7 posts tagged “hope”
Papers signed. Records filed. Name changed at Social Security office and with DPS. Check, check, check and check!
Wanna hear something funny? I overslept...by hours! That's what I get for staying up late and working 'til 3 a.m. I woke up in instant panic realizing there was no way I had woken up on my own at a quarter-to-seven. It was 9:30! I'd slept through three alarms! In the end I made it to court just before 10 am--and still looking fabulous, by the way. Turns out I didn't miss anything because my attorney was 'dealing' with his attorney in the interim. I made a brief concession to some language I'd wanted to add, but it was ultimately just a matter of sign here, here, and here.
We had just a little bit of casual interaction at his attorney's office afterwards to sign some additional paperwork dealing with the house, and then again a few minutes after at the County Records Office where we had to file them. I finished first, and stuck around to say good-bye. Ready for a handshake, he instead pulled me in for a hug--stiff on my part, I mean, I'm sorry, but it wasn't really a huggable moment for me, you know?--kissed the top of my head, and I said simply "I wish you the best in everything." He turned away without another word, choking up a bit.
I ask you, what sort of silly man divorces a woman he still seems to love?
The answer? My ex-husband.
I am strangely cheery...unexpectedly and blessedly cheery. And relieved and joyful and peaceful at heart. It's a beautiful sunny day outside--the sun came through the clouds just after I left the Social Security office. It matches my hopes and my dreams and I am so terribly proud and thankful to have made it through this last year that I just don't know what to do with myself...oh yeah...I have a conference call to jump on right now. Guess that's what I'll do. ;-)
You see...life goes on.
I'm up with a sore throat. Ugh. I am not getting sick, I am not getting sick, I am not getting sick!
My throat is kinda' killing me.
When I swallow I feel it up into my stuffy ears. I don't know what happened...six hours ago I was fine, then all of a sudden a small tickle in my throat, a little congestion, and whammo...please just let it be a cold and not the flu again.
Oh well, nothing to do about it now. So now to recap...
Despite a breakdown on its lone rainy day, this has been an extremely productive and positive week for me.
Work wise I've crossed a number of tasks off my list and I feel like I'm hitting my stride with a few of my business sponsors and with this beast of a product database that is involved in most of my projects, thank goodness.
On the home front, I've been purging the house of old papers and assorted junk, recycling what I can, and finally have ditched all the old clothes that are, thankfully, now several sizes too big for me. They're in bags in the car waiting to be taken to Goodwill tomorrow on the way to San Antonio. I also sent all my Easter cards out on time and planned ahead to have a little basket to give to my grandma when I see her tomorrow.
In cleaning up and organizing I've also started to turn my eye toward decorating too. I replaced the garnet colored candles on the living room mantle with saffron-colored tapers, and I'm on the lookout for just the right shade of bright, filmy gold curtains for the windows. I'm tackling one room at a time in an attempt to both simplify and beautify the 'feel' of each.
Lastly, in a calm and reflective manner I sorted through and organized the photos and mementos that have been haunting my home since I stuffed them away almost a year ago. Not everything went into boxes, though--there are a number of things I've chosen to keep as part of my decor, mostly gifts of one sort or another...like the little crystal turtles he gave me on our wedding day and first anniversary, and the carved quartz cat we bought in Monterrey. The most important thing that went into boxes were the few special dresses I saved over the years---what I wore the night he proposed, the night of our wedding shower at his parents' house, and his favorite dress--the one I wore so many times on special occassions and on our honeymoon too. No tears at all, just the occassional distant flash of anger and lots of head shaking. I still, after all this time, cannot quite believe it.
There's another dress I kept...a dress I've never worn and have been keeping at the back of my closet. I bought it in October at a little boutique in Nashville. It's a summery, blousy ivory number, short but not too short, with little flower appliques and cutouts at the neck, nape, and hemline. It's lovely and simple and I bought it because I loved it and because I wanted to do something tangible to express my faith. You see, as soon as I saw it I knew it should be a wedding dress, the dress I would wear when we renewed our vows, when we found our way back together. I don't know if I'll ever wear that dress, but I'm not throwing it out. It's too lovely. Perhaps I'll save it for some other special day. I'm not sorry I bought it. I'm glad I believed so strongly that I felt in my heart I would have the opportunity to wear it.
