around. The place was packed.

“I’m the only one younger than seventy,” I whispered.

“More proof,” she began with a knowing nod, “that older people know how to enjoy life on a Sunday afternoon.”

I had a flashback of the two of us, thirty years earlier, side by side on plush red seats in a theater on Broadway, my patent leather shoes barely scraping the floor.

“I feel like such a lady.  Don’t you?” she said as she smoothed her skirt and patted her hair into place.  Her eyes were gleaming. I did feel like a lady, dressed in my Sunday best, hands folded, waiting for the curtain to rise once more and take me on a journey.  I loved this feeling of doing something with my day other than chores and ‘getting ready’ for the week. Getting ready for what? Being busy? How many Sundays had I passed up the opportunity to feel like a lady? How many Sundays had passed in my life without taking advantage of quality time with my beautiful mother?

Suddenly, the lights dimmed and onto the stage waltzed Nancy Dussault, an award winning actress of stage, film and TV, looking every bit like the photo of Ann Landers that graced the cover of the brochure.

We were transported to her living room, June 30, 1975 as she was trying to pen her infamous column about the break-up of her thirty-six year marriage to her beloved husband, Julius.  Because she was utterly heartbroken she found all sorts of other topics to talk about rather than writing the column.  And through her humor and the reading of letters and conversation with the audience, we learned about Ann Landers, the woman.  Eppie Lederer, the sister of Pauline Lederer, the double-crossing identical twin who went on to become her adversary, Dear Abby.  A simple, yet complicated human story that reminded me that all of our lives hold opportunities for greatness and none of us escape sorrow.

We learned of her rise to fame, how she won a contest to take over the column after the death of the original Ann Landers, and became a trusted advisor to the public for many decades. But though her life was full and exciting, it also had its share of pain and betrayal. Though her words held great power in society at the time, she was powerless in situations that deeply plagued her.

There was one particularly moving scene in which she recalled speaking with President Johnson, personally begging him to end the Vietnam War.  To drive her point home, she traveled to the war torn country for three weeks, visiting the bedsides of wounded soldiers, a few thousand by the end of her stay.  She recalled the moments sitting by those bedsides, holding the hand of one and touching the forehead of another, asking about their homes, listening to their stories. Her mission was a powerful one, to stand in for the mother they desperately needed.

This was the moment in which I remembered why I loved the theater when I was young. It connected me to a life bigger than my own, broadened my understanding of the human experience, made me a better person. In the glow of the stage lights I could see tears glistening on the cheeks of many, cloth handkerchiefs lifted to eyes and noses; a powerful silence filled with a grief so real I could reach out and touch it. Like the whole place was afraid to exhale, afraid to unleash long buried terror.   This audience bore those memories in a deeply personal place, some of whom may have been in Vietnam themselves.

Finally Ann finished her sad letter to her fans, humbly admitting even she, the lady with all the answers, after all of her years of preaching against divorce, could not hold her own marriage together.  She asked, “How did it happen that something so good didn’t last forever?”  I could see a thousand heads nodding with her in the darkness. Acknowledging that good things in our lives do end, and it hurts.  Living proof that memories do not stand all alone in the moonlight.

When the curtain came down, I did not want to move. I wanted that feeling of human connection to last. I wanted to think about the reasons why we let things that are important to us slip away.  Why is it always a shock when the very things we stop paying attention to end?

“Maybe we should sign up for a few more of these,” I said as we searched for our purses and waited for the majority of people to file out.

“I was thinking the same thing,” my mother said as she buttoned her jacket and adjusted her grey silk scarf.  “That was wonderful.  I didn’t want it to be over.”

“Me, neither.”
“Let’s make sure that these Sunday outings together continue.”

“Well, you’ve already convinced me that older people know how to have more fun on the weekend,” I began as I looped my arm through hers and walked slowly out of the theater.

Path to a Peaceful Heart: Part 4

 

Where Peacefulness Resides

Simplicity is one of the keys to peaceful living. Clearing emotional and material clutter from your life opens the emotional and physical space needed to think and communicate effectively with loved ones.  It creates time in your day to pursue the activites that feed your soul or to simply rest.  It will change your life in dramatic and subtle ways.

I know that this is not some grand new revelation. Some of you are probably thinking “blah, blah, blah…heard it all before”. But please hear this next sentence, because this is the part that matters.

