ah! a new print – or actually, a redo of an old one.
here’s part of the write up i have with it over on etsy –
feeling really good about offering this new print. which is actually an adjustment of an old print. resized and a little darker with a stronger white candle glow. both things – the darkness and the glow – both getting more intense felt very appropriate for 2020! a little inspiration and reminder for us all!
it IS more intense in both those ways. which felt a little unusual in creating it. i felt tempted to soften both the dark and the light. but seriously?! it’s 2020. intense felt much more appropriate. so i went with it.
i was so excited when it came in (yesterday!) that i couldn’t wait for the guys to get it up on the site, i went and popped it up on etsy. (it’ll be on the site within the next week or two)
if you’re in the mood, go check it out! you can find it – along with other prints – AND originals – right here!
and let’s just keep reminding each other to hang on to our candles. we’ll help each other keep them lit!
i had no idea way back when… i thought love was about the other person loving me. filling me. making me happy. a hero in my life that took care of me. cherished me. never let me down. and i, of course, did the same.
yeah. so that didn’t work out real well.
so the second time around, i knew better. but still had so much to learn.
i have now traveled this road with this man of mine for about eighteen years. we’ve been married for three. that tickles me. i didn’t want to just jump into things! grinnin’ here.
what i’ve learned so far is that love is really about me. not him.
honestly.
first up – i found out how important self love is. i had no idea. i knew it was a good thing to have. of course it is. no brainer. but now, i firmly believe you can’t have real love with another person without it.
so. that’s big.
there’s a huge journey right there. learning to love yourself. sure, we can all say we do – but do we? i would have said yes years ago – and yet, i had so much more to learn. and the more i learn, the more i see how much there is to learn!
the ‘filling me, making me happy, hero’ part is also about me. i gotta do that stuff. now, he can add to it all. oh yes he can. but it’s when i know that it’s my job, it takes such tremendous pressure off of him and allows him to be all of who he is. which sometimes does not fill me, make me happy or feel like my hero! and that has to be okay.
because a part of love that has got to be there is – who we are has to be allowed.
which, oh, for pete’s sakes – is hard!!
and it all mixes into the cherish me/never let me down stuff.
cause everything that i want for me, needs to be flipped back for him. ya know? this isn’t a one way deal.
so yeah, sometimes our humanity slips in and our cherishing doesn’t come out quite like we’d like. we’re human. and the letting someone down? well, that gets complicated, doesn’t it?
if i’m let down, then i need to go look at my ‘expectations.’ cause there musta been some to be let down.
are they healthy? honest? fair?
oh for pete’s sakes.
to do all this leads one to radical honesty with oneself. which again, brings us back to self love.
how about when you’re hurt?
too bad. you gotta look at the whole darn picture. see the other person’s hurt. even if they were the one who caused the whole darn problem. cause nothing is so isolated that only one person has the emotions. that’s the point, right? you’re so entangled you both feel stuff.
it’s really odd, but more often than not, i see that we are both feeling the same pain – only different angles.
seriously?
so that means that i gotta be gentle to both of us?
seriously?
this is complicated stuff. and not easy by any means.
ohmygosh – but the payoffs! oh the payoffs! i want to say that is what we’re celebrating today. but that’s not true. we gotta be celebrating the all.
because who i am from this journey is so much more than i would have been without it.
i so sincerely mean that.
and the payoffs are so deep and beautiful, that tears come to my eyes as i type just thinking of them.
to love and respect and cherish someone through all this craziness – there is such glory in that.
and to feel it and step into the closeness that it brings – there is magic in that.
i have no definition i can give you for what love actually is. i feel though, with all my heart, that i am bumbling my way into it more and more.
and there is nothing that matters more than this.
i am feeling like a very grateful student today, who is totally in love with her teacher.
it’s a newish word for me. not that i never used it before. but the way i used it. as in finding the glory. and spaces for glory to win. i used it opposite of tragedy.
glory/tragedy. you could fill in other words. love/fear good/evil light/dark yin/yang salt/pepper
the thing with words is they give me angles to look at things. this gives me another angle of looking that’s very similar to other ways i’ve looked at things before. but because it’s a wee bit different, sometimes i can see a wee bit more.
since i had this thought with glory, i have been thinking hard about things that i’m doing. asking myself ‘where’s the glory’ in what i’m doing. it’s like asking myself ‘what’s my highest good here?’ which i have done before. same thing. but different.
and i just love different angles.
so i’m playing with this one now.
how do i make space for the glory to show up? that’s the best question so far! isn’t that delicious?!
