June 28, 2010 @ 6:13 am | Filed under: Soul Food,The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me

I try to write down my day’s agenda early in the morning, before anything can possibly happen to alter… The Plan.  I  do love a good plan, and  when it comes together all smooth and delightful, well – that is one good feeling!

It throws me off to have it wrecked before midmorning. So the past week has been a challenge in flexibility and in “going with the flow.”

All of which is good for the soul.

Or it at least sounds as though it should be good for the soul anyway.

Instead of doing a load of whites on Monday, towels on Tuesdays, spending 3-4 hours writing each morning, I’ve been learning the art of simply sitting. Sometimes I sit and wait for my grandfather to eat. Sometimes I wait for him to finish a story. Sometimes I wait for him to wake up. Sometimes I wait for him to walk with slow, halting steps across the room.

And sometimes I wait for nothing more than another moment to learn a little more about this man who loves me so much.

Although this might not be the week to ask him just how much he loves me. I’m the one asking him multiple times a day if he’s drinking enough water, or if he’s hungry. I’m the one handing out medicine and cautioning him to use his walker and that I think it’s time to take a breathing treatment.

But I’m also the one on the receiving end of some really great stories and the one who’s caught a twinkle in his eye a time or two. I’m the one who’s seen frustration, anger, and sadness – manifested by unshed tears- all swiped away hurriedly by shaking, wrinkled hands, and this completely melts me.

These days don’t call for The Plan or any plan.  These days ask simply for acceptance. For each moment to be acknowledged and embraced because it exists and it is important.

Not all days work out according to The Plan, and perhaps that’s what makes each morning’s new mercies even better.

Tags: daily agendas, living simply, plans

June 24, 2010 @ 7:35 am | Filed under: Soul Food,Uniquely Me

We’re on the brink of another sacred weekend, those all-too-precious 48 hours of togetherness, and it’s always a lovely feeling. On Friday nights, an aura enters our home – and although I’ve never quite been able to put a name to it, I think it’s just an extra dose of love.

We hoard our weekends like little treasures, and while sometimes I think we should be making efforts to visit interesting places or socialize more with friends, the truth is that home is our favorite place to spend time. And when we’re both there…it’s pure perfection.

I have all these dreams of making home the best place possible on this earth. Like citrusy-smelling candles and open windows in the springtime and soft music, dim lights, and living room picnics on long winter evenings.

Home is where you hang your heart. Where it goes to seek refuge from the beating it may take from the outside world during the week. Where it finds solace from the winds of adversity.

And where it recharges so that – when it emerges from the walls of home again – it is able to operate at full capacity, giving and caring for all the duties and responsibilites that make up a productive life.

So home is not confined to a house, to a building with four walls and a roof. Instead home is where the heart is. With the people we love and the ones who love us back.

I’m not “at home” this week, nor will I be this weekend.

And yet my heart is preparing for another sacred weekend anyway. Because it doesn’t matter where we are, or who we’re with, my heart is most at home when the work week comes to an end and MJ’s week on the road comes to a close.

We won’t be in the place we’ve lovingly turned into a home that we adore this weekend, and instead he’ll join me here at my parents’. Where he’ll help me prepare meals, spend long amounts of time in conversation with my grandfather, and more than likely feel less than comfortable sleeping in a bed that is not his own. And yet…

…our hearts will be at home.

Tags: home, living simply

September 3, 2009 @ 6:49 am | Filed under: Family,he said she said,Uniquely Me

“The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.” - Frederick Beuchner
_____________________________
(journal entry from mid-May)

Tonight was a quiet evening. We sat in our (now) small living area – Mike in his chair, with his computer (doing sales call reports) and me in my spot on the sofa, with my computer (doing homework.) It was just a few minutes before nine when there was a knock on the door.

I think it startled us both. In the couple of weeks we’ve been here, we’ve not seen many people, let alone knocking on our door.

Mike set his computer aside and went to the door. Even though he was less than twenty feet away, I could neither see nor hear our visitor. I could only hear Mike’s side of the conversation.

“No, thanks, we don’t really need any this time.” He closed the door and locked it. “That was a local high school girl selling cookie dough for—”

He stopped mid-sentence and I can only guess it was because I had sprung up from my seat and was at his side when he turned around.

