Living Life

I haven't been here much lately. I have been focused on living and loving my life. Life has fallen into a gentle rhythm that is really working for our family at this time. I am avoiding analyzing it or exploring it too deeply. I am just being with it so to speak.

Recently, I realized I live a calm, mundane life. I will let you in a little secret, I really like it that way. I do. For years I thought conflict and wildly swinging emotions were passion and creativity. The truth, for me, could not be further from that chaotic, frenetic existence. I have found true peace, passion, and creativity within the quiet moments of my life. Each day I run a little, do alot of yoga, spend time laughing and cuddling with my babies and snuggling with my husband at night. Each day I knit a little, write for awhile, read something delicious, and slowly and calmly breathe in the flavor and scent of life. It is amazingly glorious in its simplicity.

Will it stay just this way? Of course, not. Do I want it to? Not really, a stagnant life quickly loses its joy and breadth of experience. I want to continue to experience and savor life as it comes, each day as it will be.

I am sure I will find, very soon, the need to express myself to others. That familiar companion will press me more greatly than it does at this moment. And then I will return here to share myself and my life with those of you who care to share with me.

Until then, I am just breathing, just living, just being, and just loving.

But What Do YOU Want?

So this entire post has come from the HGTV show "House Hunters" and a quote from Epicurus. Now how cool, groovy, and esoteric is that?? I am simply fascinated with the ubiquitous fascination of stainless steel appliances on "House Hunters". This couple will walk into a gorgeous kitchen, usually stating they never cook, look around and say, "Oh but the appliances aren't stainless. That is just a deal breaker!". I sit there thinking, "Really??? Why?? Have you tried to keep stainless looking good especially with children? Impossible. THIS is your deal breaker??". It makes no sense. And then the quote from Epicurus, "If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires." All in all some pretty good stuff.

But then I started thinking. What if isn't our desires that cause so much strife and anxiety but the desires that we have been socially conditioned to accept as what everyone should want or more insidious, what the "good life" entails? What if keeping up with the Jones is what is really getting us, and keeping us, down?

I think we can all agree that several decades of relentlessly and ruthlessly attempting to keep up with that proverbial family has landed us all into serious hot water. If not you personally, then the country in general. The mindless pursuit of wealth and status has led to a staggering number of foreclosures, respossesions, sky high credit card bills, and bankruptcys. Even more sad, it is has led to divorce, depression, families ripped apart, and suicide. Remember, this is the "good life".

So I challenge you to really think about what you really want. If you take away all the commercials, ads, and adult peer pressure, what would actually make you happy and bring you true peace?

I will tell you what I want. I want a house full of love, laughter, gentleness, and joy. I want my children to run and laugh with abandon inside the house. I don't want no-no rooms or things lying around that would be tragic if they were broken in a game of don't touch the floor.

I don't want an impressively beautiful home. I want a home that is warm, lovely, and quirky. I want you to take off your shoes because you are are comfy and snug not because you might mess something up. I want a home full of hospitality. I hope my home will be the place deep relationships are born and nurtured. A place where you know you can come to laugh, share your joys, cry when your heart is breaking, or lean on a strong shoulder when you just can't do it alone anymore. I don't want it to be a showcase of all my fancy material stuff.

I want a home filled with ideas. I want passionate and lively discussion not zombies in front of a huge flat screen tv. I want books passed around, digested, and dissected. I want to hear arguments over what Shakespeare really meant by....

I want yummy, healthy food. I want friends to stop by for a quick bowl of hearty soup. I want dinner parties full of joy and friendship. Not formal affairs, but casual craziness that finds people on the floor, the couch, the sunroom, wherever.

I want a car that can handle muddy trips to the creek. I see tired babies falling asleep after a day of adventure and exploration. Their dreams are of all the wonderful things they have seen not momma screaming because the precious interior of the car might get dirty.

I don't want a Wii. Nope not at all. I don't want a game system to simulate experiences. I would much rather play tennis with my children, take them bowling, hula hoop with them outside. There is no need to pretend if you really do it. In addition, I want to be active in general. I want long family hikes. I want to play without inhibition on the playground with my children. I want to race together when we are older.

I desperately want my children to know that it is NOT necessary to always give your best and your all to any endeavor. I want them to learn that sometimes good enough IS good enough. I hope they learn that not striving for perfection can be much healthier and leave more time and energy for other things. Be the best all the time often leads to adults desperately overcoming perfection and self confidence issues.

I want my children to be open and willing to try new things and fail gloriously. I want them to try the piano even if they are tone deaf. I want them to understand that parents who scream and berate their children to constantly succeed at all costs are....wrong and sad.

