Don't Sit Next to an Uncomfortable Chair

I just read a book about abundance and reciprocity, and I believe in it. 

As such, I think recent lessons learned should be shared. 

Coming in hot... Don't Sit Next to an Uncomfortable Chair. 

Please allow a clarification... 

Don't sit next to an uncomfortable chair if your goal isn't to sit alone. 

If you are one who desires connection (cue the age-old "I enjoy long walks on the beach"), you are at the beach (for the first time in two years), and you're with someone who isn't inclined to sit with you anyway...

Don't sit next to an uncomfortable chair. Your aloneness hardly deserves an explanation. You chose it.

May God be with all who are alone when they would rather not be, despite the seat they chose, and how content they seem in it. Amen.

Healing Wounds

I'm making houses out of old boxes with pretty paper, scraps of wood, old jewelry boxes, and Altoid tins. (I am glad I grew up "poor" - it is easy to find treasures in things bound for the trash.) 

It's raining and thundering, so my dog has desperately situated herself between my feet. 

She's trembling. 

I play my music to increase my pleasure and reassure her, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. She trembles on.

This reminds me of my own trembling at different times, not that long ago, and also of yesterday's lunch. 

A very admirable and faithful friend reminded me of the unfairness that my old wounds should impact an innocent person. (Innocent person=my husband.)

True. True.

But, wait. 

I feel incredibly honored to be my dog's safe place during a rainstorm. And I believe that what is harmed in relationship (or a thunderstorm - will I ever understand this?!) can be healed in relationship. 

My dog has settled in and so have I. What an honor to help one another heal... 

Just sayin'.

Top 5 . Thanks, 2025.

Feeling less reflective than most years, my thoughts land on a very-zoomed-out version of 2025. If you're interested, they are as follows:

• My Mom died in February but I'm not leaving her there. I'm bringing her with me.

• A puzzle can be your best friend when your son is a Marine at the same table, going through bins from his whole life at home, and on the brink of leaving again. The perfect tool when you're trying to be present, but not too, and distracted from all of those feelings, but not too...

Probably the hardest year of marriage, yet. (The competition is tough when it spans over decades.) We were closer to divorcing than ever before. Spending our 23rd wedding anniversary apart when we could have spent it together was a pretty good sign of the times. Probably not ideal, but still best. 

And guess what? I think we're closer than ever before. (I say I think because I'm still a little afraid to ask him, so we're going with it.) Anyway, didn't see that coming!

That's the thing, isn't it? We can't see the good coming around the corner. Even when we're well into the turn. 

Another BIG lesson. Which reminds me - in case I haven't said it, and I know I haven't, Thanks, 2025. 

Top 5 Takeaways from 2025 

1. Don't run away just because you don't know how to stay. 

2. What is best is often a long way away from what is ideal. But that makes a lot of sense when you are way past ideal in the first place.

3. It bears repeating...We can't see the good coming around the corner. Even when we're well into the turn. 

4. Use yourself as an untapped resource. We can feel as if we're actually dying if someone else doesn't meet our needs. We're literally wired this way in infancy! In adulthood, we must learn that we won't actually die, we have what we need (or can get it) and we can always help/comfort ourselves. 

5. Prayer for Generosity: Dear Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as You deserve; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not ask for reward, save that of knowing I am doing your will. Amen.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As for new beginnings, I propose thoughtful consideration of "Thus far..." or "This again?" 2025 saw me out with timely inspiration between my morning devotional and a Ricky Gervais comedy special. We run the gamut over here. 

2026 started similarly with mumbled conversation across rooms with our teenage son.

.... ... ... ... _______________10:00.

Did you say it's' only 10:00 or it's already 10:00? He answered "already" when pressed (but only because he didn't want to hear another lecture about wishing time away.)

Reminds me of a line in a book I read recently. Something like... Time - Nothing is more valuable nor regarded more cheaply. Preparation for Death by St. Ignatius, I think. Now that I think of it, I just might put that on my headstone.

Is 2026 going to be a thus far, this again, only, or already year? Probably D. All of the above.

God be with you and yours in 2026. Don't run away. We have what we need and there is endless good ahead...

No Place Like Home

Heading back to Texas in the rain could explain the water running down my face, but it doesn't. More accurately but incompletely, visiting the cemetery and Mom's best friend in her old room 167, does.

