Continuum

Perhaps more than history, I am fascinated by the comparisons that can be made to the world when it was seen only in black and white: the struggles so different then and yet so evidently the same now, even in our modern, varied kaleidoscope of digitized color with its illusion of perfection. I love to see relationships captured unknowingly, the innocence and guilelessness of eras gone by, and the culmination of accomplishment earned through hard work with its adherence to traditional values. Real values. Sustaining values.

I feel as though this is why black and white photos both intrigue and beguile me; they give me pause to evaluate in the now, truths that have remained steadfast and so relevant even through the ticking clock of unrelenting age. It ignites my thoughts, sending them into rampant dissection, one leaking into another and another -- an exegetic foray into processing a multiplicity of themes.

And I'm unwittingly caught in a moment suspended from dates and markers of every kind, as the richness of humanity steals over my heart, and I'm helpless but to feel its message slide into my soul. Then. And now.

I find it interesting that social behaviors and human thought patterns are proverbially chained and fully constrained to time, hours, and calendar dates, rather than a sweeping flow in continuum. I wonder what attitudes would change if we would repudiate expiration dates in totality to live as if forever. Would there be more continuity of being and a solid commitment to character, choices, and self-responsibility? Would there be less stops and starts, an absence of anxiety, and maybe the utter rejection of haste, "busy"ness, and therefore waste?

It brings me to a perfect beginning to a beautiful Sunday: contemplation and contentment. Family. The ins and outs of communication, expectation, desires, direction, and even the want for abiding peace. To be eager for far-off goals and yet to seize, with fortitude and fearlessness, combinations of joy and determination, the essence and sanctity of each experience available for our fulfillment in every moment as we have them.

To cherish always, no matter what.

It is a cold winter morning today; frost arrogantly gleams in vanity as it lords its crystal dressing gown upon the grasses. The house still sleeps even though the sun is just barely peeking through the sky. And, oh! How I've been lost in so very many photos from yesteryear and my ancestry. Generations, family, struggle, commonality, history. Heritage. It fuels my soul and ignites my being, for it surely confirms that each of us are more than we ever think ourselves to be.

Good morning, Sunday. Attached is a throwback article written about my grandfather, Frank Cyrus Carman.

Legacy.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Heritage

I was raised with a distinct awareness as to the family name I belonged to, as well as the equally responsible set of standards mandated to ensure its prominence and legacy. Clans are a thing, and we are Scots; this has been ingrained within my bloodstream since birth. And so, time and again, I teach our children that their behavior can either make or break their heritage and name, as well as serve as either a hindrance or a stepping stone to achievement.

Every single individual behavior results in some kind of consequence, whether positive or not. And it speaks volumes as to how everyday decisions can either bolster public perception or obliterate good intentions. "My word is my bond" is not archaic; but rather, powerful and transforming. It makes me want to cry out to the world that honor is the most valuable currency in any market today: it disavows the unconscionable, while simultaneously imbuing and endowing excellence.

All of this is a means and a definition of success, regardless of any varied representations, interpretations, or ideology. The advent of monetary gain can be sure, indeed, but the prosperity of a clan, and what it stands for, will impact generations due to the honor and integrity it came from.

Family matters. And heritage stands.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

(Photo credit: Charles Harvey McConnell Jr.; or, Uncle Chuck - my mom's brother, displaying the McConnell plaid with his father, my great-grandfather.)

Sundown

Perhaps it is that each encounter, experience, goal or endeavor, serves to expand into vision the myriad of possibilities that yield limitless opportunity -- and, all merely upon the simplicity of a turn of thought. Embracing the flow of change can open perspective, shift priorities, and grant each of us reason to doggedly, impetuously, stubbornly, and relentlessly believe in more.

Change can only come from within before it will ever mold any other state of being. Rather than succumbing to the transience of emotion, fear, or perceived helplessness, it is in the safety of absolute truth that, regardless of circumstance or condition, awards us the faculties to seize, disseminate, and obtain the wisdom necessary to achieve success. Along with that, courage and fortitude remain the defining characteristics that separate the witless from the willing, and the discontented from the content.

Choose strength. Choose Joy. Choose to flourish.

Free will is just that: freely given and equally free to reject or receive. And it is in the acceptance and exercise of personal responsibility that provides the impetus to accomplishment, contentment, and personal increase. Boldly assessing truth offers opportunity to grasp the freedoms that come from acknowledging what is, to then forthrightly raise it tenfold, thrive, and thus consummate growth.

Negativity will always be a disease that decries culpability and denies creation.

