Captured in the Moment

Lessons in the Stream of Life

Tag Archives: love


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Time Out

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Photo Credit: Christina Bynum-Breaux, Simply Black and White Photography, Keller, Texas

When my boys were little, I worked hard to teach them how to resolve their differences without hitting one another or seeking out parental support for their cause against the other. If they fought, I would place them both in time out and ask them to think about a solution to their issue that could make them both happy. My goal was to forge a stronger relationship between the two of them and to teach them positive resolution skills.

I think of this today as all of humanity is facing the single biggest threat to our lives, both literally and figuratively. This COVID-19 virus is pulling the rug out from under every foundation that has held us up, and we are quickly finding that those foundations have been built on sand. Our jobs have disappeared overnight. Our health is threatened by sharing the air we breathe with the person standing next to us. We are fighting among ourselves for food, toilet tissue, sanitizers, and more.

Like my boys when they tussled, we have a choice to continue divided or to find common ground. At this moment in time, we’re all in time out together – rich and poor, Republican and Democrat, black, white, or brown. Whether we want to accept it or not yet, we are on the same team. And teams don’t successfully make their way down the court or the field without a unified effort. Our very survival depends more upon our ability to support one another and work out solutions than on winning or losing as individuals.

Our world and the human beings that inhabit it have become so broken, and I can’t help but wonder if a crisis like this isn’t nature’s way of correcting our path – of shining a light on the fact that our selfishness and the divisions we’ve created with our unyielding stances are killing our bodies, our souls, and our planet. We have to stop waiting on someone else to fix it and take responsibility for making a conscious contribution to healing by taking the small step, every time we are faced with a me versus you choice, to choose us.

My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action. 1 John 3:18

Be always humble, gentle, and patient. Show your love by being tolerant with one another. Do your best to preserve the unity which the Spirit gives you by means of the peace that binds you together. Ephesians 4:2-3


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Hitting the mom jackpot

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Photo Credit: Simply Black & White Photography, Keller, Texas

Some days you just feel like you’ve pulled the arm on a coin slot machine and silver dollars are pouring all over your feet! That’s how Mother’s Day was for me yesterday, and I wasn’t even in town to spend it with my boys.

Instead, I’m away enjoying the generosity of my husband and anticipating a photography workshop several hours away from home. Since my youngest couldn’t be home from college in time for the big day, we had already decided to consolidate our Mother’s Day and Father’s Day celebrations in June, so I skipped out of town a couple of days early to visit a close friend that lives near my destination. Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting much to happen. Mother’s Day was on pause as far as I was concerned.

Maybe that’s why the flowers and text from my youngest son, phone call from my oldest son, and text from one of my shared sons lit up my sky like the 4th of July. (Isn’t that a line in a song?) It’s hard to express how blessed and overflowing your heart can feel at all the goodness in your life sometimes – just like those coins pouring from the slot machine. It just keeps flowing out in a stream that puddles at your feet and grows into mounds the longer it goes.

It’s the next day, and I still feel the glow of the gratitude to have such loving and giving young men call me mom. I’m grateful for their love and their appreciation for all I’ve given them over the years. In return, I am grateful to them for being one of the most significant sources of refinement that I have ever had. I doubt they will ever know the many gifts that they have given me that have molded me into a far better person than I ever was when I held them (or met them-I’ve been blessed with an extra helping of shared sons) for the first time.

For me, the true blessing in motherhood is in understanding that the experience will forever change me in ways that I never could have anticipated. I am a better human being thanks to the joys and challenges of being a mother.

 


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Man’s search for meaning

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I know – I’m stealing the title of a very famous book (Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, 1946) as the header for this post, but it’s the one that fits. I haven’t yet read it to know if I’m stealing his ideas, so I’ll risk being repetitive. All I know is that we all look for it at one time or another – that sense of purpose that makes life on this Earth mean something.

I ran across a quote from an old blog post by Terri Savelle Foy today that really made me think about purpose and about how many of us may have missed the boat on our own purpose by buying into the belief that our contributions only matter if we’ve done them on a large scale – you know, been famous for saving a corner of the world in some way that makes newspaper headlines. It made me wonder how many days I’ve wasted and left no positive footprint. I asked myself a big what-if question – what if our most important purpose is in the day-in and day-out kindness we offer to loved ones and strangers?

The more I think about it, the more right that option feels, and it helps me to see how we can all have so much more influence than we are led to believe. What if we helped that frazzled mom quiet her crying baby instead of scowling at her in anger for failing to control it? What if we smiled at people and looked them in the eye, acknowledging their presence, instead of passing them by as if they are invisible? What if we held the door for the person behind us? What if we told them they had the most beautiful color of blue eyes we’d ever seen?