I guess I'm surprised at how much feeling at "home" in Kansas has to do with being hugged by and hanging out with my Mom.

We had lots of family, great food, hugs, bracelet-making, and football-watching at my Dad's, so it wasn't that there wasn't a lot of good and a lot of love in another home with a lot of great memories. There certainly was. 

I knew it was going to be hard and there was going to be a big void because I spent a lot more time with Mom than anyone else on my visits home, but I'm still surprised at how this feels like homesickness, for her. 

Many widowers have told me they lost their home when their wife died and just live in a house now. I think I'm closer to understanding.

Maybe I'm surprised because Mom lived in a nursing home for her last few years, our roles have been reversed for so long, and being with her always meant attending to a laundry list of things she wanted or needed, and usually right now. 

The lists were so long, I used to write them down so I could marvel at them later. I guess later is now. 

Here's one from my last visit with her, a month before she died:

Look for eye drops. Wash glasses with hot water and Dawn dish soap. Apples cut. Peanut butter on them. Window shade down. Water plants. Find necklace. Find earrings. Go through mail. Clean out text messages. 

Considerably shorter than when she lived alone in her apartment:

First 40 minutes:

Sweep up hominy (implied)

Pick up mail off floor (implied)

Empty pee bag

Put lid on toothpaste

Hang up sweaters (request for later)

Get jacket

Get bag

Close heater vent

Clean glasses

Wash inside of van window (request for later)

Open gum

Go to eyedoctor (request for later)

Get gas (request for later)

Another day:

Hi honey. I need you to...

Pull my shirt down on both sides and wash my glasses.

Get my zebra bag

Take vacuum off charger.

Get my phone off charger.

Put money in my wallet.

Pull my butt (x3) *Translation = reposition me in my wheelchair

Get my bangle bracelets

Move medical alert bracelet to other side

Get poncho

Put scarf on

I need my CPap put back on my bed, but I can ask Janet to do it...

Getting her from A to B was time consuming, even if she was on time, and you could bet against that with all of the money in the Publisher's Clearinghouse. 

It took four strong men to get her into any house and her colostomy, George, leaked at the most inconvenient times. Yes, including last Thanksgiving. She was in tears and just wanted to go home, but we made the best of it, and we're glad we did.

She wasn't talking about Heaven just then, but it would only be three more months until she got to go Home-home. 

She's nestled between a beautiful tree and her Mama. I am very happy for her, and closer to wanting the same thing for myself.

I am newly hopeful that I might, one day, have a similar holding in the hearts of my sons. Sizeable and significant, and if anything like me, quite surprising to them. 

No matter how messy, task-oriented, back-breaking, or upside-down it can get, there seems to be something untouchable about a Mom and her sacred role of introducing and orienting us to life. 

Roles might get reversed, but titles don't. She called me a lot of things (mostly good), but Mom was never one of them. That name-calling went one way, and one way only.

Here's to your Mom and my Mom, home, and the women who not only create it, but are it. Happy Thanksgiving. ❤️🌻

Goulash and Abandoned Tables

I'm standing in the kitchen, making my Mom's goulash recipe (in the same old pan she made it in) for the first time since she died, and in years actually. 

My husband doesn't care for it, but he is on his second week out of town, supporting search efforts for flood victims. My job is to keep things going here and to be grateful, which I am. And I am.

I realize how "white" this recipe is and cook the noodles in beef broth for an attempt at flavor. The miracle of this recipe is twofold. I remember it as delicious AND it doesn't have the staple of staples - cream of mushroom soup. 

My teenage son swoops in and out, shirtless, farting, and making animal sounds in a newly-empty-paper-towel-tube. 

Over my music playing, he shout-sings random lyrics that accompany a melody only he can hear in his solo earbud. 

I laugh and chase him off, but know I don't need to because he'll be gone soon enough. If he's anything like his big brothers, he'll have a girlfriend making steak on Saturday night or living another dream states away, in no time at all.

Just a few weeks ago, I took their kindergarten artwork down and hung up my Mom's in its place. Seasons are strange, but similar in brevity.

Last month, this same teen and I went kayaking. While he was fishing, I gravitated to our old stomping grounds. 