Whole choices matter.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Lamplight

Inadequacy asks for and demands another's change, whereas wholeness attracts wholeness and basks only in the rewards of equal exchange.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Joy Road

I spent much of my early years feeling awkward and wanting so very badly to fit in. I feared beautiful people, gregarious people, fabulously perfect people – you know, those who seemed to have it all put-together; those who moved about with ease and grace. 

I feared being gauche; I feared my own insecurity. Mostly, I think I feared wanting to matter - to be validated as a worthwhile human being with a heart, and a vision, and hope. More so, I suppose that I was desperately consumed by the terrifying thought that someone might baldly out me completely as a person of naught. I feared that they would sneer down with expressions of disgust as if it would be absolutely fraudulent to even seek such a thing as personal worth.

Unease littered the majority of my twenties; bouts of anxiety and struggles with eating disorders haunted, dominated, and scored my daily consciousness. And yet, through a variety of experiences – loss, divorce, endless moving – all of these sparked an insatiable hunger and unwavering need to truly understand what universal and inviolable definitions of importance actually were.

I soon realized with a thud of shock, awareness, and epiphany, that many of the people who seemed put-together also had moments, events, and difficulties when they, too, were also hanging by a single thread. There never had been a chasm of unworthiness separating the darkness of my mire against what I thought was a halo of what appeared to be "making it". I had pitted myself against them to my detriment and struggling wounds, and in an unfairness to the unseen challenges these apparently perfect people likewise endured.

I realized what a misnomer it had been to be so beguiled by first impressions and other (mis)perceptions because they truly carried with them unyielding opinions similarly steeped in stigma, double-standards, and/or unforgiving judgment. Who was I to decide, based upon appearance, the status of their lives? Who was I to mindfully compete and tap the gavel as if to condemn myself as much as I did them?

For condemn, I did. A sentence that fueled comparisons, ruminations, melancholy, and so much jealousy (although I was loathe to admit it). Oh, how I realized that the pay-off for remaining in self-sabotage was often the feeling of entitlement to criticize others. I had allowed the disinherited opinions from a few trusted relatives in my early teens to reign over my consciousness and tear me apart. None of them had been true, but I fed upon those inaccuracies while drowning in my own.

I had worn my scars as a shield and tendered my broken spirit as if I had somehow solely been dealt a hand of cards in life given only to the dispossessed and undeserving. I had remained within safe pain because I knew its boundaries and parameters; and while it was dark and empty, and filled with oceans of tears, and a litany of my perceived failures, it was mine.

As I moved into the steady grace of my late twenties and stepped across the threshold of my thirties, I came to realize that those who reached for perfect, strong, and put-together -- those who sought the best of themselves in unwavering belief and potential, were the bravest for sure. It hit me squarely that it was neither fraudulent to own inherent worth, just as it wasn't fraudulent to enjoy life to its absolute fullest amid difficulty, strife, illness, vice, or other pain. Every day presented itself with a mindful decision to either retreat or believe.

I realized that we are all a little broken but beautiful, weak and yet strong, but oh-so-perfectly human. Maintaining a garrison of determination and approaching life with tenacity against whatever odds, looks different to each of us. I would advocate that there is no such thing as a chasm that separates us - none. Every single one of us have moments, days, or even weeks of lows; but weakness does not constitute unworthiness, neither do the varied ways each of us might choose to push up and through.

We are magnificently human -- whether reaching for the best of life in outright determination, or quietly and needfully blanketing ourselves in the midst of a raw situation, loss, or experience, is perhaps the most valuable, vital, thing we can do. Life is a series of pockets of personal awareness; no timeline or condition should serve to mandate behavior, beliefs, thoughts, healing, or change.

Grief is a thing.

Sorrow another.

Circumstances come, and go.

As do loss, renewal, growth.

And whether some people might appear perfect and put-together while others of us might feel like we stand out within our struggles, we share one truth: the sanctity of personal worth.

What I have come to know is that when and if any of us are prompted to speak, comfort, or reach out to others - regardless of first impressions - it is paramount that we do so. It is paramount that we don't talk ourselves out of it due to our own limited self-perceptions or roaring inadequacy. God works through each of us at the right time and the right place. We're all needed, important, loved, and have been blessed with the histories of our lives to that end; to build, understand, reap, and to expand our capacity to step into worthiness, explore it, magnify it, and to share vulnerability.

Sorrow and anguish provide an opportunity to seek deeper meaning. There is profound substance to Psalm 30: weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. It didn't say that there was only ever weeping in our lives, or only ever joy. It did not say that some of us were inherently broken while others blessed to be untouched.

Sorrow earns wisdom, develops compassion, and is then administered to by Joy. Joy would not, could not, even come into being without previous soul experiences in the darkness of the deep.

