The Birthday Girl

Yesterday was Casie's 23rd birthday. I can't believe my firstborn is 23 years old. It seems like just yesterday she was snuggling in my lap. One of my favorite memories is how she would cuddle in my lap when she was a toddler and preschooler and hug my neck and say "Oh how I love that Mommy smell!" My heart would just melt.

So she's older now, and she is cuddling with the purse of her dreams and probably saying "Oh how I love that new purse smell!" But that's okay...because, I, the mommy, found it for her! :)

Seriously, I am honored to be her mother. She was a beautiful baby and has grown into a beautiful woman. And I'm not even talking about the outward appearance, although she truly is beautiful outwardly. I'm talking about something more important...her soul. She is a beautiful soul. She is a young woman who lives out the fruits of the Spirit....love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

My own mother and I are very close...and I considered myself close to all my grandmothers and great grandmother. I'm blessed to still have one remaining grandmother as a matter of fact, and I treasure her. So, I always felt loved and nurtured by the women in my family. And yet, until I held Casie in my arms for the first time, I never knew the intensity of the love between mother and child. And Casie won't get it until she is blessed to have her own child.

I'm glad that we had a good celebration yesterday. Her dad even came over and took us all to lunch to celebrate her special day, and we all four had a lovely afternoon together. We ate her favorite cheesecake from the Cheesecake Corner in Memphis, and we played a boardgame together, all four of us laughing quite a bit. Although life's changes aren't always good, I'm glad for the bond of children, and how the celebration of life can bring people together for awhile. She hugged me and said her birthday was a great one, and those words have made my heart melt all over again.

The Loss of a Friend

I mourn the loss of a very old and dear friend this week. He was in a fatal traffic accident in Dallas this week...leaving a void in the lives of many.

We were high school buds first, high school sweethearts off and on for a time, then buddies again. Being young and immature, we went through phases of extreme devotion or extreme frustration with one another. Our friendship began at age 15 and lasted until age 47. Our friendship began in the excitement and idealism of our teenage years, and most recently found itself in the reality of life....finding contentment in the joys of it, realizing the sorrows of it, and talking about you hopefully are constantly growing and redefining yourself.

I tried to write about Eric earlier this week, only to find myself not knowing where to start. I wasn't quite brave enough to put thought or feeling to paper....(er, computer screen). Another wonderful friend of both of ours, who now lives in Virginia, and writes a wonderful blog, wrote beautiful words about him yesterday. I finally decided to sit down myself and see if I could find the words.

My friend's name is Eric Heebner.  From the time we were teenagers, he was determined to be different. And he succeeded well in that endeavor.

 He wanted to prove to people who did not believe he would be successful, that YES, he would be. He wanted to be successful in friendships, family life, school, his career (both military and post-military), hobbies and pursuits. He pursued life with gusto...mixed with lots of caring and compassion. He wanted to see the world, and he did see probably most of it.

Eric seemed to succeed in everything he touched...his military career was successful, his undergraduate and graduate career was successful, his writings were successful enough to be published. Since I was fortunate enough to reconnect with him in adulthood, I knew him as a nurse, nurse practitioner, public health officer, writer, speaker, and most recently, business owner and practitioner of his own mental health business. But it's not his professional life that I want to write about.

He chose to reconnect with people and make amends many years ago to anyone he felt he might have hurt. He chose to forgive those in his past that had hurt him. He was on a mission to make any "wrong" relationships "right" again. He found me about 10 years ago, living in another state, and we began to re-establish a friendship and catch up with one another and follow one another's family life, career, etc. He was a husband, father, brother, son, and wonderful friend.

Eric was kind, warm and extremely funny. But one of the most tragic things about Eric to many of us who knew him well, was that he seemed to still be a lonely soul in many ways, and still seemed to be seeking something that was illusive to him. I'm not sure he ever quite grasped just how many people truly loved him, wanted to be his friend, just enjoyed his company. If he felt he had let you down in any way, he would often "retreat" from the friendship for a little while....seeming to not understand that most people accept the flaws of each other and move on. He could be incredibly tough on himself.