I opened my mouth and tried to find a voice for the overwhelming pull that had propelled me upward in the first place. I spit and sputtered, uttering words that seemed to come from out of nowhere. I’m pretty sure that ‘community’ and ‘witness’ and ‘part of the plan’ all came out of my mouth in that brief twenty second period, but I don’t know that it made any kind of sense at all.

Mike unlocked the door and stepped out into the breezeway outside our door, looking down the hallway for the girl. She was at the next apartment.

“Hey, I think my wife wants to buy some after all.” Mike beckoned her back.

I spent the next five minutes introducing myself to Kenesha, a striking African-American teen with the most beautiful blue eyes I think I’ve ever seen, and buying the white chocolate-macadamia cookie dough that – truly – we did not need. Even as we chatted, I was almost mesmerized by her personality, and I even had the briefest of seconds when I thought – again - how unlike me this was, to be so involved in an animated conversation with a complete stranger.

But there was an unspeakable pull toward this teen that began while I still sat on the sofa, before I’d even laid eyes on her, or heard her voice.

After I handed her the fourteen dollars for the cookie dough and then shut and locked the door, Mike chuckled from his chair. “Think we’ll ever see that cookie dough?”

I was silent, still kind of in awe at what had pulled me from my spot on the sofa in the first place. Somehow I knew it wasn’t really about the cookie dough at all. We sat in total silence for about five minutes. And then Mike spoke.

“Do you ever get the feeling that we’re here for more than just the reasons we think we’re here?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Tags: life lessons, living simply

September 2, 2009 @ 6:35 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me

One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it’s very complex, it’s very profound.” - Dennis Prager
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(originally journaled in early April 2009.)

The past few weeks have been surreal.

I can scarcely believe we are actually doing this. I keep waiting for the REAL me to rise up and say something along the lines of “what the…?” But there is nothing except certainty that is flowing smooth and easy inside of me.

Even as I pack the house in the late night hours when I’m all alone, moving through the rooms and hallways, I have no qualms about this decision. It’s the nighttime that is usually the breeding ground for fear and trepidation and – some nights – I keep waiting on it. But it’s a visitor that never knocks.

My logic tells me that surely I must have been konked on the head and awakened with some other woman’s rationale and emotions. This is NOT me. I worry. I fret. I resist change.

I’m emotional.

But the reality is that I’m calm and certain, in a way that I just can’t explain. In less than two weeks I will walk out of this house – this style of living – and I will walk into an apartment over an hour away. We will know no one. I will stay many, many nights by myself while Mike is on the road. I am leaving behind the concept that “bigger is better” and the theory that as I get older, my “things” should become bigger, nicer, finer…

I sit here tonight and wonder what happened to the woman I was. When I look in the mirror as I brush my teeth, I look the same. But I no longer recognize the inner woman. I don’t know her. I think I should be afraid.

But I’m not.

I go to bed with peace and awaken with a quiet excitement.

I don’t know what to expect, but I do know that I should be expectant.

(Two weeks later…)

Tomorrow the movers will come.

By this time tomorrow night, I will be preparing to spend my first night in Commerce. In an apartment. In a community that is so unlike any I’ve lived in before.

Boxes are packed and labeled. Many will go with us into our new home, but even more will go into storage. We are losing over 1400 square feet of living space with this move, so – in ways even we had not anticipated – simplicity is truly finding us.

It’s a funny thing. Sometimes the very thing we ask for, pray for, finds us and takes us by surprise. Very seldom is it packaged the way we’d imagined, or presented in a way we’d recognize.

But it is a gift, nonetheless, presented by Him, simply because we requested it.

There have been so many mini-miracles (is there such a thing? are they all huge, and that is why they are miracles…?) to transpire over the past couple of weeks that we have almost been amused. I’m pretty certain that I have both, laughed out loud and broken down and cried, because it further solidifies that this move is the one thing that needs to be done.

Even in the moments when my logic kicks in and I run through the mental list of just why this is a crazy move, and just who probably now thinks we’ve lost our minds, and where I’m headed…even in those moments I can’t ignore the obvious.