Sharing vulnerability recognizes even the smallest hauntingly weak threads in ourselves and others, allowing our mutual stories to weave these together into a binding rope of valuation, validation, and hope. It is a tow-line out of even a single foray into murky waters -- especially for those who might appear outwardly perfect, put-together, strong.

And for its history, when the dawn breaks, Joy is unrepentant in its zest for the light. Joy rightfully demands to sit upon a throne of hope while feeding off of the richness of belief. Joy partakes of trays of gratitude and thanksgiving - ever remembering the pain, but remaining grounded in the miracles that continue to gently and lovingly confirm its seat.

Joy is bold, but cannot be in truth unless clothed in humility and mindful of compassion. Joy shapes the footsteps of creation after turbulent waves have cleansed the sand of a previously littered path. And then Joy seeks to magnify the light in reverence and steady commitment to the humanity of the night.

- Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Labor

Plant a garden of not just seeds, but one that cultivates strength, hope, love. Plant it the strongest within yourself so that you can deliver an abundant harvest that weathers all times, seeks humility and discernment through hard things, and yet thrives within a prosperity of spirit borne from chronicles and chronicles of personal miracles.

I say: plant peace, fertilize wisdom, water laughter.

Yield grace.

This rich earth!

- Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Speechless

(The content of this blog stems entirely from an FB memory; it caught me stock still enough that I knew I had to commit it to this page for all time.)

*October 23, 2016*

So, I have this silly shirt I purchased from Walmart that says "I'd be jealous of me, too!" which is completely ridiculous and funny, and causes hilarious conversations when I'm out and about. Trust my youngest - our "mister" - to offer up his sage, 9-year-old soul.

"Jealousy," he says, taking a giant bite from his sandwich, "Jealousy causes despair." And then the twins stop short, as do I. And there's a quiet while this hefty morsel sinks in, and then we just all still the insane joking and puns for that moment to honor this.

Yes, mister, it does. And that's why it's so important to never look at what others have, but to instead focus upon the very many blessings God has gifted each one of us -- to honor them.

You can always recognize someone who is set upon Christ and trusts in their individual worthiness, etc., by the way that they praise, are genuinely happy for, and celebrate someone else's fortune.

Smiles. Indeed.

Dang, if I'm not a blessed mama. #TheseKiddos

- Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Untitled

Here I stand, naked and alone

Without hello, or goodbye
I felt your pain, I heard your cry
I must awaken to the realization
And bypass all procrastination
For in that time, of those days
I did love, in my way
Now, all I have are memories of my
Thirty-second day.

- Lee White

(Composed on a napkin in a Chicago Diner in the middle of a melancholy night.)

Note: This man was my father-in-law -- he succumbed to colon cancer in the Fall of 2006. Of everything I could even begin to say, he was gentleness, wisdom, and perspective, personified.

Lee could out-talk me (I'm serious!!), and held such a steadfast and profound belief in the goodness of God. Every. Single. Day. Even yet enduring the end-stage pain of his cancer, he would say, "Rebecca, everyday is a good day; the sun is shining and I can walk -- God has never failed me even though I have failed Him many times." And he would tell me how joyful he felt simply walking from the condominium offices to his home.

I miss him.

I miss his perspective.

I miss that he rambled on, and on, and on.

I miss his grace. I miss his leniency. I miss that he could peg truth within one whimsy of a declaration of thought.

I love you, Lee White.

YOU LIVED JOY. And I carry you with me still.

- Living Joy - This Carman Girl

The Essence of a Man

(Written 2010)

There you are, ball cap on, legs splayed in powerful stance and muscled arms resting loosely at your sides. You are the force of man -- a picture of stature and prowess. Your home is large and equal to your neighbors'; your title at work imbues security and success, while the Jeep parked in the driveway evidences virility. Identity. Flexed and tan, you stand at a local park watching your kids excel at sports. Chest puffed out, you've obviously made it -- all this points to one thing: you are Someone.


Then pink slip comes in, Jeep breaks down, discouragement and disillusionment cloud your image. Depression sets in but disguises itself with anger, silence, division, derision. Calls begin, one after another, demanding payment on overdue bills. The vibration of the cellphone is no longer business deals made or golf times confirmed, but instead, tension-mounting pressure. Even your neighbors do not know what to say. It is awkward in all directions.


Arguments spring up within your marriage. You find yourself falling into the safety of a walled-up space that decides that no matter what, nothing you say or do will make a difference to the outcome. You hide behind an internal statement which declares that you can't please anyone. There is no point in trying; you think you are a worthless failure. Everything you ever set your identity on has disappeared and seems to laugh and taunt at the vestiges of what little remains of a sense of self.


