Living Into Our Moments

I believe that all too often we spend our time feeling as though we are walking this world without a purpose. Wandering around hoping that our eyes will become open to the possibilities that surround our current time, and for some, not even absorbing that there are theoretical possibilities that encircle our very beings. Some of us getting caught in the trap of our own paradox.

For reasons unknown to us, time is continuing to be granted to those still walking on this earth. Time is made up of moments that are drifting away slowly. For some, these moments are lost without utilizing them to gain a better comprehension of the purity of enlightened knowledge that is within our reach.

I am here to start the process of believing in this meaning. The meaning of living into our moments and using our time to begin to understand our purpose.

This precious time that we are currently in, is being granted to us now from a hand that is bigger than we understand. Literally being poured out as I write these words, or as you kayak down the river, or while others sit at their old familiar desks.

Time that has a mutual relationship with places we do not see with our eyes.

Time that is made up of moments that are beautiful and excruciating and terrifying... and sometimes all of these things at once.

Time that is of its very core, spiritual. Eternal beings working to figure out what our current time is all about.

I believe that part of our purpose here is to search for that meaning, the meaning of time, while believing in the current moments that we are in. The complex dance of doing both of these things without agonizing about what the next moment will entail.

We are blessed with questions that surround our consciousness. Why am I chosen to be in this current moment while some are not? How can I be the beautiful person that was mindfully made perfectly in every detail, while I continue to walk forward with mistakes around every corner?

Mistakes are the fears that we hold onto.

We are constantly standing on the edge of something bigger than we know. I want to know that edge, be comfortable with the curve of the side and hopeful that the understanding of what is on the other side will be shown to me as I live in this moment.

My fear is that our current moments will become obsolete if we fail to live into them. Replaced with something new, always hoping that the new moment will be better than the last. Waiting for a second chance when the first is being presented gracefully with our purpose wrapped tightly in the center. Our purpose is within these current moments. Some are quiet and some are loud. Some shake us to the core while others drive us to tears. Perhaps part of the answer of our purpose lies in keeping an alert consciousness while beginning to live into our life-changing, all encompassing, quiet moments.

Rivers and Cliffs

This life is leading me down rivers that I never even knew existed. From the valley of my home town to the mountains of my new, I am enamored by the river of life that makes up the pages in-between.

I have fallen in love many times in my life. Not just in relationships with other people, but with other passions that take up my time. I have fallen hard and fast without leaving room for the idea that not everything works out. Somehow, during these times of jumping off the cliffs hoping that the water is calm below,  I have realized that the experience of jumping can be just as powerful as the mind blowing love waiting below... and I now know the depths of the risks associated with these jumps.

I continue to walk on cliffs.  Following my heart to new places with risk that at any time the side of the path that I am walking on may crumble into the river below. It can be terrifying and exhilarating, all wrapped up together so intricately that I can’t tell the difference between the two extremes. As if they are the same emotions playing dance together in the rain. A beautiful dance being played out on the side of this cliff, hoping for the best but being content with knowing the worst is just around the corner.  

As I walk along this journey with raging rivers below waiting to catch me when I fall or when I choose to jump, I am continuously transfixed by the moving water below. My eyes search for normalcy, trying to define new ways of normal in an ever changing journey of rivers and cliffs. My hands reach out to touch the cliff walls and the water below me. My heart search is complete, in these moments of silence. Content with the knowledge that I now know the depths of the top and the bottom.

I cry out for the past and am enamored by the future. The current moments hold my attention, my eyes looking to what is standing next to me, quietly surrendered to these beautiful moments that are making up every page of the journey onward.

As this life leads us up and down valleys and mountains, the river is waiting for us. Calling out to remind us that this cycle of life will continue on as we choose to play it safe or find love by finding the perfect place to jump off of the cliff.

Take My Hand

I am changed by the alertness of the reality that was once unknown to me. My body is awake and aware of knowledge that was once foreign ground.

