Month: November 2015

NaBloPoMo Day 30: Advent

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As I sat at my kitchen table, eating my breakfast of warmed apple dumplings and doing some research, I found myself pondering Advent. As you know, Christmas season has officially begun and this past Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent, which continues over the four Sundays before Christmas. I have refilled our chic little Starbucks Advent calendar with my toddler daughter’s new favorite “Chifee” (Christmas) candy, peppermint, and I couldn’t help thinking on how and what we will teach her about the Christmas season as she grows older.

Growing up, Advent was not made a huge deal of in my church community. I do not recall any advent candles or calendars, although that may just be a flaw in my recollection and not an absence in my experience. But, still, in our current church home, advent candles are lit, one added on each of the four Sundays before Christmas Day, with the fifth and center candle lit during the Christmas Eve service. Hope, peace, joy, and love–these are the themes of Advent, per my recent research and reading. These are themes and thoughts that lift my heart and soul. I have been researching Advent-themed devotionals, blog posts, and articles to share on our church blog and I can only pray that these posts will speak to people’s hearts and center minds and spirits for this season, bring them joy in hope.

I try to live my life with the goal and intention of living in peace, showing love, sowing hope, and (hopefully) exuding joy. I am so grateful for all that God has done for me and how He makes his presence known in my life, lifting my heart and soul in differing ways. Providence in circumstances, a perfectly-placed or timed song, or the spoken or hugged-out love of a friend or loved one. All of this has made an incalculable impact on my life and all I really desire is to live an encouraging, edifying, loving life in return, to share that peace, hope, love, and joy that has been lavished on me over the years.

NaBloPoMo Day 29: A Smile for a Kiss

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largeWill you kiss me?

Will you restore my smile?

It has gone running, fleeing from my lips.

Will you beckon it back? Cajole and convince it?

Tease it up from the corners of my mouth where it has hidden itself?

Will you make a bargain for its restoration?

Will you kiss me?

Will you trade that one moment of lips upon lips, mouth to mouth, breath briefly shared,

For a smile that will shine and shimmer like the sun?

A smile that will always appear for you, always greet you.

A smile that will be yours forever.

Will you trade with me?

A tenderness for a smile?

Will you kiss me?

14_mary_tudor_the_tudors_Sarah_Bolger

NaBloPoMo Day 28: On Crying

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I am an empathetic crier. It is rare, very rare, that I can see a friend or dear one crying and I don’t start crying as well. Perhaps it is a sense of wanting to be able to comfort the other; perhaps it is to let them know that what they feel isn’t silly to be crying over. I cry when my friends are hurting. I cry for and with them because, often, there little more that I can do from where I am.

I am also a very easy crier. I cried last night when I prayed over Elizabeth as she lied congested and uncomfortable in her bed. I cry when something bad happens on my favorite tv show. I cry at moments in books, at cards sent, gifts given.

Right now, though, I have plenty of tears of my own. I am tired, my shoulder aches where I banged it, the weather is gloomy and wet (see, even the sky is crying), my baby is sick, my husband also isn’t feeling, and I have had nightmares. It’s just been a teary couple of days.

Not all tears are bad, not all crying is painful. Sometimes we go through periods where our heart leaks out of our eyes for reasons of which we are unaware. But it happens, so the likelihood is there that it is needed. I am not sure just what my tears need to wash away, smooth, or reshape within me, but I think I am willing to let them.

 

NaBloPoMo Day 27: Delightfully Odd (or Weird, Whichever You Prefer)

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Four Weird Things About Me:

  1. I am easily startled. Like bolt-like-a-bleeping-deer startled. Case in point, I was running on the elliptical this evening, had just finished a “hill” and had closed my eyes to breathe. When I opened them again and looked up, my workout partner was there and, even though I had my earbuds in, I know I yelled in surprise. She immediately apologized and said that she didn’t know I’d startle so easily and it’s why she hadn’t approached me from the side. But, yeah, it’s true. If I turn and something is in my line of sight that wasn’t there a second ago, especially when I catch it in my periphery, yeah, totally started — gasping, heart pumping, all of that.
  2. I am an absolute epistolary fiend. But, then, if you’ve been reading 11419026_940310942688566_484985028_nthis blog for a while, you know this already. I have at least seven boxes full of stationary and writing supplies. Writing letters and cards is a passion for me.
  3. I am a huge fan of period stories, especially television shows, bits of historical drama that I can devour visually. I love my books but I also love to be able to SEE the stories that enrapture me. Right now, my husband and I are binge watching season 3 of “Vikings”.
  4. I hate Velcro. Absolutely HATE IT! I have ever since I was younger. The sound of pulling it apart makes my skin crawl and my temples ache.

NaBloPoMo Day 25: Opening the Doors of my Home and my Heart

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I’m sitting on my couch at last. Tomorrow, the flurry will begin anew and, come early afternoon, my little home will be bustling with family and filled with the scents of home cooking and comfort. My house is tidy, the dishes are clean, the laundry (most of it) folded and put away, the table cleared and ready, and the ingredients set out to cook my own dishes for our Thanksgiving meal tomorrow. There is more, SO MUCH MORE, that I could do: tidying and sorting and cleaning and perfecting. But I keep reminding myself of something that I am trying to internalize deep down into my bones and write on the forefront of my brain this holiday season:

Hospitality-is-not

My home doesn’t need to be perfect to welcome other people into it, but my heart does need to be in the right place. If I focus on how stressed I am, how much work and trouble this is, etc., then the entire day will be a waste, people will leave my home and presence unhappy, and I will have missed the entire point of this holiday. I want to make sure that my heart is in the right condition — welcoming, loving, compassionate, and grace-giving — so that my family will leave my home tomorrow evening better and happier than when they arrived.

