Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Face Time

When is the last time you really looked your family in the face?
This past week I realized that seldom do I actually look into my darling daughter's eyes.  Most of our true heart to heart conversations take place while she is riding in the backseat and I am driving.  Sure, sometimes we catch a glimpse of each other in the mirror, but it is only a reflection and she is changing.
She isn't my baby anymore, she is my girl.  Her face is changing, her cheek bones are revealing themselves and her eyes are starting to tell her story and I have been missing it.
So, being the extremist that I am, I have changed my ways almost overnight.  Now, when I fix her breakfast I sit down with her at the island face to face and just listen.  No more television with her beautiful, brown eyes absorbing other faces.  I want her to absorb mine while I memorize hers.
I don't want to miss the expressions behind her voice.  I don't want to look back, like I do now, hanging on to a picture as my mode of reference for the details.  I want to have her face at eight years old completely burned into my memory bank because I looked deeply with intent at it every day I had her home.
And if she feels like I do, she will want to have memories of mine as well.
We are both changing, both growing older, both hoping to hang on to some of these moments for as long as we are on earth.  So, while I am here, I want to remember face time as just that....face time. 

Monday, June 21, 2010

Thank you, Lord, for my body

If you woke up this morning with your health...praise God because not everyone woke up with that gift.

I just enjoyed a trip to Jackson Hole.  I enjoyed that trip as a healthy person able to run, hike and move my body, but while I was there my cousin was put in the hospital struggling to survive.  He has lived with MD for most of his life and has reached the dreaded age of nineteen. 

Following his carebridge site on-line I thought about how much we all take for granted our health and the ability to move freely.  We are so selfish in our thoughts.  Selfish in that we are always pondering what we don't have until we lose something we took for granted.

Let's not do that anymore.  Let's appreciate our bodies no matter the size or color.  Let's live assuming that our bodies are a gift for today, not for always.

If you hate exercise or dread being active, but know it is what is best for you...do this...move your body in honor of all of the children who are not able to move theirs.  Hike, run, walk, play...just move and don't take for granted the gift of that movement.  Many children across the nation and around the world would consider you incredibly rich for having that option. 

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The Scales of Life

Why do we live so unbalanced?
What if everything we spoke actually came into being?  What if God made it happen?  Would you be scared?

I would.  I speak of things I know nothing about.  At dinner parties I am the girl in the corner professing to be "Eden's mom" or "Brian's wife" or the party goer who only speaks of the road less traveled chosen so many years ago, but I don't have a clue.

Do you want to test yourself?  Go to a farewell party for someone leaving to receive a treatment they may not survive.  What matters at that party?

No one cares that you wrote a book, heck, even you don't care.  No one cares that you just finished sixty-five pages of curriculum for an innovative program bolstering emotional intelligence for children of all ages.

So what! 

Do you know what really matters?  Being present.

There is no guarantee that you haven't just attended your own farewell party. 

My hope for all of us, me included, is that we truly live in the moment.  Let's embrace those around us by listening with ears to hear what they are actually saying.  Let's live our words instead of professing them and hope that the Lord doesn't make us only wear the titles we profess in life.

Treat each day as a day measured by a scale and pray that it reveals balance.

For me, balance is the beautiful moments that I was completely present wanting nothing but the joy of the moment which usually includes others.