It's much later now and exhaustion is finally winning out over the sore throat. I'm off to bed. G'night.
I'm published! Ok, so it's just a little Op-Ed, but I'm rather proud and I didn't tell my family so it was a big surprise for them this morning.
I submitted it a couple of weeks ago, and it was the editor's decision to run it on Christmas Day...even had to change the tense and voice in some places so that it made sense running today rather than last week. Also, they made an exception to their normal maximum word count for this piece, something they normally don't do. And they've asked me to contribute in the future, so I hope it's the first of many pieces I will do for it and other publications.
More than anything, I'm proud of simply being comfortable with sharing something so very personal with a public audience that also includes my private circle of family and closest friends. That's a big milestone for me as a writer--someone who used to let only a few random strangers see her stuff. The content, however, says more for me as a woman, and a grown-up, than anything else.
Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas! Good-night!
"long ago, and far away.." she sings on, my late a.m. gold songstress. bittersweet to hear her voice, but the sun is shining and i'm looking out the windshield at a cloudless sky, so i smile and sing along.
moments later she fades out and the next song comes up. my mouth gapes and i give the radio a reproachful look, but i love the song and i go with it. "maybe i think too much, but something's wrong...maybe i shouldn't think of you as mine..."
the perfect oldies mix rolls on and on, past rudy's barbecue and the turnoff to gruene, down highway 46 - one of many memory lanes - a long and winding road. i could be sobbing, but i'm not...i'm dreaming and i'm hopeful. i have to trust that love and god will find a way.
i drive on in the bright white of midafternoon blazing down on the hill country, goat farms and pet resorts slip by and the radio signal dips for a moment, and then...
"i'm going where the sun keeps shinin', through the pourin' rain..."
and the sun keeps shining...
remember those signs of hope? they're still around. they tiptoe up out of the earth and shine through as the north star in the night. these are of the earth-bound kind.
this is just one of my bougainvillea. (a word i like both to look at and say--a five dollar word you might call it. say it with me now: boug-ain-vill-ea.) dried up and depressing to look at just days after their arrival, they have been gloriously revived. plucky little things, aren't they? and pretty too. almost makes you want to hum a little tune or whisper some thank yous to the breeze.
the breeze itself is another thing to be thankful for right now. alas, the summer heat has fallen on austin like an old, wet mop. splat. not exactly a pretty metaphor, but it fits. it felt like 90 degrees at 2 am this morning. i know because i was out and about. unusual for me to be out that late, but my little brother was in town and i had the opportunity to sit and talk and just listen with friends who've been missing for a little while and who i've missed. it was nice.
and then a drive home to walk evita under a starlit sky of deepest india ink. i think people should go walking in the middle of the night more often. the early morning too. that's when the world seems more solemn and joyful, more freeing and true, than any church or cathedral. and when you pray--whether out loud or just in your heart, whether you call it praying or just talking to yourself--you can almost hear, and almost feel, someone answering back.
to one who is far away: i bought a hisbiscus tree on friday...it was rather bedgraggled looking with yellow leaves and only one sad little blossom still holding on for dear life, but something about it seemed perfect to me (despite the fact i was told it was already half dead) and so i brought it home. soon after it was pounded by a terrible storm and lost even its one lone blossom. but i re-potted it the next day, protected it and supported it, and even gave it some good luck charms to reflect on (you can almost see them in the pot) and now look..and do you see all the other little buds just waiting for their turn to bloom? they must be waiting for something...
“Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5)
have you ever wished and hoped for something, something so crazy and impossible, but wished for it for so long that even if you didn't really expect it to ever come true, it became second nature to include it in your daydream list of wishes? and then suddenly, one day, while you're still wishing for it, you look up and realize that it HAS come true?
when i was little, around 10 years old i think, i first read and fell in love with anne of green gables. i wanted to be her, not just read about her. what i didn't realize at the time was that i liked her so much because i already saw myself in her, but not thinking quite that introspectively at 10, i just knew that she was what i wanted to be when i grew up. and weirdly, i extended that wish not just to her personality and being, but to her looks as well. anne was fair with pale "alabaster" skin and red hair, first like the color of carrots, then a rich auburn. her eyes were light and changeable, moving from gleaming grey to shining green depending on her mood. in my imagination she is still the most beautiful woman i have ever, um, not seen.. and i wanted to look just like her.
so much so, in fact, that i actually started to pray about it. in my prayers at night after asking god to bless every relative and friend i knew, i would ask that i could someday look like anne.
now you have to understand that at the time i was a scrawny, short, brown eyed little girl with scraped knees and the dorkiest glasses on the planet. more than that though, i was a pretty dark kiddo. my summer tan would last and last and my skin was definitely brown. so talk about the bluest eye, i was praying to god to change me in to a fair haired, fair eyed picture of beauty, bargaining with how good i would be if i only looked like anne. (an interesting aside: in the books, anne was always praying for brown hair and a blushing complexion!)
i prayed my way right through up to 8th grade, just about one year before i would lose my Faith all together, when my skin actually changed. impossible you say? i wish. though i can still tan in the summer, and do, i am naturally very pale now. my mother is perpetually telling me, "ness, you need some blush" and molesting me with a blush brush and too pink powder from her purse.
i don't exactly regret having seen this change come through. it was an interesting lesson for me, both in the "be careful what you wish for" way and in the "mind/prayer is a powerful thing" bit of spiritual spookiness.
i've been thinking about this because my faith is, very simply, back. frankly it has been creeping back for the last year, but i had been afraid to fully explore it for fear of being a total hypocrite. i say creeping because even though i wasn't going to church and wasn't really praying, i was thinking more and more about it and "wishing" that i could "find it" again. you may laugh, but it's the sunday late night broadcasts of joel osteen's that helped me the most. it was my covert way of indulging in a little god time. my husband was really irked by my watching it, although i don't think he was irked in the way i was irked by it. you see, i was worried that i was finding inspiration through a snake oil salesman. he, my husband, however seemed to dislike it the way he disliked my other guilty pleasure TV, like Roseanne and The Nanny. i wonder if i should have asked him to really sit down and watch i with me, instead of turning it on, low volume, while he slept at night. i think that whatever evil there may be in him, Osteen's messages aren't half bad. they helped me quite a bit in finding faith in myself...though not necessarily, at the time, in god.
so after months of making an effort to watch the program, but not really feeling comfortable with taking any other steps, i went on my trip to europe and saw church after church after church. i wondered why the St. Peter's was beautiful and grand, but didn't make me feel...something more. i loved the Duomo in Florence, but more for its juxtapostion of Church dogma and Renaissance messages than its effect on my heart. there were probably another 20 churches on the trip, if not more, all beautiful in their way, with their own story and significance, but all museum like and far away from me.
and then, the last church we visited, rife with violent, bizarre and beautiful history, was Notre Dame. still a Church in use with areas roped off for worshippers and weekly mass, the Cathedral still not necessarily more beautiful than another, but it moved inside me somehow. my sister and i sat in the chapel of our lady, lit some candles, and prayed for our gramma, our grampa, and our little cousin daniel, and for whatever else we needed. i prayed for everyone, oddly, and including the caviat that i would pray for myself, for my husband, but that might just be "too hypocritical for you to take." and there it was. a conversation with god, the first in years, and one that has made me smile inside ever since.
don't get me wrong, folks, i'm no wannabe or holy roller, professing to be something i'm not. this journey is of my making and i'm seeking guidance as i need it, going to church as i want, praying on things in ways that are as much medatative and therapeutic as anything else. i am also as aware as ever of the evils of religion and dogma, the crutch for free thinking they can become, but i stopped arguing against faith a long time ago. faith is faith. if you truly believe in something, it might as well be real. to the believer, whatever the cause, faith and reality are one and the same.