If you want to feel its power, you actually have to do it!

It is one thing to understand, intellectually, the concept of simplifying. It is altogether different to experience it on a visceral level.  When we moved overseas, we brought only clothing, photographs of loved ones and a few games.  That was it.  The apartment we rented was sparsely furnished.  Other than buying fresh flowers from time to time, we did nothing to decorate.  We had all we needed and nothing more.

The liberating effect of this simple living was intoxicating beyond words.  I didn’t expect it to affect me the way it did.  All of the following minutia that used to eat up my precious minutes were gone: cleaning, dusting, fixing, decorating, shoping, yardwork etc.  Life, for us, pushed outwards.  We spent our time exploring the world, trying new foods, meeting interesting people and laughing together.  We stopped taking care of things and began taking care of each other.

Perhaps we become restless as we reach mid-life because all of those material goods we have strived to own, begin to own us. There is a point where our abundance begins to work, silently and secretly,  against us and we don’t even notice until we are lonely and unhappy and have no idea why.

Simplifying can be a process that you begin today.  Try it a little at a time and introduce your soul to freedom in small ways.  Clean out your closets, kitchen drawers, cabinets to start.  Stop buying new things that you don’t really need. As your home becomes visibly more sparse, notice the emotional energy it frees within.

Then begin to simplify emotionally. Stop spending energy with toxic friends, take a long walk at sunset without your cell phone, listen to yourself, take a deep breath, be present in the moment, pray.  Less of the material equals more of the spiritual, and that, my friends, is where peacefulness resides.

Path to a Peaceful Heart: Part 3

The Words We Choose Matter

 

Words are powerful. They can, if strung together in just the right pattern, change lives.  You can choose to make your life more peaceful by thoughtfully examining your daily word choices.

Words reflect the soul of the person that speaks them.  They will effect those who hear them in either a positive or negative way.  If you choose words that uplift, heal, problem solve, soothe, and promote good will, then those with whom you come in contact will generally mirror your tone.

Nobody likes to be around a cranky, down in the dumps, stick in the mud.  This type of person, and we all know at least one, creates his/her own misery by choosing to constantly share their negative thoughts and words with those they meet.  Though he or she might actually be seeking solace from the listener, it usually accomplishes the opposite.

When I teach writing, I spend a lot of time on word choice and how it affects the tone of a story. We examine pieces of writing with angry, divisive words and compare them with pieces that contain soothing and peaceful ones.  The tone in the classroom invariably corresponds with the tone of the writing. It is often an eye opening experience for the students to feel this on a visceral level.

Such it is in life.  Each day you are the author of a new page in your life story. If you want to live in peace, choose words that promote it.

 

Improve Your Marriage by Letting Go of Myths

Hi folks!  I would like to introduce you to a wonderful and vibrant organization called Chat, Chew, and Chocolate.  It is an award winning company that helps busy women lead a lifestyle that is filled with balance and fun. I was honored when CEO Dena Patton asked me to write a monthly column on marriage for their website.  Each month I will be presenting a new author who will share wisdom about different aspects of marriage.

Here’s a sneak preview!

Improve Your Marriage by Letting Go of Myths

Can we talk?  Can we sit down and pour a cup of coffee, rich and dark with an aroma that fills the kitchen, and agree to get real about marriage while we pass the creamer back and forth?  Any of us who have been married a while knows that these can be some of the most fruitful therapy sessions. Girlfriends sharing, brave and deep.  You tell me your joys and pains and I’ll match you, even one up you if I can.  We’ll test the waters of our trust by first sharing the moments that make love grand, and then we’ll venture through the awkward silence that will surely follow the first mention of pain, the first acknowledgment that marriage is sometimes lonely and unpredictable.

I am of the ilk that there are no real marriage experts. All of us are searching. Oh sure, there may be learned people out there that can help us become better communicators, help us understand ours and our mate’s personality types, help us move from inaction to action in unexpected circumstances that have caused us to stand still.  But no one is an expert in your marriage except for you and your spouse.  The two of you are unique in every way and the dynamics of your partnership, where one of you ends and the other begins, can only be known by you.

