Monthly Archives: February 2008

Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Home and Hearth, Music and Theatre, Uncategorized

Leave a Legacy

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The Grandmas and Selah 2

Originally uploaded by sarahgrace

Its number three on the aforementioned Bucket List; but right up there with number one on mine.
My three children are by far the greatest thing that has come out of this challenge and chaos called life.

They are not mine to buy and sell and use and own; but, they are mine to love, and to provide wings for. They are the primary recipients of the LEGACY I long to leave. A legacy that includes:
1) Plenty of music and musical opportunities
2) A classical education
3) Rewarding work ethic
4) The proper tools and gifts to help the tree grow in the way it is bent
5) Freedom to be oneself, who one is meant, by the Creator, to be
6) A well of memories and experiences to grow on
My professional friend has a large matted gold frame on her office wall. The frame proudly displays all the major accomplishments of her life: diplomas, professional licenses – and a portrait of her three children. I could not illustrate it better. Children are a heritage from the Lord. They are my life’s magnum opus. Children’s Children are the crown of old age. I must be old, because I have a three jeweled crown.

Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Home and Hearth, Music and Theatre, Uncategorized

Leave a Legacy

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The Grandmas and Selah 2

Originally uploaded by sarahgrace

Its number three on the aforementioned Bucket List; but right up there with number one on mine.
My three children are by far the greatest thing that has come out of this challenge and chaos called life.

They are not mine to buy and sell and use and own; but, they are mine to love, and to provide wings for. They are the primary recipients of the LEGACY I long to leave. A legacy that includes:
1) Plenty of music and musical opportunities
2) A classical education
3) Rewarding work ethic
4) The proper tools and gifts to help the tree grow in the way it is bent
5) Freedom to be oneself, who one is meant, by the Creator, to be
6) A well of memories and experiences to grow on
My professional friend has a large matted gold frame on her office wall. The frame proudly displays all the major accomplishments of her life: diplomas, professional licenses – and a portrait of her three children. I could not illustrate it better. Children are a heritage from the Lord. They are my life’s magnum opus. Children’s Children are the crown of old age. I must be old, because I have a three jeweled crown.

Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Home and Hearth, The Cabin, The Petty Pace, Uncategorized

Reflect (#1 on the Bucket List)

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Grandma MM

Originally uploaded by ein feisty Berg

“Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants…….The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word. But the worries of this life…choke it, making it unfruitful. Matthew 13:7 and 22.”

Over the past several years, I have repeatedly heard speakers lamenting and pointing out the fact that houses are no longer designed with front porches on which to sit and talk with family and neighbors at the end of the day. Companionable reflection rarely happens in our activity laden or television choked lives.

When we moved to the cabin, the porch, or deck, was rather rickety and precarious. Doug reinforced and replaced the pile and beam supports. I bought two patio benches for our anniversary the first year. For a few years we made a nightly habit of sitting and reflecting on the trials and successes of each day. It was a good habit. Reflection is healthy; for the individual and for relationships. By and by the worries and cares of life choked out this reflection time. Once again the struggle to survive became all consuming.

Now I am once again in a place, a time, of reflection as I work on my book and “feel my pain.”

In a previous post, I quoted Christian Counselor, Maryellen Stipe as saying (in part)
“When you fill your life and brain with obsessing … fixing …you mood alter on that (worrying, catastrophising, planning to control the chaos, etc) and you do not feel your own pain, or take care of the issues in your own life. You are so busy living someone else’s life that you don’t live your own life or dreams or purpose”

Reflection.  Reflecting on the pain and the joys in life.  Getting emotionally, mentally, spiritually healthy.  Definitely on my list of 10 things I want to do before I die.  How about this year?

Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Music and Theatre, Religion, Uncategorized

The Bucket List

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Definitely, it goes on my list of movies I want to see.  It is also reminiscent of my thinking and Blog writing of last year at this same time, Ten Things I Want to Do Before I Die. 

On Sunday morning I heard a “Bucket List” message at church, complete with trailers from said movie.  The speakers said that a survey was taken of folks in their 90s. Following are the top 5 items on the bucket lists of those elders:

1)       Reflect more

2)       Live life like it is an adventure

3)       Leave a Legacy

4)       Give other people Joy

5)       Have Joy in my own life 

Not bad.  I kinda like that list; in fact, I think I will reflect on it in the coming days and see how well it fits my current list of Ten Things I Want to Do Before I Die.  

Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Religion, The Petty Pace

Here’s to an Addiction Free New Year!

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 Information you need to know from Christian Counselor and Life Coach, Maryellen Stipe:

Caretaking can be an addiction, an addiction to other people’s problems.  When you fill your life and brain with obsessing on other people’s issues and fixing them you mood alter on that (worrying, catastrophising, planning to control the chaos, etc) and you do not feel your own pain, or take care of the issues in your own life.  You are so busy living someone else’s life that you don’t live your own life or dreams or purpose. This is why co-dependents are called “co” dependents—they are also dependent or hooked on the addiction of their significant person.  Taking on the role of savior in another person’s life is intoxicating because the co-dependent feels so powerful and comforts himself or herself with what a good person (s)he is to look after this loser in her life.  Caretaking is one of the legal addictions of Christians.  It can seem noble but it also steals one’s life away.  Instead of taking her (or his) cues from the Lord about how to live her life, the co-dependent takes her cues from the problem person.  The co-dependent’s life orbits around the problem person rather than around the Lord.  God’s Lordship in his / her life is diminished.  The co-dependent is not free to obey God’s bidding.  He / She lives life focused on the problem (s) of the significant other.  This kind of activity is modeled in many Christian homes and passed on to generations

Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams, Poetry and Prose, Uncategorized

Writer’s Irony

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Cherry Quill 2

Originally uploaded by ein feisty Berg

In the desert town where I grew up and where I am now domiciled; there is an old Indian legend which says that the Native Americans (Ute tribe), as they were being pushed out by white settlers, left a curse that anyone born here might leave; but would always have to return.

Well, here I am, back home again and living a writer’s irony that rivals that of a science fiction author. I have heard repeatedly that good science fiction is like prophecy and tends to come true in the future. I do not write Science Fiction so I presume I am exempt from living my plot, digging my own grave, or pre-engraving my own tombstone.

Good fiction of any nature is often based on fact or experience; so you could say that my narrative came true in the past rather than the future. I think of relational, narrative, fiction as a sort of unknown author’s memoir. Much more is probably true than the reader imagines (only the names have been changed to protect the innocent-or the guilty).

I am now 136 pages into my novel, and I know the final page. The main character hops a plane and moves toward her future in Seattle. My original plan had been to spend these 5 months writing in Seattle. I have always loved Seattle and thought it would be rather quaint to wrap up the plot there. A sudden turn of events rerouted me to the desert. Rerouted me on the heals of scripting the protagonist to say, “I promptly joined the Symphony Guild.”
Guess what I did this morning, gentle reader? I knowingly, intentionally, joined the Symphony Guild – the new and improved, 22 years more experienced, but none the less, same guild that was the model for that chapter of the book. I have been here before, I know the script. Now I see it with the eyes of the next generation. Last week my old friend Charlie commented on this very blog site. Guess whom I had just caricatured and morphed into someone else in the preceding pages?

So explain to me again how I ended up here in déjà vu land?
I WASN’T BORN HERE. I AM NOT UNDER THE CURSE.