This morning, I was re-reading one of his older blogs...and came across these words, used in describing himself.

"I study hard, work hard and always want people in my life that 1) Reciprocates 2) Encourages 3) Forgives 4) Grows and 5)Judicioulsy exercise Ecclesiastes chapter 3 in friendship. A tall order indeed. Who am I that I should ask for so much? Worthy of my own expectations? (See #3) I know who I am not, I know that I can be something worse and have. I know my friends have said the same about themselves. This is why they are my friends, partly."

* I left his misspelling in his words just as he wrote them. Eric was a NOTORIOUSLY bad speller, and I am a very good one. In high school, he would usually show me his homework so that I could correct the spelling. It became something we joked about later in our 40s.

In 2002, he sent me a package that had a piece of lava in it that he had picked up somewhere in one of his many travels. He had carried it for years, and was now sending it to me. I was going through a particularly tough time, and quite down on myself. I wish I had kept the words he had written, so that I could quote them here. But what he sent to me was more than a piece of lava...he sent me encouragement. And the meaning behind the words I have forgotten, was that there are times in our life that we are going to be refined by fire. We will feel like we will never survive the intensity. But we will..and when we are in the fire, we are being refined. And we will come out as something very unique, if we allow ourselves.

Now...knowing Eric and his quirky and hilarious sense of humor...he probably picked that lava rock up at a landscaping store and sent it to me with those words. I know him quite well. But the gesture of sending that piece of lava, carefully placed in bubble wrap and placed in a cardboard box with words of encouragement for me showed the kind of friend he was. It has set in my office since 2002...and my office has changed locations 3 times since then. The rock has always made the move with me.

So thank you my friend....for high school "love notes", holding of hands, dances, getting me into trouble in choir, making me laugh on school bus trips, for sharing your poetry with me, for movie dates, for being brave enough to face my parents when we were late once, for helping me learn you can argue and still speak to one another (well...after the obligatory length of high school silence), for meeting me at the school bus with flowers you brought to me to take to drill team camp, for late night phone calls (I talked under the covers of my bedspread as if that really fooled my mom), for eating the inedible brownies and cookies I made for your our sophomore year when I was your spirit booster for football (or pretending like you did), for the kimono you sent from Korea in our early 20s, for well wishes sent from afar when I was getting married, to later comforting me with phone calls when my marriage was ending. Thank you for sharing poetry...from the writings of a 16 year old boy to a grown man in his 40s, excited over having one published. Thank you for wanting me to know you had become a man of faith, when you weren't even sure God existed when we were young. Thank you for sharing tips on how to lose weight as we both talked about mid life weight gains and health worries. Thank you for for making amends. Thank you for accepting mine. Thank you for taking the time to reconnect. Thank you for making me laugh when I wanted to cry. Thank you for calling me once when YOU needed to cry, and you did. Thank you for most recently helping me rebuild self esteem which I had seemed to lose. Thank you for my cup of coffee and the hug in June. Thank you for my lava rock.

The First Few Days of December

It seems as if I'm becoming a lazy blogger these days, but it's not intentional. I love this time of year, and like everyone, my life just becomes busier and busier. Working in accounting at a law firm, one of my busiest times of year is the end of the year. So when I walk through the door a little after 5 pm, I'm already feeling wiped out. And simply because it's December, there are all sorts of seasonal activities and tasks to be done.

Before I sound like I'm complaining, I'm not. I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR. Seriously, I love it. I love it all...the decorating, the gift buying, the cooking and baking, the parades, the concerts, the church plays and music, the Christmas music everywhere, Christmas movies on tv, the anticipation of getting together with extended family, and the anticipation of the actual day itself.