The sounds of anger in the house transition from unaccustomed shattered silence to drumming white noise. A daughter may push for excellence to avoid the conflict, while a son may shelve brilliance just to exercise his own anger at being helpless to the situation. And as a man, your ego is so embattled it cannot discern anything but the uselessness of life. Anger is the only coping tool you have. Snide. Sneering. Stalking off, or shutting away. Things you may have enjoyed hold little interest, and you wonder why the world has turned against you.


But there stands your wife.


And she wishes you to see. She did not fall in love with your muscled arms, nor ball cap; she did not find status in your resume, selfish pride in the merits of your children, nor measured your testosterone by the horsepower of the engine idling on the street. She does not care one whit about the square footage of your home, nor the landscaping of her neighbors'.


Her eyes are clouded with worry, uncertainty -- distrust even. Anguish, loneliness, perhaps even bewilderment. She shares worry for the finances, yet aches with the inability to reach your jagged dejection that very well could leave her entirely closed-out. She cannot reach out because you have placed her on the side of "them". You have decided that since you are no longer worthy, that she must think so, too.


She did not ask for the world to fall in either and she fears, more than anything, that along with the frightening conditions of struggling to keep a household together, she will ultimately lose the very man she fell in love with by virtue of his inability to re-assess the measurement of his worth. All that was lost was a job. And now she may lose the man. Over a job.


And she wonders, what is the price of a man's spirit? Is it his annual paycheck of $100,00? $60,000? $45,000? Is this what will ultimately be the catalyst for maintaining his masculinity and power? Is the loss of career or abrupt departure from a corporation only interested in their fair market value, worth losing his entire family and self respect over?


No. When she classifies man, she thinks of power and leadership of a different variety. She thinks of humor, direction, learning and conversation. She falls in love all over again when she watches you take time to explain to your son the merits of his choices; she experiences joy when she watches your encouragement and support of his ambitions. She is glad that her daughter may no longer feel the need to be a driving super power of perfection just to somehow fill your void or feed you vicarious happiness.


She is humbled by the power of your stature when you pause and choose to swing back around to address the tough issues of finance, or miscommunication, instead of slamming the door and retreating to deafening silence. Her heart melts with emotion when she feels you hear her soul, and yet knows she has touched yours as well.


Her body reacts with arousal to the laughter in your eyes and the wicked tilt of your grin. She does not want the loss of job and title to take away those things she loved to see you excel in-cycling, sports, hiking, camping. She remembers where you've traveled together and the places you made love along the way.


Her world has caved in with yours, but only to circumstance, not self-possession. She wants to rise up with you, as the team you were meant to be - you are indomitable, the both of you. She knows it and wishes you to see that your value has never decreased within her eyes. She knows that circumstances and jobs can always be replaced, that success is a veritable misnomer, yet the soul of a man is represented in power and virility by his wisdom, choices, integrity, gentleness, and intellect.


She fell in love with the beating heart of a man, not the merits of the world.


- Living Joy This Carman Girl


Note: This blog was borne from a culmination of thoughts brought about from witnessing so many families struggling with financial loss. Men take it the hardest (and they shouldn't), while it seems that so many women these days are so bent upon establishing a misplaced sense of worth world-wise, that they either inadvertently, or blatantly, emasculate their men. Such a thing guarantees shredding a marriage ten-fold.


I cannot say enough that titles do not make one iota of difference as to the magnitude of a person's value. Character does, however. It remains, and it can't be bought nor demoted. It is a solidarity of being inviolable to social esteem, pride, or persuasion. To attribute worth, or set emotional well-being upon the haves of a bank account and/or title, is not simply shallow, but a recipe and guaranteed risk for failure and worthlessness when one no longer matters to the youth-obsessed appetites of the general populace.


What we seek is very definitely what we will reap. Be sure to build what matters: legacies of character and ideals. The things that make a difference are those of the spirit - those that can be passed down, generation upon generation.

Precipitation

Blame is the most accomplished pretender.

The cards we've been given are very much the most powerful catalysts to becoming our best selves. Creation is forged from embracing the etiology of our individual existences, and then paring down unnecessary ego, mire, manipulation and control, to seek profound meaning.

This life is to realize that there is absolute truth in the wisdom that "everything works together for our good"; it will bring us higher and farther than we ever thought possible if we would but release our own narrow-minded vision of history, shoulds, oughts, or coulds. It's a definitive rejection of self-absorption in favor of choosing the gift that is "free will" and then making the empowered decision to bask in soul awareness, love, compassion, peace, and self-reliance. 