I want a family that love God with all their mind, all the heart, all the strenth, with all their all. I want a house laid back enought to fingerpaint and make paper mache messes, to create. I want a family who shares close bonds, love, laughter, tears, fears, joys, and sorrows without shame or derision. I want friends who are family and family who are friends.

Truthfully, I am extraordinarily bless that I already have most of my wants. Some days are better than others. Some days I get caught up in wanting some nonsense a well paid ad executive told me to want. But most days, this is what I want and I praise God because this is what I have. So I aske you, what do you want?

I Want to Train for Cirque du Soleil

Okay, I ran into another blog post over at A Whole Lot of Hoop Love (sorry I can't figure out how to embed and I am excited about my subject) about the things she wants to do to be a circus performer. I totally get where she is coming from with this. I really do. You see, I have a whole plan laid out on my journey to train for Cirque du Soleil. Do I think I am going to get there?? Well of course not, I am an almost 40 year old women with two small children. I am neither young/flexible enough nor free from responsibilities enough to run off to join any circus. But the journey, oh my the journey will be AMAZING!! I already hoop and I will take classes for my doubles and minis soon. I want to learn more poi over the summer. I intend to take belly dancing lessons soon. And then the coolest, coolest part, AERIALS! Bumbershoots here in St Louis has classes for both aerial silks and aerial hoop. Hubs says go for it!! (Love, love that man. He truly is coolest hubs evah!!!!) So that is my plan for the next 6 months or so, to explore the creative and physical side of the circus-y type arts. They are so elegant, beautiful, and let's be honest, downright gorgeous. It is just the kind of beauty in my life and my world that makes me happy. I just had a morning with my amazing friend Sarah. Seriously, she is one of the most beautiful and light filled souls I have ever met. My week is better from the visit. I know my life is better because of the friendship. Anyhoo, we were discussing my let's call it gregarious and inhibition free personality. I wasn't always like this. I used to be caught up in the world and the rat race that so aptly describes it. I used to think I will be happy and really start living my life when... oh fill in the blank. It didn't matter what is is but it held me back. One day I thought, I am done. I am living today for today and living a life that I am proud of and makes me happy. And that is what I did. And now what makes me proud and happy is to train to be a circus performer. I love my life. It is so cool to me.

Cultivating Friendships

It is less than two weeks before my first half marathon, my first race ever. I am very excited. I am running 12 miles this weekend but the thing is, I am ready. I am surprised but there you are. I don't know how fast or amazing I will be but I am ready. Actually, I will be pretty amazing to me because I am going to run 13.1 miles and that is pretty fabulous to me. I have a hard time believing it is real. But it is very real. So what next? That is the question right? I like what knowing what is next. It gives me comfort. In reality, I am fairly flexible and okay with my plans changing but I still like a plan, a rough map so to speak. The next stage is presenting itself in all its alliterative glory, "Family, Friends, and Fun". Not the most original perhaps but it is important to me. What does it mean exactly? Two things are a part of the foundation of this plan that make appear to be unrelated at first glance but I believe them to be critical. First, I am committing to a 60 day yoga challenge. Each day I will do at least 20 minutes of yoga. I hope to do much more but I want to make a realistic challenge. After all, I have two littles who very much need my attention. The second is all about the food. We are looking to really clean up our diet. We, hubs and I, are focusing on lots of fresh veggies and fruit with as much locally grown as possible. In fact, we are going to do some container gardening ourselves. We desire to follow as closet to a whole foods diet as possible with little to no processed food. Including within that statement is the idea that causes me a great deal of trepidation, saying good bye to white and brown sugar for the duration. It could be 30 days, 60 days, or who knows. I do know that I have an addiction to sugar and this is the only way to clean it from my system. What do the above two things have to do with a summer of "Food, Family, and Fun"? Well, I have known for awhile that I am slightly off center of the place a desire to be in my life. I don't like the word balance. It implies perfection to me and I am learning to revel in my glorious imperfect nature. Perhaps I can call it the center of my life. It is the place I am healthiest, happiest, and most at peace. It brings me calm. I like it there, its nice. It is also the best starting point for any endeavor I may undertake. Yoga and healthy, nourishing foods are two of the greatest helps to get there. This summer is important to me although it may seems fanciful or just another way to follow my bliss. Connections and relationships are of utmost important in our lives. I am coming to believe that although technology brings a great deal of information, help, and enables us to do things that just a few years ago were unthinkable, it also is creating distance and disharmony in our lives. I want to close those gaps and feel harmony again. I intend to actively pursue quality within my relationships. This intention is both for friends and family. I intend to eshew much of the technology in my home and focus instead and companionship and building friendships. I want to take the time to really get to know some just amazing people in my life. I have not decided how this will unpack, exactly. With so much of the everyday workings of my life on the computer, it is hard to get rid of it for any extended period of time. I do think it will be regulated to very limit use. Some days any screen time will be verboten. I desire to live my life more in reality than online. I want to take this time to refresh myself and revitalize my passions. This summer I hope my joie de vivre will explode and the result will turn the ordinary magical.

