magic words

i have been going back to this so many times, letting it pour over me like oil, softening the hard places, rubbing it into my wounds and trying to excise the poison so that healing can come more quickly. i know it is a process, and it takes time, natural time. it will run it's course, but i can so easily slip into the martyr role and that is a slippery slope for me.

i like to pretend sometimes that blue writes just for me. i know it's silly, it's a whole huge blogosphere, but the anonymity of the words are always so timely it's as if he/she is reading my thoughts like an angel and taking me to where i need to go next. reminding me that all is not lost and that new thoughts like rain will fall from the sky if i only bother to notice.

these words are especially timely for me:

For everything that is lost, there are a hundred--a thousand--or more new things sprouting and shining with possibility. Don't grieve so long you miss them. Grieve deeply and well and then notice the freedom that loss affords. Your dreams are not gone, they have only shifted and you can shift with them.

in the stupor i seem to be in i have been missing those sprouts, those new things growing at my feet. i feel like i'm stumbling, walking through a mist with my arms outstretched missing all that my feet walk over, trampling the beauty that is the path i am on.

shifting - it sounds so graceful. it is not a term i associate with myself. years ago liam and i brought a dance instructor to a teen camp we we programmed to call a square dance (cutting edge back then - dancing at a christian camp! gasp) and near the end he taught us all to waltz. i felt so graceful in liam's arms as we all swirled in that large oval around and around. that is until i saw the video - we all (not just me) looked like hippos stumbling and bumbling around. not shifting smoothly and gracefully like i imagined.

i have longed to carry myself with that feminine grace i see so often in other women. i know it comes from an inner strength and confidence within their own skin. i may be able to find it one day on the outside for others to see. but for today, i want to shift gracefully into gratitude, into noticing the shining gifts that surround me. seeing those things that are sprouting at my feet.

growing up our property backed onto a large woods, it was my private play ground. land locked by property owned by friends and neighbors it was my place of solitude and i would spend hours alone, all summer, wandering through the woods, picking at toadstools and sitting in the dead leaves, pulling them back to explore the almost white new growth that begins in the humus of the forest floor. wild violets and jack-in-the pulpits were my favorite finds, may apples and climbing vines surrounded me.

i think in the mist of all of this i have forgotten that my path is through this kind of forest, friendly and familiar, not nearly so terrifying and threatening. nothing has changed, but everything has changed. all is still familiar, i just need to sit for a spell in the humus and find my bearings. take time for the mist to clear a bit and remember to notice all of those wonderful, beautiful things that are growing right at my feet.

blue writes on:

Look around you and find one of the many gifts of Life. They are rarely hidden well. There is always a corner peeking out to draw your eye. I want you to find them, and I want to watch you search with faith's anticipation on your face.

There are magic words that will help you find them when you cannot seem to see them on your own. Take a deep breath, close your eyes and repeat after me...

"Thank you."

thank you. thank you. thank you.

in the middle of pain it is difficult to be grateful, but remembering all that we have at times like these can make all of the difference. so today as i journal my three pages (the artists way at work) i am going to focus on all of those things and 'search with faith's anticipation on your (my) face'.

thank you. thank you. thank you.