Once, there were swim diapers, mud fights, and free boats with plywood floors that had an excellent chance of needing to be towed back to shore. But that didn't discourage anyone enough to stay on the shore in the first place. 

It's closed to the public now and as I sat there alone, I remembered how often I wished I were alone when my kids were little. Being alone certainly comes, and my encouragement to all with littles, is try not to wish it away. The picnic table will not always be noisy and crowded.

First Responder's Wife

I am the wife of a first responder.

Our marriage has been swamped by every flood and hurricane and hit by every tornado, for more than 20 years. It is hanging on by a thread. The time we're going to be together is always just beyond the next crisis. 

We were on a pontoon boat in Oklahoma the morning of the 4th of July. On board: a distant man working on vacation, a teenage boy who speaks little (and with sarcasm when he does), and a woman's heart throbbing with hope and wild expectation that the time had finally come.

But no. 

There are details and conversations that don't change this one-time-too-many, and she broke.

I broke. 

My sons, Dad and stepmom, brothers and sister, in-laws, nieces and nephews, and their boyfriends and girlfriends all saw it. 

I sobbed off and on for hours and was unapproachable in between.

What is wrong with her?!?!

They suspect grief from losing my mom and mother-in-law in the past year, my son being away in the Marine Corps when he was supposed to be home on leave, hormones, or maybe an undiagnosed medical problem??????

They cannot see that hope deferred makes a heart sick, the way the conversation goes round-and-round, and where a woman's feelings find no place to go or land.

Logic stands opposed to any such display of feelings. It spreads its arms wide to keep us apart. Like a referee in a boxing ring. 

Not to keep us from killing each other. Just to make sure we don't get tangled up in any form of understanding or intimacy that lasts too long.

My husband and others are tempted to believe if I just had less feelings, more love, and more logic, my marriage would be thriving, instead of on the rocks.

Sensibility could politely excuse unnecessary (and embarrassing) spiraling and command every situation with great composure, dignity, and self-respect. 

Of course "he can't help it." Look at all of the good they're doing. This can't possibly be the time to think about yourself. 

And of course it can't. How barbaric and selfish can a woman be? 

I wish my overwheming pride around their exhaustive training, courage, and honorable work, and in the people who are doing it, and horror and grief at the suffering and mind-numbing loss of life would displace the newness and the oldness of 20 years of going it alone. 

I wish it did. 

It reminds me of a hospice patient we had once. She felt so bad and ashamed she couldn't stop wondering if those ugly bumps on her hands were cancer after the war in the Ukraine broke out.

So we move forward, in silence. Separately bewildered, bemoaning, and grieving what has happened to the innocent, and grateful he has to go to work as soon as we get home.

The time apart seems to be the only way we can stay together. 

And so I pray. For me. My husband. All first responders, their spouses and families, and all whom they are serving - where the real problems are. 

(Pic taken after spontaneous visit to church to pray for all of the above)

Beach Surprises

My home state, land-locked Kansas, probably helps the ocean affect me the way it does. 

It reminds me how much I love quiet because it is never quiet, and it makes my body feel small but not my mind. I find things where I don't expect them and the other way around.

How does a mighty ocean require no container and stay within its bounds? Pools, ponds, and lakes seem to require far more. 

How can a ship seem big - in the ocean? And how can you still almost not see it/them?  (Zoom in!) Begs the question of what else I am missing, albeit a little closer to home.

None of my business, except I happened to be hanging out on our rented porch. A man followed a woman around with a camera in one hand and a baby carrier in the crook of his arm. She walked away and back again, along the shore, into the water, looked back over her shoulder, sat down, stood up, bent her knee, put her hands on her hip, and on and on for what seemed like a really.long.time. My arm was getting tired for that guy. 

Probably a fleeting and unbidden moment of solidarity, but I never want to ask someone to take my picture again. 

Okay, last thing - Christmas trees! So much joy for the many who celebrate - with all of the wonder lights, presents, and tucked-away cats can bring... 

But that's not all. Another noble task awaits.

Thank you, Christmas trees. I want to take a page out of your book. (Sorry, very insensitive to reference paper. But thank you for that, too.) 

May being useful in death lessen the sting for us when it is our turn. Certainly, we'll be more generous.