Silence sits next to me as I long to reach out to take your solid hands that are now only a memory in my soul. I picture your hands, intertwined together with mine when I saw you for the last time on this earth. The same calloused hands that once held me tenderly and made me feel like the world was a place of wonder and not agony, rested so peacefully as I grasped them with all I had.

The same hands that 6 months before took mine and became husband and wife, ready for years of adventure and beauty, laid quietly folded on your pendelton that I had seen you wear a hundred times.

I remember taking your hands as your body rested there on that table. The quiet room was so still and void of life, or maybe that was my own self, my reality becoming confused with the actuality of the existence around me. My hands searched for yours that day, in that room, while you were quietly waiting for me. I knew you were waiting for me, you always were.

I felt it was magnetic, the pull that brought us together every day, and that day in particular as you waited for me in silence. It’s hard to explain to those around me, that unseen force of power that existed between our souls. Love. Love is what that is and love is what this life is all about. 

God is love. That sentence is powerful and worthy of our energy to understand it's meaning.

I walked into that room with hesitation, scared of death and scared of my reaction to the emotions that our culture doesn’t talk about. But, it was you, it was always you. Waiting for your lady, waiting for your love.  I took your solid, calloused hands that day and didn’t let go. If I held them long enough they stopped feeling cold. For some reason that's one of the things I remember most about that time with you, that I wanted your hands to feel warm again. To come back to life and touch my cheek as you had a million times over. Instead I touched yours, tenderly touching where your cheeks were pinked by the Grand Canyon sun. I thought about your time out there, on the river that you love. Gratitude for your time out there flowed from my soul like a river that cannot be stopped.

I sit here now and think about this time, this time that seems like a lifetime ago. I have changed. My normalcy is skewed from the enlightened knowledge that comes from experiencing what is real during this time on earth.

The short, powerful life of my husband inspires me to take the hands of those around me and change the world while we are here.

Curt's hands that accomplished so much during the time while he was here, provokes in me the courage to do the same. This journey continues, I am all in.

Love is what nourishes our existence- Paulo Coelho

Temporary Existence

Your voice lingers in my memories, these memories that are fading quietly into the distance. I desperately try to grab hold, clawing my way back to the times that made sense. Because, this time doesn’t make sense anymore, or, I have found, it makes perfect sense, depending on the way that you look at it.

You see, before you died I believed in this temporary existence more than I believed in the unseen realm that continues on forever. But, now that it is the time that exists after you are gone, this all just doesn’t make sense anymore. This temporary, tangible reality makes no sense to me. What makes more sense is that you are still here, just out of reach, listening to my voice and smiling at the way I move my mouth or give a sideways glance when I am nervous. You are still here and waiting until we all join you in eternity.

For, how can you have once been here, full of the most genuine, boyish, electric, charisma, and then in an instant, be gone forever?

Our temporary existence is lingering all around me. Examples reminding me that it is true, this is all a fleeting time, moments slowly evaporating like the fog that hovers over the river at dawn. So temporary that I struggle to understand if it is even really happening. And, if it is happening, where do these moments go after they are gone?

For, if I am not mistaken, my eyes see these moments take place and my heart fills with joy as they play out. Then, they are gone, evaporated into the flow of the river that separates the beginning from the end. Where does this temporary existence go? Are these moments still here, everywhere and nowhere all at once?

I think so. They must be. Because, those times, those precious moments that only you and I shared, make up the all encompassing love that radiated out of our skin. Skin that was so electric to our touch, full of so much life that there is no way it dies. Those moments that I can’t relive with another person while I am in this temporary existence, ache to be talked about, ache to be laughed about, and ache to be cried about. Anything but stuck in my head without hope of leaving my tongue.

And so I will do these things. Laugh and cry, live into the memories of our temporary existence because there is no other choice. I will do this alone until we are reunited and can do this together. I will also make new memories, full of life and wisdom that only comes from living into my reality. A reality that I didn’t ask for or predict, but a reality that is part of our story. This story that continues on with my eternal soul living in this temporary existence until it meets yours once again.