thought i’d offer it in case you wanted to play with it too!
and if you haven’t seen it and would like to – you can find it here!
and if you’d like to get on the newsletter list, at the bottom of the newsletter is a link that will take you to the sign up! it comes out about once a month. you also will get my holiday card if you’re on that list as well.
my hope is the newsletter is filled with things to make you smile and feel good today!
talk about a walk this morning! i think the meaning of life landed on me!
well, okay, maybe not the ‘meaning’ of life. maybe not the ‘point’ of life.
maybe the ‘vehicle’ of life. the space ship of life? maybe that.
i think the space ship of life landed on me!
it all happened when i stopped thinking.
which took awhile.
i have now learned that thinking while i walk is one heck of a huge distraction that takes me away from all that matters.
but it’s a comfortable habit. so i tend to start off doin’ that. but sooner or later, i catch myself and stop. my eyes almost always gaze upward when i switch gears.
today my gaze turned to the tree tops blowin’ in the breeze.
they were so beautiful.
and this voice in my head, filled with so much sincerity, mixed with a feeling that just flooded all over me – and the voice and the feelings together said – ‘i have NO idea what i’m supposed to do with my life, but i know the ONE thing that i can’t seem to do enough is to breathe in this beauty. i JUST can’t get enough of it. it’s the only answer that comes back over and over for me.’
and so that’s what i did. i just watched and soaked in the glory all around me.
and that very word – GLORY – filled me.
and so when i stop thinking and i start soakin’ in stuff, things just land inside me. and sure enough, land they did. and i realized that maybe that was what i’m supposed to be doing – watching the glory.
believing in the glory. knowing there was always space for glory.
the glory in nature, yes. AND the glory in people.
so yeah, let’s face it, people aren’t always glorious. and that came immediately to mind.
and for the first time ever, i really really felt like i held the idea that you can’t have the glory without the tragedy. i really saw that. and that in the tragedies were the opportunities for glory. and sometimes that happened, and sometimes tragedy ruled. and because glory didn’t always win, that also was part of it all. you HAVE to have the mix or it’s not glory.
i felt like i understood this in a deeper way.
so? where does that leave me? or lead me?
i think it leads me to acceptance, allowing, awareness of where i want to focus, awareness of where i want to aim.
and with the idea that maybe the vehicle i have to hop into to travel this journey is one that fully believes in the possibilities and existence of glory – and because of that very belief, it actually IS a vehicle of glory itself. (like to hold the belief deep in your bones even tho there is more than enough tragedy to shake that belief loose, but it doesn’t – that in itself is glory. and THAT is a vehicle that will take me places.)
i’m still thinking about it all. so if this makes no sense, no worries……these things happen.
i came home, changed outta my wet clothes and grabbed my inspiration tee shirt to put on. it’s a musician buddy friend of mine who i see as glory. he has lived thru tragedy, and his very presence and attitude is glory.
he is a piece of the glory.
this is so cool. i apologize if this only articulates confusion. i could sit with it all day and try to tweak this as i think. but nah, it’s what’s in my head right now. what the heck. maybe there’s some glory right there.
there are a lotta different directions as we journey along this life, aren’t there?
it was on my walk this morning that i began to really think about this.
i went out specifically to find joy. that was my goal. it doesn’t take long to realize that i can’t find it if i’m looking AT.
at. is that even a direction? that was the first one i noticed.
i was lookin AT world stuff. AT what someone said or did. AT the heavy, never ending nagging things that can (but don’t have to) make up a day.
atclogs the joy pipes for sure.
but when i looked UP i was immediately transformed. up can be the sky/heavens or it can just be a productive/ positive/healing direction. UP totally opens the joy pipe.
UP is a good one to go towards.
then i thought about ‘in’ – for me, in is a lot like at. in is a certain shallow level. where you get tied in knots about STUFF. in is where your mind whirls and spirals.
but INSIDE is a completely different thing. that’s the deeper spirit/mystery area. inside and within go together for me.
which brings me back to UP. up and within are the same thing. up, within and inside are all very calming centering places.
out can be just like at. rarely, but sometimes, it’s like up.
i got to thinking about all this and grinning. words. they make such a difference. and my words won’t be the same as another. another person can have completely different ideas about what direction these words are pointing.
which brought me to LISTEN.
listen – the realest most purest form of listen is completely the same as UP or WITHIN. listen opens doorways to heaven.
LISTEN, i thought. listen for the directions you decide to go in, listen for what your words are actually saying to another, listen for another’s heart and their directions,
choosing our directions carefully…. yes. that seems like a worthy thing to do.