Struggle is a misnomer; it's an exhausting diversion that will never see healing just for its beguiled dependence and toxic lure in dwelling solely upon a relationship with its own bedsores. 

None of us have to struggle. Release is growth. Release is to stop living in a world of "me" to actually, instead, offer ourselves up to the world. To serve. Connect. Love. This is the means and the way to unparalleled and sustaining joy.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Abandoned

The only commodity in this life worth anything, whatsoever, is personal integrity; and that can't be bought, reassigned, embellished, or traded. Definitions of equality, privilege, social distinction, and/or opportunity are being projectile vomited into the cash-filled cavities of corporate porcelain thrones. And it spills over into our cities, communities, groups, PTAs, and the like, eroding individuals, values, families, and most of all - character.

It is a self-serving sewage spewed into our world on such a scale that instant gratification, social posturing, and other misguided empty definitions of worth are beguiling our youth and rotting their parents. Parents have reversed their roles to seek relevance from the younger generation rather than the converse, trading the sacred mantle of their self-respect and powerful potential for standards of legacy,in exchange for tickets to a life-long tango with depression and worthlessness. Ergo: apathy.

There is a fundamental morality missing; and I'm not speaking of the religious kind. Morality, of itself, is a code of unimpeachable ethics. The end. It is a state of being so important that to allow its definition and presence to become slandered by the spineless and self-serving, is to gravely and helplessly observe that the degeneration of our current society is swirling together down a stench-filled single pipe towards nihilism and depravity. There is no excuse for this. There are no parameters to this. It is toxicity in totality.

This world is being seduced into homogeneity; it is being bombarded by a kind of reprehensible dogma that is continually and premeditatively deceiving cultures across the board by its unctuous and clever complicity.

Newsflash: The term "progressive" should not condone violence, division, invite strife, wage war, incite greed, or conspire to corrode conscience and personal consequence. It is far more progressive to maintain the rights to our individual behaviors then to disinherit the wisdom of the ages - Aristotle, Plato, Socrates.

Empires fall: Rome never thought her robes would tatter. Likewise, we either believe in rooted conviction, or we are as those with "weak chins", easily kowtowed and lured by the next cheap luxury and the disingenuous gluttony presented upon platters of trending waste, garnished with misery and cyclically replaced with the next and the next and the next course of faceless, nameless "newest" important fare.

RISE UP.

Recognize.

And then stand together.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Nectar

So much of this world vies for our energy and attention when, truthfully, the only measure of valuable consideration beats within the hearts of our own in a place called home. Do we teach our children of their individual worthiness outside of our own misguided insecurities? To be mindful of this, acknowledge it, rise above it, and then walk in the surety of belief is to model truth and breed contentment.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Field Day

I was thinking about how much hands, of themselves, tell a story. I remember looking down at my own small hands in Kindergarten to see them for how little they really were: plump, tiny, and - well, perfectly five years old.

Now, as I idly notice through the bus(y)ness of doing, day upon day, they have begun to resemble the memories of my mother's hands. And I love this, somehow. Any untoward obsessions with youth melt away as I stare at the new lines and creases brought on by everyday labor, toil, and the mundane and yet sacred simplicity of being me. Mother. Woman. Autonomous. Creator. Wife. Lover. Adventurer.

Mmmm, how I love this!

In fact, perhaps one could say that I'm not only fascinated by the changes that seem to resemble the exact antithesis of centerfold status, but am drawn unequivocally into the quiet potency and pulsating back-stories that dwell within the steady rhythm of veins powerfully blessing the blood-supply.

Defined. Pointed. Purposeful.

And far surpassing any other indicator.

For, isn't it always - in any paradigm - the facade that garners the glory?! Yet, isn't it always the heart of the matter that actually guarantees the absolute resonance of truth and/or equitable satisfaction?!

Something to chew on, inhale, consider, reflect. And then correct, champion, seek recompense. Preach.

Smiles.

Preach on, preacher.

I suppose I should say that this particularly arbitrary thought was brought about from a news' headline about women who, while endeavoring to keep themselves younger, were outed because of the condition of their hands. So tragic, honestly. And very definitely another tangent that could delve into deeper recesses of intensely layered discussion: intellections of wellness, being, prosperity -- convoluted associations, need, insecurity. And perhaps, the multiplicity of other sub-definitions, otherwise ignored, rejected, and bled aside.

No matter.

I love my hands. I love my hands.

Yes, I said that twice.