In addition to the hustle and bustle of everyday life, I find myself in quite a more emotional state than I had been in October and November. While I still feel a peace about my new stage in life, I find myself very sentimental and reminiscent lately of Christmases past, and I feel both of our daughters are going through this also. I'm trying to keep our family traditions that are the most meaningful the same, so there is continuity. Both Casie and Lindsey enjoy that immensely. But I'm also trying to come up with new traditions, activities, etc now that our lives are different than they were previously. It's a hard balance to find. Couple that (the sentiment) with the hormones of my late 40s, and I seem extra weepy as of late. I have a couple of other girlfriends who are admitted "cry-ers" as I am, and we have joked that ever since our mid 40s, it isn't a normal day if we haven't had at least one good cry. The last couple of weeks, I've done more than that. And I never know when they will come...sometimes they are happy tears, sometimes they are sad tears, sometimes they are frustrated tears, sometimes they are just sentimental tears. But boy....do they come! Just today, my good friend Vicki and I shared a cry (well, a couple actually) over a gift and the words sent to her by another friend encouraging her before her 3rd chemo treatment tomorrow.

Think I'm through?? Not yet! In addition to the hustle and bustle of the season, the roller coaster of emotions, I also feel as if I'm entering a new season of "reflection and teaching" by the Lord. I'm feeling like a mirror is being held up to my soul, and while I see things I like, there are still those dark hidden corners that need to be opened up and cleaned out. So I'm learning alot about Tracy right now....and not necessarily anything I'm ready to put into the written word just yet.

December is flying by quickly..sometimes I want the pace to change so that I can savor it a little more slowly. I'm trying to squeeze every bit of savoring out of it that I can. All in all, even with the extra tears, December is a good month. I'm blessed beyond measure, and life is good. Difficult some of the time...but very, very good.

Time To Be Still

Over the past couple of weeks, I've found myself slipping into a "funk" (as I call it) every now and then. I don't stay that way very long...sometimes for a day or two, sometimes maybe only an hour or two. But the busier I get, the more I find myself having these moods where irritations, wounds, stresses, worries just pop up and take over.

This morning, as I was sitting in my favorite chair, house all quiet, Christmas tree lights on, hot cup of coffee, I got out the current devotional book I am using. Today's reflection was on "Being Still" and how that we find ourselves best prepared for life's battles when we have taken time to get to know God during our moments of simply "being still".

I realized again (sigh. Sometimes I am a slow learner) that I have been so busy that I have stopped the being still part. And I know from past experience, that when I get too busy to simply be quiet and still that I find myself frantic, hurried, worried, and my emotions seem to have more emphasis placed on them than they deserve.

So I was so grateful my Christmas tree this morning. Why you ask? Because every year when my tree goes up, it just beckons to me....I can almost hear it..."Come sit for a spell, Tracy. Enjoy my beauty". Ever since I was a little girl, I have been mesmerized by Christmas trees and Christmas lights. So for the last couple of mornings, I have been getting back into my routine of making sure I get up early enough to enjoy the quiet and stillness of the wee hours. I slowed down enough to spend time with God in prayer, reading and reflection. And as a result, I have felt better all day long.

I'm going to give myself a gift this Christmas season...the gift of stillness before God. And I'm going to unwrap it each morning (hopefully) with anticipation. Because I much prefer the joys that come from a few moments of stillness and quiet over the "funk" that I get in when I neglect that need within my soul.

Reflections of Thanksgiving

It's the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, and I'm snuggled under a warm throw on the loveseat in our living room...looking at the lit Christmas tree, beautifully decorated, feet warmed by one of the dogs curled on top of them, enjoying the quiet and peace of my favorite time of day.

I've had a hard time blogging lately...wondering if any of my blogging friends ever go through this. Life continues, events continue, emotions continue...sometimes words just don't come easily to me when I sit to write.

I'm still adjusting to the "single life". It is an odd reality at times. It's hard to switch off thinking as a married person, to thinking as a single person. They say it takes only 3 weeks for a habit to form, so I guess I should cut myself some slack, as I was married for 23 years. Still...I'm wondering when it will not feel so weird to me.

Wednesday was full of anticipation....Lindsey was home from school, I was able to leave the office early to begin the Thanksgiving prep, and Casie was heading home. Our evening was full of laughter and silliness as we finally were all together and enjoying a casual supper of finger foods.