Finding My Place in the Circle

Hooping. I love it. I truly do. Hooping has giving me more than I could have imagined. Last summer, I was toying with the idea of poi. Through researching poi, I discovered hooping and hoop dance. I thought it would be a cool, quirky thing to play with so I gave it a whirl. I ordered my first adult size hoop from Hoopnotica and signed up for beginning lessons with the St Louis Hoop Club. And my love affair was born.

From the first moment, I found hooping to be this amazing, zen thing. I would start the hoop around my waist and the cares and troubles of the day fall away. I found peace in the rhythmic movement. I hooped outdoors so it meant I spent a greater amount of time outside and with nature. I have hooped to some amazing sunsets and a couple of incredible sunrises. Each one was a gift to behold.

Hooping challenges me in many ways. First, it is great physical exercise. It tones and shapes your core like nothing else. It has also given me a flexibility and suppleness of movement I have not experienced for two decades at least. Another challenge is the myriad and infinite variety of tricks to be learned and mastered. Some are quite easy, others are hard, and some are downright painful to learn. The final challenge hooping has presented me with is the ability to let go of my inhibitions, lose myself in the music and the dance, and just hoop unfettered by fears such as someone could be watching or judging. Just open my heart and let my soul sing with the rhythm it finds. Amazing.

I attended a Fusion Movement Seminar today. It was an experience I shall savor in coming days. A group of forty or so people that were willing to look like fools, drop props, and be silly all in the name of discovering movement. Hooping and learning with this group was freeing. We played with hoops, mini hoops, staffs , and finally, at long last, my poi. I played with poi for the first time today. Of course, the first thing I did was smash myself in the nose...really hard. Pain gave way to numb which turned back to pain and then dissolved into laughter. You get bruises playing with flow toys. You get bruises when your neighbor flings their toy into you. It is the way of learning. I now of a cool floral Hawaiian looking pair of poi to play with.

The greatest gift my hoop practice has given me is a comfort with myself that was fleeting before now. I am more at home with my own physicality than I have ever been. I am more assured being the person I truly am. I am far more comfortable in my own skin. There has truly been a fusion in my life bringing many aspects together to progress further on the path I am meant to follow. So I will continue my journey to find my place in the circle.

Permission To Grow and Flourish

There is a wonderful blog out there http://www.theorganicsister.com/. Tara is such a cool and fascinating woman. I love her honestly and the authentic way she lives her life. Recently, she wrote a blog about the things she is going to give herself permission to do. I absolutely love the idea. I did my own list. I copied a few of hers but I doubt they will be lived out the same way so I thought that would be okay.

Here is my list:
1.Wear clothes that make me feel amazing and beautiful. I am getting rid of the last remnents of soccer mom clothes in my wardrobe. It is so not me! I love gauzy cottons, joyful silks, beautiful colors, and I will admit it, sparkles. Somewhere along the line I unconsciously bought into the idea that I had to wear some specific mom uniform. This appears to have been tied in with the fact that my next birthday I switch decades. Well, I don't care anymore. I am a momma, I am almost 40, and I am going to wear sparkly, rainbow fairy wings if I want to!
2. Pursue hooping as if it were my profession. I don't want to be a professional hooper but I want my passion to be at the same level. Hooping has been a gift from God to me. There are few activities that give me more pleasure, more unadulterated joy, more hope and freedom than hooping does. I want to pursue this art with all the passion and zeal it deserves in my life. I hope to become amazing in this to me.
3. Stop justifying our parenting. We are really different parents than most around us. We practice attachment parenting, we believe in grace based discpline, we don't spank or use shame to motivate our children, we don't use cio, we cosleep, I practice extended breast feeding, you get it, we are pretty crunchy in our approach. This upsets alot of people. Well, I am not going to justify this anymore. We have prayed, researched, talked, thought, on and on and on. There is not one thing we do with our children that has not been well thought out by both John and me. These are our decisions for our family and that is all there is to that.
4. Do nothing. This is so ridiculously hard for me. I am always jumping up and down like a jack rabbit on a sugar high. It keeps me more wound up than I think is good. I am going to make a conscious effort to learn to sit and do nothing. I want to laze out in the backyard and watch my babies play. I want to curl up on the couch and just listen to my husband withou seeing a to do list over his shoulder. I was to learn to truly rest and relax. I want to be calmly present.
5. Learn to be okay with a messy house. I am a recovering perfectionist. It is not healthy at all. I think this practice will lead to more joy in the lives of me and my children. I do not like that often I see the mess rather than the fun. I practiced this today and it was wonderful. We had such a good time.
6.Surround myself with joy, beauty, and inspiration. This definately includes people! These are the things I plan to seek this year. There are some amazing people in my life and I truly hope to know them much more deeply during the coming days.
7. Fearlessly live up to my potential. This year I am going for it more than I ever have. I am jumping into the abyss and learning as I go. You may want to stand back if you are near me, it could get messy.
8. Revise, add, or takeaway from this list as I see fit. Because this is really what it is all about. I am giving myself permission to be free. If something isn't working, I want to change it and move on. No reason to fuss and flutter about, just revise and get going again.