I love my hands, because -- like I said -- they remind me of my mother's. And that's not an idle musing: my mother can play concert piano, create artful chocolates, home-school seven children, garden, stand upon a second-story scaffolding at seven months pregnant while framing our next family home, manage her own stockholder portfolio, dig in the dirt, plant a garden, run around with grand-babies, raise pigs, comfort those who have lost loved ones, teach from the spirit and give of her soul to congregations of hundreds of women, tame a horse, ride a horse, and win ribbons in dressage for said horse.

My mother can. There is absolutely nothing that she can't.

To understand this heritage is to perhaps begin to understand me. "Can" is not just an operative word, but the lodestone to everything positive, powerful, spiritual; it is the impetus that would challenge incumbent insecurity.

And so I stare at my hands in wonder. I stare at them because I feel her, my mother. I stare at them because I feel a kinship to the vein formations - spider or otherwise - that have begun to accumulate; what they actually signify in my own life, and how much they express perceptions and experience.

And so I think that any and every bruising, age spot, singularly mottled affectation, or textured pattern, mean nothing to me cosmetically. I would loudly cry that they are treasured evidences of the very many chapters of my life.

And I am content.

So content.

My hands proclaim with echoing resilience and thunderous pride, everything I have ever accomplished, the experiences I have weathered, and yet pay homage to the clan from whence I came. I am neither too naive to misunderstand reality, nor too cognitive to not consider objectivity.

And so, I am. Of my own accord, fully my own. And very definitely owned by none.

It makes me wake upon every sunrise with a buoyancy of happiness that cannot be contained. I am unabashedly joyful. Unleashed. The promises of a new day and the intoxicating euphoria of what adventures will come, are more than welcome to etch further stories into my skin.

Talk about vein mapping! Smiles. Laughs.

In all ways, I am about the lines as much as I'm about everything in between -- for they are inherently, incredibly, sustainably and justifiably beautiful.

I say: Oh people, unleash your stories; the world needs you. Be your own renaissance of change.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Lookout

Virtually any link with humanity brings the sweetness of another point of view. Ageless. A continual climb in delight and anticipation. A pause. Then silence. A moment to allow intensity and passion, precipice and trial, irony and infamy, opportunity to mull conjecture, discard unnecessary opinion, and then release what would not serve growth, self, others. It's to inhale perspective, absorb compassion, step into empathy, and then exhale grace.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Breathless

I am a dandelion of a thousand wishes, scattered by the exhilarating winds of belief and hope: planting seeds, creating yields, living high off the uninhibited oxygen of change.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Storms

I am forever sighing over the disparity between green and gold, lush and parched, bitterness and love, to find that really, such are truly about the everyday, keen, defined, passionate and opinionated elements of personal conviction. It's a stalwart belief system that is juxtaposed against a world so steeped in subversive natural behaviors that it makes me refuse all the more to yield to the dark matter of abysmal influence or broken humanity.

Having said that, though, candid transparency would find myself caught up within an exhale of breath, lost within reflection as to the fickle transience of mortal posturing - personal stasis, marketed rights, collective cries, social positioning or otherwise - and how all of it is simply a ceaseless (and senseless) noise that ultimately masks the authenticity of being. It's self-actualization disdained and well-being denied in favor of short term highs and flimsy excuses.

It's because of this that my thoughts come full circle to the articulation and presence of active integrity and its perfect set-point of cause and effect, truth and consequence. Truth and justice ring, and ring often -- at least in my world (wry smiles). It's as if the contents of a beaker hit a boiling point and finally escape the glass: perfect heat, prime components, and a completion so profound that it must wait upon the punctuation of timing and fruition, granting honor to the process, and steadfastly seeking truth and knowledge over notoriety and pain.

A certain pause.

A confluence of expectation and intent that meets redirection and contemplation to evaluate the results: personal allowance, value, conditions, ideals, outlook, recognition.

Change.

And it's here that my heartbeat increases. Flips. And butterflies flutter throughout my chest and up into my throat until finally it stills and resumes its natural rhythm.

So many times, I feel a warning tremor before a cause roars up within me. Sometimes, I rage against the machine; sometimes, I rage for a machine I would create. And yet, just beyond the edges of emotional hysteria and an unleashed tempest of feeling, tendrils of sensibility whisper along my synapses, bringing me back down and into the fallacy of even my own mortal idiocy. I am then pulled into the vortex of personal soapbox contradictions to find myself in marked introspection and scrupulous dissection, immediately intent upon seeking correction from any uncomfortable interaction, difficulty, or contention.

