The Spotlight Is Now On...YOU!

Winston Churchill is quoted as having described a man he knew as "a modest man with much to be modest about" and while I certainly have more to be modest about than I generally think, it is still a lovely feeling to be appreciated by others. Today I received a lovely award from Ellinor, a woman who I genuinely admire even though I haven't met her in "real" life. She and her husband are adopting from China and I am always amazed by the absolute patience and the grace with which she waits for her child. Her optimism, even in the face of waiting many years, is inspiring!

The part I love most about awards is passing them on to others and of course, I enjoy answering the questions. (No false modesty today I'm afraid.:)

But today I think I'll change a couple of the standard questions so that I can learn more interesting things about those who choose to answer.

1. What was the last movie you saw and what did you think of it?

"La Dolce Vita" and it left me troubled and perplexed.

2. If time and money were no issue, where in the world would you travel to?

Everywhere but I especially want to travel to India and I would never tire of exploring Italy...

3. Would you ever consider living in a foreign country?

Yes. Obviously. :)

4. Where do your ancestors come from?

My great grandparents on my mother's side came to North America from Iceland.

5. What historical figure, (it can be recent history as well), would you meet if you could and why?

I would meet like to meet Sigmund Freud and be psychoanalyzed. :)

6. Which historical figures (again, can be recent) are you fascinated by?

Vincent Van Gogh. (I actually did meet him in Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam.;) Sigmund Freud. Marie Antoinette. Lucrezia Borgia. St. Maria Goretti. St. Francis of Assisi. Emily Dickinson. The list goes on and on and on...


At Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam.

And so I pass this on to:

Kelly at Musings, my brother who has just started a movie review blog. Absolutely excellent.

Carmody at Utter Prattle, a friend of mine from boarding school who has a wicked wit and writes genius character sketches.

Alicia at A Little Time to Share, who writes so beautifully and has such a peaceful and lovely soul.

Lori at My Life Interrupted, who has a hugely generous heart and always a kind, uplifting word for others.

Marianne because her little boy's smile lights up my entire day whenever I see a picture of him.:)

Lidj at Crown of Beauty who never fails to touch my heart with her incredible writing about faith.

Serene at Elegant Bohemian, who I just LOVE! Beautiful, funny, smart, I could go on and on!:)

Felisol at The Far Side Of The Sea, I really appreciate the thought she puts into what she writes and her honesty and I like the way she sees the world.

There are so many more that I genuinely like and enjoy reading so I hope that you will make me smile and answer the questions! Even if today is your first visit here, please feel free to. I would love to know what you think.

Love, C.

Small Things

(Mandal Norway)


I never really knew what to do with myself.

At around 8 years old, I wanted to be an artist and wear straw hats and live in the south of France. At 16, I wanted to be a writer and a poet and only achieve fame long after death. Lead a tragic sort of life but the problem with that was that I was irrepressibly happy most of the time so there went that grand ambition. At 21, I toyed very briefly with the idea of being a nurse but at the age of thirty I still cry when I have to get a needle and pass out cold when I get a vaccine and just last week I screamed when I was at the chiropractor's so physically, I'm a wimp and nursing wouldn't suit me. In between all these great career plans, I worked many jobs in several countries. I have a good work ethic but there was no job I did that I wanted to do forever.

Except travel which isn't really a job I suppose. At every age, I wanted to be a globe-trotter and at that at least, have been somewhat successful. (But not very because there is a lot of the world left to see.) When my husband first suggested buying a house, I was dead against it because "Then what would happen if we wanted to go travel the world for a year or two?". Thus spake the voice of maturity, responsibility, and logic. ;)

I won't say I always wanted to be a mother. Not that I didn't want to be a mother, it was simply something I never doubted so there was no need to want it too badly and I didn't really think about it aside from enjoying the reaction I got when I would tell people I wanted to have seven children. Of course, I desperately wanted to be a mother when I found out that my husband and I couldn't have biological children. That is when I really discovered what I wanted. Everything else paled in comparison after that. I had an excuse to feel tragic. (I'm not making light of it but it is amazing how mourning the loss of something you can't have gives you a sense of purpose.) So we pursued adoption with purpose. It became our goal, our hope and our dream. The transformation was incredible. I went into adoption with an angry heart, with words destructive and ugly, with huge, encompassing sorrow that we would never have a little boy with my husband's smile or a little girl with my eyes but also with a lot of desperate prayer. Very gradually my heart changed until I could say honestly that I wanted nothing different than what I had. That even if given a choice between pregnancy and adoption, I would still choose adoption and choose it joyfully. I still feel this way.