Too many things have aligned in short order. Too many people have unknowingly been a part of this plan. Too many past prayers and nights and days spent in restlessness -knowing that I was in the big middle of the deep, learning to swim and tread water, and yet not being able to see the other shore. In a crazy, crazy, definitely unforeseen way, I’ve reached the banks and I’m crawling ashore. It’s certainly not where I’d pictured myself washing up. The beach is not white and sandy like I prefer. The water is not crystal clear and cool to the touch. It’s not paradise. It’s not my dream.

But for some reason that I am still helpless to explain, it has become…home.

Tomorrow I go there.

Tags: life lessons, living simply, walk with God

August 31, 2009 @ 6:36 am | Filed under: Family,Soul Food,Uniquely Me

I’ve been the quietest I’ve been in years…maybe ever…these past several months.

As an aside – I’m sure if you were to ask Mike, he’d beg to differ with that last statement! I’ve been talking, for sure, as we’ve been planning, implementing those plans, and making various adjustments these past few months. But, other than journaling it and talking it out within our four walls, I’ve not been too vocal on much except surface…stuff.

When I shut out the noise around me, good or bad, I can truly focus. Regain some clarity, perspective. There is a tranquility of spirit these days and – while it is something new for me – it is definitely something I hope to keep.

There is one area though that I am resolving to bolster even more. It is one of my weaknesses: time management. I want so much to do well in so many different areas that I find I am constantly tending to the urgent and – in the process – often ignoring the important.

Putting out fires is necessary, goodness knows, but what I so often perceive as being a burning forest usually turns out to be nothing more than smoldering embers. And sometimes when I get back to the important, the passion, the energy and the drive has already been spent.

My heartbeat lately has been to find God and then join Him in what He is doing. In this protected, tender space that is my life right now, I feel a real need to maximize the time. To not only be productive in my work, school, church and family life, but to really be cognizant as I go through my day of the people around me. What they are facing. Decisions they are making. Hurts they have.

My life has slowed, for sure. I don’t know that I will ever truly understand the scope of what this time is about for me. I feel almost certain that, at the very least, I won’t glimpse the meaning until I’ve faithfully trodded this path until I come to the next leg of the journey.

The last thing I want to do is to fill this time with busyness instead of progress. There are some things – some people – that I can do nothing about, nothing for. Some things just need to be left alone. I’m trying to learn that, accept it.

Only then can I cultivate the important. I want to grow a garden during this time, and nourish it with time spent with Him, time spent in reflection, time shared with loved ones, and time in knowledge and understanding.

Today begins the new fall term and, with it, I am starting a new book. I’m excited about both…and also nervous about both. Beginnings – as fresh and fun and exciting as they can be – aren’t really my forte. But they are crucial and I know that these first days will set the stage for the next weeks and months. I want those months to be productive ones.  And I know what it will take for that productivity to even have a fighting chance.

This morning I lay it all down, all the components that make up ME.

I ask for eyes to see the realities.

Ears to hear His voice.

A heart to love without borders.

And arms strong enough to cradle it all.

Tags: Family, living simply, school stories

August 27, 2009 @ 7:08 am | Filed under: Uniquely Me

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.” - John Pierpont Morgan
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It was the Friday after the New Year. 2009.

We drove east on I-30, headed towards TAMU-Commerce. I had a two-o’clock with my new advisor, and Mike tagged along just for the ride. For several months I had kept a running list of pros and cons for switching schools. There was a huge part of me that resisted. Probably the part of me that normally can’t stand change. But it had become all too clear that I had two choices: change schools or settle for the major that I didn’t really want.

Sometimes I question my decision to even go back to school. As much as I enjoy it, the time and energy it takes sometimes exhaust me. I miss the massive amounts of writing time that I used to take for granted. I miss spending lots of time with friends. I could live the rest of my life without finishing school, without teaching…and my life would still be full, vibrant and happy. It’s not as though I need to do this.

Yet…I do need to.

I’m not sure when or where I knew it, I only know that somewhere along the way I intuitively knew that this was something I was meant to do. As the first couple of years slid by, I have alternatively loved/despised school, but I’ve not wavered about the fact that it was something I needed to do.

So on this Friday I was scheduled to meet with Dr. Bolin and chart the remainder of my school career. Even as we drove, I commented several times that – really – the drive is not bad. Already I was assimilating myself to the realization that I would be on this very road a lot as I commuted back and forth.