My husband knows this of me - intimately so, and loves me all the more. For this, I am grateful, humbled, and thankful. I am sensitivity personified - day in, and day out. Literally, I'm unable to shut out light or sound, song or emotion, charged electricity, or physical awareness. Inevitably, we'll be driving along a road to some-odd important destination, and I'll be so transfixed by the scenery that it steals my soul and sends me into mind-bending conjugations of all sorts of things. It's nature so alluring that it enslaves me into a beguiled state of earnest pleasure and oh-so-much introspection. And just when I think I can formulate a thought process that could both exclaim my joy and audibly offer credence to my ruminations, my tentative verbal expression gets cut short as the phrasing in my head meets my lips all at once.

Laughs.

Oh, how I love these drives. Oh, how I love even the mundane jaunts to the grocery store. Perhaps I am carried back to childhood and the first mesmerizing experience of seeing the world whir by from the bucket seat of a 1973 Ford LTD station wagon. Oh, how I love the trees and cars, clouds and earth, deer and flowers, craggy rocks and the speed of sound. These invigorate my spirit and fire up my soul. I am transported to another paradigm, one that breaks the monotony of an ordinary continuum and gifts me with exhilarating reminders of the sweetness of creation.

I am refreshed, energized, and given over to the simple, but wonderful. And just when I'm about to unload my soul in a torrential downpour over some kind of something that has sparked my notice, somehow, my husband already connects and knows. And he smiles with a warmth of love and amusement that mixes with his intimate knowledge of me. He'll glance over at me, and with a slight tease to his voice, remark, "Let me, guess - 'the juxtaposition of.... '" And I'll stop short, caught within exasperation, laughter, and the need to express all the garbled thoughts in my head begging for release.

This man "gets" me, and I feel his heart slide into mine. Oh, how he knows me and my spontaneous silly self! No apologies. No excuses. I am a child who was born and raised upon Errol Flynn, swash-buckling pirate movies in black and white, and every Cary Grant movie known to man. I am a girl who has become woman, but somehow wishes to set up residence at a Warner Bros back-lot set, circa 1947. I am intensely feminine - almost to excess, and yet I'm intent upon honing my skills, positively feed upon intelligence, and voraciously soak up information with an insatiable appetite for more.

I'm in love with everything that is scarred, but vulnerable; intelligent, yet seeking; perceptive, and yet open; and defiant as much as rebellion might be. I am. In totality. And to get me, is to take on much.
　
I wish the world could see through the lenses of simplicity. I wish that the haze of competition and clogged ambition would come out of the blur of contention and smog to see its own wide-angle web-cam of marked irrelevance. In my wildest dreams I would bask in the bliss of miles and miles of acreage that would buffer such confusion and leave me to the glory of wide blue skies, blossoming foliage, acres of terrain and untainted oxygen. What more could a woman want than a Steinway Grand (okay, indulge me!) gracing a modest library, a barnyard filled with several chickens, goats, and other life-serving lovelies, a garden that could produce season, upon season, and horses to ride with the wind at my back.

Mmmmm...

Life untethered and oh, so alive.

And, yes. I would still wear an apron. With ruffles. And, yes, there would still be curls. And yes, I would still wear lipstick. And yes, my blood would continue to pulse with the same intensity as it does now as to the pursuit of life, truth, outlook, and substance. And, yes! My stubborn self would seek over-achieving even until my mortal demise. And, oh...

I am carried away. Again.

I suppose in all of these musings that I wish the world could see passed the proverbial snapchat filters of every kind: behaviors and conditions that would choose to circumvent powerful contentment and the sanctity of self to vie for the precariousness of artificial validation and tenuous positioning. I wish that such insidious constraints could be seen for what they are as to their direct participation in the desecration of selves, relationships, families, ideals, communities. Home.

I wish the world would cease to worship the idolatry of comparison; to recognize it as the disingenuous invitation it surely is - an illness and malignancy of envy that confounds growth in a blindness that would seal its fate into a damning abyss of discontent and subsequent depression. I wish the world could see this. And see it clearly.

And for all of this, I suppose I will always be my own storm. I will always champion joy and love, happiness and faith, and the absolute tenets of self-worth. What I know to be true is that we either live in this world, exhausting ourselves in and out of fear and hardship through an outlook that struggles for validation; or we live our lives having already assumed the sanctity of personal creation, fully giving over to the individually endowed strengths, weakness, and talents we are graced with, to concentrate our precious time alive in the pursuit of building others.

There is money gained and lost from the former while there are dividends and a multiplicity of wealth in a variety of ways gathered from the latter. When we seek ourselves, we are lost; when we lose ourselves, we come alive and step into a powerful realm of being.

Creation is.

And it sings its song through every tempest.