We don’t have to be rich or have lots of free time. We don’t have to have any extra resources except for being present and being mindful that we have a choice to be kind or a choice to be hurtful in that split second of our encounter. What if our choice to be kind changes the whole trajectory of someone else’s day? I think of the times that I’ve been the recipient of someone else’s kindness, and my heart kind of swells at the realization of how often I have the opportunity to make a difference in another person’s life with one small act, word or expression. I don’t want to waste any more days being caught up in things that won’t matter when I’m gone. I want the time I have left on Earth to count, so before I run out of it, I’m making a commitment to look up and to participate in a positive way. I get more clarity all the time – we only have one chance to make a difference in the right now. Just do it! (Yes, I’m stealing again – this time from Nike, but it fits.)

                         Your life is precious. Every single day you live is a day recorded in history never to be relived again.

Terri Savelle Foy

 

 

 


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We may never pass this way again

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Post, Texas April 16, 2016

Several years ago, I began making more road trips than I ever have – visits to my parents, moving kids to and from college, weddings, funerals, and girl trips with my friends. Most of my travel is getting to some place for a specific purpose and then turning around for home – definitely nothing to get too excited about! But this last couple of years, I’ve started to wonder more about the places I visit as well as the stops along the way. I find the lure of the billboard advertising “the best thumbprint cookies in Texas” almost too much to pass up, and I find myself veering off the highway more and more often to indulge those little wonderings.

Over time, I’ve come to appreciate taking the road less traveled when opportunity allows. My excursions tack a little extra time on to my trips, but I take a lot of pleasure in finding the occasional treasure along the brick-paved streets of long-abandoned downtowns, the beautiful detail of historic buildings, and the faded paint of advertisements on the brick walls of buildings. If I’m lucky, I find a local cafe, a bakery  or a cute little place to shop to help break up the drive. I figure I may as well see what there is to see while I’m in the neighborhood.

In the back of my mind, I hear the words to an old Seals and Crofts song, We May Never Pass This Way Again. I am reminded that life is short and that I must make a conscious choice to seek joy in each day lest I get lost in the monotony of my routines. For me, this means taking everything in and avoiding the temptation to take it all for granted as I speed through life. It means stopping to feed my curiosity on the road and at home – by seeing what is around me and enjoying something every day that I’ve never noticed before.


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I have something to tell you…

Andrew & DogsThe fabric of our family was torn when my oldest nephew lost his battle with mental illness, depression and alcoholism and took his life as the days of January came to a close. Our loss is fresh – our hearts are laid open and overshadowed with grief on a daily basis. I trust that it will ease as the days pass, but in the meantime I’m searching for a silver lining in a very dark cloud. I’m unwilling to believe that Andrew’s death will leave us with nothing more than a heavy heart and a profound guilt that we might have done something to change his path.

I know if I linger in my sadness, I will be swallowed up in the darkness, but I also know he would be devastated for any of us to get lost in the awful place that took the light from his eyes and left him hopeless. So, I’m asking myself what he would want me to take away from this loss in these days following his death. He and I spent a lot of our time together pondering the essence of life and happiness.

Lately I feel moved to connect and reconnect with the people I care about. Somehow I feel he’s urging me to have no regrets as I move forward. He’s inviting me to get real and share thoughts and feelings with the important people in my life before it’s too late.

And so, I have something to tell you…you know who you are, I hope.

I’m sorry that I’ve let the busyness of life overtake me for so long. I never meant to get lost in it and lose my ties with you. Nor did I mean to make you feel like you were less important to me. I am beginning to understand that commitment to the things of this world has limits, and relationship priorities should trump all else.

I love you with all my heart and soul. You are my family. You are my friend. I wish I’d told you more often. I promise I will say it more in the days to come.

You give my life texture, richness and meaning. Without you, I am less me. We are interwoven as intricately as any tapestry through our relationship and our experiences.

You challenge me to be a better person even when you don’t know it or I’m not willing to admit it.

I’m so proud of you for all of your accomplishments and the person you are.

I forgive you and myself for the things we’ve said or done that have come between us. I no longer wish to hold on to the petty things that divide us. I relinquish my need to be right for my need to have you in my life.

There is more to be said – more than I can cover in the text of this post. I promise you I will say it as we move forward.

Andrew, if you can hear me or see this, I love you. I have always loved you, and I am grateful that we connected so deeply over the past few years. I wish I could have helped you more and told you one last time just how precious you are to me. You have made my life deeper, wider, more colorful, fun, understanding, and loving by being in it.

If there are guardian angels out there, I trust that you are watching over your flock of family and friends and guiding us through the pain of living life without your smile and your goofy laugh. It’s the picture I hold and the sound I hear when I think of you…our beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy. We miss you.

In memory of our lunches, our yoga sessions and the hours of philosophical discussions, I leave with the words of one of our favorite authors:

“Your time on this earth is a gift to be used wisely. Don’t squander your words or your thoughts. Consider that even the simplest actions you take for your lives matter beyond measure…and they matter forever.” ~ Andy Andrews