What about you? Are there things you need to givc yourself permission to do this year? Do you feel the same longing to set yourself free? Are you going to do it?

Year of Eucharisteo?

For some time now I thought of the coming year as the year of facing and overcoming my fears. I do that. I give the coming year a theme. I don't do resolutions or even goals, not really. I just decide what I want to work on in the next 12 months. So that has been the name of 2011. You can imagine my surprise when my heart said, "Nope, I don't think so. I don't like it." Of course my brain argued, "But its been decided! The invitations have been sent and the napkins are printed." With absolutely no remorse my heart replied, "Don't care. Don't like it." My heart won.

I fully intend to face life and my fears head on this year and hopefully, every year to come. But I understand where my heart was going. It seems wrong to give my fears, the very things I am determined to shred to utter insignificance, that kind of pomp and importance. Why put my fears up on the pedestal of my year theme? Just trounced them, put them in there place, and be done with them already. Why not focus on something positive and joy giving? My heart wants to live in the yes not the no.

Not only did my heart shrink from the fear title, there was already another idea on the horizen. I like it much better. It is about gratitude, joy, and love. It is about living a life of yes. It is about eucharisteo. Isn't that an amazing word? It is greek. It means to give thanks. And that is what I want to spend my year doing, giving thanks.

We are blessed beyond measure. We truly are. If I am honest, and I do try to be, we are blessed with an embarrassment of riches. I often am surprised and delightly to realize my life is this good. It is not the life dreamed of because it is better than anything I dreamed of. I have an amazing husband, gorgeous and wonderful children, family that loves me, friends that stand by me, more food and stuff than I could ever need, and God's infinite grace, mercy, and love. I am seriously blessed. And I want to spend this next year giving thanks for it all.

Another thing I intend to focus on is paying special attention to the relationships in my life. I am sad to say, I take them for granted. I want to give them the love and energy they deserve. I have some amazing people in my life. I hope to take special care to love and nurture them. Ihope to develop deeper relationships with my friends and family. I want to know John, Hannah, and Logan more intimately. They are incredible people and more fascnating with each passing day.

Living the life of yes. I long to have a yes face, spirit, and heart. I want to be more intentional and say yes much more often, especially with my beautiful babies. We all know that yes often brings with it alot of mess! But that is okay, it is good. I want my children to have the freedom to explore and create. I want them to remember a happy, messy childhood with a momma who embodied the spirit of adventure and openness.

I intend to be more present. I read an awesome essay the other day that we rob today if we are fixated on the things of the past we cannot change or become too focused on the futre that has not, and perhaps will not come. Each moment is fleeting and shall never come again. Each moment is a precious gift from God. I pray I will learn to savor and celebrate these moments. I pray to remember that those ordinary moments are often extraordinary moments under a thin layer of disguise begging to be discovered.

Finally on a purely personal note, I intend to explore the joy of movement as much as possible. I hope to hoop more and include as many other flow toys as possible in my life. I was gifted a pair of mini poi hoops for Christmas. I am so excited to learn to work with them. I am going to a movment workshop in a couple of weeks and one of the cool things is I will get a poi set (not hoops). I hope to learn aerial exercises and experience antigravity yoga. I am eager to discover what my body can do if I allow it the necessary freedom. Playing with flow and movement has given me more joy, more peace, and more happiness than I could have even imagined. It has encouraged me to find the rhythym of my breath and my heart. It has taught me about the beautiful, flowing rhythym of life. It has been an amazing gift.

This is my Year of Eucharisteo. This is the year to celebrate and give thanks for the blessings covering my life. So, what does your heart long to do this year? Is there something buried deep wanting your attention? Maybe something not so practical but beautiful none the less? Do you have the courage to follow your heart in the coming year and enjoy the adventure and journey along the way?