So now I am a mother. I spend these days with William. Sometimes they are lovely, full of laughter and fun, sometimes they are frustrating and feel far too long. Many days I wonder if I'm any good at being a mother at all.

Sometimes that question of what should I do now winds its way back into my mind, plays havoc with my peace for a short while. The quiet, persistent "Yes you are a mother, but what else Colleen? What else?" And I sit and think "So much else. Leave me alone."

I don't have a career. I don't even want one. I know how unfashionable that is today. I don't care. I am still trying to figure out what I want to do and probably always will be. (At least I always have wearing straw hats in the south of France to fall back on.:)

Sometimes the things that matter are very small things, "to do small things with great love". Last week I wrote about William having such trouble sleeping. I was so frustrated and impatient because I didn't want to spend hours helping him get to sleep. I wanted to do other things. Important things. Like watch "La Dolce Vita". So as I sat in his room, rocking him and feeling slightly resentful, like I was really getting a bad deal, this wasn't what I signed up for when I thought about being a mother, all those sorts of thoughts...I looked at his small, beautiful face, his eyes closed and listened to him breathing softly against my chest and felt the Lord press words on my restless, impatient heart.

"This is what I want you to do Colleen. I want you to rock him to sleep. Your job just now is to love him."

Dreams And Beatific Vision

A moment of perfect understanding, beyond what our minds are capable of. The moment our soul leaves our human body behind and suddenly we know. Things we've always known? Things we have forgotten? Concepts never fully understood. Reasons, decisions, our history, our parents histories, the history of the entire world. Why the things that happened had to happen. The fullness of our spiritual nature. The ways we have been hurt and hurt others. The ways we have loved and been loved. The mystery of God. The Trinity. Forgiveness. With the passing of one moment to another, an instant, an immeasurable second, we understand eternity. The confusion is forgotten. Our blinders removed, our souls aware. For the first time. In a way it never was during life. The mundane falls away and we simply know. This is my imperfect understanding of beatific vision.

A conversation overheard in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome while admiring a beautiful mosaic of the Transfiguration:

"But how did they know that the prophets who appeared there were Moses and Elijah? Nobody there had ever seen them before! There weren't photos back then! How did they know?"

"Maybe they just recognized them. I don't know. Like you know in dreams when you dream about a person and they look nothing like their actual selves but you still know it's them?"

I listened to this conversation with interest. I also listened because I'm nosey of course and no qualms about eavesdropping on private conversations.

Though a simple conversation, it fascinated me for days. Well, actually years since I overheard it about two years ago and still think about it. :)

I ponder it. Really and truly. How in our dreams we sometimes just know a person even though they appear nothing like the actual person, sound nothing like them, etc. Is it because our spirit sees more than our eyes? That what we recognize in a person isn't their physical appearance but rather their essence? Their spirit? The eternal part of that person?

The other night I dreamed about my grandmother who passed away a couple of months before I moved to Norway. I was walking in a city, loaded down with shopping bags and suddenly, I felt my heart lighten and fill with quiet joy and I grabbed the arm of the person I was with and exclaimed "Look! There's my grandma!" She didn't see me, she was moving away from me up an escalator and she was young in body and spirit in a way I had never seen her in life. Her face was unlined and her smile beautiful and radiant. I watched her go and woke up with a deep sense of peace.

(My Grandma Leona and Grandpa James)

When I dream like that I wonder what it is my soul knows that my waking mind doesn't.

A Security Blanket of Sorts

(I know that's a cake beater but if you mentally replace it with some sort of medicine you at least have a vivid image of his fierce ways.)



We do have a number of stuffed animals for William but he isn't really a stuffed animal sort o' guy I'm afraid. If I give him one to cuddle while he's watching a movie or going to sleep, he throws it on the ground in disgust.

What he does like when he's settling in to watch his daily dose of Aristocats is to have his soother in his mouth (it's manly and tough) and in one hand he clutches a bottle of Dentinox (teething medicine) and in the other a tube of zinc cream (for diaper rashes).