Though I am not unrealistic and understand that some unions must end for the health and well being of a couple, I do believe in marriage overall.  It is a sacred vow, even though this promise to honor and love a person through thick and thin is proclaimed when we have no concept of what “thin” is going to look like as the years unfold. Thin can get to a sheet of ice, translucent parchment.

There is plenty of literature out there to defend the life altering decision to end a marriage.  But sometimes, we don’t want it to end, not really.  We don’t want to split up our family, ask our children to shuttle between worlds.   Sometimes we are just lost and lonely, or wandering because life has dealt us a paralyzing sucker punch.  We want to return to love and just don’t know how.

Consider this column a safe haven where we can safely come to chat and chew on marriage.  The tough times.  What we have gone through, and why we have stayed.  The unexpected fruits of staying as shared by a variety of women who have stories to tell and wisdom to share.  Wisdom that may challenge you to think outside the box, to allow yourself a paradigm shift because that’s what it takes to weather tough times.

Our first topic introduces us to the inherent dangers of certain myths that our culture holds dear. Prince Charming, happily ever after, and the white picket fence are just a few of the phrases that come to mind. Transforming a marriage is, sometimes, about letting go of these images.  Recognizing the end of a chapter when it presents itself and finding a way to move on, together.

Though it was not easy, one of the myths that my husband and I let go of was the whole concept of the American Dream. As I discuss in Halfway to Each Other: How a Year in Italy Brought our Family Home, the glossy magazine ordained lifestyle we were working long hours to achieve was the very thing that was getting in the way of our ability to love each other effectively. By stepping completely outside of that lifestyle and moving our family to Italy, we were able to see, more clearly, the downfalls of abundance. Living simply enabled us to create the emotional space needed to reconnect and remember that taking care of each other was more important than taking care of all of the things we had accumulated along the way.

I am excited to present Laura Munson and thank her for being my first guest to the CCC community.  Her powerful memoir, This is Not the Story You Think it Is, recounts a painful time in her marriage and how she and her husband worked through it.

Laura delivers her story with courage and insight. This is what she had this to say about letting go.

“One of the things we fear most is being told we are unloved.  Especially twenty years into a marriage that for the most part, we feel proud of.  My husband and I had existed in the normal ebb and flow of married life:  we’d been happy and unhappy together.  It seemed important to know how to do both.  We’d never really signed up for the happily-ever-after myth.  Or had we?

When my husband announced that he no longer loved me and wanted to move out, I was stunned.  I knew that he was in deep despair over his failing job, I knew he was wildly frustrated that my books were not getting published with all my efforts and his years of support…but I never saw his woe turning against all that we’d created together.  Years of love, adventures, intimacy, laughs.  Two happy healthy kids.  Land in Montana.  Our dream house.  That’s what mattered, right?  We could survive failing careers, couldn’t we?  We’d be the ones to land on our feet, right?  The look in his eyes told me that his love came with a cap on it, and that cap had to do with success.  That was the piece in our wedding vows I’d missed.  His “worse” was much less worse than mine.  Had I been standing at that altar vowing to love a quadriplegic in a wheel chair, when he was vowing to be married to anything short of a New York Times bestselling author, but not too short thereof?  Was he vowing to a permanently twenty year old body when I was picturing us old and grey and wrinkly, on a front porch?  How much had myth run our relationship?  Because to me, love was about holding the space for our partner’s hard times.  Of course, I had my deal breakers.  But being married to a man in financial ruin was not one of them, especially because I knew how hard he worked.

In my heart, I knew what I was up against.  He was transferring his pain onto me.  Rather than being responsible for his own emotions, he’d decided to blame me and run.  I knew this man.  This was not his style.  He was in deep crisis and I knew that my reacting to his drama would only make things worse.  So I said, “I don’t buy it.  What can we do to give you the distance you need so you can heal through this season of your life without taking down the family?”  Love could survive finances, couldn’t it?  Shouldn’t it?  The word should:  not a good one in the field of myth-busting.

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Path to a Peaceful Heart Lesson 2: Centering

I find it helpful to center myself in the mornings. Whatever is your chosen spiritual path, take a few minutes to tread upon it mindfully.  Remind yourself who you are and why you are here.  The belief structure of your life has everything to do with all of the choices, big and small, that will make up your day.  If you are clear on that, or at least seeking clarity, it will bring courage and swiftness to decision-making. You won’t waste time muddling around or agonizing about choices if you know what you value.