Thursday was a day that began with me slinging pots and pans in the kitchen, scurrying around, working hard and frantically to get it all together. Now I must say that even though I might look like a mess when I am cooking a big holiday meal, and even though my kitchen may look like a mess, I am one of my happiest times when I am preparing a meal like this. By the time we sat down to eat, I wasn't that hungry (I seldom am when I cook like that), but I looked around our table, and was so thankful for my 2 beautiful daughters and the joy that they bring me. We enjoyed our meal, and gradually, all 3 of us fell asleep in the living room...one on the loveseat, one on the couch, one in the easy chair....and all 3 dogs fell asleep as well. When I woke up, I couldn't help but laugh at the sight. We pulled down the tree from the attic and began to decorate later that evening.

Friday was the day that threw me...even though I was prepared emotionally. The girls were heading to Little Rock to see their paternal grandparents and spend the day with their Dad, who was there also. This was a good thing...one that I wanted to happen. It's just that I miss those two precious people, and I miss being a part of that. So as they got into Casie's car to travel to their grandparents, I decided to face the Black Friday crowds (something I don't necessarily enjoy) but I knew that I just needed to go do something and not stay home all day. I went to a store that I enjoy more than the girls do, I browsed, took my time, picked up a few gifts, and treated myself to a coffee and simply enjoyed the time alone. I'm learning from some wise women who have traveled this path ahead of me and who are wonderful about giving me tips on how to cope with some of the alone time.

Today, we have plans to go out shopping and enjoy a lunch together. Razorback football is on later today, and while I may have to listen to part of it on the radio (my girls aren't quite as football crazy as I am), I am happy to be spending the day with them. My house is a mess at the moment...kinda driving me crazy, kinda making me smile. Christmas boxes are everywhere...the tree was put up as I mentioned earlier...but we have the mantle, the entry way, the Snow Village and many other things to put out. The fall decorations have been taken down, and those boxes are waiting to go up into the attic. I'm ready for all the decorating to be done and boxes put away, but I'm learning more to enjoy the moment and not stress over the open box of garland and tissue wrapped ornaments taking up space on my couch. It's all getting done...and we're all doing it together. That's the most important thing.

So as I reflect halfway through this Thanksgiving weekend...I am thankful for my Savior, and how He continues to heal my wounded heart, and has brought a deep joy and peace into my life. I am thankful for my two beautiful daughters....they are beautiful inside and out. I am thankful for my extended family - those crazy, loving and supportive people....from my parents, to my grandmother, to my sister and brother and their families, to a wonderful crazy aunt....I am grateful for their presence in my life. I am thankful for the inlaws that I was blessed to be a part of their family for so long, and their influence in my life....I'm thankful that my girls will continue to be a part of that wonderful family. I am thankful for my friends....I am blessed to have some of the most loving people in my life....here in my town, a couple of hours away, some even a few states away....whether they support me in person, phone calls, blogging, emails or facebook....I am blessed to have such a wonderful network of loving people. I am thankful for the wonderful doctors that are treating my friend Vicki, as she battles cancer, and is WINNING. I am thankful for the job I have...with a boss and a team that value family and each other. I couldn't work for a greater person and with a greater group of people. I am thankful for my home....it's a tad run down, and needs many things done to it...but it's a warm and cozy home...and many memories have been made here and will continue to be made here. And I'm thankful for the trials in my life, because they have taught me to grow as a person, and they have helped me see that God is ever faithful in my life.

So....I'm going to stop writing for now (this has grown quite lengthy). I'm going to enjoy the solitude a tad bit longer, linger over a hot cup of coffee, look at my lit Christmas tree and the unpacked boxes left. I'll make a list of what needs to be done today, knowing we probably won't get to it all...but we WILL enjoy one another...we will laugh alot, probably argue a little, we will sing Christmas songs (loud and proud...maybe not so well) as we travel from store to store...we will eat a lunch together and whisper about Christmas secrets. We will come back home and finish watching the football game, and then pull out the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers. At the end of the day...I will be looking at them in my living room...and smiling at the richness of love in my life. And I will be reminded that although being single is odd for me...that I am still a blessed woman indeed.