Driving East

I drive slowly away from the shadow of our dream, my love. You are sitting quietly next to me in the passenger seat, your box wrapped tightly in the shirt that you wore when we explored the East Coast for the first time. Flashes of that time cross my mind as I bite my lip and head East. I attempt to hold onto these images instead of the one that is my reality. Instead of your beautiful smile and hand on my knee, I ride with your ashes by my side and your shirt wrapped tightly around the box. 

My body is still, my eyes are straight ahead, and my heart still aches with an ache that most don’t know, as of yet.

My mind is racing from the past to the present and hesitantly towards the future. I am moving away from our Portland home, my love. It’s time. I can feel you so close to me that my heart races with anticipation that perhaps you will appear, ever so close yet just out of reach, but perhaps you will appear this one time if I just hold onto the memories a little longer.

Death is a funny thing, my love. Oh how I long to talk to you about the crazy ups and downs, the way that this world is spinning so fast and out of control while I grasp for the reins to try to slow it down a bit.  I think if you were here we could make sense of it together, talk about the secrets of the world, and then figure out that we really don’t know anything but that it’s ok because we have love. Pure, unmessy, unconditional, time stopping, love. But, I can’t talk to you yet, my love. So I rely on the ten thousand words we shared before you were gone.

So, I drive. I drive quietly with a hope for the road ahead of me. When I met you I dropped everything and followed you. We walked up countless mountains together; always with you in the lead and me smiling as I watched your legs lead me uphill. We talked about these hikes, these tangible examples of how I would follow you anywhere, forever.  Our respect for one another growing every second as we figured out that the only true thing in this world is the love that God gave us to share with the utmost respect. Nothing more.

As the miles pass I think about the love that we shared, this rare kind of love that not everyone is open to having because they are scared of the unknown. As the sun rises and falls with every passing day, I will remember this love. I will hold onto this truth and remind myself that this was not a dream, because, my love, sometimes it feels like a dream.

I reach the Hood River Bridge and I feel like I am home. I feel your strength and I know that you are happy to be back to where it all started for us. I think about that time and I smile. You are here, my love, you will always be here. As I continue my journey back where we started, I will carry you with me, my love, and I will continue what you started. Living life to the fullest and changing the world, ever so slightly, with my eagerness to see it all.

Moving Forward

I feel acutely aware that I am a completely different person than I was before my husband passed away. At times I feel like I can move mountains with my steady faith and powerful voice. Other times I feel as though I am tiny and weak, waiting for someone to tell me what to do next, to help me find my way in a world that, to me, seems bleak and exhausting.

I have found that the secret is living between these two realities, the powerful moments and the weak moments, embracing both feelings for what they are, the same reality in a different form.

I have come to know that my strength is my weakness asleep.

With this journey one aspect that has continuously felt off is the amount of stuff I am surrounded with. As I said, I feel I am acutely aware that I am a completely different person than I was when Curt was here. Now, when I think about life and the things that surround me, I also think about my husband’s body being ashes in a box sitting quietly next to my bed. I think about the fact that it simply doesn’t matter what we have or don’t have in material possessions and has everything to do with what we have or don’t have in our souls. I am acutely aware that I see the world through a different lens.

As I reflect on these truths, I walk around the house that my beautiful husband and I created together with quiet wonder. The sweet memories of laughing and crying, tenderness and strength, overwhelm my senses and make me lose my breath. I can touch the smooth surface of the counters he built with his strong hands and the rough surface of the beautiful chimney that he slowly and painstakingly chipped dry wall off of so we could enjoy the original beauty of our 1903 home. I can see where we slept on the floor the night we got the keys and didn’t want to leave our new dream. The tangible signs of our love are everywhere; this both comforts me and exhausts me.

This week I am beginning to go through it all and consolidate so I can move out of our home. As I begin this step, I feel overwhelmed with the idea that I have to look at a piece of our history and make a decision. How do I begin, and, if I know that this stuff doesn’t really matter, then why am I having such a hard time letting go of it? A close friend said something that has helped me with this, he said… It’s just stuff, stuff isn’t real, but the feelings you feel when you see it, are very real… That was it. I feel so unattached to stuff yet feel desperate when I think of no longer seeing Curt’s shirts or his tools. That is it, the stuff is absolutely not real yet the feelings that I get when I touch them are more real than I can describe in my earthly terms.