Rise with it.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Bedtime Stories

Releasing ego is to relinquish the need for one-ups-man-ship in any relationship. It is the absolute key to truth, peace, prosperity, love, and even legacy. And, though for a variety of reasons - whether from personal history, hardship, emotions, circumstances - none of us are immune to sometimes unbecoming bouts of ego and/or momentary displays of desperate inadequacy.

Peace is peace; it is gentle and entreating - patiently standing by, waiting for notice. It offers an open-ended invitation to abide within the halls of unconditional love, where vulnerability and meekness can rise above insecurity and weakness.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl

Wellspring

The important things in life can't be bought: we weren't born to need "experts" to tell us how we feel; we weren't born to seek relationships that would enslave us into requiring approval, change, or acceptance. We weren't born to be deceived into homogenization. We weren't born to need to prove ourselves. We weren't born for this. At all.

We were born to rise.

We were born to revel in love, hope, and an invincible power of being. We were born to thrive within the sanctity of our individual spirits.

Doubt that?!

Oh, think back.

What changed for you? Childlike innocence is the most pure; we were all there at one time - until age, experience, and chronological choices based off of uncertain emotions, sideways ills, and/or other doubts - introduced us to abject negativity.

Forlorn.

Confused.

Uncertain.

And then somewhat condemned.

No, truth is truth. And it always remains. There is no difference between the purity of a newborn babe, and the essence of a hardened soul who has been reminded of his youth in such a way as to weep at his indiscretions, soak up his unworthiness, and then yield to a space of eternal awareness that confounds mortal comprehension. To find himself precious.

It is raw, tentative; a metamorphosis into a realm and temerity of the hopeful, but oh-so-cleansed.

An immersion of renewal and grace.

Frightening, yet invigorating.

And a certain beginning when it really hits home.

We don't lose innate value because we grow up. Our sense of self should not trend as to stock market volatility just for our age and development, choices, and/or inadequacy. And while time and circumstance, focus and trial, sometimes undermine the quiet resonance and wisdom of the sweet purity of toddler perspective, it's actually a growth curve of tender, gracious, and exquisite import. The entire point of this world is to meld the pureness of such cherubic outlook with the wisdom that comes from the harshness of everyday reality; to build up and through, meet and triumph, recognize and deliver - compassion. Yes, compassion. And to finally release the stubbornness of human frailty and its consort ego to receive God's grace and all that He can and will endow.

If we let Him.

Existing on this earth is about free choice. And for all the things our Father in Heaven would want us to know, He wants us to internalize and never let go that, intrinsically, we were born to discover the individual talents He graced us with. He wants us to embrace, expand, and become so fulfilled and joyful within the glory of them - yes, replete within such elation and fruition - that we are singularly and intimately overwhelmed by His unconditional love. It's a fractional awareness that chokes upon the tears of His creation and the knowledge that we were knit within our mothers' wombs out of nothing.

To be something: His.

The world at large would have us vie for popularity, obsessed and consumed by marked effort, while at the same time, promoting objectification and the transience of mortal appreciation. Grand mal evidences of depression, competition, blame, jealousy, and dis(ease) are now so prevalent, they have become as a given. It's a manipulation of esteem upon an epic scale, and aggrandized to the extreme.

Yet, God would not want this. Rather, He would have us recognize our innate value so that we could rise within them and invite others to do the same. He would have us achieve such a state of being, that to fully bask in it, would only come to pass through the encouragement of our fellow men. In all ways. To teach them, show them, and lead them to the truth of their own existence, beauty, acceptance. Claim.

We are all unique - and it's not happenstance. We were born to become ourselves; to heal, nurture, grow, and evolve strictly through an absolute commitment to self-truth. Preserving walls, coping mechanisms, and any other emotional behaviors that might shut-out, shut-down, or lend themselves to mire in doubt and depression, only serve to support the current soul-rot and decay found within the stench of public association, commerce, and the ever mutable appetites of dissension and acclaim.

Tenets of self-actualization are always grounded within an intricate fabric of appreciation. Simplicity is actually authenticity, while the complication of even the most elementary truths are truly a coward's endeavor to smokescreen personal responsibility, and to disavow the ownership of free will.

Many of us are broken - in fact, I would say that we all are; but if we continually allay our own motives under the auspices of assuaging fear, then such - regardless of heartbreak, history, or intensity - embrace a marked stasis of resignation to seek and ensure familiar pain.

Yes, to justify, rather than rectify, is to seek topical medicine over and above a cure. We are either ready for peace, or we're still needing the messy processes of dancing with the devil. 

And so I plead: take a chance; step into living large.  What are you waiting for? 

If not for a revolution of Joy.

Living Joy - This Carman Girl