Looking back, we have no clue who made the first move, spoke that first word…For someone who marks milestones by emotions and feelings, I have no memory of this particular milestone. It’s very odd. I only know that something happened along the drive that day. I looked out the window as we passed a certain section of town and I felt a pull. A sense of somehow belonging. Of somehow having a sense of purpose there.

I couldn’t identify what it was that I was experiencing and it never occurred to me then to voice it. I simply attended my meeting, made academic plans and then we drove home.

It was much later – back home – that the surreal began to take place. We looked at one another and it was Mike who spoke first.

“I…I felt something today.”

I didn’t question his words or the tone with which they were spoken.

I knew.

Tags: life lessons, living simply, school stories

August 26, 2009 @ 9:19 am | Filed under: The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me

“The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.” — Winston Churchill
_______________________________
Be still and know that I am God. - Psalm 46:10

I knew that change was coming to my life.

Normally, I don’t do change. At least not with any kind of ladylike grace at all. It usually involves a bit of kicking and screaming, asking why, and – more often than not – results in lots of hot tears.

Why is it that some lessons are just so hard to learn?

My heart is a tricky place. Just when I think I have all its rooms cleaned up and ready to pass inspection, I trip and fall over something I thought I had already picked up and put away properly.

When I want too much, I become a very unhappy woman. And it’s never things that get me twisted, it’s matters of the heart, a longing for that one, single, solitary place inside of me that has yet to be satisfied…

It was during times alone with Him that I began to ask for simplicity.

And it was in the darkness of those hours before Him, when I could no longer hide and found myself stripping off everything that was trying to bind my mind, my emotions, my purpose, that His voice found me.

He began to uncover the makeshift bandages I had placed over bruised spots. His fingers caressed the scars, and He spoke whispers of comfort that moved a long-needed breeze through my soul.

For the past year I have been so acutely aware that I was being prepared for something. In almost everything I took a part in, it was shown – again and again and again - that I was to walk out into the deep and that I was to do just this one thing.

One thing at a time.

I have found that if you do that ONE THING and then the NEXT one, and then the NEXT one…before you know it life has evolved, situations have evolved and…I have evolved. And evolution equals change.

One day that still quiet voice penetrated to the depths of my heart; I listened, sensing an important message.

Simplicity, I can give you.

I instinctively knew I should stiffen at those words, but I no longer had the energy. Wasn’t I on my face, tears streaking my face, my throat raw from the time spent with Him – acknowledging that my ways needed to fade away so that HIS way could be made clear?

The struggle within me died in those moments of surrender. I didn’t know where He would lead. I didn’t know what He would have me do.

I only knew that I could no longer hide. Could no longer numb the pain. Could no longer live a life that was merely reactive.

I rose to my feet, not knowing anything more than I had said yes.

To what, I didn’t know.

Tags: living simply

August 25, 2009 @ 10:32 am | Filed under: Uniquely Me

(Hey Robyn. Hey Denise. Here ya go, ladies…

I posted this song here a while back, and also to my personal online journal and – I have to say – it’s the song that has lived in my heart since.

Waiting is sometimes the hardest thing to do. Ever.

I’ve been quiet here for a while. My friends think I’ve abandoned blogging. I’m not sure what my readers think. This is my effort to share the story of a true revolution. And one in progress, at that. This is the story of the past few months and what has happened, and is, happening in the Wilder home and hearts.

This is the story of a home that gave up ‘simply living’ in order to begin ‘living simply’ and what we’re discovering in the process.

There is so much more woven into the fabric of this story than mere catch phrases of the hour. It is more than a return to the simple things; instead, it is a return to the First Love, to His call on our lives. It is the tale of our journey of faith. It’s a journey that changes just a bit everyday, just enough to continually surprise us in good ways, in uncomfortable ways, and in all ways in between.

I think that God must surely look down on me in some of my less-than-finer-moments and wish that this daughter of His wasn’t quite as feisty as I can be at times. The truth is that He’d been trying to talk to me for a while, but I’d not really cared to have the type of conversation I knew He wanted.

I was in hiding.

But it didn’t work. Not for long. My soul can only take so much distance before I run to Him, fall on my face, and cry out for His touch once again.