As I touch this stuff that surrounds me for perhaps the last time, my weakness surrounds me and I grasp for its opposite as I begin the journey onward.

Over a year ago I lost my whole world on the river. My home, my lover, my best friend, my everything. Through this loss, through this journey of anguish, I have also found something beautiful. I have found a woman that can do anything because the one thing she didn’t think she could do, she has already done. A woman who now understands more than she ever could have imagined she could, or ever would, know. I have found truth in a world that is spinning out of control. As I walk into this next chapter, I do so with beautiful memories etched deep into my heart. I walk forward with my husbands heart in my own and will slowly let go of the rest.  

Illusion of Control

After Curt passed away I felt almost immediately overcome with the realization that God is leading our paths. As I sat there on the ground, unable to move while my body shook with grief, I had a strange realization in that moment that it is so much bigger than we are. Even in the midst of the greatest pain you can imagine, I knew that I had no control. This both infuriated me and comforted me. I pictured my hand being pried open and my life becoming liquid, flowing quickly through my open palm, draining freely through my fingers and down my arm while I desperately tried to clasp it tightly to save what was left.

 Over this last year I tasted for the first time the freedom that comes from completely surrendering to no control. Letting go of the tight grasp I had on what I think I need. As the months began, as the fog surrounded me, I walked in a daze. My thoughts snapped from death to life to despair to hope, and then back again through the sequence. I genuinely felt for the first time, that It doesn’t matter how hard I try to control anything, what is meant to be will be through my trust and hope in God, only. I had no need for control any longer; I was free from the chains.

All that said, as the months have gone on and the fog has lifted, I am realizing that my humanity has started to kick in once again.  Control tries to sneak in and rear its ugly head. Being a woman with a deep heart and a passion for things I do not see, control is a word with heavy meaning. So, I dissect this thought of control, giving it the fair attention that it deserves. Why do I try to control the things around me when I have tasted the freedom that comes from completely being surrendered to the absolute fact that we do not have control?

The illusion of control is something we all struggle with. We think we know what we need or want based on emotions and desires of our heart and mind. We often struggle with letting go. This physical life that we see around us continually impacts us to grasp onto what makes us feel safe or loved. Without thought or foreknowledge we become captive to the illusion that we have control. Once this happens, once we think we want something, we try to make it happen. That in and of itself is not the problem, the problem lies in that sometimes what we think we need is not what is meant for us. God’s plan is much bigger than ours and when He closes a door, when do we know to walk away?

We try to control our lives by planning it all out, having families that we idolize more than God, romantic partners that are not right for us, advancement opportunities in careers we think we deserve, revenge on someone that has wronged us, doing what it takes to win whether right or wrong… and the list goes on. The illusion that we can control these things based on the premise that we know what is best for our lives, is a rabbit hole of disappointment. Even bigger than the problem of disappointment are the feelings of despondency that emanates in us when it doesn’t turn out the way we wanted it to. When we lose what we think we need or want, our confidence and self-worth are hindered.

Through all of these examples of control, in their loss, our confidence in our abilities to make the right decisions, suffers.  Through our lack of ability to make something turn out the way that we want it to, our hearts feel down and our mind skips to trying to find another way that it could possibly work so that our self esteem can be regenerated.  That is the rabbit hole of disappointment and that is the problem with our human instincts of not letting go of control. Our self worth can not be found in these earthly interactions.

God gave us feelings and desires that we struggle to comprehend. As I now know what it is like to let go of control, I pray daily to continue to have the grace to do so. I know God’s plan is much bigger than ours. I know that through Him I am going to do amazing things that are bigger than the greatest thing that I can imagine, but it will not be on my understanding of greatness but on His. Finding the balance of following God's lead while continuing to take steps of faith, is the harmonious ground in which I strive to walk upon.

Isaiah 55: 8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the Heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.