Centering can be whatever you want it to be.  A walk or run at sunrise, a conversation with a loved one, a paragraph in a journal, a meditation or reading.  Whatever you need to focus your day. But choose something.  To spring out of bed and into morning at full tilt is simply jarring. Those are the types of days I feel irritable and behind schedule.

My morning routine usually begins with a cup of coffee and my computer.  I don’t look up the newspapers as I know I will have all day to hear whatever bad news is waiting. I sign in to read a short passage from a book called God Calling.  I registered to have it sent, free of charge, to my mailbox every day. It takes two minutes, but it speaks to me deeply and reminds me that my daily challenge is surrender.

Yes, you may have to get up earlier, but I promise that once you have established this new habit (they say a new habit takes 21 days to create…or break!)  you will see a marked difference in your ability to navigate your day with a more peaceful heart.

Do you have a centering exercise that inspires you?  Please share with us~

 

Path to A Peaceful Heart 1

Stay Inside the Inch

A few weeks ago, at the end of a book lecture, a young mother raised her hand and said to me, “You claim to live with your days now with a heart that is peaceful. I can hear it in your voice and see it in your eyes. I desperately want that. Can you please write a book that tells me how to do it? How to simplify my life and live with a peaceful heart? Because try as I might, I just can’t figure it out. I am completely overwhelmed.”

Her earnest voice and desperate tone has prompted me to add a category to this new blog.  I would love to share with you what I have come to understand as peaceful living. It has changed my life in deep and meaningful ways.  Each week I will offer one idea, one thought to ponder, one thing to try.  One is enough because creating a peaceful heart is more about taking things out of your life than adding them, and it is difficult to change behaviors and challenge cultural norms.

I’m not going to lie to you, a peaceful heart is not for the weak or close-minded, it is for those with the strength and willingness to let go of emotional, spiritual, and physical clutter.  Please feel free to comment or challenge me.  I enjoy a good discussion and am hoping to learn from you as well!  We are all in this thing called Life together.

My first idea to share in called “Stay inside the inch.”

I have taught middle school on and off for many years.  I know many people out there are afraid of these emerging and complicated human creatures, but I happen to love them.  They are strong and fragile and fearless and scared.  An eighth grader can hate you and love you at the same time. And they are capable of words that will cut you to your knees or reveal a tenderness that will break your heart. Why am I telling you all of this? Because, they remind us of what it means to be human in all of its jumbled glory. All of us are eighth graders on the inside, equal parts passionate and unsure of ourselves. Age just teaches us how to hide all of that and act with decorum.

One of my favorite lessons to teach comes in April when the curriculum calls for Family Life (aka Sex Ed.)  It is the only week or two when the classroom is quiet and I have their undivided attention.  Mechanics aside, they are hungry for advice on how to manage their life’s choices.  One afternoon, after a particularly heated and humorous discussion on the emotional (not to mention obvious physical) pitfalls of serious dating too soon, I scanned the room for something to get my point across.

My eyes fell on a dusty yardstick that stood in the corner.  I grabbed it, held it up and said,”Imagine that this is your life.  This is all you get. Each inch represents a year of certain joys and challenges, certain opportunities that are only offered during that one time period of your life.  Be the age that you are or you will miss it.  If you are 13, don’t try to be 17. You’ll have your time to be 17 over here,” I said pointing to a section four inches away. “Now is the time to drink the waters of being 13. You’ll never get this chance again.”

I was grasping at straws. Had pulled this simple image out of nowhere hoping to convince these young hearts to remain in childhood as long as they could.  The room became still. I could see eyes with that faraway look that comes with actual thinking. Heads began to nod.

“So,” said Jonathan, his hulking frame shifting in his seat, “Just stay inside the inch.”

“Exactly.”

“I can do that. Makes sense. I can see it, now.”

I have held on to this simple, but powerful statement for years. Slow down to be present in the actual time of your life. Stay keenly aware of your day, of the needs of the hour.  Agonizing over the past puts you in an inch that ended long ago, and wishing puts you in an inch whose time has not arrived.

When my days become harried and I feel overwhelmed, I stop and visualize that yardstick because I don’t want to miss one minute of the life with which I have been blessed.

Stay inside the inch.