And when he hurts himself and cries there is no surer or faster way to calm his little soul than to murmur "There there William" and deftly slip his bottle of Dentinox into his hand. The crying subsides almost immediately. So darling.

He also likes to sleep with the Dentinox as well and really and truly, his fist is still wrapped around it in a death-like grip in the mornings when he wakes as well.

It just warms a mother's heart.

;)

The Saint Of Impossible Things Or Hopeless Cases

William is stubborn.

Imagine if you will, a four and a half month old baby not sleeping a wink on the flight from Colombo, Sri Lanka to London. Eleven hours, his dark eyes wide and staring, not shutting for even one blissful second. I imagine it would have been blissful at least. We longed for sleep but sat there zombie-like instead murmuring nonsense and cooing to the small bundle of a boy in the cot in front of us.

This was only a dark foreshadow of things to come. Alright to be fair, he has been a very good sleeper up until now so I guess that's why it's a shock for me the nights he does choose to lie in bed screaming fit to wake the dead...for hours and hours amen.

Of course I go to him...feed him...change him...rock him...but he is not the sort of child who tires himself out crying. No. Not for William you see. He can scream with the best of them from ten in the evening until almost five in the morning so there is no option here of "letting him wear himself out". It's we who pay dearly for his lack of sleep. What does he care? He can nap the next day. :)

Fast forward to Saturday, he is 18 months old. I tried all the things I listed above. He is awake until well after five in the morning. I feeling like screaming myself, tearing my hair out, running away...

Sunday, he sleeps fine.

Monday, back to the same old tricks. I do cry in frustration, tear a bit of my hair out but not so much that it hurts and plan what I'll take when I run away to camp out in the woods across from our house.

Tuesday. I begin to dread the evenings as one does something awful that happens to them repeatedly. I feel a growing sense of panic in my chest. Sure enough as I sip my peppermint tea a piercing shriek splits the air. "No God...please..." (And this is a prayer not taking the Lords name in vain. :) as I put my head in my hands and begin to rock slowly back and forth at the mere contemplation of another night like this.

I go in, determined to be patient. I wrap a little blanket around my own shoulders for comfort and speak quietly to him. But every time I think he's asleep and try to leave, his eyes fly open and his shrieking resumes. Finally I remember. I'm Catholic. We have patron saints for everything! So I run out to the living room and grab my rosary and go back in and make a solemn vow. I will pray it until he falls asleep. I prayed it two times and finally...his breathing becomes heavier and lo, the child sleeps. I don't dare breathe. I get up as quietly as I can and flee the room only pausing at the door to offer up a last, desperate "St Jude, please intercede for us! This is a potentially hopeless case and I need sleep tonight! You are the saint of impossible things! Have fun with this one!"

And he must have because William slept, I hesitate to say "like an angel" but I will, all night.

;)

Simple Abundance

I want 2011 to be a year of getting back to basics. Simple pleasures. Truly enjoying the small things. An alert mind. A compassionate heart. A patient spirit. I know that striving for simplicity is a popular, (with very good reason), theme lately and I believe we desire simplicity because our world is complicated and crowded. Distractions abound and simplicity is hard won.

I want a simple life. But it must be an abundant life as well. I don't want my soul to be dormant, my eyes dulled to beauty or my heart to feelings, genuine pleasure, and love.

There is so much to take stock of. I want to consider the ways that I can grow spiritually and emotionally. I want to lessen the distractions in my day to day life and do "small things with great love". I want to enjoy my morning coffee, laugh more with William, take more pleasure in the world at my fingertips, write more, paint more, pray more. I want to learn to contemplate and appreciate solitude when I have the opportunity. I want to learn kindness again. I sometimes feel like I've forgotten simple qualities I used to know so well.

I want to take certain things out of my life and replace them with more uplifting ways of living.

This post isn't particularly original or well written but that's alright today. Today I just want to make a beginning.

I want beauty to blossom like the first flowers of spring in my heart. I want to plant the seeds that will probably take more years than an entire lifetime to develop. I want to be better tomorrow than I am today.

Today I will begin. Imperfectly. Clumsily.

But it's better than nothing.

I would love to hear from you if you have any particular things that create a spirit of simplicity in your own life. What brings beauty to your days?