I needed to be quiet for a while; needed to get to that place of solitude where His voice was all I heard and His touch all I craved.

And so I got quiet. Got quiet here, and got quiet quiet in life, trying instead to tune in solely to the people and responsibilities that He’s placed in my hands, my heart – my life.  

In upcoming blog posts I will endeavor to chronicle what happened next. I’m not quite sure in what order, if any, they will be told.

I’m a work in progress.

My God is amazing, the guiding light of my life.

This is not the journey I thought I’d take.

I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what will rise up to greet me along the way. I know…nothing, really.

Except that I am waiting – always waiting – and, for the first time in a long while, my thoughts have stilled, my heart has quieted, my soul has found peace.

This is the story of how it began.

How I gave up simply living, in order to begin living simply.

Tags: life lessons, living simply

March 17, 2009 @ 7:00 am | Filed under: Family,The Solid Rock,Uniquely Me

I – like most women – value security. There’s comfort in the familiar, reassurance in the mundane. We know what to expect, and pretty much when to expect it. While this life runs the risk of skating dangerously close to BORING, I have to say I prefer this ride over the wildly unpredictable roller coaster of the UNKNOWN.

But sometimes the normal – the FAMILIAR – can breed mediocrity and we begin to give less-than-our-very-best. When we finally get brave enough to truly face the situation with clarity we can then – and only then – summon the courage to venture into newer, unfamiliar waters. It is only there that we can meet newer, more mature challenges. And, really, it’s the challenges that promote personal growth. And personal growth is what we all need, isn’t it? Once in those waters…

I might weep. Grieve, even. My spirit and my soul tend to lay claim to my every thought and action. I don’t want to make a change. Even so, life is all about change. In no way at all do I want to miss out on what God has for me for fear of the unknown. With hesitancy, I feel myself being drawn to the deeper things.

I allow the waters to suck me into their uncertain depths.

I may retreat for a while. Retreat from all the noise, all the distractions, all the pulls of the world around me. I might share with no one the conflicting and warring emotions tugging for proprietorship in my soul. I enclose myself in the only place I know will bring healing and hope for my bruised spirit.

And then I pray.

You know the kind of prayers I’m talking about. The ones that seem to claw their way from the innermost parts of your being. The ones where words elude you, fail you, yet you pray on, your spirit interceding for the human being that you are. But it’s only in those moments of uncertainty, of brand-spanking-newness that you somehow sense that in your trevail you are giving birth to something new.

So I surrender.

Once in the murky, uncertain waters of what I once perceived as scary territory, I discover treasures. Pieces of beauty that I would never have seen otherwise. My eyes adjust to the dimness of the situation and I became still, doing the only thing I knew to do. What I’ve always been taught to do. Be still, and know that I am God. Verses from the Bible became my food. Lyrics from songs became a healing balm for my soul. Worship – though often wordless – brings a quenching to my thirst.

After a while, I realize I no longer flail at the water surrounding me. No longer struggle against the lessons these depths are trying to teach me. Acceptance, slow yet persistent, begins to inch its way into my conscience. And then the AMAZING…

…the healing of soul and spirit comes to me.

I break the surface again, and breathe in great gulps of fresh peace. I’d gone under in a black-and-white world, but now the colors around me bloom with vibrancy and brilliance and techni-color supremacy. The scales are gone from eyes, the pain gone from my heart, and doubt gone from my spirit.

I am different. Yet the same. I’ve released the familiar. Yet I’m more comfortable than ever before. I stand still and KNOW. I have moved into the deeper waters. I have security that cannot fail.

I am no closer to knowing my future. Some dreams may come true. I may have to bid good-bye to still others. There will no doubt be days that appear cloudy and uncertain. There will be days when the familiar once again blankets me, lulling me into a complacent existence that feels wonderful, but has the potential to stagnate the growth that I crave. And then it will be time for my focus to change again.

All that I am, all that I hope to be, is in HIM.

That’s it for me. Nothing else matters. There’s comfort in that. It’s familiar. Yet it’s ever-changing, pulling at me, tugging on my heart’s door – begging me to come deeper still.

And so I will. I’m letting go and moving willingly into the deeper waters.

And in that movement I’ll know POWER.

And in that power I’ll know LOVE.

Tags: living simply