I will probably take tomorrow off from posting as I will be spending time with family. I hope and pray that you all have a good holiday and that you are able to spend time with people you like and love this Thanksgiving.

 

 

 

NaBloPoMo Day 24: The 21st Turn

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I do not have any journal entries about my 21st birthday night aside from the mention that my friends and I were going to go to dinner and then a film festival (don’t even remember what the films were about). But I do have a particular journal entry from the night before my 21st birthday that I really like and would love to share with you.

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So…soon (in a matter of hours), I’ll be 21, and I find that rather odd, honestly. I have a hard time stepping out-of-body and looking at myself, not as the little teenage girl who came here almost four years ago, but as a 21-year-old woman.

There are ways in which I KNOW I’ve grown. Only in the past year have I truly found what it means to be comfortable in my own skin. I’m a ‘walking contradiction’, and I like it. I’m a paradoxical simplistic, a semi-angsty romantic, as I once put it. I’m a girly-girl with a love for action and battle prowess; I’m a hobbit who speaks the tongue of Elves; I’m a wielder of pen with a love for the sword;  I’m a teacher who loves to learn; I’m a drama queen who has to work on graciously accepting compliments; I am a self-confirmed bachelorette who would someday like to get married; I’m a walking contradiction.

And I like it that way.

For years, I tried to be only one thing, what I thought people thought I should be: the perfect young lady, the angsty tomboy, the all-knowing sage, etc. No, it doesn’t work that way; I’m merely bits and pieces, as are we all–flawed but lovingly forgiven. This past year has just proven to me that God can put the pieces together in ways we could never imagine. Pieces that ‘should not go together’ come together perfectly in me. That’s not saying that I am perfect, but my Creator is, and I admire His ingenuity.

NaBloPoMo Day 23: My Dear Little Storm Cloud

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Visual Inspiration Writing Prompt by Strangling My Muse: “Let this image engage your muse. Write a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry … or whatever you feel inspired to create.”

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My friends have a verb that applies specifically to me. Apparently, I tend to opine darkly about situations. I call it being realistic. But, sometimes, they will look at me, interrupt what I am saying, and inform me:

“Daria, you’re storm-gathering again.”

As if I were out with a basket, harvesting storms to heap on their heads.

The Road from My Shoulder

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John Milton: “A woman’s shoulders are the front lines of her mystique, and her neck, if she’s alive, has all the mystery of a border town. A no-man’s land in that battle between the mind and the body.” – The Devil’s Advocate

I have fallen in love with the curve of my shoulder. The gentle slope that my fingers travel from just behind my jaw down the side of my neck. They settle into the valley where it and my shoulder meet and join together, ball in joint, hand in hand. Beneath it, the terrace of my collarbone beckons, but only for a moment! There are other places to explore. The round of my shoulder pulls my fingers in a circle, tracing its sphere as if it were a small planet unto itself. I can feel the strength in it as the muscle presses back against my prodding fingertips, proving the work is worth it. There is also some tension there that bespeaks of some needed TLC, my body reminding me that care goes hand-in-hand with work.

I walk my fingers along the flat of my shoulder blade, up the back of my neck, feeling my spine press upward as my head curls forward. That beautiful sweet spot at the bottom of my skull calls, but that is not my focus for the moment. Forgive me, I get distracted sometimes.

I am slowly learning to love my body. To walk my fingers over its inches, feel my own skin, find my own strength, revel in my own softness and curves. There are days (and nights) that I just sit or lie in bed and run my fingers over my hips to feel the barely-there scars that tell tales of growth and blossoming. I knead them over my feet to relieve the weariness of a day’s coming and going. I brush them over my calves, pressing them under that muscle and deciding to work for more of a defined niche to hook them. I am finding what is beautiful in this body of mine. Or, rather, finding this body of mine and learning to call it beautiful. This is the only body that I will ever have, and I am rather liking that I am learning to love it.

NaBloPoMo Day 22: Dressing for Success

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I take great pride in how I dress; just about anyone who knows me will tell you this. I agonize over outfits and am rarely happier than when an outfit comes together just the way I envisioned it. I would like to say that my style is equal parts cute, vintage-lovely, elegant, and feel-good. Today, however, I questioned my choices as I rushed out the door, late as we were for getting on our way to church. I felt a little odd, almost frumpy, though I know I probably looked anything but that.

My choice this morning was a dress that I bought at least a year ago but had never worn before today. A lovely, lacy, little fit-and-flare dress by Xhilaration in a bright cream and then covered that with a cream and gold striped waterfall cardigan by Mossimo, one of my new favorite comfort pieces to just wear all the time. Beneath those, I pulled on a pair of black ribbed tights (I still call them stockings) and, though I wished I had brown ones to keep with the color palette, I found that that black made the cream of my dress and the cappuccino of my shoes really pop. Yes, I have these lovely, coffee-and-cream colored, Fioni leather booties that are probably my favorite shoes ever.  In my hair was a faux pheasant-feather fascinator headband, another one of my favorite accessories.

As I finally came home four and a half hours later and spied myself in the mirror, I decided that, even if I wasn’t happy with the outfit as a whole, I was extremely happy with how fan-frickin’-tastic my legs looked in those tights and heels.

Sunday's Outfit 11-22-15